Media Company Case Study

Task 1 Understand the structure

and ownership of the media sector

Lydia Cooke

Private Ownership – A company whose ownership is private. As it is private it does not need to meet strict securities and exchange commission as public companies do. Private companies may issue stock and have shareholders.Private companies never trade on public exchanges and are not issued through an initial public offering. Values are also difficult to determine through the shares of the businesses. An example of a private ownership would be the BBC.

Advantages of Private Ownership:* Better quality products due to competition. *Large media firms achieve efficiencies due to economies of scale.*The fact these companies are not owned by the government allows perspectives that dissent from official sources to be shared.

Disadvantages of Private Ownership: *Can lead to cultural decay in that popular media can become homogenized.

*Private Ownerships lead to media firms placing profit above public interest.

Types of ownership: private ownership

Public broadcasters receive funding from sources such as license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing. Public broadcasting may be nationally or locally operated, depending on the country and the station. In some countries, public broadcasting is run by a single organization. Other countries may have multiple public broadcasting organizations operating regionally or in different languages.An example of a Public Broadcasting Company would be ITV.

Advantages of Public Broadcasting:•Public Service advertising is there to reduce the strain on the public services by pushing the information through to consumers rather than dealing with the consequences afterwards (which has a cost).

Disadvantages of Public Broadcasting:•The public then have to ACT on this message, if they see the advert but choose to ignore it (not wear a seat belt) then it has been a waste of public funds as well as still costing for the fatality. Which costs more.•Also the advertising needs to reach the right people at the right time in the right place with the right message is difficult and they may need to hire an expensive ad agency to do this - then there is the cost of the air time to reach a mass audience.

Types of ownership: public service

Types of ownership: independent

Independent ownership companies, are simply production companies that are not ran by the government or have connections with any outside inputs. Some examples of independent UK ownership companies would be Tiger Aspects Productions and Baby Cow productions that was in connection with the popular BBC3 comedy show The Mighty Boosh.

Advantages of An Independent Ownership:•Free from influences from the government or corporate interests. •Small independent companies have no fees or rules, they make their own rules and regulations without any outside opinions or inputs.

Disadvantages of An Independent Ownership: •It would not have access to as many advertisement schemes as they would not have the funds. So the companies audience would be smaller than one such as Universal Studios or Warner Brothers. •Normally production companies that aren’t as well known as others don’t get their product advertsied through things like the cinema, billboards. Normally just through online forums or webesites specifying in film/TV programme reviews.

A media conglomerate is a company that owns a number of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing or movies. For example Virgin Media. Virgin Media is involved in many parts of the media, such as television. However it also owns a number of other things such as transport. For example Virgin Airlines and Virgin Media trains. Virgin also are involved with providing internet, mobile phone contracts and house broadband. These are also good, popular ways to advertise their media aspect of business.

Advantages Of A Conglomerate:

•Good way of advertising the companies branches. •A conglomerate company provides jobs for the public, as theirs many branches to work for. •Conglomerate companies are very successful, so the audience easily builds trust. They think as its such a huge company their products can be reliable and suitable for their needs. Disadvantages Of A Conglomerate: •Doesn’t give other media production companies a chance, such as independent production ownerships. As people would pick a more trustworthy successful product than one not as popular. •It can decrease competition rather than increasing quality products. As other companies feel they cannot compete with these sort of huge ownership businesses, therefor the outcome would be products will not be distributed evenly.

Types of ownership: conglomerate

In business, horizontal integration is a strategy where a company creates or acquires production units for outputs which are alike - either complementary or competitive. One example would be when a company acquires competitors in the same industry doing the same stage of production for the creation of a monopoly. Another example is the management of a group of products which are alike, yet at different price points, complexities, and qualities. This strategy may reduce competition and increase market share by using economies of scale. For example, a car manufacturer acquiring its competitor who does exactly the same thing. For example when universal bought EMI, they emerged and become one company.

Horizontal integration is the opposite to vertical integration, where companies integrate multiple stages of production of a small number of production units.

Advantages: - Makes the audience trust the companies more, depending on there material too be

trustworthy, entertaining and for filling. - Creates competition so more companies will start to produce good entertaining products.

Disadvantages: - Other companies will feel as if they cannot compete with two huge brand names together,

so they will not produce as much material. So the company and business will become unsuccessful causing loss of jobs and audience.

- The companies merged together will have to share fairly the earnings of their product. Which could create trouble if one company becomes to be treated unfairly.

Types of Companies:Horizontal Integration

In microeconomics and management, vertical integration is where the supply chain of a company is owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or market-specific service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need. It is contrasted with horizontal integration . An example of vertical integration would be when Warner Bros. which is owned by Time Warner. The Warner Bros. helped distribute Harry Potter, one of the most famous chains of films made. It was produced by Warner Bros. in association with HeyDay Films. Advantages:-A main advantage sought by companies that get into vertical integration is more control over the value chain. When retailers decide to acquire or develop a manufacturing business, they get more control over the production part of the distribution process. -Vertical integration also typically offers significantly ability to control costs throughout the distribution process. In the traditional distribution process, every step in product movement involves mark-ups so the reseller can earn profit.-Vertical integration gives companies access to more production inputs, distribution resources and process and retail channels. Each of these offers opportunities for the company to distinguish itself from competitors through effective marketing. A retailer can more quickly adapt to changing customer needs if it owns the manufacturing or production firm that makes its products.

