Industry- Key Terms Flashcards
What is Acquisition?
Where one media company buys most, if not all, of another media company to assume control of it.
What is Circulation?
The number of copies a print publication distributes on an average day.
What is a Conglomerate?
Two or more media companies engaged in entirely different media enterprises that fall under one corporate group, usually involving a parent company and many subsidiaries.
Conglomerates are often large, multi- industry and multinational.
What is the definition of the Concentration of Media Ownership?
The idea that progressively fewer companies control increasing shares of the mass media.
What is Convergence?
The merging together of previously distinct media technologies e.g. the smartphone is the convergence of computing, communication and content.
What is Distribution?
The process of making a product available for the consumer. (Regulation, Marketing etc.)
What is Diversification?
Where a media company expands into a range of media industries outside their core business e.g. a film company acquires a comic book publisher and a television network.
What is the definition of Exhibition?
It’s how the audience sees the product e.g. in cinemas, on DVD or online.
What is a Franchise?
A collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work.
What is Globalisation?
When the global reach of companies such as Disney blur the boundaries between distinct global markets.
What is a High- Concept media production?
- Easily marketable, clearly defined characters, high production values, universal themes, hyperbole etc . Quite mainstream.
What is Homogenisation?
A lack of diversity (in media production).
What is Horizontal Integration?
An organisation develops by buying up competitors in the same section of the market e.g. one music company buys out other smaller music companies.
What are Independents/ Independent Studios?
Studios that work outside the major studio system.
What are the Major Studios?
The ‘big six’ diversified media conglomerates whose various film production and distribution subsidiaries collectively command approx 80 to 85% of US box office revenue.
What is Marketing?
The promotion of media products through advertising and communications.
What is a Monopoly?
Where one company dominates the market.
What is an Oligopoly?
It’s where a small number of companies dominate the market in one particular industry.
What is Production?
It’s how the media product has been made (ownership, funding, planning, talent, development, production values, content, format etc.)
What is Public Service Broadcasting?
Media outlets whose primary mission is public service and to please/ entertain the large variety of the members of public. It is funded by the government, especially via annual fees for a service or in the case of the BBC the TV license fee.
What is Regulation?
The control or guidance of mass media by governments or other bodies via law, rules or procedures with the goal of protecting “public interest” and establishing common technical/ media standards.
What is a Subsidiary?
A company that is owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company.
What is Vertical Integration?
When a media company owns different businesses in the same chain of production and distribution e.g. when a publishing arm owns a printing facility.
