Chapter 3: The Business of Media Flashcards

Question

What do entertainment formulas usually includes?

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Patterns of actions

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Evolve over time

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Orange is the New Black

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Investigative journalist can devote more time to their projects.

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The inverted pyramid structure Being told in the third person The use of quotes from experts

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Information is like raw material

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Is the paid insertion of products into TV shows and movies.

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Is the link between production and exhibition can mean the difference between a media prodcut's success of failure can help secure shelf space

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The rules that guide a flow of products

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Is the outcome of consolidation production,distribution, and exhibition.

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license agreements

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producers exhibition advertisers

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Moves through a complex process of production,distribution, and exhibition. Must meet the requirements of investors,advertisers, and targeted audiences. Is influenced by various kinds of audiences research conduct by media industries.

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Are common ways that companies generate revenue for already completed media products.

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The content creator track record Surveys Focus groups

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Physchographics attempt to get into people's motivations.

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Collaborative activity

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license fee

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Direct sales he student gets to keep the textbook. If the student had rented the book, she would have to give it back after a certain time period had passed.

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Involve activities that mark potential audiences as different from other audiences

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Is an assemblage of eight to 10 carefully chosen people who are asked to discuss their habits and options about one or more topics.

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they are mixed genres.

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Reporting factually correct information.

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The development of digital technology has made deadlines more important in the journalism profession.

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Editorials are expressions of opinion.

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It includes materials in addition to textbooks.

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Hard-sell ads combine information with an intense attempt to get the consumer to purchase he product as soon as possible

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Is the activity of presenting mass media materials to audiences for viewing or purchase.

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Trade incentives have a deep impact in the book industry.

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Investment banks sometimes organise syndicates to share the risk and rewards of lending money to media industries.

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Venture capitalists are individuals or companies that invest is that invest i startup or nonpublic firms in the hope that the firms value will increase over time.

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Money to pay for already completed media products comes from a variety of sources, including advertising.

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An understanding of how media products are distributed adds more to a person media literacy.

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Database companies sell information about audiences

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A shift in the way that consumers acquire recorded music has resulted in the closing of may record stores.

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Education is a largely profitable genre that media industries generally disregard.

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Entertainment media has a real educational or political point.

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Media practitioners who work in the fields of entertainment, information, and education explore the value of hybrid n order to attract and hold audiences.

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LOWRY MAYS, FORMER CLEAR CHANNEL CEO

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In its 2011 Communications Industry Forecast, consulting firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) estimated that 2010 spending on media in the United States by companies and individuals was a bit over one trillion dollars

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As the table notes, these five companies alone brought in almost $119 billion in 2010

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The people to whom a media product is directed.

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

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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?

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1 Comcast Corp Philadelphia, PA 44.9 2 DirecTV El Segundo, CA 22.3 3 Walt Disney Co. Burbank, CA 21.5 4 Time Warner New York, NY 19.9 5 Time Warner Cable

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The car manufacturer does care about her age, her gender, her income, and the kind of car she presently owns because it believes this information predicts the likelihood that she will buy its brand.

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They get revenue from the advertisers. First, they have to create content that will attract audiences. Second, recognizing the importance of convergence, they have to place the content, or content like it, on a variety of media—the printed magazine, the magazine’s website, S&B apps for tablets and smartphones, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, Instagram photos, and even brochures for fashion shows that S&B puts on in malls. Third, the S&B executives also must make sure that the content and the audience it brings in will be attractive to advertisers on one or several of these media so that money flows to S&B instead of to its competitors.

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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

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They first ask which audiences advertisers want to reach and then look for ways to attract those audiences.

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Through demographics, psychographics, and lifestyle categories.

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one of the simplest and most common ways to construct an audience—refers to characteristics by which people are divided into particular social categories. Media executives focus on those characteristics, or factors, that they believe are most relevant to understanding how and why people use their medium ex: Age, gender, income, occupation, ethnicity, and race.

