Conglomerates and such

"Jeffrey Katzenberg, while he was still at Disney, once said, “You know this business is not fun anymore". I said "Why is that Jeffrey?", and he said, "Because there used to be a time when somebody would come into my office and be absolutely passionate about his movie and I would think, “God damn! I don’t think this movie would make much money but it shouldn’t lose money because it is a bright idea for a movie. I want to make it.” and with that passion, every once in a while I would say, "You know we are having a pretty good year and so let us take a chance and make that movie. Now we cannot do that anymore. Disney certainly does not do it!"

Has the Hollywood film industry just become consumed in its attempts to make money?

I found an interesting debate online titles "The Future Of Hollywood, Creators, Conglomerates and Culture" - It's abit long winded at times and focuses upon America but it's a worthwhile read about the notion of TNC and goes into detail about HBO and AOL at times; so yeah! READ IT

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/artists/the_future_of_hollywood_creators_conglomerates_and_culture/

I wont really elaborate upon all of this for the time being so i'm gonna include some of my favourite quotes from the debate here :)

"So what you see out there is a monolithic audience of 16 to 24 years old, who have a great sex drive and a need for action in order to distract them from anything else that might make sense. That is the audience that we are racing towards in order to make big money. That is why we are seeing these wonderful little independent movies that come along and tend to win Oscars and go on to making 6 million dollars. Monster’s Ball was a tremendously successful movie that won the Academy Award for Halle Berry. That movie made the makers about 6 million dollars. In Hollywood today that is chump change. "

"Some people say that the arrival of personal video recorders or digital video recorders will create a new business model which caters to highly tailored choices and creates more potential, successful niche markets which could then leave you with a successful blockbuster strategy and many other strategies as people move away from a time based network model. Is that a possibility? Shall we just not put our faith in technology?"

"Within three or four years, going by the way that technology is advancing, it is going to be feasible for an ordinary person to download movies. Right now it takes a long time even with DSL or fast access or broadband line. but the time is going to come when it is easy to give away movies from somebody who has gotten hold of one, as it has become in the music industry, which has been really devastated by this whole thing."

" I thought you were going to tell him that you want a healthy capitalism, and that unless you have government regulation that breaks up vertical integration, the kind of economic power to fund creativity that he is talking about won’t be liberated. "

"So there is a narrowing of the base of the population from which we draw for fresh and new ideas. They are only a few network executives and these few executives own blocks of the show time and the rest. They are the ones who are now essentially creating and bringing forth the new ideas. We see this impoverishment of what is happening particularly in the field of network shows, much less so in HBO. HBO is a refuge that we now run to. It is like coming home. It has those few people who are alert and looking for some fresh ideas."

"The same thing is true in the motion picture business. The net result of this kind of vertical integration is that the major studios are solely in the business now of making big blockbuster pictures that could make half a billion or 3 quarters of a billion dollars of money that appeal to a very narrow base of customers, i.e. boys with disposable incomes, that is those between 16 to 24.
And anybody with a brain, education and experience or a desire to be enriched by their entertainment experience is simply not being served. It has had an extremely destructive effect on the creative community and a very depressing one for those of us who remember that making movies on television was once fun."

"And this also translates into entertainment because studies have shown that so much American public gets its values, its news, its information, its culture, its intelligence not from watching news but from watching entertainment shows, all in the family, Cosby show, law and order, ER etc."

So there we go, if you read it and enjoyed it then comment me :D
xx

Transnational corporations

So this post will be dedicated to expanding on what we learned/discussed in class about transnational corporations, focusing upon Time Warner foremost because they were the larger company behind the release of my case-study subject film "Sex And The City"

We learned that the majority of the worlds media is controlled by a small number of primarily US based companies who to a certain extent; have the power between them to influence what we view everyday via the media. But how dangerous is this? When you think about it, the media is more-or-less a part of almost everything in day-to-day life nowadays. From adverts on the interior and exterior of buses, to the news reports and findings we switch on at night time: apart from word of mouth we wouldn't really be aware of what's going on in the world if it wasn't for the all "amazing" media and technological advances of the 21st century. I'm kinda going off on a tangent and i'll probably do so in the rest of this post here but i feel it's necessary (;


Back to Hollywood for abit; the top Hollywood studios are:
-Pixar
-Disney
-Universal
-Paramount
-Colombia Tristar
-20th Century Fox
-Dreamworks
-Warner Brothers
-Fox

But most of these studios are governed by a higher power. An example would be Paramount, they are owned and run by the Viacom corporation.

But, overall the top five biggest Media giants of the world (not just hollywood) are the following:

1- Time Warner
2- Disney
3- Bertelsmann (A corporation more based in Europe)
4- Viacom
5- News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch)

But but but lets concentrats on Time Warner. Time warner forged in in 1989 when Time Inc and Warner communications merged. At the moment Time Warner has almost become a fully global company, with well over two hundred subsidaries worldwide. Here are some of Time Warners select holdings:

- The largest cable system in the US
- Alot of Global and US television channels, such as cartoon network, CNN, and many others.
- Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema film studios
- Fifty percent of DC comics, publishers of spiderman
- Six Flags theme park chain
- All AOL products (AOL purchased Time Warner in 2000)

Here is a list of all the assets owned by Time Warner:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Time_Warner

When i read the big long list i couldn't help but think "What the hell?"
How the hell does one large company run so many other companies? But hey i don't mind, but it is kinda scary the thought that the CEO of Time Warner has (to a certain extent) complete control of all the outgoings from Time Warner.
And they own Loaded and Marie Claire magazines! So many things are all influenced and run by this sodding big greedy company, i would have never had a clud of any of this if it wasn't for film o_0



I liked this page and how it kinda explained all of the "big players" in the media world, albeit it is from nearly ten years ago:

www.fair.org/index.php?page=1406

But, no matter how hard you debate or try and detest; is it inevitable for mainstream society nowadays to become manipulated by the mass media corporations? With the rise of the internet also comes with many subversive people who can easily express their opinions to a broader audience on the whole notion of the world being somewhat "taken over" or manipulated by these media moguls. But in all fairness, if you were never really aware it was happening in the first place and were happy to go along with it; then why should you complain? I kind of think it should be considered in human rights and ethics somewhat, because in all honesty i dont wana see some make-up'd celebrity flicking their hair telling me to kill my hair with dye because "im worth it", or see some bullshit advert about compensation. I don't believe people should have to see all this crap on a daily basis, but if i elaborate upon all of this then i can see myself becoming contradictory and easily open to counter-arguments so i'll just leave my opinion here.

But there we go, the end of a moderately short post, and i spoke to a teacher via Facebook chat tonight! That was something new.

Happy 2009.