Unit 7: Understanding media structure and ownership
Introduction:Ths assignment will be about the structures and ownership of the 8 creative media sectors. I will be talking about these sectors; Film, TV, Radio, Publishing, Advertising and Marketing, Animation, Interactive media, Games and Photo Imaging.
Size and Structure
Film
The purpose of the film industry sector is to entertain a wide range of audience with one long story. It's brought together with three main components. These components are: Pre-Production, Production and Post Production. Walt Disney Productions Disney is one of the biggest major film conglomerates, its a multinational mass media corporation that was founded by Roy and Walt Disney in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon studio which then progressed to Walt Disney Productions. Disney owns a variety of companies here's a list of some of them:
The UK doesn't have as much as America in the film industry as America has Hollywood, Hollywood has a huge impact to the film industry as it produces more films per year. It produced on average 600 films last year, however according to the guardian Mark Gill head of the film department in an independent firm stated that:
"Last years 606 films to emerge from Hollywood would fall to 400 next year and may go lower next year"
This is basically telling us that Hollywood is beginning to have financial issues which means less movies will be getting produced per year and less movies means less money which also means less audience and funding for other movies.
The BBC is one of many large film companies in the UK, The BBC has produced over 35 films one of them being 'Before I go to Sleep' This film had a 6.5 rating from imdb. In the UK the BBC is one of the most popular media industries and is probably most liked, however the movies produced aren't as good as people anticipated. This is due to planning and budget of the film not being as high as Hollywood films, Hollywood films have more staff, cast, and more budget applying to it. For example if you take Pirates Of The Caribbean budget: $900 million it is a lot higher than Before I go to sleep because a more successful bigger film company has produced the film. The UK doesn't have the luxury of Hollywood and its studios but it does have access to Pinewood Studios, another quite successful film company of films such as Skyfall.
The film industry has a variety of film types also known as Genres, the main genres of film would be:
TV
The role of the TV(Television) industry is to entertain a wide range of audiences with a series of short movies, but also to create money. The BBC is a main impact to the UK and TV industry due to the license fee the BBC makes millions per year, according to Link: "the license fee made up the bulk of the BBC's total income of £5.066 billion in 2013-2014" So thanks to the license fee the BBC made a whopping 5 billion!
Like the Film industry the TV industry also has genres, these genres are the same as the ones in the film sector, comedy, action, horror, fantasy etc. The TV industry has a good amount of independent companies in the UK. One of them being Endemol, it's one of the largest UK companies. Information taken from Link stating that: "Endemol is a creator, producer and distributor of multi-platform entertainment content." Endemol has produced some big shows such as Big Brother. Big brother is a reality TV show when it first aired in 2000 it completely changed the UK, getting super popular and making it branch off in different directions with some comedians creating several series doing parodies of Big Brother.
The TV industry consist of both private and public companies. A private TV company that owns up to 18 distribution and production companies goes by the name of All3Media, it is also the UK's largest film, television and digital production company. All3Media owns companies such as IDTV and Bentley Productions Ltd. For a full list of all the companies that All3Media owns click here. companycheck.co.uk claims that All3Media's Net Worth is: £155,780,575. A perfect public company would possibly be the BBC, it offers a variety of content, including TV channels some being BBC1, 2, 3 and 4. The TV industry is the second largest sector in all of the UK because of its huge amount of content from different providers such as the BBC and All3Media, there is so much content that there is no lacking any time soon. The TV industry isnt going out of business any time soon.
Radio
Radio's purpose is to entertain the audience through a broadcast, a non visual show. Some shows are recorded but most radio shows are done live with recorded music, Radio breaks down into two types, non-profitable and commercial. The BBC which is owned by public state would be the best example to choose for radio as its being paid by the public, the public pay through the licence fee. The license fee is a licence that anyone who wants to watch TV has to pay for. As told by BBC since 1 April 2013 for a colour licence it costs £145.50 and for a black and white licence its £49. Here's a picture of BBC's radio stations:
Publishing
"Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information - the activity of making information available to the general public." This came from: Link.