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factors such as age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, race, and income

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Media organizations also differentiate groups by psychographics, or by categorizing people on the basis of their attitudes, personality types, or motivations.

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By finding activities in which potential audiences are involved that mark them as different from others in the audience or in the population at large

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For another, you have to have a strong grasp of the kinds of materials that may be available to meet audience interests at different times of the day. What will grab people’s attention? Who can create it? How much will it cost? And (here comes convergence again!) can you make money on the shows beyond the traditional CBS over-the-air network—for example, by getting advertisers to sponsor older programs on their cable systems or by charging individuals to access the programs on their tablets? How do you even begin to determine whether the ideas that potential creators pitch to you will succeed on these and other platforms?

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To lower their risk, they may choose creators with a good track record—that is, a history of success. They also may choose to produce material that is similar to other material that has recently been successful

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departments within companies that explore new ideas and generate new products and services, systematically investigating potential sources of revenue through surveys, focus groups, or the analysis of existing data

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Survey: is asking questions trought a phone, internet or a person. Focus group: is an assemblage of 8 to 10 carefully chosen people who are asked to discuss their habits and opinions about one or more topics. analysis of existing data, involves systematic investigation of the potential audience for certain kinds of content (who they are, where they are, how much they like the idea, how much they will pay for it) and of the competitors (who they are, how similar their products are, how powerful they are).

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In cases in which sales are not involved, such as with radio, broadcast television, and the web, ratings companies conduct regular surveys to count audiences to help executives determine how many people watched particular programs

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No it is not always scientific.

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Major categories of media content are called genres— categories of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content.

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The primary genres that media practitioners discuss are entertainment, news, information, education, and advertising.

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The word “entertainment” derives from the Latin tenere, which means “to hold or keep steady, busy, or amused.”

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However, this doesn’t mean that people who work in the entertainment business always stay away from informing or persuading. Many movies that are categorized under “entertainment” by their production firms have been written and produced with the intention of making a political point (

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four subgenres—festivals, gaming, drama, and comedy

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They are genre, subgenere, second-level subgener, third-level subgener, fourht -level subegener

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one-sixth of the U.S. population. They can have economic impacts on mass media.

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a formula—a patterned approach to creating content that is characterized by three major features: Setting Typical characters Patterns of action

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The setting is the environment in which content takes place.

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The typical characters are those who appear regularly in the subgenre

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The patterns of action are the predictable activities associated with the characters in the settings

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The formulas can do and change. They can borrow plots and characters. Basic elements will maintain popular, reshape elements to fit the audiences. They can borrow from 2,000s to current time.

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Hybridity is mixing culture and across cultures. TaYlor swiff, pop culture and normal culture.

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mixing culture and across cultures. For swiff, pop culture and normal culture.

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Rules associated with drama and serious and comedy.(Dramedy)

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Mixes dram (serious) with comedy(funny)

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Journalist

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News stories tell an informative stories. Hard news investigative reports Editorials Soft news

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a news story marked by timeliness, unusualness, conflict, and closeness

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Timeliness: A hard news event must have happened recently typically withing the past day or so. Uselessness: Hard news even that are consider usual. Man bites dog. conflict: Struggles between opposing forces. Closeness of the incident: An event that is closer may be seem as more hard news that happened far away. It can be geographically or psychologically close. Like mexico.

Answer 81

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 anyone else who witnessed the event would agree with the journalists’ recounting of it; the way in which the news ought to be researched, organised, and presented.

