Structures and Ownership

Film

"The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., filmproduction companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals,distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew personnel." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry

The film industry is involved in the creation and distribution of films as a product. This industry is a worldwide phenomenon, but some countries have a greater role in production than others. This industry generally employs a wide number of people directly through production and distribution process, and it also employs a large number of people indirectly because of the money spent to produce films. In most cases, the film industry is focused on films as a medium for entertainment, but in some situations, it may use film for educational purposes as well.

The main companies around the world in the film industry include:

• Dreamworks
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• Warner Bros. Pictures
• Walt Disney
• Universal Pictures
• 20th Century Fox

There are smaller and independent film companies too, which may be less known but are still existent, for example Pico Pictures. They are a London-based film production company, and have made 14 multi award winning shorts since 2008 and have features in development with Creative England and the BFI.
There are also larger UK based companies, such as Shepperton Studios. Shepperton Studios has 15 stages. They are often described as the home of independent film and TV production in the UK, but have actually served as a production base for high-budget films.

This industry has the potential to make major profit from its products, some examples are:

• Avatar - $2,787,965,087
• Titanic - $2,186,772,302
• The Avengers - $1,518,594,910

In the UK the employee size for the Film sector is just over 30,000. The industry is constantly growing in size as there is always a new demand in the sector, so the figures are likely to increase very quickly.

There are many sources of income for the Film Industry, but the main ones being:

• Cinema box office - The 2009 hit "Avatar" made an astonishing $2.787.965.087 in box office
• Product placement - "The Matrix" had a very popular and famous product placement case, all their mobile phones were a Nokia.

• DVD Sales - During 2014, in the US alone Frozen sold 10.113.898 DVD units, which accumulated to a total revenue of $166.862.218 
• Merchandise - The Avengers has its own official store where you can buy merchandise from the film "http://shop.marvel.com/the-avengers/mn/1001602/"

TV

Television produces a wide range of shows and programs to appeal to as many viewers as possible. 

The main channels on TV are provided by BBC, Sky and ITV, these produce different types of shows to attract as many people as possible.

Love Productions is a small independent company based in London. It is responsible for shows such as; Junior Bake Off.

All3Media is the UK's biggest independent television company. They have distributed companies across the UK, Europe, New Zealand and the USA.

Television has many ways of income:

• Advertising 

• Sponsorship - TalkTalk has been the sponsor for The X Factor, and has recently signed a new contract which will last for three years. "http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/may/06/x-factor-signs-talktalk-deal-simon-cowell-itv"
• Product Placement - There are many cases in which a TV show will use product placement as a source of income, the newest product placement which we are experiencing right now is cups from different coffee chains being displayed on talk shows and news reports.

• TV Subscription - Sky has a TV subscription which requires a monthly payment in order to view their programs and channels "http://www.sky.com/shop/new/starter-bundle?s_tnt=62895:1:0"
• BBC Licence Fee - In order to watch television, one must pay a monthly licence fee to the BBC, which at the moment is £8 per month "http://www.bbc.co.uk/corporate2/insidethebbc/whoweare/licencefee"

Television is the second biggest media industry in the UK. The employee size in the UK for television is well over 55,000. There is a constant demand for new content on TV. and therefore the sector is likely to continue to grow even bigger.

Radio

With television becoming the main source of news and entertainment, radio had to come up with new ideas on how to keep the listener numbers high. Nowadays most radio channels play music and still report on the news.

There are two different types of radio, non-commercial and commercial. An example of a non-commercial radio would be the BBC. They produce content without making any direct profit from the listeners.

While commercial radio station focus on making profit from the listeners, and therefore produce a wide range of content to attract as many people as possible, an example would be Classic FM.

The radio has a harder time making profit nowadays, but still manage very well:

• Sponsorship - RPC Audio is and will continue to be the sponsor for Coastal Radio
• Advertising - Ads are also present on the radio, although they have to have a different format as there are no visuals and it's all audio.

• Subscriptions - Radio Times requires a subscription in order to use their services. They offer six issues for £6
• Premium Telephone Lines
• Downloads

The radio sector has been decreasing in size, but is still one of the biggest media sectors in the UK, having 22,000 people in employment. These figures are not expected to increase, and in contrary, are slowly expected to decrease.

Publishing

This sector focuses on printing and distributing books, posters, newspapers, comics etc.

The biggest newspaper distributors in the UK are The Sun, The Times and The Mirror, these are all examples of national and international newspapers, which are usually owned by large companies, and are hence international.

There are also regional newspapers, which are owned by small companies are their main aim is to inform the community they are based in, an example would be The Evening Gazette.

This sector has an easy source of income and is predominantly guaranteed to make a profit on everything they publish, some sources of income are:

• Advertising 

• Subscription - The Times newspaper offers a membership deal. For their "Classic Pack" they ask for £3 per week.

• Merchandise
• Contracts
• Purchases

Publishing is currently one of the biggest media sectors around the world, and is the largest in the UK, with approximately 173,000 in employment. Although this figure has been going down in the last decades, it is expected that the sector will stay at the top for a very long time.

Advertising and Marketing

Advertising and Marketing focus on creating a desirable view for a product. Advertising is the main source of product acknowledgement and can have major influence in sales. There are many ways to create advertising which can be viewed by the public, the main ones being during breaks on TV, magazines and newspapers, billboards, radio breaks, online etc. 

The main companies in this industry are Iris Worlwide, Saatchi & Saatchi and BD, which is an independent company.

Each company specialises in different types of advertising, as there is a wide range of adverts. Some will focus on graphic advertising, video advertising or audio advertising.

