Task 1-Sectors of the Media

The Umbrella of Media

The main aim of the media is to communicate with it's audience through informing, educating and entertaining. It can communicate with it's audience in a number of different ways and platforms, these are known as different sectors of the media. The different sectors of the media I will be looking at are:

• Film
• Radio
• TV
• Publishing
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Books (e-books)
• Internet

The film industry is made up of Independent films and Major Studios. Independent film companies are those that are involved and engaged in the process of producing and distributing films. They fund their films on a low budget, use actors that aren't widely known and have story lines that are quite ‘out of the ordinary’. A lot of funding in the UK for independent film makers comes from the Arts Council. They are a charity who give funding and grants to people they feel are worthy who want to create productions of a kind of art, whether it’s dancing, reading, music or digital film, as it would be in this case. Film 4 is not only a TV channel but it’s also a film production company called ‘Film 4 Productions’. They develop and co-finance films with a distinctive and creative flair- Slum dog Millionaire, for example. Independent films make most of their appearances in film festivals, such as Cannes Film Festival. For our final major project, my group is making an animation; this is a part of independent filming.

The Major Studios, otherwise known as Hollywood Blockbusters are worldwide known companies such as Walt Disney Co, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, and Paramount etc. They receive their funding for their films through a countless amount of ways, such as current revenues, credit facilities with banks, public and private offerings and advance payments. Hollywood films cost millions and billions of dollars to make, a very steep price compared to independent filmmakers. This can make it a lot easier in some senses for them to gain their finance, from profit they have made in previous films, and pitching to people with enough experience and knowledge in Hollywood films to know they will be a success.

The chart below shows the structure of the film industry, mainly in America. The top row of the chart shows the ‘parent’ companies. These are the companies at the top of the chain who own and have power over the ones below and who create the films. These are Walt Disney, VUE, Sony, Viacom, News Corp, Time Warner and Liberty Media. The next line in grey, is the major studio distributors. These are people who distribute the films to other major companies. Some of these studio distributors are Disney/Miramax, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox. Using a section of company from the flow chart as an example, Time Warner is distributed by Warner Bros. Dream Works is a distributor, but isn’t a part of another company like the others are. The next flow of the chart in brown, is the major studio speciality divisions. These are the people that acquire rights t the studio’s picture and deal with marketing and finance. Twentieth Century Fox’s specialty divisions are Fox Searchlight. Next they have the Broadcasters, the people that are allowed to show the films, who are Fox in this case. Next are the cable broadcasters, who are the cable TV channels who are part of the whole chain of the company. Fox’s cable networks are FX Network and Fox News. Next are the Cable/ Satellite Systems who are the satellite systems that broadcasts the channels. Fox’s is Comcast Continental. Lastly is the retailing, which is the shops and shopping 

channels part of the company, in this case QVC.

 Radio is another part of the media sector. It is a distribution of audio content, where presenters generically play music, discuss topics and conversations and tell the news sport and weather. Radio falls into three categories, publicly funded radio, commercial radio and community and voluntary radio. The industry employs over 20,000 people, more than terrestrial TV, which is a type of television broadcasting that doesn’t require satellite transmission or cables.

Public broadcasting radio is provided and funded by the Government, who receives money from taxpayers and TV license payers. BBC is a public broadcaster, with not only radio but television as well. Because the Government funds the BBC, they have an advantage of not having commercials and adverts throughout their shows.

The chart above from Ofcom shows the amount of money from the public for license fee’s Worldwide, and how much of the money was used towards radio. In the UK, with only just under 4% of it’s total advertising expenditure coming from radio, over 60% of the public fee funding was used.

Commercial radio stations earn the majority of their money from advert spots that they sell to businesses or service providers or mentioning them on air. Commercial radio is often local radio, such as Heart FM but it’s also national radio, like Kiss FM. To buy radio airtime, they measure it on ‘cost per thousand.’ This means that for every thousand people that the advert impacts. Each station has an individual price for how much they charge, depending on the size and scale of their radio station.

Community radio is stations that are ran by hospitals, students and small towns. They have to apply for radio licenses and some only apply for Restricted Service Licenses. RSL’s are short term licenses with a duration of up to 28 days. Volunteers often run them and they cover approximately three kilometres, enough to cover the radius of a town or city.

Publishing covers magazines, newspapers and books. The act of publishing is to make information available to the general public. Before films, television programmes and radio, it was known for publishing books, magazines and newspapers. In this instance, I will be talking about print publishing.

Magazines have been published for over three hundred years. They cover topics such as art, music, film, fashion, food, lifestyles, travel etc. Niche magazines is a term used for magazines that appeal to only a certain, smaller audience These would be magazines based on fishing, gardening, hair, food, for example. Life style magazines and ‘gossip’ magazines are ones that are highly read, especially by women. The National Readership Survey is an example of a company that works along-side the industry. It estimates the circulation of magazines and the demographics and social groupings of people that read them from their readership surveys. From these results, the magazine can be helped to target their magazines to their circulation ages and demographic groups. 

Newspapers are scheduled publications containing news. They are printed on low cost paper, known as ‘newsprint’. Newspapers fall into two catergories, a broadsheet and a tabloid. Broadsheets newspapers are seen as the more informative ones, with news about politics, the economy and covering also overseas news. The size of them is typically double that of a tabloid. Broadsheet newspapers include The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Observer. Tabloid newspapers are ones such as The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Mirror. These take into consideration more news about celebrities, lifestyle and human interest stories. Rupert Murdock is the owner of The News of the World, The Sun and The Times, as well as owning 39% of the UK’s satellite broadcasting. He has been talked about a lot in the news recently for his ‘phone hacking scandals’. He and his newspaper companies have hacked into people’s phones who have been covered in the news to find, or add on to, news stories about them- for example, Milly Dowler, a thirteen-year-old girl who was abducted. Another thing that Rupert Murdoch is known for is for what looks like attempting to cause a ‘monopoly effect’. This is when a company or person owns all of the news and media, consequently having control over what the viewers can read and see in terms of news etc. This is something which is illegal in the UK, as you wouldn’t be able to see the full sides of news stories, and the company can pick and choose what it’s audience and what the country knows about.

It seems that since the recession, the internet has had a big impact on all the different parts of the media industry. Publications are now able to be seen online. Newspapers publish their articles and many more to their online sites, as do magazines. There are now apps on smart phones where you can access news and purchase electronic copies of magazines for your iPhone or iPad etc. E-books are now available too, which are electronic copies of books for kindles and iPads etc.  The internet is a broad platform where people can upload their own films, tv programmes, podcasts, music, articles, photographs and many more. Even uploading essays onto blogs, as I am now. These can all be both positive and negative things. Positive, because people’s work can have more of a chance getting noticed through websites such as Youtube, but also negative because the creators voice is lost, with no control over where their work goes, who sees the work or who may unknowingly copy their work. Although I definitely see it as a good thing to be able to have a fountain of news, magazines, music, films, television programmes and whatever else at your fingertips, this amount of accessibility is always going to cause problems somewhere. For example, in China they blocked the search engine Google because they wanted to “ keep strict controls on the flow of information to its own citizens.” [BBC News]

The ‘Umbrella of Media’ is the different sectors in the media industry which I have covered, as well as their importance to the industry and an overview of which each other sectors does, as well as the sectors within themselves.