Answer 82

It should be written in a form that journalists call an inverted pyramid (see Figure 3.4). This means that the reporter should place in the first paragraph (the lead paragraph) a concise recounting of the entire story. In the paragraphs that follow, the reporter should give increasingly specific information about the material in the lead paragraph. An objective story should be told in the third person: that means writing as if the journalist is a novelist telling the tale but is not involved in it (i.e., the person doesn’t use personal pronouns such as “I” or “me”). An objective story should report at least two sides of a conflict. If a politician is accused of corruption, the objective report must also note the politician’s denial of the charges. An objective story uses quotes from those involved or from experts on the topic to back up statements

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There should be a title on the screen telling the viewer whom the reporter is interviewing. The camera should film the reporter or a person being interviewed from the height of an average person, not from the ground staring up at the person or from above the person staring down. The camera should give as much time to a person representing one side of the conflict as it does to a person representing the other side. Anything less would be considered biased

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Accuracy means reporting factually correct information

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Investigative reports are in-depth explorations of some aspects of reality. This news subgenre shares the same standards of objectivity, accuracy, and fairness or balance with hard news. However, a major difference between hard news and investigative reports is the amount of time journalists can devote to the project. When it comes to hard news, journalists typically work on tight schedules; their time limit (deadline) for the completion of an assignment is often only a few hours after they begin it. In contrast, journalists who work on investigative reports have quite a bit more time to do their research, interview their sources, and write their script. Their deadlines can be days or weeks from the time they begin, or even longer.

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Investigative reporters often seek to uncover corruption or other problems in government or business, and the tone of the report resembles that of a detective story

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Opinions regarding hard news are usually reserved for editorials. Unlike hard news and investigative reports, an editorial is a subgenre of news that expresses an individual’s or an organization’s point of view. Some editorials are written in the name of (and express the point of view of) the person who wrote the piece, whereas others are written in the name of the entire news organization—for example, the newspaper that printed the piece or the television station that aired it.

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people who do not work for their firm to present editorial comments. Columnists are individuals who are paid to write editorials on a regular basis —usually weekly, monthly, or daily. Editorials by the most famous columnists, such as Dave Barry, Peggy Noonan, and Anna Quindlen, are carried by many news outlets across the United States and even around the world.

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as Dave Barry, Peggy Noonan, and Anna Quindlen,

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or on blogs, online sites written in the style of journal entries, often in reverse chronological order. A well-known example is the Huffington Post group of political opinion blogs. They include regular columns by Arianna Huffington, talk show host Tavis Smiley, and Fox program host Greta Van Susteren, as well as opinion pieces from a wide spectrum of celebrities and non-celebrities from different fields.

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soft news, to be an area in which the reporter’s opinions and biases can show through. As you may be able to tell by its name, soft news (also known as the human interest story) is the kind of tale 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

Answer 92

One way to understand the difference between news and information—a difficult distinction to draw for some—is to say that information is the raw material that journalists use when they create news stories. On the most basic level, a piece of information is a fact, an item that reveals something about the world. Generally, we must bring together many pieces of information in order to draw conclusions about a person, place, thing, or incident

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One major segment of the information industry aims to help businesses find, evaluate, and understand their current customers. For example, Trans Union Credit Information Company and Equifax hold collections of information about the income and debts of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. These firms are in the business of selling selected segments of that information to banks, insurance companies, and other organizations that are interested in the creditworthiness of particular individuals. Information activities affect you directly when you are approved (or turned down) for a loan or a credit card. This part of the information business also provides lists of names to the marketers who send you postal mail or e-mail— or phone you (often in the middle of dinner)—with “great” offers. Catalog companies often rely on information companies to help them find new customers too.

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Another major segment of the information industry focuses on providing quick retrieval of data for people whose work requires them to get facts quickly. LexisNexis,enables journalists, professors, and students—in fact, researchers of all kinds—to search for and retrieve virtually any fact in more than 2.5 billion searchable documents. Lexis, a sister service, enables attorneys and paralegals to find, analyze, and validate information from countless legal documents by, work efficiently

Answer 95

When it comes to genres of media, education means content that is purposefully crafted to teach people specific ideas about the world in specific ways. Education is a large segment of the media marketplace. In fact, spending for “instructional materials” by elementary and high schools reached $11.8 billion for the 2013–2014 school year. 1 Much of this money was spent on textbooks, the medium that most of us conjure up when we think of instructional materials for schools. Spending for college textbooks is high, as you undoubt

Answer 96

A traditional definition of an advertisement is that it is a message that explicitly aims to direct favorable attention to certain goods and services. The message may have a commercial purpose or be aimed at advancing a noncommercial cause, such as the election of a political candidate or the promotion of a fundraising event

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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.

