MEDIA INDUSTRIES AND AUDIENCES

MEDIA INDUSTRIES AND AUDIENCES 

Telegraph - 

- age 65 - politics, royal family 

-male - avengers end game article 

- c2, d, e

MAIL ONLINE -

- age 65 and over - holiday, articles on tv
- female - gossip stories
- b, c1, c2, d, e - as political stories

Print news: Historically news paper production was expensive.

·         The production of the News was in the hands of newspaper journalists editors and printers

·         Distribution of the news occurred when newspapers sent their newspapers to Newsagents via organisations who had some control over which publications were published, but had no control over content

·         Newsagents and retailers sold the newspapers to the public (circulation)

·         Producers control news content – this is an important issue as journalists and news editors are expected to adhere to professional standards.

On-line 

·         Distribution and circulation are combined via websites or social media

·         News shelf life’s with the onset of Online are now short.  With news exclusives being used (in Print media) to sell  news.   They are now less valuable as the news cycle has shortened with Online News, where an exclusive can be picked up by the competition and recycled instantly.  

·         News Organisations now rely on formats such as gossip, lifestyle journalism and sports journalism to minimise risk.

Curran and Seaton’s theory relates to PROFIT and Power. 

·         With the concentration of newspaper’s in fewer hands (oligarchies) enables Newspapers to increase profits through increased readership.

·         With the narrowing of choice to few Newspaper groups the owners of the Press groups the Press Barons (see below) or Elites have the opportunity to represent their political perspectives.

·         This applies to the narrow range of political opinions expressed by British Newspapers with a bias to Pro capitalism

·         The reason why Press barons own Newspapers is to achieve status and to wield political power.

Economic factors.
Print Media

·         Historically Print media had a strong editorial heritage with professional standards leading to serious journalism.  

·         This was funded through the cost of the newspaper.

On-line media

·         With the decline in Newspaper sales there has been a decline in the quality of journalism where serious journalism such as international news and investigative reporting have been reduced for cost reasons

·         Advertising revenue from print journalism has moved to Online media such as Google and Facebook

·         There has been a rise in cheaper journalism in the form of opinion, celebrity reporting, lifestyle journalism and sport.

News Industries funding

·         Newspapers relied on circulation and advertising for revenue, Tabloid Newspapers had a larger circulation but their working class audiences were less attractive to advertisers so the Tabloids relied more on cover price.

·         Broadsheet Newspapers had smaller circulations and an attractive upmarket audience and relied more on advertising.

Newspapers now have a wide range of funding sources

·         The Daily Mail has a cover price of £ 0.65 which is relatively low in order to boost its circulation.

·         Some Newspapers rely entirely on advertising as they are given away (to boost circulation and attract advertising) for Free such as the Metro

·         The Daily Telegraph retails for £1.40 and applies a Paywall £3.00 per week to generate income

·         The Guardian retails for £2.20 and relies on voluntary donations for online news and now has 800,000 paying supporters

·         Some newspapers gain revenue from advertising space where Print was traditionally more lucrative than online advertising, however with the decline in print sales online is increasingly more important especially as On-line has a global audience.

Broadsheet newspapers	The Guardian, Telegraph and Times newspapers have markedly upmarket audiences and more London based readers
Redtop tabloids	Te Sun and the Mirror have markedly down-market audiences and the fewest London Based readers
Daily Mail	Daily Mail has the most female and oldest audience of all newspapers and the most evenly spread readership in terms of social class.
Daily Telegraph	Has the oldest audience of the broadsheets.

The content of the newspapers will reflect the social make-up of their audiences.  The Daily Mail for 
example has sections which reflect the lifestyle of its audience.  The Femail section on Thursdays has a tab in the Mail – Online and addressees its female audience with topics similar to lifestyle magazines such as health food,, fashion and beauty.   The newspaper reflects its social class by including sensationalist celebrity coverage and a fairly detailed business section.
The Mail online addresses audiences quite differently to its print sister as the style is targeted towards a younger audience and the contentment covers more celebrity gossip and international stories as its audience is much more global.

