105MC Week 3“Who’s talking to you?”

• Who are “The Media”?• What do you consume?• Who makes it?• Who sells it to you?• How do they make their

money?

Advertisements

• Who is talking to you in this ad?

• Nicole?• Voice-over?• Chanel?• The Advertising

Agency?

TV Programmes

• The TV Station?• The Production

Company?• The Scriptwriters?• The Director?

Why does media content get made?

• For pleasure (YouTube)• As a piece of creative

art• For money?

• Which of these do you think is responsible for most media production?

How do media companies make their money?

• Sales (music, books)• Subscription (Some TV

eg the Arts Channel• Indirect state funding –

licence fee (BBC)• Direct state funding• Advertising

Media Businesses

• Commerce• Exchange• Profit and Loss

• Even not-for-profit organisations operate within these considerations

Approaches to understanding Media Organisations

• Political Economy– Media in context of

• Political structures• Economics

• Organisational Study– How the organisations work

• Workplace Ethnography– The culture of media

workers– Professionalism, creativity,

skill

Political Economy of Media

• Power relations in production

• Who pays?• Who profits?,

distribution and consumption of media

Media and “Free Markets”

• Competition– Should ensure variety

and innovation• Choice• Supply and demand

keep prices low• Successful ideas are

copied• Good innovations

become successful

The Downside of Free Markets

• Lots of products aimed at the same consumers

• Lower quality• More of the same• Minority groups

excluded

Audience as Commodity

• Is advertising-funded content free to consumers?

• The advertiser pays• The advertiser id buying

the attention of the viewer

• The “consumer” is actually the product

The Hotelling Effect• Profit maximising leads to

concentration on the mainstream and the centre

• Minorities are excluded unless they are targeted by public service organisations or niche providers

• Compare with contemporary electoral politics

Risk and Uncertainty• Investors don’t want risk

so they favour old ideas over new ones

• Big organisations make low risk decisions

• Mergers and monopolies• Independent producers –

market created by legislation (separate production from distribution)

Organisational Studies

• How are media businesses organised?

• Map out the different divisions, groups, roles, activities within the organisation

• Who controls whom?• Who does what?• Who’s in charge?

Raymond Williams’s 3 eras of cultural production

• 1 the era of patronage– Pre-industrial– Working for the rich and

powerful• 2 the era of market production

– 19th Century– The Art Market– Beginnings of mass market

• 3 the era of corporate production– 20th Century– Large scale production needs

large organisations

Production Processes

• David Hesmondhalgh’s taxonomy of media workers– Primary creatives– Technical craft workers– Creative managers– Owners and executives

Cultures of Production

• How do media workers think and behave?

• Ethnographic studies• Discourse analysis– Espinosa on TV

programming meetings– Barton on advertising

agencies

What sort of people are media workers?

• Their assumptions• Their beliefs• The context they work

inThe constraints they work

underTheir identity

advertising workers and the cult of creativity

The digital world and the end of scarcity

• Anyone can publish anything

• Anything can be accessed anytime, on demand

• Piracy and downloading – is everything free now?

• Why will anyone make anything if they can’t make money?

• Will we all be “famous for 15 minutes” (Warhol)

Research task: who owns that stuff?

• In research groups – take one item from one of your media diaries and find out

• What is the name of the company that produced it?

• Is it a major or an independent?• Who owns the company?• What other companies do they own?• What is the turnover of the company?• How do they make their money?• How does this affect what they do?• Is anyone overseeing what they do?• How effective is that control?