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Informational ads Hard-sell ads Soft-sell ads

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Informational ads rely primarily on a 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. An advertisement in Sound & Vision magazine that carefully details the specifications and capabilities of a set of Bose speakers would be informational in nature. Similarly, a television announcement aired during PBS’s This Old House noting the program’s support by Home Depot is another example of an informational ad.

Answer 100

ard-sell ads are messages that combine information about the product with intense attempts to get the consumer to purchase it as soon as possible. For example, a TV commercial in which a car salesman speaks a mile a minute about the glories of his dealership, shouts about a two-day-only sale, and recites the address of the dealership four times before the spot ends is a hardsell ad

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Soft-sell ads 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. Television commercials for a wide variety of products, including soft drinks, beer, and athletic footwear, are soft-sell ads. Remember the “Got Milk?” ads for milk producers, the Clydesdale horse commercials for Budweiser, or the “Mac versus PC” ads for Apple? These are classic examples of ads that aim to create a “hip” feeling about a product that will lead consumers to want to be identified with it.

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hybridity involving advertising and entertainment—and other content genres—is becoming increasingly common

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Production Distribution Exhibition Audience research Finance

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Production is the beginning of the chain of events that brings mass media content to audiences. Production for the mass media means the creation of materials for distribution through one or more mass media vehicles.

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A mass media production firm is a company that creates materials for distribution through one or more mass media vehicles. The Washington Post Company, which publishes the Washington Post, is a production company. So is Routledge, the publisher of this book, and its parent company, Informa. So are Time Inc. magazine company (a division of Time Warner), which creates Time magazine; Comcast’s NBC Universal, which pro

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he making of all these media products requires both administrative personnel and creative personnel. Administrative personnel make sure the business side of the media organization is humming along. They must thoroughly understand that the media business they are in and their daily jobs—in, for example, accounting, law, marketing—have much to do with the success of the organizations for which they work. Their work does not, however, relate directly to the creation of their firm’s media materials. Creative personnel do that. They are the individuals who get initial ideas for the material or use their artistic talent to put the material togeth

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An on-staff worker has secured a full-time position at a production firm. For example, most, though not all, art directors in advertising agencies are on-staff workers. They work for the same agency all the time; the projects they work on may change, but the company that issues their paycheck remains the same.

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Freelancers, on the other hand, are workers who make a living by accepting and completing assignments for a number of different companies—sometimes several at one time. Most movie actors work as freelancers, for example; when they finish one film, they look for work on another film, which may be made by a different company.

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Freelancers, from actors, to book editors, ghost writers, and cinematographers, have reported that production companies have used this power to “borrow” innovative ideas discussed in job interviews, force them to work unusually long hours, and withhold their due credits when the assignment is completed. To establish a power of their own, many freelance creatives have banded together to create talent guilds. A talent guild is a union formed by people who work in a particular craft; consider, for example, the Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Directors Guild of America. These guilds negotiate rules with major production firms in their industries regarding the ways in which freelance creatives will be treated and paid.

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In an effort to manage their risks, movie companies typically will not allow high- budget movies to be made unless a high-profile actor (such as Matt Damon or Robert Downey Jr.) signs on imilarly, book publishing firms have been known to pay popular writers quite a lot for the rights to their next work. In 2006, various firms agreed to pay $7 million for books to Warren Buffett’s ghostwriter, more than $8 million to former U.S. Federal Reserve head Alan Greenspan, and over $10 million to evangelist Joel Osteen.

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author book designer copy editor acquisitions editor developmental editor

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Well known actor actors agent actors manager executive producer screen-writers supporting actors casting director set designer film director cinematographer film editor

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

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Generally, however, production in media industries is a collaborative activity, in which many people work together to initiate, create, and polish the end material.

