Chapter 3
Impact of advertising
As we have seen, profit requirements provide incentives for the operators of media outlets to keep costs down and to create a product that will bring in sufficient revenue. We must weigh one additional factor: the specific source of revenue. For many media, the key source of revenue is advertising. As a result, it should be no surprise that the most watched show on television each year, the NFL Super Bowl, is also a showcase for the flashiest and most expensive commercials of each year. Advertising is, after all, what is paying the bills.
The concentration of ownership and the changing pattern
Concentrated media ownership means that a small number of large corporations own a significant percentage of media production, platforms, and pipes.
The power of platforms
Google and Facebook are media companies because their platforms host a vast population of media users, have a powerful impact on media content, and take in a huge percentage of media advertising dollars.
Media strategies for profitability: imopact on programming/content
In Inside Prime Time, Gitlin explores the decision-making processes at what were then the three major U.S. networks, suggesting that bottom-line profit pressures set the framework for programming decisions. The goal for network executives is steady profits. Executives achieve profits by broadcasting programs that will attract large audiences that will, in turn, lead to the sale of advertising time at premium rates. The problem is that there is no surefire formula for successful programming. Even the most sophisticated methods for predicting success are much better at determining which shows will not succeed than at identifying which programs will become hits.
Influence of media ownership and content diversity
Media pluralism refers to the degree to which there is diversity in media content readily available to audiences. Media owned by a few will lead to products that lack diversity; that is, as ownership becomes increasingly concentrated, the content of media will become increasingly uniform.
Consequences of conglomeration and integration
One consequence of integration, then, is an increase in media cross-promotion and, perhaps, a decrease in media products that are not suitable for cross-promotion. It also makes it more difficult for smaller media firms to compete with the major corporations that can use their vast and diverse holdings to saturate consumers during their promotional campaigns (often on social media platforms) and ensure prominent exposure on their various media outlets and platforms. Conglomeration has affected print journalism as well, where the loss of advertisers and paid subscribers has hit especially hard. Some critics have long argued that corporate takeovers of print media put the emphasis on attracting and entertaining consumers rather than on informing citizens. Conglomeration, therefore, has led to increased bottom-line pressure, even in areas of the media that used to be partially insulated from such pressure.
The relationship between media control and political power
Owners can use media sites to disseminate a specific position on a controversial issue or to help legitimize particular institutions or behaviors. Just as important, owners can systematically exclude certain ideas from their media products. Although control of information or images can never be total, owners can tilt the scales in particular directions quite dramatically. Ownership of the means of information becomes part of larger patterns of inequality in contemporary societies, and large media conglomerates can use their capacity to shape media discourse and their substantial financial resources to influence public policy. In this sense, mass media institutions are no different from other social institutions; they are linked to the patterned inequality that exists throughout our society.
Changes in advertising models: product placement, brand integration, online marketing
Product placement within television shows and movies—whereby a character sips from a can of a well-known brand of soft drink or flies on a prominent airline—is a big business and a subtler way to promote products. The use of products on screen or the mention of brand names by star actors can bring in big money, helping offset the rising costs of film production and marketing. One trend linking products with media content involves complex partnerships that advertisers call "brand integration." In some of these partnerships, companies contribute products or props that keep film production costs down, whereas other cases involve joint marketing campaigns to promote both a film and the brand-name products.
Media components in the internet area
Products— content Platforms—the sites and services that host Facebook, YouTube, and Google Pipes—the conduits by which we access media content and platforms, such as wireless, cable, DSL, and fiber optics that are the arena of telephone (Verizon and AT&T), cable (Comcast and Charter Communications), and satellite companies (DirecTV, owned by AT&T, and Dish Network).
Homogenization hypothesis
The combination of ownership concentration and growing horizontal integration leads Bagdikian to conclude that the absence of competition in the media industry will lead inevitably to homogeneous (однородный) media products that serve the interests of the increasingly small number of owners.
Conglomeration and integration (horizontal and vertical)
Vertical integration - refers to the process by which one owner acquires all aspects of production and distribution of a single type of media product. Horizontal integration - refers to the process by which one company buys different kinds of media, concentrating ownership across differing media types rather than up and down through one industry. In horizontal integration, a media conglomerate might assemble a portfolio that spans across film, television, books, record labels, video games, and so on to promote one another's operations.
