Week 2 - Business of Media

Question 1

Audiences

Answer 1

the people to whom the media product is directed.

Question 2

Media practitioners

Answer 2

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

Remember: No media business can exist (or continue to take in revenues) without content that attracts consumers or audiences.

Question 3

Audiences pose enormous risks as well as great opportunities for success for media practitioners.

Which 3 questions must media practitioners consider?

Answer 3

1) How should we think about our audiences? How should we define our audiences?
2) Will the material we are thinking of creating, distributing or exhibiting attract that audience and generate adequate revenues?
3) Were the people we thought would be attracted to our product in fact attracted to our product? Why and why not?

Question 4

Thinking about the audience means learning to think of people primarily as consumers of media materials and other products.

What are the 3 main challenges faced in defining and constructing an audience?

Answer 4

1) Creating content that will attract audiences
2) Recognizing the importance of convergence: media producers have to place the content on a variety of media
3) Making sure that the content and the audience it brings will be attractive to advertisers on one or several of these media so that there is a money flow to the company and not its competitors

Question 5

Adequate revenue

Answer 5

enough money to allow the enterprise to pay for itself and to provide the desired return of their investment to the owners or bankers who put their money into the company.

Question 6

In recent decades, companies have been quite targeted in their audience aims: they try to appeal to particular segments of society rather than to the population as a whole.

What 3 broad ways are there for constructing segments?

Answer 6

1) Demographics: characteristics by which people are divided into particular societal categories; one of the simplest and most common ways to construct an audience. Demographic indicators: factors such as age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, race and income.
2) Psychographics: a way to differentiate among people or groups by categorizing them according to attitudes, personality types, or motivations, i.e. qualitative data.
3) Lifestyle categories: activities in which potential audiences are involved that mark them as different from others in the population at large.

Question 7

In creating new content to attract an audience, companies use either:

1) track record - using previous success / failure
2) Research and Development to explore new ideas. Comprised of a) surveys b) focus groups c) analysis of existing data.

Define a) b) and c)

Answer 7

A) Survey: a research tool that seeks to ask a certain number of carefully chosen people the same questions individually over the phone, online or in person.

B) Focus group: as assemblage of 8 to 10 carefully chosen people who are asked to discuss their habits and opinions about one or more topics.

C) Analysis of existing data: a systematic investigation of the potential audience for certain type of content.

Question 8

What are genres in mass media content?

Which primary genres do media practitioners discuss?

Answer 8

major categories of media content; categories of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form or content.

The primary genres that media practitioners discuss are:

1) entertainment: material that grabs the audience’s attention and leaves agreeable feelings, as opposed to challenging their views of themselves and the world.
2) news : involves the telling of stories.
3) information : the raw material journalists use when they create stories; information is a widely used and lucrative mass media commodity, bringing together facts and packaging them in a multitude of ways.
4) education : content that is crafted to teach people specific ideas about the world in specific ways.
5) advertising : a message that explicitly aims to direct favourable attention to certain goods and services.

Question 9

Journalists

Answer 9

individuals who are trained to report nonfiction events to an audience.

Question 10

What are the 4 sub-genres of news?

Answer 10

a) Hard news: a news story marked by timeliness, unusualness, conflict and closeness of the incident. Examples: the first-hand report of a battle, the coverage of congressional bill’s passage or the details of a forest fire.
b) Investigative reports: in-depth explorations of some aspects of reality; the stories should be objective, accurate and fair.
c) Editorials: subgenre of news that concentrates on the individual’s or an organization’s point of view (e.g., that of the TV station which aired a news item).
d) 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. Examples: cooking spots, articles of the best ways to shovel snow without hurting your back, video clips highlighting local students in community plays or recitals.

Question 11

What is objectivity in the news genre?

What 4 characteristics do objective stories exhibit?

Answer 11

presenting a fair, balanced and impartial representation of the events that took place by recounting a news event based on the facts and without interpretation, so that witnesses of the event would agree with the journalist’s recounting of it. It is the ideal way in which news ought to be researched, organized and presented.

4 major characteristics of an objective story:

1) should be written in an inverted pyramid;
2) includes quotes from experts of those involved in the story;
3) an objective story should be told in the third person;
4) an objective story should report at least two sides of the conflict.