Publishing prepares journals, posters, newspapers, books and many more. Publishing is the largest industry at this current time, the purpose is to give the public a chance to explore a creators work by making 'publishing' it meaning it makes it something that anyone can use whenever they want.
Publishing is large in the UK because of its staff, it currently has 145,000+ employed. In the picture below is a graph of the employment in newspaper publishing. Unfortunately it shows that it has went from 450k employees but then hit the 250-300k range, also it does not state what is on the bottom of the chart. However I believe that this is years, 1947, 1955, 1963, 1971, 1980, 1988, 1996, 2005 and 2009. If this is what it means then this shows that during 1988 newspaper was at its highest but as it got to 2009 it has dramatically decreased over the years, I think this is because of the use of technology and how advanced its got over the past years.
In the publishing industry there are sub-sectors according to Link with also information coming from this. Some of these sub-sectors are:
Advertising and Marketing
The purpose Advertising and marketing is to promote and provide content in certain ways to persuade an audience to buy or look more into an object or other work. Advertising provides more income as it increases purchases of an item. Advertising is often done through TV adverts during show breaks or YouTube adverts during YouTube videos.
Advertising is not the most popular industry in the UK as it only has 17,000 staff. But that's because the UK is a small company and other countries use so much more staff. Here's a two of many advertising companies in the UK:
Animation
Animation's purpose is to entertain an audience (mostly under-aged) with short movies and TV shows that are animated basically not real. This is done with a series of images also known as frames that are the same but distinctively changed in certain ways to create an illusion of different movements. When I say distinctively changed I mean the image is the same but maybe the leg has moved or the characters eyes have shut. On average there are 24 frames per second in an animated film so imagine how many that is overall considering many animated movies are over 60 minutes long.
Animation is not just done in one way. There are different types of animation: 2D, 3D and stop motion. 2D is most likely the easiest of all for animation as it just has to be done 2 dimensional but with 3D it takes more time, more equipment and professionals as it setting up models to look almost life like. For example Toy Story a "1995 American computer-animated adventure film" according to Link. This film is a CGI animated movie, it's basically a 3D computer Graphic. 3D is done on the computer its known as Computer-generated Imagery(CGI).
Animation like film and TV is produced with various companies, some large companies are: Pixar, Dreamworks and Nickelodeon Animation studios. However there are some small companies unfortunately animtaion is so popular I could only find Aardman Studios, even though they are quite popular for animations such as Wallace and Gromit and The Pirates, they are still a small company. Animation in the UK is not that popular since the UK does not have many major so there are only roughly 5,000 employed in this industry.
Interactive Media
According to Link: "Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user's actions by presenting content such as text, graphics, animation, video, audio, games, etc." An example of interactive media would be an app for a mobile or a tablet device/ipad.
The menu on a DVD is a great example for Interactive media as it takes actions and has background music playing. You can perform various actions on the DVD menu such as going through scenes, changing language, adding subtitles and of course play the movie. A DVD menu can come in so many different shapes and sizes here's an example of two that I have obtained:
Games
Games have many purposes but the main overall one is to create a virtual world for a player to move about and explore the natures of certain entertainment in that game. A game is like the film industry it also has genres with information provided from Link, these are the genres:
Photo Imaging
Photo imaging is not just one thing, its not taking an image and leaving it as it is, its manipulating the picture in various ways to look worse or better depending on what look your going for. You could make someone look older or younger, you could even modify the picture and take out objects out of the background to get a perfect image. You could also take a picture of a person, take out the background and then make him/her into a render so you can just pop the image of that person on anything maybe take out an autumn background and put him/her on a beach.