Answer 115

Compare the production of a scholarly book with that of a typical commercial movie starring a well-known actor (see Figure 3.7). In addition to the writer, a scholarly book requires an acquisitions editor, who finds the author and might help with the initial plan for the work; a few readers (usually other scholars or development editors) who suggest ways in which the writer can improve the book; a copy editor, who helps with the manuscript’s style; and design personnel, who craft the look of the book and perhaps its jacket

Answer 116

rhaps its jacket. Now consider the film. The well-known actor is chosen by an executive producer or studio head, with the assistance of the actor’s business representatives. In addition, the film will need screenwriters to write and rewrite the script; other actors to work with the star; a casting director with assistants to choose the other actors; a set designer and assistants to plan the backdrops; a director and assistants to organize the filming; a cinematographer and assistants to photograph the scenes; an editor and assistants to put the scenes together into a finished movie; and many more collaborators. Although individual authorship of the scholarly book may be fairly clear, the same cannot be said of the movie. Because so many people are involved on the creative side, it is often very difficult to argue that the final version of a Hollywood film is one person’s vision.

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The pattern in which the programs are arranged and presented to the audience

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In mass media industries, “format” is the term commonly used to describe the rules that guide this flow. A format is the patterned choice and arrangement of elements that make up specific media material. The material may be a flow of programs, such as ABC’s schedule, or it may be an arrangement of video, audio, or text presentations that people upload to a website, such as Facebook, YouTube, or Pinterest. Most radio stations use formats that convey their personalities by combining certain types of songs, disc jockeys’ sounds, and jingles that identify the station. The concept of format applies to magazines, too. Vogue’s creative personnel are involved not only in the production of individual articles that appear in the periodical, but also in choosing the topics of the articles to begin with and arranging the articles in a flow that is designed to convey an image and entice readers through the magazine.

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Distribution is the delivery of the produced material to the point where it will be shown to its intended audience. Although the activity takes place out of public view, distributors often have a large say in marketing the products to the target audience

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Note that these firms—Philadelphia Media Network, Twentieth Century Fox, and Sony Music—use their own distribution divisions rather than rely on other independent distribution firms to do the job

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Some executives argue that although “content is king,” distribution ought to share the crown.

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e. It’s likely, in fact, that no legitimate bookstore will carry it. This is not necessarily because your writing is bad; your book might actually be a true work of art. The real reason that your chances of getting your book into a bookstore are so poor is that your book does not have a powerful book distributor behind it

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it. Perhaps you will get lucky, and the clip you posted to YouTube will become a popular viral video viewed by millions. In most cases, however, the key is to have the clout to place the content in a position where many people have a good chance of seeing it. That means getting the attention of a powerful distributor

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What makes a powerful distributor? Simply put, a distributor’s power is measured in terms of the firm’s ability to ensure that the media products it carries will end up in the best locations of the best exhibitors to the best audience. To understand what that means, we have to look at exhibition

Answer 125

Company does the same but usually involves different firms.

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Exhibition is the activity of presenting mass media materials to audiences for viewing or purchase. When media executives speak about the importance of exhibition, they often mention shelf space

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Shelf space is the amount of area or time available for presenting products to consumers

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The front area, internet main page.

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They have more recognizimation, and The large publishers also may be better able than smaller ones to offer trade incentives—payments in cash, discounts, or publicity activities that provide a special reason for an exhibitor to highlight a product—that could influence large stores such as Barnes & Noble to carry their books

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To make sure that a bookstore chain exhibits key titles at the entrances to its stores, for example, a publisher might have to offer—through its distributor—to pay the bookstore chain a sum of money for taking up that space. Bringing the author in for special book readings and book signings and helping to pay for ads in newspapers (a practice called cooperative advertising) might als

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

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(also known as co-op advertising) advertising paid for in part by media production firms or their distributors in order to help the exhibitor promote the product

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surprisingly, the major production companies either own or are otherwise strategically linked to the major distribution organizations. In these cases, it is important to keep in mind that power over production and distribution is self-reinforcing: creative personnel with strong track records are attracted to the production firm in part because it has powerful distribution. In turn, the company has powerful distribution in part because its production arm attracts creative personnel with strong track records.

