I'm starting a new unit with my media students on Monday that I have never taught before. It's called Understanding the Film and Televsion Industries and their first assignment will be to look into the funding and ownership of these two media industries. In order to get a few things straight in my head and ensure that I know what I'm talking about before trying to teach them, I thought I'd give the first assignment a go myself. So here is part one on the funding and ownership of the film industry and I will try to keep ahead of the students by producing part two on the television industry asap!
The film and television industries in the
UK and the US are made up of many companies that are all owned and funded in
many different ways. I will first discuss the film industry and then move on to
the television industry, focussing on the ways these two similar but different
media industries are funded and owned in the UK and the US, referring to a
range of contemporary and historical examples.
FILM INDUSTRY
The film industry in the UK is made up of a
number of different parts. There are companies that are involved in Development,
Production, Facilities, Distribution, Exhibition and Export. Skillset’s most
recent research shows that there are ‘around 400 'permanent' (i.e. registered) companies in
the film industry’ but this number
can vary depending on how many film productions are being worked on in the UK
at any time. Their research also shows that of these companies, ‘43%
are production, 13% are distribution and the remaining 44% are exhibition
companies’, meaning that much of the distribution side of the film
industry is likely funded by foreign companies, often Hollywood studios that
help to sell British films to US and international audiences.
The British film industry does not have
quite the same power and wealth as the big Hollywood studios and therefore
depends much more on public funding and financial aid from government
intervention. In 2012 it was announced that ‘some
£285 million of National Lottery money is to be put into the British film industry
over the next five years’. The
British Film Institute (BFI) will determine how this money is spent after
taking over funding responsibilities from the UK Film Council which no longer
exists. Though there will be spending in other areas, much of the funding will
be put into the production and development of future British films.
The producers of The King’s Speech for
example had to scrape together the approximately £10 million budget from the
following companies:
Weinstein Company, The
(presents)
UK Film Council (presents)
Momentum Pictures (in
association with)
Aegis Film Fund (in
association with)
Molinare Investment (as
Molinare, London) (in association with)
FilmNation Entertainment
(in association with)
See-Saw Films (as See Saw
Films)
Bedlam Productions (as
Bedlam)
Some of these companies, for example the
American The Weinstein Company, would invest in production in order to gain the
distribution rights and therefore a larger share of the profits when it is
released. ‘The Weinstein
Company (TWC) is a multimedia production and distribution company’, independently
funded by its own profits, and ‘also
active in television production’ showing it is both vertically and
horizontally integrated. Vertical integration is where ‘a
company expands its business into areas that are at different points on the
same production path’ so when a film company owns the means to
produce films and then also the means to distribute them, it is said to be
vertically integrated. TWC is also horizontally integrated because it has acquired
‘additional
business activities that are at the same level of the value chain in similar or
different industries’. Not only can it produce films but it has also
expanded into producing television shows as well.
Concerns were raised in the past about the major Hollywood studios’ oligopoly over the film industry. The so called ‘big 5’ studios were vertically integrated to the point where they owned the means to produce, distribute and exhibit their own films which meant that other films did not have a chance against the poser of these big studios. The Paramount Decree passed in 1948 meant that the studios had to sell their cinema chains as this much vertical integration was seen as anti-competitive and therefore made illegal, diminishing the power of the old Hollywood studios.
However despite these moves to stop
excessive levels of vertical integration, the film industry is still dominated
in the US and UK by global companies such as Time Warner. Warner Bros. Pictures
is a subsidiary of the global conglomerate Time Warner and produce films such
as the Harry Potter franchise. But Time Warner also owns HBO, ‘the world's most successful pay-tv
service’, the Turner Broadcasting System that ‘operates worldwide news,
entertainment, animation, young adult & kids media networks and related
businesses’ and Time Inc who are ‘one of the largest branded media companies
in the world, with a portfolio of 96 titles’ which means they are
horizontally integrated over television, film and print media. Warner Bros operates
internationally all over Europe, Latin America, Japan and Australia leading to
some concerns over huge companies like this and their potential influence over
a global audience.
Bibliography so far:
Part two on the television industry coming soon!
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