Photoshop is probably the best possible example of a program that can modify an image in a certain way or any way to be exact. the picture above is a good example of photo imaging and what Photoshop can do as you can see on the left side of the image that is what it originally looked like and on the right is what it looked like after a few modifications were made. There are many tools on Photoshop in that picture from where the arrow with the 4 directions mouse next to it to the left downwards are a few tools that are included in Photoshop that can be used to modify this picture in many ways. Some great tools to use in retouching an image would be the Spot Healing Brush tool or air brush tool.
These tools aren't used much they are mainly used in celebrity pictures if needed, the spot healing tool is an advanced tool that when you click and hold the mouse over a certain area it will highlight it and when you let go of the mouse the computer will attempt and most of the time succeed at blending a patch to make it look better for example the picture above spot healing could be used to get rid of those freckles on that woman's face.
Photo imaging is not just used on its own its pretty much linked to the majority of the media industry these sectors would be: Film, TV, Advertising, Publishing and possibly interactive media. If photo imaging was to be used in the TV or Film industry, an actor on set could get an image in the post from someone and it could be retouched so it doesn't look how it did before the face of the person in the image could be made to a better quality etc. Unfortunately I could not find any Photo imaging companies to include it seems this industry isn't as large of an industry as it should be.
Ownership
In the part above you have found out all about the sectors and how they work but you haven't actually found out who owns the companies and a few other variables with also information like sources of income.
Private and Public
Public ownership, its a company that is owned by the public state which is aimed more towards entertaining the audience than gaining profits from them. The most famous public ownership in the UK would most likely be the BBC as its funded by its own licence fee. This licence fee only applies to the people of the UK who own a TV as they have to pay for a TV licence. As said in the Radio sector colour is £145.50 and black and white is £49. Even if you do not have a licence and you for example watch live TV on a tablet or stream at all you will be find or will have to buy a licence.
In the picture above it shows a picture of a 2004 TV licence. To this day they look the same but obviously have date changes on them e.g. "Valid Until: 31 January 2015"
As you can see in the picture above it shows that this was 2004's TV licence and the cost is different to now. This is because of the demand for TV shows and film have escalated erratically in the past years so the price has increased due to TV being used and watched more, leaving the BBC with a huge profit overall possibly millions/billions. Here's an example of the previous years of the licence fee.
Private ownership is not the same as public at all as private is based on making profits and nothing else, Adverts are the best way to go for Private ownership as its not being funded by the state so they have to do all the work themselves kind of like the independents. Private companies are mostly the highest profitable companies on top of ownership, for example News Corp is a private organisation it fits into the cross media sector but its overall a private company with one of its main goals being to gain profits and bulk up the company to look stronger.
Private companies also gain a great amount from viewers and sales. For example for Viewers the viewers of a TV show can gain more because it shows its going to be a high priority thing for people to watch which makes the company gain more, the sales of things like product placement also gives a dramatic increase to profits with different content. In the picture above Sky movies is a private company that mostly goes for profits.
Conglomerates
According to Link: "A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate group, usually involving a parent company and many subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company." Conglomerates are not independent they rely on other companies. There are six main conglomerates which overrule all the other companies, these six companies are:
Independents
Independents are not the same Conglomerates, Independents are independent its in the name. They do not rely are on other companies for funds and stand alone by themselves, they are normally privately owned and are also not owned by other companies or related to takeovers/mergers in any way. sometimes an independent company can be hard to maintain because of funds as it does not rely on others for funds, for example if the company made a product and it did not return the expenses/profits it was aimed to then the company would be in quite the spot of bother which could result in them either becoming a lesser business that is not known by many people and cant afford to promote themselves or they could eventually run out of business.
Archer's Mark is a small film production company that is based in the UK. According to their website they class themselves as "Archer's Mark is a full-service film production company based in Shoreditch, East London. A strong creative cross-pollination between our Advertising and Film & TV departments informs our mission statement: to produce bold, innovative and strongly authored work with a wide commercial appeal." This company is quite a small company but its an independent company so it could possibly be a lot harder for them to maintain this depending on profit, as it states they are a film production company, this means it could possibly cost a good amount for official camera equipment.
