1. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA INDUSTRIES I
Basic Terminology
Television Industry

2. IN·DUS·TRY/ˈ
INDƏSTRĒ/
•
South Park Anecdote: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/151040/the-underpants-business
1. Noun: Economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture
of goods in factories.
2. A particular form or branch of economic or commercial activity: "the tourist industry".
ALL media texts are part of an industry, whether they are produced under
commercial, government, DIY, or public mandates!
Economic aspects appear in ALL media text productions, funding needs to exist whichever
form this funding takes!

3. THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF CULTURE
YOU, Your
Friends, Yorur
Neighbor
Social Trends
Cultural Odor
Conditions
Tech/Reg/Econ
Mandate
TEXTS
Practices

4. •
Social Trends, Tastes, Traditions
1.
Cultural Odor
2.
Culture
a) aesthetic
b)anthropological  citizens/viewers/activists/consumers
•
Mandate : primary goal and point of origin/reason  non- / commercial
• Different hierarchies of consumer groups
•
Conditions: Technology (prod/distrib), Regulation (national/industrial), Economics
(ownership/ funding/ conglomeration)
•
Practices: conception, funding, preproduction, production, marketing,
testing, post production, etc.  1. creative, 2. exhibition, 3. auxiliary
•
Texts
•
Public

5. BLOG SUGGESTION
•
Pick a text you really enjoy and look at it in regards to it mandate, asking yourself how
certain conditions and practices may have affected its production. For example, if you are
looking at a sitcom, how does that create specific norms for the text itself, by having been
assigned this genre?

6. EXAMPLE of Framework Approach
These TV shows have all been formatted into US television.
•
The Ex List
•
The Frame
•
Homeland
•
In Treatment
•
Phenomenon
•
Traffic Light
EVERY TEXT STANDS IN CONNECTION WITH ALL ELEMENTS OF THE TV INDUSTRY

7. APPEARANCES
HTTP://WWW.THE-MEDIUM-IS-NOT-ENOUGH.COM/2012/05/REVIEW_PRISONERS_OF_WAR_HATUFIM_1X1.PHP

8. CONDITIONS CHANGE
•
•
In many countries in Africa, video-film
is the main film-making and film
distribution platform.
Economic, and Political
Conditions, Practices and Audience
Concerns
•
Public Broadcasters are, by
comparison to PBS, very wealthy.
Their production output is
broader, with more high-end
productions.
• PBS often purchases cheaper
material from elsewhere

9. HOW AND WHY ARE MEDIA TEXTS CREATED?
•
Communications Technologies
•
Mass media  Information, Entertainment, Propaganda
•
“public sphere”
•
Ideologies  intentional and unintentional/ dominant MI: processes of embedding
these, how they get created, framed, silenced, privileged… rather then questioning what
they are
•
Agency  Circumscribed Agency  general upbringing, surroundings, experiences
•
Other circumscribing forces: Organizational, political, conventions (genre, practices etc.)

10. THE “ECONOMIC” IN INDUSTRY
Risks
Adaptive Strategies
First copy (sunk) costs
Low reproduction costs (economies of scale) –
losing cultural odor, as in program marker, can
however threaten a product’s success
Uncertain markets
Overproduction
Public Goods
Artificial Scarcity/Windowing
A-List/B-List hiring
Conglomeration/Consolidation/Synergy
Fragmentation of Audiences
V-H-Integration/Formats/Formatting
MONOPOLY

11. BLOG RESPONSE SUGGESTION
•
Come up with an idea for a media text and then walk through the steps to see which
mandate may be best for your product, which issues you will have to deal with, how the
text may be affected by conditions. What creative practices may stand in your text’s
and/or your level of control’s way?
•
Pick a TV program, or news cast show, that you have recently seen, maybe even watch
regularly. What were some of the economic risks you think? How would (possibly have)
those risks have been minimized by the industry? Can you weigh in on which of the risks
may be easier/harder to minimize?

12. AID MATERIALS:
•
Trade Presses – Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Business Journal of Film, TV
Broadcasting, Broadband, Production, Distribution www.videoageinternational.com
•
Scholarly Journals – Television and New Media, Television History
•
Newspapers - L.A. Times, New York Times
•
Blogs – Antenna, JustTV, Extratextuals, CST, Convergence Culture, In Media Res, Social Media
• Classic and Historic TV, International Journalism Sites
•
Source Material – Media Industries Research