Disadvantages: - Although vertical integration gives manufacturers control over supplies, it can also create capacity problems, according to Quick MBA. If demand for a product falls, it can be difficult for a vertically integrated to scale down production or reduce order quantities with a supplier.

Types of Companies: Vertical Integration

The combining of two or more mediums. Media convergence in the film industry can happen in production, distribution or exhibition. It happens when the music industry comes together with the film industry. For example when the popular artist Adele realised her new single Sky fall, for the James Bond film Sky fall. Synergy and cross media are quite similar. The key difference is that cross media convergence involves media products and synergy can involve non media products for example merchandise. Another example of cross media convergence is when contestants on shows like The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent use publishes music to sing to, this music is licensed for the shows.

Advantages: - It gives other artists a chance to cover songs, the artist audience might enjoy a cover of their

favourite song buy a different artist.- If the song was quite old, and a newer upcoming artist realised it as their single the public

might research the old song and purchase both versions. Which is good for the original artist and the new upcoming artist.

Disadvantages: - Songs may become ruined and overplayed as the newer single version of the song might not

be as good as the old one. Which would not be a successful outcome for either artists.

- Artists may daringly cover an artists single without permission and post it on social networking websites such as YouTube where the public can see it.

Cross Media convergence

Synergy is the simultaneous release of different products to boost both. Synergy can most often be used by bigger companies as the different elements work together to promote linked products across different media. Realising two or more products at the same time will promote each other. They have a larger affect than if it was just one product existing alone. They have a mutually beneficial relationship. Conglomerates for example Sony are able to use synergy to boost profits because of there diversity. For example the own lots of different companies which produce different products for a variety of target audiences.

Advantages: - For example Sony will earn more of a profit as they have different companies

concentrating on different products for their target audiences. - They will earn more trust from the public. As people will straight away think, they are

involved with lots of different aspects of the media so they must be a good reliable company.

Disadvantages:- Other companies may feel they don’t have much of a change as most of the public trust is

with the most popular companies, not the upcoming ones. - Products will become more similar, which will become expected by the audience so it

becomes boring, so they will start looking elsewhere for more of a unique new fresh product.

Synergy

In the music industry there is a structure which is followed by the companies and businesses involved. Production, distribution and compositing. They are always companies which will produce an artists song, a company which will distribute it and someone which will composite, such as making a visual aid to advertise the song for example a music video. As the music industry is becoming wider and wider and more artists are being broadcasted its becoming more competitive to create a product which is unique, fresh and generally something the public and audience hasn’t ever heard before. Popular genres of music such as pop, rock and dance are merging and becoming sub – genres.

Media ownership is dominated by the big three. Which is Warner Music Group, Sony Music and Universal. The major labels own, and are made up by many subsidiary labels that you have thought were independent labels. For example Def Jam Recordings is owned by Universal Music Group.

Describe the Structure and of Ownership of Either The Film, TV, Gaming or Music Industry

Disney is a film production company. Its target audience is children aged from 4 onwards. Disney is one of the most successful production companies and has produced some of the most greatest films such as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Peterpan. Walt Disney Pictures later went on and merged with Pixar, so it became Disney Pixar which made films such as Toy Story, Up and Monsters Inc. Disney still to this day produces films of there own. Disney is a conglomerate company as it has merged with another company, however they still work independently. Walt Disney Pictures is an American film production company and division of The Walt Disney Studios, owned by The Walt Disney Company. The division is based at the Walt Disney Studios and is the main producer of live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Studios unit. It took on its current name in 1983. 

Disney

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American diversified multinational mass media corporation headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. It is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Disney was founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, and established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and theme parks. The company also operated under the names Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions. The company is best known for the products of its film studio, the Walt Disney Studios, which is today one of the largest and best-known studios in Hollywood.

Ownership

As Walt Disney is such a popular, successful company it as the following competitors:

1.Twenty First Century – Fox inc.

2.Time Warner Inc.

3.NBCUniversal Media, LCC.

Competitors

Disney’s Audience Profile:Females + Males aged 5+ - 16.

Hobbies: Enjoys watching films with happy endings, learning about morals and ‘the right thing to do’ which what most Disney films are based upon. Enjoys fun and humorous activities. And also being in a friendly sociable environment.

Religion: Catholic, Sikhism, Jewish, Hindu etc.. (Disney is made for all religion and no offensive scenes or terminology or props.

Audience

Media Organization involves the examination of media organizations, industries, and policies and the vital role that media play in the production of news, information, and entertainment in a democratic society. The concentration includes a critical analysis of the history, functions, and structures of media organizations in American and global life; of the economic, social, legal, and technological forces influencing media; and of the roles that media play in society.

organizational structure

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