Cross media ownership
Cross media ownership is where one organisation owns multiple media sectors. For example a company could own a Radio company and film production company. One of the biggest companies that is cross media ownership would probably News Corp it owns a huge amount of sectors, the sectors that News Corp owns are: TV, film, publishing and radio. They might own other some companies from other sectors but I could not find anything other than these sectors. Rupert Murdoch is the executive chairman and founder of News Corp.
There are many benefits having multiple sectors as it can obviously benefit from money but also gives you an advantage but thats not the only benefit, it can make the company bigger and expand more in different directions making it stronger and being able to provide more content to a great range of audiences. News Corp is a big impact to the world despite its owning of several sectors it is such a big company in general that it makes a whole big difference to other industries.
Mergers and Takeovers
Mergers are two or more companies that combine together to create one single company, could happen due to lack of profit/funds or the companies think they would get more fame through doing this combining. Some companies merge to make themselves stronger and benefit more, also making them look like they have more control than they actually do. Disney and Pixar merged, Disney bought Pixar in a $7.5 billion deal according to Link.
Mergers can be seen as both bad and good, if its a lack of money then jobs might be lost or replaced to make the merging easier and more profitable at a later date, however this does mean some sectors of those two companies will end up losing employees which is never a good thing. Also with the company being bigger and more expanded out than before, with the cost of job losses as well, the one big company that it becomes might be a lot harder to maintain and control.
Takeovers are not the same as a merger, instead of a company merging with another company the company takes control of that company. This could happen due to the owners of it not wanting much part in it any more or does not feel as though they are right for the part, or the company taking over might suggest they will be willing to take control of the company for them.A good example would be the latest Minecraft purchase. Microsoft bought the famous "blocky" game Minecraft, a game originally created by Markus Persson also known for his in game name "Notch" He did not want much in the game once he had created therefore handing it over to Mojang.
Mojang, a small Swedish company which then went on to giving control of Minecraft over to Microsoft this was probably because such a small company could not handle such a huge game so they believed being controlled by a huge more thought out company(Microsoft) would be an advantage to the game and its players. A takeover can have its good and bad points, bad being the new owners could completely change the game to their liking and drive it to the ground. However a good one could be that since its in new hands and a new aspect of it could be taken on since its viewed by others.
Income
Media and its Sectors have a great amount of ways for making money some of these ways are: Advertising, games, licence fee, TV subscriptions, product placement, sponsorship and many more. The Licence fee made by the BBC is a great source of income, however it mainly affects the UK as well as the TV, Publishing and Radio industry sectors. This source of income is paid by the public, its a licence that allows you to watch TV, coloured TV or black and white. The current price for colour is £145.50 and for black and white its £49, this licence covers a year and has to be paid whether or not you watch TV. This is where the BBC get most of their income.
Sponsorship in the TV sector is a great source of income because if a company was to sponsor a TV series or one episode maybe provide them financially or some other contents, and for them to benefit they get credit at some point throughout the show. It helps the show as it shows the audience that it might be worth watching if someone big like the BBC or someone has sponsored it.
Product placement often occurs throughout TV shows and films, product placement is embedded marketing. "Its the inclusion or reference to a product" according to Link. IPhones and Samsung phones are a great example of product placement throughout films and TV shows they are constantly used unless of course its a western/ time before phones show or film, but the placement of phones are often used which sometimes makes the audience think 'Oh if they have it, I should as well.' Here's an example of an IPhone being used in Sherlock the TV series.