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In some industries, major firms consolidate their strength by owning not only the distribution organizations but the major exhibition firms as well. Television networks such as NBC, CBS, and ABC, for example, have production divisions that create fiction, sports, and news programs. They also own broadcast TV networks that distribute their programs and broadcast stations in key cities that exhibit them. This control of the entire process from production through distribution to exhibition is called vertical integration,

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Money to fund new production Money to pay for already-completed products

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A loan is money borrowed from an organization, usually a bank, for a certain price (a percentage of the loan called an interest rate). To get a loan, executives must persuade the lending organization that their plans will realistically bring in the cash they expect so that the firm will be able to repay the amount of the loan (its principal) plus the interest in a timely way. The lender will also want to be sure that it has a claim on some of the current value (assets) of the firm—for example, the real estate of an exhibition chain or the current holdings of a radio station owner—in case the firm does not pay back the loan

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are companies that arrange to lend millions, even tens and hundreds of millions, of dollars to companies and that also arrange stock offerings. Some investment banks specialize in particular industries, and the executives of these investment banks feel that they understand quite well the risks involved. Large investment banks hire experts in particular industries to guide the banks’ lending activities in their areas of expertise. These investment bankers assess the firms that want loans and put together the terms of agreement. When very large amounts of money are involved, the investment banker will organize a syndicate, a group of banks that agree to share the risks and rewards of the lending deal. Because it takes on more responsibility, the lead bank (the bank that organizes the syndicate) makes more money on the deal than the others.

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When very large amounts of money are involved, the investment banker will organize a syndicate, a group of banks that agree to share the risks and rewards of the lending deal. Because it takes on more responsibility, the lead bank (the bank that organizes the syndicate) makes more money on the deal than the others.

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ereas bankers worry that firms will not be able to pay back the money they have borrowed, executives of those firms worry about how much money the loans are costing them. That is, paying the interest on the loans requires cash that the company could use for other purposes. Consequently, executives may prefer to raise money through stock offerings. A share of stock is a unit of ownership in a company. All corporations, whether they are owned by only a few people or by millions of people, issue stock. When a company engages in a stock offering, it sells these units of ownership to organizations and individuals.

Answer 140

In view of its small size, DigitalFeast will probably sell its stock to venture capitalists. Venture capitalists are individuals or companies that invest in startup or nonpublic firms in the hope that the firms’ value will increase over time. These people and firms are in the business of assuming the high risks of investing in such firms in the hope of receiving high rewards.

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There are other ways in which DigitalFeast can raise more money. Assume, for example, that after the sale of stock to the venture capitalists, DigitalFeast’s board of directors (which now includes some of the venture capitalists) decides on an initial public offering (IPO) of the company’s stock. The board needs to convince an investment banker that the company’s future is so great that investment companies and individual investors would buy five million new shares of the company’s stock at $10 a share. The investment bank agrees to manage (or underwrite) the offering for a fee. Because five million new shares will be created, the shares that already exist will represent a smaller percentage of the ownership than they did before the IPO. Still, the market value of the early stockholders’ shares will go from $2 to $10 a share. DigitalFeast, meanwhile, has $50 million more to chew on.

Answer 142

A primary indicator of the health of any company is its profits—the amount of money brought in by the completed products (the revenues) minus expenses. 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. In mass media firms, there are several ways to bring in revenues

Answer 143

s The purchaser pays the production firm or a separate distributor or exhibitor for the item and can use it in any way she or he sees fit—keep it forever, throw it away, give it to someone else, or even resell it. In college textbook publishing, for example, most of the money comes from sales to consumers (the students).

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A person or organization pays the production firm or a separate distributor or exhibitor for the use of a product, but the producer has ultimate control over the way it is used. For example, a toy company may pay Warner Bros. for the right to use the image of Bugs Bunny on toy banks for five years. Similarly, if you have Microsoft Word on your computer, what you have actually bought is a license to use it. (Remember the notice telling you that if you use the software, you are accepting the “license agreement”? One consequence is that, according to the agreement, you are prohibited from reselling the software to someone else.)