The Telegraph addresses their audience in a way that focuses more on international news and serious politics as is reflected by its Broadsheet heritage. 

S. Hall’s Reception theory
The theory suggests that: When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey to the audience

–      In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say

–      In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message

media producers encode ‘preferred meanings’ into texts, but these texts may be ‘read’ by their audiences in a number of different ways:

•        The dominant position: a ‘preferred reading’ that accepts the text’s messages and the ideological assumptions behind the messages

•        The negotiated position: the reader accepts the text’s ideological assumptions, but disagrees with aspects of the messages, so negotiates the meaning to fit with their ‘lived experience’

•       The oppositional reading: the reader rejects both the overt message and its underlying ideological assumptions.

Preferred -  anger and rage over immigrants coming into the country 

Oppositional - 1.5m is extreme and more likely only a few hundred 

Negotiated - some people are angry that they are being allowed in 

NEWS AND ONLINE MEDIA

News and Online media 

Tabloid

-Tabloids are considered ‘popular press’

-Tabloids are aimed at lower social groupings (C2,D & E)

-Tabloids have a bold layout (there is colour on the masthead, they use a bold typeface and it is easy to read. Usually with large and dramatic typeface and large images)

-Shorter Articles

-Less in depth reporting

-The headline usually includes a pun or a joke

-Focus more on gossip stories to do with celebrities (‘stories of human -interest’)

Broadsheets

-Broadsheets are considered ‘serious’ or ‘ ‘quality’ press

-Broadsheets are aimed at higher social groupings (A,B,C1)

-Plainer layout (Masthead: usually no colour or limited small and subtle images).

-Longer articles.

-More detailed and lengthy reports

-The headlines are more serious and focus on ‘shocking’ rather than making jokes.

-Focuses more on international news as well as politics

Curran and Seaton.  - The idea that the media is controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by the logic of profit and power. ... - The idea that more socially diverse patterns of ownership help to create the conditions for more varied and adventurous media production

Capitalism (Right Wing Politics)

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labour.   THE CONSERVATIVES ARE CAPITALISTS, the Telegraph and Mail Newspapers believe in Capitalism. 

Socialism (Left Wing Politics)

Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management, as well as the political theories and movements associated with them. Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.   - - THE LABOUR PARTY ARE SOCIALIST and are considering bringing back into state ownership the Rail service.

Liberalism

Liberalism is a political and economic doctrine that emphasises individual autonomy, equality of opportunity, and the protection of individual rights (primarily to life, liberty, and property)

- Guardian newspaper supports many labour policies and has a liberal view on e.g individual autonomy i.e. they support multi-multiculturalism, they advocate  freedom of expression e.g. gender and sexuality.  . 

Barthes:     enigma code, connotation and denotation associated with a sign, open and closed narrative…

Todorov: theory of narrative disruption.

The Telegraph Headline and Splash (UK Internet Laws will be the toughest in the world)  the contents of the article discusses the harmful affects of the internet on children :  discuss using Todorov’s theory how the story links to disequilibrium and an attempt to restore equilibrium.

Levi Strauss:   Binary oppositions

 Task look at the Daily Mail Main Headline:   Discuss the Binary Opposition of the headline “Betrayal of the Brave” how is the Newspaper trying to influence the reader?

Neale: Genre theory: (page 16 revision notes)  covered previously and relates to a shared code linked to a genre (e.g. genre conventions of Broadsheet and Tabloid Newspapers)  However Neale insisted that the genre conventions are constantly changing therefore the Guardian’s transformation to Tabloid format with more human interest stories (page 9 revision notes)  is a clear example of hybridisation)  

HOUSE OF CARDS - PART 2

House of Cards 

The influence of technological change -

How Long form dramas came into being. Terrestrial TV

Schedule content was fixed (reliant on analogue (radio wave technology as pre the internet)

Viewing experience was communal (families watched the same/similar content) as content was transmitted via Radio waves.

Dramas developed to encourage regular viewing

Program content with high audience numbers secured revenue via advertising.

Advertising revenue or PSB income (TV license) pays for drama for e.g. a typical Eastenders episode costs £141,000

 The influence of Technological, cultural and Economic contexts -

How Long form dramas came into being.

