The Business of Media

Chapter Two

IDENTIFYING AN AUDIENCE

AUDIENCES – the people whom a media product is directed

MEDIA PRACTITIONERS –the people who select or create the material that a mass media firm produces, distributes, or exhibits

TABLE 3.1 The Top Five Largest Media Companies by U.S. Revenue, 2010

LARGEST MEDIA COMPANIES BY U.S. REVENUE

1. How should we think about our audience? How should we define our audience?

2. Will the material we are thinking of creating, distributing or exhibiting to attract that audience generate adequate revenues?

3. Were the people we thought would be attracted to our products in fact attracted to our products? Why or why not?

IDENTIFYING AN AUDIENCE: INCREASING PRACTITIONERS’ SUCCESS

FIGURE 3.1 The Constructed Audience

CONSTRUCTED AUDIENCE

DEFINING AND CONSTRUCTING A TARGET AUDIENCE • ADEQUATE REVENUE – enough cash to allow the

enterprise to pay for itself and give the owners or bankers who put up the money the desired return on their investment

• DEMOGRAPHICS & DEMOGRAPHIC INDICATORS – characteristics by which people are divided into particular social categories by factors such as age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, race, and income

• PSYCHOGRAPHICS – a way to differentiate among people or groups by categorizing them according to their attitudes, personality types, or motivations

FIGURE 3.2 Demographic and Psychographic Analysis

DEMOGRAPHIC AND PSYCHOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

CREATING CONTENT TO ATTRACT THE TARGET AUDIENCE

TRACK RECORD

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (R & D)

SURVEYS

FOCUS GROUP

ANALYSIS OF EXISTING DATA

• Measuring the content’s success with the target audience may depend on counting sales.

• In cases in which sales are not involved such as radio,

broadcast television, and the web, ratings companies conduct regular surveys to count audiences to help executives determine how many people watched particular programs.

GENRE AND MASS MEDIA CONTENT

GENRE – Major categories of media content

ENTERTAINMENT – material that grabs the audience’s attention and leaves agreeable feelings, as opposed to challenging their views of themselves and the world

FOUR SUBGENRES OF ENTERTAINMENT 1. Festivals 2. Gaming3. Drama4. Comedy

FIGURE 3.3 Entertainment Subgenres

ENTERTAINMENT SUBGENRES

ENTERTAINMENT FORMULAS

FORMULA – a patterned approach to creating content that is characterized by the use of setting, typical characters, and patterns of action

SETTING: the environment in which content takes place

TYPICAL CHARACTERS: those who appear regularly in the subgenre

PATTERNS OF ACTION: the predictable activities associated with the characters in the settings

HYBRID GENRESHYBRID GENRES is a term used by some academic writers to describe mixed genres

Example: Taylor Swift’s music – blurs the lines between country and teen pop music

HYBRIDITY is the process of mixing genres within a culture and across cultures

Example: Bollywood meets Hollywood, Bride and Prejudice, 2004

DRAMEDY is a subgenre that blends the rules associated with drama (serious) and comedy (funny)

Example: Desperate Housewives, Psych, Monk, Ugly Betty, Californication

NEWSNews, like entertainment, involves telling stories. The stories presented in the news are a tale with a beginning, middle and end. JOURNALISTS today must present the news using many forms of media including audio and video reports on the web.

Subgenres of News

• HARD NEWS

• INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS

• EDITORIALS

• SOFT NEWS

HARD NEWS

What most people think of as news. It is the firsthand reportage of a battle, the coverage of a congressional bill’s passage, or the details of a forest fire.

Other important elements associated with hard news are OBJECTIVITY and ACCURACY

Four Guidelines that determine what is and isn’t hard news

1. Timeliness

2. Unusualness

3. Conflict

4. The Closeness of the incident

FIGURE 3.4 Inverted Pyramid Approach

THE INVERTED PYRAMID

INVESTIGATIVE NEWS

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS are in-depth explorations of some aspects of reality

Share the same standards of objectivity, fairness and accuracy with hard news

Difference between hard news and investigative reports is the amount of time journalists devote to the project

EDITORIALS

An EDITORIAL is a subgenre of news that concentrates on an individual’s or an organization’s point of view

COLUMNISTS – individuals who are paid to write editorials on a regular basis—usually weekly, monthly, or daily

BLOGS – journalistic websites or opinion sites in which writings are in the style of journal entries, often in reverse chronological order

SOFT NEWS

The kind of news story that news workers feel may not have the critical importance of hard news but nevertheless would appeal to a substantial number of people in the audience

Also known as a human interest story

Examples: cooking, sports, daily life tips, local and community events like plays or recitals

ADVERTISING

An ADVERTISEMENT is a message that explicitly aims to direct favorable attention to certain goods and services

A broad definition of advertising even includes PRODUCT PLACEMENT, which is the paid insertion of products into TV shows and movies in order to associate those products, often quietly, with certain desirable characters or activities

Subgenres of Advertisements

• INFORMATIONAL ADS

• HARD-SELL ADS

• SOFT-SELL ADS

FIVE PRIMARY BUSINESS ACTIVITIES

PRODUCTION

DISTRIBUTION

EXHIBITION

AUDIENCE RESEARCH

FINANCE

FIGURE 3.5 The Process of Mass Media

PRODUCTION PRODUCTION for the mass media means the creation of materials for distribution through one or more mass media vehicles

A MASS MEDIA PRODUCTION FIRM is a company that creates materials for distribution through one or more mass media vehicles

Who Does the Work?

ADMINISTRATIVE PERSONNEL CREATIVE PERSONNEL ON-STAFF WORKERFREELANCERSTALENT GUILD

FIGURE 3.6 Collaboration in Mass Media Production

HOW PRODUCTION TAKES PLACE

Production in media industries is a COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITY, in which many people work together to create, and polish the end material

Other important aspects related to production include the SCHEDULE and the FORMAT

DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION

DISTRIBUTION is the delivery of the produced material to the point where it will be shown to its intended audience

EXHIBITION is the activity of presenting mass media materials to audiences for viewing or purchase

SHELF SPACE is the amount of area or time available for presenting products to consumers

FIGURE 3.7 Vertical Integration & CBS

VERTICAL INTEGRATION An organization’s control over a media product from production through distribution to exhibition

FINANCING MASS MEDIA CONTENT

The cash coming into a mass media firm can be divided into two categories

1. Money to fund new production

2. Money to pay for already-completed products

Taking out loans Investments

LOAN STOCK OFFERINGSINVESTMENT BANKS VENTURE CAPITALISTSSYNDICATE INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING (IPO)

FUNDING WHEN PRODUCTION IS ALREADY COMPLETE

The primary indicator of the health of any company is its PROFITS. In mass media firms, there are several ways to bring in revenue

• Direct Sales

• License Fees

• Rentals

• Usage Fee

• Subscriptions

• Advertising