Question 12

What is the differences between hard news and investigative reports?

Answer 12

1) Hard news: journalists typically work on tight schedules; the deadline is often a few hours after the event.
2) Investigative reports: journalists often have quite a bit more time to do their research, interview their sources, and write their script; the deadlines can be days/weeks after the event.

Question 13

In the context of editorials, who are Columnists?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

What are blogs?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Product placement

Answer 15

the process in which a manufacturer pays a production company for the opportunity to have its product displayed in a movie or a TV show

Question 16

What are the 3 sub-genres of advertising?

Answer 16

a) Informational ads: ads that rely primarily on the recitation of facts about a product and the product’s features to convince target consumers that it is the right product for them to purchase.
b) Hard-sell ads: messages that combine information about the product with intense attempts to get the consumer to purchase it as soon as possible.
c) Soft-sell ads: ads that aim mostly to create good feelings about the product or service by associating it with music, personalities or events that the creators of that product or service feel would appeal to the target audience.

Question 17

What are the 5 primary business activities within media?

Answer 17

1) production: the creation of mass media materials for distribution through on or more mass media vehicles.
2) distribution: the delivery of a produced material to the point where it will be shown to its intended audience.
3) exhibition: the activity of presenting mass media materials to audiences for viewing or purchase.
4) finance:
a) Money to fund new productions: comes from taking out loans or obtaining investments.
b) Money to pay for already completed products: even if a company is run efficiently and its expenses are low, it still needs to bring in ever-increasing amounts of revenue in order to increase its profits and satisfy its investors and lenders.
5) audience research: methods through which media companies get to know who their audiences are.

Question 18

How does media production take place?

Answer 18

The personal vision of an actor or a novelist can sometimes make it to the screen or the page. Inserting such personal vision into work is called authorship.

When there are many creators, the author of the work may not be a person, but rather a group or a company

Question 19

Shelf space

Answer 19

the amount of area or time available for presenting products to consumers.

Question 20

Cooperative advertising

Answer 20

(i.e. co-op advertising): advertising paid for (in part) by media production firms or their distributors in order to help the exhibitor promote the product.

Question 21

Trade incentives:

Answer 21

payments in cash, discount, or publicity activities that provide a special reason for an exhibitor to highlight a product.

Example: To make sure that a bookstore exhibits key titles at the entrance of its stores, a publisher might have to offer to pay the bookstore chain a sum of money for taking up its shelf space. Bringing in the author for special book readings and book signings is also a widely-used strategy.

Question 22

What is Vertical integration in media?

What are the criticisms of vertical integration?

Answer 22

an organization’s control over a media product from production from distribution to exhibition.

In some industries, major firms consolidate their strength by owning not only the distributing organization, but the major exhibition firm as well.

Some criticisms of this practice:

1) Leads to few organisations controlling the prices, providing ability to lower them enough to crowd competitors out of the market;
2) Potential lack of content diversity.

Question 23

What are media profits and what are the 6 sources of them?

Answer 23

Profits: the amount of money brought in by the completed product (the revenue) minus the expenses.

Media profits come from:

1) Direct sales: the purchaser pays the production firm or a separate distributor or exhibitor for the item and can use it in any way he/she sees fit (example: a college textbook).
2) License fees: a person or organization pays production/distribution firm for the use of a product, but the producer has the ultimate licensing power over it (example: Microsoft Office).
3) Rentals: the production/distribution firm charges for the right to employ a mass media product for a certain amount of time and then gets the product back (example: renting a movie on Amazon).
4) Usage fee: the production/distribution firm charges for the mass media product based on the number of times the product is used.
5) Subscription: the production/distribution firm charges for regularly providing media product or service (example: Netflix).
6) Advertising: a company buys space or time on a mass medium in which is allowed to advertise for a product or service.

Question 24

What is a Retransmission fee?

Answer 24

amount of cable system or satellite firm pays to a broadcaster for the right to pick the broadcaster’s signal off the air and send it to cable or satellite subscribers.

Question 25

What are Government regulations?

Answer 25

a wide variety of activities and laws through which elected and appointed officials at local, state and federal levels exercise influence over media forms