Film
The purpose of the film industry sector is to entertain a wide range of audience with one long story. It's brought together with three main components. These components are: Pre-Production, Production and Post Production. Walt Disney Productions Disney is one of the biggest major film conglomerates, its a multinational mass media corporation that was founded by Roy and Walt Disney in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon studio which then progressed to Walt Disney Productions. Disney owns a variety of companies here's a list of some of them:
- Walt Disney Pictures
- Lucasfilm
- Hollywood Pictures
- Touchstone Pictures
- Caravan Pictures
- Disneynature
- Pixar Animation Studios
The UK doesn't have as much as America in the film industry as America has Hollywood, Hollywood has a huge impact to the film industry as it produces more films per year. It produced on average 600 films last year, however according to the guardian Mark Gill head of the film department in an independent firm stated that:
"Last years 606 films to emerge from Hollywood would fall to 400 next year and may go lower next year"
This is basically telling us that Hollywood is beginning to have financial issues which means less movies will be getting produced per year and less movies means less money which also means less audience and funding for other movies.
- Action
- Adventure
- Comedy
- Crime
- Drama
- Fantasy
- Historical
- Horror
- Mystery
- War
- Western
- Family
- Musical
The reason for all the genres is to give a bigger variety of types of movies to entertain a wider audience because not everyone likes the same genre.
TV
The role of the TV(Television) industry is to entertain a wide range of audiences with a series of short movies, but also to create money. The BBC is a main impact to the UK and TV industry due to the license fee the BBC makes millions per year, according to Link: "the license fee made up the bulk of the BBC's total income of £5.066 billion in 2013-2014" So thanks to the license fee the BBC made a whopping 5 billion!
Like the Film industry the TV industry also has genres, these genres are the same as the ones in the film sector, comedy, action, horror, fantasy etc. The TV industry has a good amount of independent companies in the UK. One of them being Endemol, it's one of the largest UK companies. Information taken from Link stating that: "Endemol is a creator, producer and distributor of multi-platform entertainment content." Endemol has produced some big shows such as Big Brother. Big brother is a reality TV show when it first aired in 2000 it completely changed the UK, getting super popular and making it branch off in different directions with some comedians creating several series doing parodies of Big Brother.
Radio
Radio's purpose is to entertain the audience through a broadcast, a non visual show. Some shows are recorded but most radio shows are done live with recorded music, Radio breaks down into two types, non-profitable and commercial. The BBC which is owned by public state would be the best example to choose for radio as its being paid by the public, the public pay through the licence fee. The license fee is a licence that anyone who wants to watch TV has to pay for. As told by BBC since 1 April 2013 for a colour licence it costs £145.50 and for a black and white licence its £49. Here's a picture of BBC's radio stations:
Each BBC radio station is fit to serve a different viewer each covers different topics and different tastes for the audience. Radio 1 is all the modern music that is currently new. Radio 2 however focuses on music in a later generation the 60's to 70's. although Radio 1 and 2 focus on generation of age etc. Radio 3 focuses on classical music. The radio stations all focus on different audiences, radio 1 focuses on anyone from 14-30, radio 2 40-60, and radio 3 which spreads out as some younger and older people like classical music.
Commercial stations aren't the same as non-profitable, they use AM and FM frequencies which is now not that useful due to technology in this day and age but they do target a bigger audience. Some stations are owned by other radio stations, but some radio stations are only local which are location specific. Here's a list of some commercial stations in the UK:
- Abbey FM
- Buzz FM
- Centre Radio
- Channel Travel Radio
- Devonair Radio
- Dune FM
- Fen Radio
- Liberty Radio
The full list can be found here: Link
The Radio industry is one of the most employed industry in the UK as it has over 20,000 staff.
Publishing
"Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information - the activity of making information available to the general public." This came from: Link.
Publishing prepares journals, posters, newspapers, books and many more. Publishing is the largest industry at this current time, the purpose is to give the public a chance to explore a creators work by making 'publishing' it meaning it makes it something that anyone can use whenever they want.
- Newspaper
"Newspapers are regularly scheduled publications that present recent news, typically on a type of inexpensive paper called newsprint." Although this information does not help much it tells us what a newspaper is. A few famous newspaper companies would be: The Sun, USA Today, Financial Times and Daily Mail. For a list of the top 15 newspaper companies click here.