Digital (streaming)

Netflix  - In just a decade, Netflix has grown from a video service with seven million U.S. subscribers to one that reaches 93 million people worldwide.

The company's now worth about $60 billion

2016, Netflix spent $5 billion on original programming.

The income from subscribers has allowed them to commission highly rated long form TV dramas such as House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.

2017 sales rose to $2.48 billion. With a global presence in 190 countries.

 The influence of Technological Change & Economic contexts - 

There is a clear shift towards SOD (subscription on demand viewing of television)

This has been enabled through the Technological change i.e. the provision of streaming services

(2017) Netflix receives an income of 2.5 $bn from UK subscribers.

Their income is used to fund “high end” television content such as the HOC

Historical cultural and economic contexts -                                                         

HOC belongs to a genre called Long form television drama. (LFTVD)

LFTVD (Game of Thrones, HOC, etc.)  are characterised by high production values.

Series one and 2 of the HOC costs an estimated  $100 Million for the first two series (26 episodes) to produce.

By comparison Eastender’s costs  £29.9 million a year for 212 episodes. 

Referring to the revision notes page 146, the cost of production of this High end Drama (HOC) is linked to

Sourcing highly skilled actors 

- Kevin spacey 

Cinematic styling camera work

- wide shots 

Lighting and editing

- dull and eery 

Complex narratives (multi-stranded) (Barthes)

Composed music 

- dramatic 

Long form TV is an American concept which effectively is a hybrid of a serialised drama with the high production standards of film.

Ideology:

“A set of beliefs values and assumptions shared by a social group and embedded in social, cultural, political and economic institutions.”

Usually thought to reflect the interests of powerful groups.

Consumerism, freedom, equality and individualism are often considered dominant ideologies in free market capitalists societies as they reflect the economic basis of these societies 

The prime contexts influencing medium language in television dram may be ideologies such as:

Individualism: e.g. focusing a drama on an individual protagonist

- follows franks narrative and story of his revenge 

Consumerism: e.g. judging characters on their possessions or desirability of their lifestyles

- a social ball where society judged certain citizens 

Patriarchal: power and the challenge to this by feminism e.g. using or refusing to use women’s bodies as objects, or narratives that present a male, female or gender neutral perspective

- when Zoe used a seductive nature to get Frank to listen to her 

Racism and ethnocentrism and the challenge to those from multiculturalism and internationalism, e.g. narratives that present a mono-cultural, multicultural or minority perspective

- main black character is represented as a lower class owner of a rib shack 

Theories - 

Todorov’s theory (Equilibrium and Dis-equilibrium)

Todorov in 1969 produced a theory which he believed to be able to be applied to any film. He believed that all films followed the same narrative pattern. They all went through stages:

the equilibrium,

disequilibrium,

acknowledgement,

solving

and again equilibrium.

The theory has its limitations when applied to LFTVD as the restoration of equilibrium may not be realised due to the serialised nature of the drama

 Representation of Men - 

'Masculinity' is a concept that is made up of more rigid stereotypes than femininity. Representations of men across all media tend to focus on the following:

•Strength - physical and intellectual

•Power

•Sexual attractiveness (which may be based on the above)

•Physique

•Independence (of thought, action, finances)

- Is shown when Frank has the physical mentality to strangle the dog to death and when he starts to plot his revenge, also when Peter uses his congressional power to try and manipulate the power of the law 

Representations of women across all media tend to

highlight the following:

•beauty (within narrow conventions)

•size/physique (again, within narrow conventions)

•sexuality (as expressed by the above)

•emotional (as opposed to intellectual) dealings

•relationships (as opposed to independence/

  freedom) 

-Is shown when Zoe uses sexualisation to gain power over the weaker man, also when Claire uses manipulation to get Frank to become angry rather than feel sorry for himself as she too wants revenge

Levi Strauss’s

-idea of the binary opposition – that the system of myths and fables

-(narrative) was ruled by s structure of opposig terms  such as male/female, good/evil.   This narrative structure can be applied to LFTVD’s such as the House of cards as follows