What are the similarities and differences between the culture industries and other industries?
Similarities between the industries are that they all want to sell things and designate their products to different audiences they also adhere to the different stages benig production, distribution and consumption.
Differences between the industries are that the culture industries can convey lots of different ideas and meanings from their products, and there is a lot more variation of what can be sold.
“On the other hand, it is equally clear that the goods they manufacture – newspapers, advertisements, television programmes and feature films – play a pivotal role in organizing the images and discourses through which people make sense of the world. – Peter Golding and Graham Murdock
Commercial Media – ITV, Sky – Multi regional
Public Service Media – BBC – Regional
Transnational Media – Netflix, Amazon Prime – Global
Public Service Broadcasting
Public Service Broadcasting refers to broadcasting given to the public for entertainment or information free of charge, and is not created to make profits.
The ethos of the BBC is to inform, entertain and educate.
Capital is a public service broadcasting program from the BBC that satisfies the ethos being to inform, educate and entertain.
Curran and Seaton are two key theorists (talk about them in TV question). They say that “the media is controlled by a small number of companies that make products to create profit”.
Key Words
- Cultural industries – a range of companies selling various media products.
- Production – The process of a media product being made and created.
- Distribution – The process of a media product being spread and delivered to people.
- Exhibition / Consumption – The process of people getting use out of media products.
- Media concentration
- Conglomerates – Corporations of several different media businesses.
- Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) – The process of spreading and distributing media products around the world.
- Cultural imperialism –
- Vertical Integration – Where one company takes control over multiple stages in the production, distribution or consumption of a product.
- Horizontal Integration – Where one company takes control over multiple providers in one key process (production, distribution, consumption).
- Mergers – When one company merges (comes together with) another.
- Monopolies – When one company has control of an entire industry sector.
- Gatekeepers
- Regulation
- Deregulation
- Free market
- Commodification
- Convergence
- Diversity
- Innovation