- Book
"Most books are published by a small number of very large book publishers, but thousands of smaller book publishers exist." An example of some famous Books could be: Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.
- Comic
Comics are a series of pictures put together developing a story in many ways. Marvel is a great example of a famous comic creator as they have created comics such as iron man and captain america.
Advertising and Marketing
The purpose Advertising and marketing is to promote and provide content in certain ways to persuade an audience to buy or look more into an object or other work. Advertising provides more income as it increases purchases of an item. Advertising is often done through TV adverts during show breaks or YouTube adverts during YouTube videos.
Advertising is not the most popular industry in the UK as it only has 17,000 staff. But that's because the UK is a small company and other countries use so much more staff. Here's a two of many advertising companies in the UK:
- WPP plc
- AMV BBDO
No one really knows who these companies are. Some of these companies are independent, both of these produce world-wide adverts for popular clients. WPP plc is a UK based multinational advertising company, it owns a variety of networks. Some being: Grey, Burson-Marsteller, Hill & knowlton, JWT, Ogivily Group and TNS as well as a few others. It was founded in 1971.
AMV BBDO is also an advertising agency that works along side 85 brands, brands such as Blackberry, Aviva, Mars and BT. It was founded in 1979 by David Abbott.
Advertising is obviously not free overall it costs over $500 billion across the world for advertising which shows how much is being advertised in this day and age as some advertising does not cost any more than $1,000.
Animation's purpose is to entertain an audience (mostly under-aged) with short movies and TV shows that are animated basically not real. This is done with a series of images also known as frames that are the same but distinctively changed in certain ways to create an illusion of different movements. When I say distinctively changed I mean the image is the same but maybe the leg has moved or the characters eyes have shut. On average there are 24 frames per second in an animated film so imagine how many that is overall considering many animated movies are over 60 minutes long.
Animation is not just done in one way. There are different types of animation: 2D, 3D and stop motion. 2D is most likely the easiest of all for animation as it just has to be done 2 dimensional but with 3D it takes more time, more equipment and professionals as it setting up models to look almost life like. For example Toy Story a "1995 American computer-animated adventure film" according to Link. This film is a CGI animated movie, it's basically a 3D computer Graphic. 3D is done on the computer its known as Computer-generated Imagery(CGI).
Interactive Media
According to Link: "Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user's actions by presenting content such as text, graphics, animation, video, audio, games, etc." An example of interactive media would be an app for a mobile or a tablet device/ipad.
The menu on a DVD is a great example for Interactive media as it takes actions and has background music playing. You can perform various actions on the DVD menu such as going through scenes, changing language, adding subtitles and of course play the movie. A DVD menu can come in so many different shapes and sizes here's an example of two that I have obtained:
Myriad is a good example to who actually do these menu's. They are a Canadian based Interactive media company which as they claim from Link, "Myriad Interactive is a team of strategic, creative visionaries and expert developers who share a passion for creating cutting-edge digital marketing solutions." Myriad is quite a large company that has worked on a variety of projects.
Interactive media has a great amount of companies within the UK some being BOX BEAR Ltd, BIMA and Tui. These companies are some unheard but large companies. In the UK there are only 50,000 employed in this industry. A company out of the UK would be the Disney Interactive media group.