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The production firm or a separate distributor or exhibitor charges for the right to employ (read, view, or hear) a mass media product for a certain period of time and then gets the product back. For example, with movie rentals, the store typically buys the video from the production firm and tries to make a profit by renting it to you and many others.

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The amount the producer or the separate distributor or exhibitor charges for a mass media product is based on the number of times the product is employed. For example, an internet database of articles may charge you for the number of articles or “page views” you print

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The producer or the separate distributor or exhibitor charges for regularly providing a media product or service. (Think of a magazine subscription, a subscription to a cable system, and a subscription to a company that provides you with internet service.)

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A company buys space or time on a mass medium (a page in a magazine, 30 seconds on a radio station) in which it is allowed to display a persuasive message (an advertisement) for a product or service. We will have a good deal to say about the workings of the advertising industry in chapter 4. What is important to remember here is that the advertising industry is the dominant support system for the mass media. If advertising did not exist, the amount you pay for magazines, newspapers, internet content, and cable television, not to mention broadcast television and radio, would skyrocket. Reliable estimates suggest, for example, that because of advertising, people on average pay half of what they would otherwise pay for magazines and substantially less than half for newspapers

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as costs go up, and as advertisers have the option of placing ads in other media if the local stations raise their advertising rates, the single revenue stream does not look as lucrative as it once did. That is why the stations are demanding that cable systems pay them for carrying their signals to their customers (what is called a retransmission fee). The stations are also trying to make money via advertising on their websites.

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

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Track Record Research And Development (R & D); Qualities and qualities. Surveys Focus Group Analyzes of Existing Data

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Who to whom what where when why (general) Supporting facts, evidence, key quotes, and more in-depth details. Supporting explanations and quotes Additional quotes and alternative explanations of scenarios. Peripheral details( to more specific)

Answer 153

An editorial is a subgenre of news that expresses an individual or an organization’s point of view. Columnist: Individuals who are paid to write editorials on a regular basis-usually weekly, monthly or daily

Answer 154

Information: The raw material that journalists use when they create news stories. There are two main information segments: Information gathering and distributing Information Research and retrievals Education: Content that is purposefully crafted to teach people specific ideals about the world in specific ways.

Answer 155

Direct sales License fees Rentals Usage fee Subscriptions Advertising

Answer 156

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Answer 157

Media firms think about members of their audience differently than the members think about themselves. Media professionals think of people primarily as consumers of media materials and other products.

Answer 158

The information genre relies on facts that reveal something about the world. Information includes content obtained through searching databases. (76-7) The education genre includes content crafted to teach people. Textbooks and instructional materials of all types fall into this category. (77-78) The advertisement genre includes messages aimed at directing favorable attention to goods and services and includes informational ads, hard-sell ads, and soft-sell ads. (78-79)

Answer 159

Talent guilds, such as the Writers Guild of America, negotiate labor agreements with major production firms. (82)

Answer 160

Following an investment by venture capitalists, the potential profit of a media firm may become so great that it takes action to issue an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. (89)

Answer 161

Knowing about the production, distribution, and exhibition processes helps one be a more aware consumer of mass media materials. Knowing about the means through which media products are financed, a media-literate person can influence sources of production revenue. Knowing how media firms construct and target their intended audiences, a media-literate person can influence decisions that are potentially objectionable or arguably disruptive in some way. In other words, a media-literate person has some potential leverage over decisions made by media firms and their sources of financing. The crucial issues, of course, lie in first understanding how this complex system works and then developing effective communication strategies of your own in order to influence it.

Answer 162

departments within companies that explore new ideas and generate new products and services, systematically investigating potential sources of revenue through surveys, focus groups, or the analysis of existing data

Chapter 3: The Business of Media Flashcards

(191 cards)