The Political Economy of Film and Television: Production and Consumption

From this week's lecture I found it proved interesting to look at the effects that wider political structures enforced within the UK had on television and the programmes produced because of them. Examples mentioned in the lecture included examples such as the BBC and it's influences from in the US, as well as the use of funding coming from audience subscription and the change this makes to the production of texts. This is common in large corporations , a specific focus in Long and Wall's fifth chapter, in which they use a definition from (Mosco: 1996, 25) of political economy to include 'power relations' "in order for us to understand 'how powerful different people are" (Long and Wall: 2012, 173).

Ien Ang looked more thoroughly at audiences, both as a market, and as a public. The chapter also delves into how these markets may associate with two different broadcasting systems, both commercial and public service broadcasting. (Ang: 1991, 22) mentions the idea that commercial television (US) is produced purely for profit (making audiences a market), whereas television produced within the UK (for example the BBC) are produced more for educational and informative purposes, making audiences a public. The concepts seems to argue a logical perspective, with the US using advertising and sponsorship in order to generate a larger profit, compared to the UK's television focus on quality productions and how they inform and educate audiences.

The text which I found was a textbook written around the Critical political economy of the media. Like Long and Wall, (Hardy: 2014, 85) focused on global corporations, by looking at 'a handful of major global multimedia companies now dominate media production'. Hardy finds nine companies of 2002 considered 'media giants', who collectively owned major US film studios, US television networks and the majority of satellite broadcasting worldwide. Such companies included General Electric (owner of NBC). NBC Universal was formed due to the merging of General Electric's NBC with Vivendi Universal Entertainment, and merging of companies in this way is mentioned by (Long and Wall: 2012, 179) as something which is used by large corporations as a quick way to gain access to more resources and 'achieve economies of scale' . (Hardy: 2014, 88) then looks at how, 'in a formerly diverse cable TV industry six companies now control over 80 percept of the market', supporting (Long and Wall, 2012 :179) and their 'Size, concentration and media corporations' where they talk about size giving advantage, as mentioned above with the merging of two companies.

From this blog post, research investigations may include those based around global corporations and a study into how their merging has created new forms of media. I would focus my attention on one or two aforementioned companies, comprising of virtual ethnographies of their websites, and potentially interviewing staff members in order to formulate a valid a reliable primary source.

Bibliography;

LONG, P and WALL, T (2012) 'Political Economy of the Media' IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition) London: Pearson pp. 172 - 185 (Accessed 15th February 2015)

MOSCO,VINCENT (1996) The political economy of communication, SAGE (Accessed 17th February 2015)

ANG, IEN (1991) Desperately Seeking the Audience "Audience-as-market and audience-as-public" London: Routledge. (accessed 16th February 2015)

HARDY, JONATHAN (2014) Critical Political Economy of the Media : An Introduction. London: Routledge (accessed 17th February 2015)