Games
Games have many purposes but the main overall one is to create a virtual world for a player to move about and explore the natures of certain entertainment in that game. A game is like the film industry it also has genres with information provided from Link, these are the genres:
- Action
- Action-Adventure
- Adventure
- Role-Playing
- Simulation
- Strategy
- Sports
- Indie
Games come in many shapes and sizes well sometimes the box changes but I dont mean that, what I mean is all games are different whether its an MMO or an Indie game. Some previous really popular games would be: Grand Theft Auto(GTA), Call Of Duty(Cod) and many others. Both GTA and Cod are quite sucessful and popular games in the game industry as they have made billions due to their continuous efforts of making sequels, believably Call of duty is on its 11th game and grand theft auto is on its 5th. With information from Link "Grand Theft Auto is an action adventure video game series created by David Jones and Mike Dailly, then later by brothers Dan and Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies and Aaron." Grand theft auto offers more than just Action-Adventure its actually an Action-Adventure, crime, role-playing, racing, third person shooter. However a game isnt popular just by who its made by or what genre it is, its popular through what it offers. A bigger game with bigger content that has previously brought out a game or two GTA: San Andreas for example is bound to get millions in profit when the next one comes out. But it also depends on the platform as of this game series is on all consoles the occasional game is on a smaller device such as PSP. With the latest GTA in its first selling day it broke industry sale records of $800 million in the first day according to Link.
"The UK is Europe's largest video game market and the third largest in the world, with sales totalling $6 billion in 2008." The UK is the largest in Europe however it only has 8,000+ employed in the game industry. This is because the recent games being a huge seller as told above the picture GTA sold $800 million in one day. However no one exactly knows how these employment statistics might joins over the next few years as the year progress with new top sellers and next generation content. Some of the top game companies would be Ubisoft, Rockstar, Treyarch and many more for a list of famous game companies click here.
Photo Imaging
Photo imaging is not just one thing, its not taking an image and leaving it as it is, its manipulating the picture in various ways to look worse or better depending on what look your going for. You could make someone look older or younger, you could even modify the picture and take out objects out of the background to get a perfect image. You could also take a picture of a person, take out the background and then make him/her into a render so you can just pop the image of that person on anything maybe take out an autumn background and put him/her on a beach.
These tools aren't used much they are mainly used in celebrity pictures if needed, the spot healing tool is an advanced tool that when you click and hold the mouse over a certain area it will highlight it and when you let go of the mouse the computer will attempt and most of the time succeed at blending a patch to make it look better for example the picture above spot healing could be used to get rid of those freckles on that woman's face.
Photo imaging is not just used on its own its pretty much linked to the majority of the media industry these sectors would be: Film, TV, Advertising, Publishing and possibly interactive media. If photo imaging was to be used in the TV or Film industry, an actor on set could get an image in the post from someone and it could be retouched so it doesn't look how it did before the face of the person in the image could be made to a better quality etc. Unfortunately I could not find any Photo imaging companies to include it seems this industry isn't as large of an industry as it should be.
Ownership
In the part above you have found out all about the sectors and how they work but you haven't actually found out who owns the companies and a few other variables with also information like sources of income.
Private and Public
Public ownership, its a company that is owned by the public state which is aimed more towards entertaining the audience than gaining profits from them. The most famous public ownership in the UK would most likely be the BBC as its funded by its own licence fee. This licence fee only applies to the people of the UK who own a TV as they have to pay for a TV licence. As said in the Radio sector colour is £145.50 and black and white is £49. Even if you do not have a licence and you for example watch live TV on a tablet or stream at all you will be find or will have to buy a licence.
As you can see in the picture above it shows that this was 2004's TV licence and the cost is different to now. This is because of the demand for TV shows and film have escalated erratically in the past years so the price has increased due to TV being used and watched more, leaving the BBC with a huge profit overall possibly millions/billions. Here's an example of the previous years of the licence fee.
Private ownership is not the same as public at all as private is based on making profits and nothing else, Adverts are the best way to go for Private ownership as its not being funded by the state so they have to do all the work themselves kind of like the independents. Private companies are mostly the highest profitable companies on top of ownership, for example News Corp is a private organisation it fits into the cross media sector but its overall a private company with one of its main goals being to gain profits and bulk up the company to look stronger.
Private companies also gain a great amount from viewers and sales. For example for Viewers the viewers of a TV show can gain more because it shows its going to be a high priority thing for people to watch which makes the company gain more, the sales of things like product placement also gives a dramatic increase to profits with different content. In the picture above Sky movies is a private company that mostly goes for profits.
