The Structure of Mass Media

The Structure of Mass Media
Economics of Mass Media
Alternative Media:
- Campus/ community radio
- Serviced by low-powered transmitters
- Many are staffed by volunteers
- Alternative voices in the radio universe
Underground Media:
- Free-distribution weekly form
- Emphasis on local live entertainment, bar-centered, outrageous ribald humour, high quotient of street vulgarities and sexual innuendo
High Tech Media:
- iPods, cybercafés, Wi-Fi
- technology creating new possibilities

Circulation: the number of copies of a publication that circulate
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Canada’s National public television network. Began broadcasting in 1952

To reach potential customers, advertisers buy space or time in mass media that can deliver audiences. Its ads themselves, however, that drive home the sales pitch – but first they must get attention

Demassification: Media focus on narrower audience segments. Most media content today is aimed at narrow, albeit often still large, segments (i.e. demassification).

Alternative media: emerging narrowly focused advertising vehicles. They include:
- sponsored websites and games and other lures to attract return visits
- direct mail catalogues and flyers to selected addresses
- televisions commercials at the point of purchase, such as screens in grocery store shopping carts
- place-based media, such as magazines designed for distribution only in physicians waiting rooms
- Telemarketing in which salespeople make their pitches by telephone to households determined by statistical profiles to be good potential customers.
- Email marketing, sometimes referred to as spam

Media Conglomeration
Conglomeration: combining of companies into larger companies
The trend toward conglomeration, involves a process of mergers, acquisitions and buyouts that consolidates the ownership of the media into fewer and fewer companies.
Convergence: Early 21st century model of media cross-ownership. Converged companies typically own print, broadcast, and internet holdings.

Dubious effects of conglomeration:
- Quality: headquarters push subsidiaries to cut costs to increase profits, a trend that has devastated the quality of writing and editing. Nowadays proofreaders have been replaced by spell-check which lacks the intelligence and judgement of a good proofer. The jobs of the reporter and the typesetter have been consolidated as well as copy editors and headline writers.
- Cross-promotion: mega-media companies (ex. NBC) are finding more ways to cross-promote their products. Reporters will take shortcuts to increase productivity. Some major publishers have eliminated important stages in the editing process to rush new titles to print and turn quicker profits.
- Sameness: Major record companies often encourage artists to imitate what is already popular. The problem? The profit driven trend to recycle existing material for a quick buck
- Corporate Instability: conglomeration has also introduced instability. Profit driven corporate parents are quick to sell subsidiaries that fall short of profit expectations even for a short term or just to raise cash. Typically in unstable situations, uncertainty diverts energy and focus from ongoing projects. Some are put on hold which too causes career jitters for some employees who decide to look for jobs elsewhere.

Positive effects of conglomeration:
- Parent corporations have infused cash into their new subsidiaries, financing expensive initiatives that were not financially possible before, including multi-million dollar deals with authors
- Because parent corporations often own newspapers, magazines and broadcast companies, book publishers have ready partners for repackaging books in additional media forms
- Many of the new parent corporations own book companies abroad which helps to open up global market

In today’s business climate, the lure of market dominance and profit often on a global scale, keeps driving the concentration of media companies into fewer and fewer conglomerates.

Public Media: financed by citizens and government money to further the public good like PBS, NPR in the United States and CBC in Canada.
Organizational Media: aimed at serving nongovernment bodies, such as professional groups, tribes, religions and corporations.
Individualized Media: Media customized to an individual’s needs and interests, as is possible through the web.
Political Media: used by political parties

- Conglomeration affects the diversity of messages offered by the mass media
- Ben Bagdikian – critic of media consolidation

Mass Media and Nation-States: Multinational Companies
The mass media have had international sales for centuries, going back to early book printers. Until the 20th century, however, media companies designed little specifically for export.
Foreign Branches: brings awareness of potential markets abroad
Acquisitions: Completed and aired programmes that are bought or "acquired" by another broadcaster. It's cheaper to acquire shows than to commission them to be made from scratch, but as acquisitions are already completed, the broadcaster has no creative input.
Mergers: A merger is when one company joins with another. Inevitably a merger will mean that at least one group of shareholders will have their shares subsumed by the other. In a true merger both groups of shareholders will be issued with new shares in the merged company i.e. the joining of assets
Alliances: Cooperative business arrangements between two or more businesses with complimentary capabilities over foreign distribution.
Content-Distribution Model: combining media content- creation companies and content distribution companies under a super-corporate umbrella.

Internet and Globalization:
- Eliminates the middlemen, low cost, seeks global audiences directly
Effects of globalization: foreign ownership worries some media critics. Some critics feel as though the control of the direction of cultural advancement is at stake.
- Cultural subversiveness & corporate ideology

Cultural imperialism: one culture’s dominance of another

Global Media Players:
New Agencies: Hundreds of agencies cover news around the world and sell their accounts to subscribing media organizations. Ex. Associated press and Interfax
Associated Press: U.S. - based global news service; largest news-gathering organization in the world
Reuters: British-based global news agency, serves 6500 media organizations worldwide.
Agence France-Presse: Paris-based Agence France-Presse is the third-largest global agency. Available in several languages.
Interfax: Proving more than just the news, including extensive databases

Syndicates: provide low-cost, high-quality content to many news outlets.

Global Media Companies:
U.S. –based Companies – five U.S. media rivals have established themselves as major players in other countries.
- Time Warner (operating in 70-plus countries, world largest media company)
- Disney/ABC (movies, studio productions, television shows, theme parks)
- Viacom. (a diverse hugely successful entertainment company)
- News Corporation (there’s scarcely a television set in the world that News Corporation cannot reach)
- NBC Universal (a merger that created the fifth-largest media conglomerate)

Non-U.S. Companies:
-Bertelsmann (media worldwide)
- Hachette Filipacchi (French-Italian company publishes 74 magazines in 10 countries)
- Televisa (Mexican Media giant)
- TVB (Hong Kong satellite service)
- TV Globo (Brazilian Media Company)
- Pearson (educating and entertaining all ages)
- Reed Elsevier (providing information to professionals around the world)

BBC – Britain’s venerable public service radio and television system created by parliament
Bollywood – Nick name for the India movie industry