Conglomerates
According to Link: "A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate group, usually involving a parent company and many subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company." Conglomerates are not independent they rely on other companies. There are six main conglomerates which overrule all the other companies, these six companies are:
- News Corp
- Disney
- Viacom
- Time Warner
- CBS
- Comcast
These six major conglomerates control or "puppeteer" the other smaller companies. According to Link: These six companies control 90% of what we read, watch, or listen to. Since 1983 to this day companies have slowly merged, taken over, bought etc. other companies and as shown in the picture below this is what we are left with at this current time. Also from the previous link they also stated: "the total 2010 revenue for these companies was $275.9 billion." that was only 2010 it could of doubled in the past 4 years as the industries are growing even more and companies are gaining more profits.
Independents
Independents are not the same Conglomerates, Independents are independent its in the name. They do not rely are on other companies for funds and stand alone by themselves, they are normally privately owned and are also not owned by other companies or related to takeovers/mergers in any way. sometimes an independent company can be hard to maintain because of funds as it does not rely on others for funds, for example if the company made a product and it did not return the expenses/profits it was aimed to then the company would be in quite the spot of bother which could result in them either becoming a lesser business that is not known by many people and cant afford to promote themselves or they could eventually run out of business.
Cross media ownership
Cross media ownership is where one organisation owns multiple media sectors. For example a company could own a Radio company and film production company. One of the biggest companies that is cross media ownership would probably News Corp it owns a huge amount of sectors, the sectors that News Corp owns are: TV, film, publishing and radio. They might own other some companies from other sectors but I could not find anything other than these sectors. Rupert Murdoch is the executive chairman and founder of News Corp.
Mergers and Takeovers
Mergers are two or more companies that combine together to create one single company, could happen due to lack of profit/funds or the companies think they would get more fame through doing this combining. Some companies merge to make themselves stronger and benefit more, also making them look like they have more control than they actually do. Disney and Pixar merged, Disney bought Pixar in a $7.5 billion deal according to Link.
Mergers can be seen as both bad and good, if its a lack of money then jobs might be lost or replaced to make the merging easier and more profitable at a later date, however this does mean some sectors of those two companies will end up losing employees which is never a good thing. Also with the company being bigger and more expanded out than before, with the cost of job losses as well, the one big company that it becomes might be a lot harder to maintain and control.
Mojang, a small Swedish company which then went on to giving control of Minecraft over to Microsoft this was probably because such a small company could not handle such a huge game so they believed being controlled by a huge more thought out company(Microsoft) would be an advantage to the game and its players. A takeover can have its good and bad points, bad being the new owners could completely change the game to their liking and drive it to the ground. However a good one could be that since its in new hands and a new aspect of it could be taken on since its viewed by others.
Income
Media and its Sectors have a great amount of ways for making money some of these ways are: Advertising, games, licence fee, TV subscriptions, product placement, sponsorship and many more. The Licence fee made by the BBC is a great source of income, however it mainly affects the UK as well as the TV, Publishing and Radio industry sectors. This source of income is paid by the public, its a licence that allows you to watch TV, coloured TV or black and white. The current price for colour is £145.50 and for black and white its £49, this licence covers a year and has to be paid whether or not you watch TV. This is where the BBC get most of their income.
Sponsorship in the TV sector is a great source of income because if a company was to sponsor a TV series or one episode maybe provide them financially or some other contents, and for them to benefit they get credit at some point throughout the show. It helps the show as it shows the audience that it might be worth watching if someone big like the BBC or someone has sponsored it.
Product placement often occurs throughout TV shows and films, product placement is embedded marketing. "Its the inclusion or reference to a product" according to Link. IPhones and Samsung phones are a great example of product placement throughout films and TV shows they are constantly used unless of course its a western/ time before phones show or film, but the placement of phones are often used which sometimes makes the audience think 'Oh if they have it, I should as well.' Here's an example of an IPhone being used in Sherlock the TV series.
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