Companies in this industry have mainly one source of income, but still manage to make money in different ways too:

• Direct Payment (from client) - Adidas are a client of Iris Worldwide, and have worked on many projects together involving Messi
• Sponsorships
• Contracts
• Collaborations

This sector is constantly growing as there are always companies in demand of advertising and marketing. The estimated employment size is around 17.000 in the UK alone.

Animation

Animation companies produce a wide range of products, short/feature films, TV/web shows. This gives creative people with a lack of actors/budget, a freedom on what to create, as anything can be rendered on to a computer.

There are four different types of animation: 2D, 3D, Claymation and Stop Motion.

Popular animation companies are: Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Blue Sky Studios, and many others.

Studio AKA are a small independent London based animation studio, which have been very successful in the past and have been nominated to many awards, including the Oscars.  

It can be quite easy for independent animation companies to make a name for themselves with the use of the internet, as animation short films are more desired around the internet than short films, and are often shared around more on the web.

Animation films have a similar source of income as the Film Industry:

• Sponsorship
• Product Placement
• Subscription
• Merchandise - The Simpsons has its own official store "http://shop.fox.com/the-simpsons/index.php?v=shows_the-simpsons"
• Downloads
• Cinema Box Office
• DVD Sales and Rentals - Toy Story made $1,063,171,911 in box office alone, which is more than the previous two instalments combines

Japan is the leading nation for animation films and series, the UK is not as acknowledged, and only has around 4,700 people employed in the industry, and is therefore the smallest media sector.

Interactive Media

Applications, websites, social media all usually contain some form of interactive media. The main focus in this industry is to make apps for mobile phones, tablets and even PC, where the user can interact with the application to his liking.

Disney Interactive produce different apps for mobile and tablets for children using the characters from their films and animations. They are responsible for Club Penguin and have produced many other successful games.

BCI Interactive is an example of an independent Interactive Media company, which produce many services for costumers, ranging from search engine to social media.

These companies can make profit from a wide range of way:

• Advertising
• Sponsorship
• Subscriptions
• Downloads
• Merchandise

The interactive media sector has been growing with the advances in technology, and will grow even larger than what it is currently at. At the moment around 50,000 people work in this industry in the UK.

Games

Games is a huge growing industry not just in the UK, but around the world in general. They attract people from all age groups, and in the recent years, indie games have had a huge influence in the gaming industry, and have created new genres of games.

The top five best selling games are:

• Tetris - 143 million copies sold
• Wii Sports - 82.54 million copies sold
• The Oregon Trail - 65 million copies sold
• Minecraft - 54 million copies sold
• Super Mario Bros. 40.24 million copies sold

There are many big game developers, such as Treyarch. They are responsible for Triple-A titles such as CoD: Black Ops and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. The company has been around for over 20 years and has been collaborating with many other major game developers.

As mentioned previously, Indie (independent) developers have had a big influence in the gaming industry, and have created major games thanks to platforms such as Steam. Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl created a game called The Binding Of Isaac. which was a hit on the PC platform. As of April 2013 the game had sold over 2 million copies, and more recently has released a sequel which has been even more successful than its predecessor.

Game developers have a simple plan of income:

• Sales
• Downloads
• Merchandise
• Sponsorship

The game industry is a very big sector around the world, however in the UK it is such a big thing, having only 12,700 people employed. However, this figure is likely to go up as the gaming industry is constantly growing and has always new demands.

Photo Imaging

This consists of manipulating a chosen image to make it look more pleasing to an audience. This can range from home usage or link to advertising and marketing. Adobe's Photoshop has created many jobs in this sector as it is a very good and professional way to perfect a photo taken of a model.

There can be many independent professional photographers who use Photoshop to improve and enhance the beauty of an image for a client, and make a living from this. Many people will also pay to have an old damaged image recovered, Photoshop allows this and has also created many job opportunities.

Peak Imaging provides many services to their customers, such as, wedding photographers, commercial photographers, professional process, package prints and online digital printing. 

The main sources of income are:

• Direct Payment (from client)
• Downloads

This is also a growing sector, as the art of Photoshop is now widely taught and requested. Currently, in the UK alone, there are 44,000 people employed in this sector.

Advantages and disadvantages of different types of ownership

Private - These are the opposite of Public ownerships, and are focused on making a profit. They are not funded by the state and therefore need to make money for themselves.
Here are a few advantages:

• Sole proprietorship
• Partnerships

There are also some disadvantages:

• Corporation taxes
• Cost and work to file annual accounts

Public - The BBC is a great example of a public ownership company. The public owns it and the content created is for the public and not intended to make profit. The BBC is funded by a £145.50 per year licence fee.
Some advantages for public ownerships are:

• It's available for everyone to use
• Content which covers a wide range of target audience to please everyone
• Non biased reports and news
• Listens to the audience

There are also some disadvantages:

•  The content can quickly become repetitive and not entertaining
• You have to pay the licence fee even if you don't watch the BCC
• Some argue the fee is too high and needs reduction

Conglomerates - These are big companies which take over smaller companies in order to control as much as possible in a given sector, this is called "the snowball effect".
The Big 6 control 90% of America's media. The Big 6 include:

• News Corp
• Disney
• Viacom
• Time Warner
• CBS
• COMCAST

Some advantages as a conglomerate include:

• They can easily spread and grow
• High profit opportunities, they have the ability to move into high growth profitable industrie
• Better access to capital market

However, they also have some disadvantages:

• It requires a lot of management
• Failure in one bussines can drag the rest down
• Big conglomerates are often phrowned upon by the public due to monopoly

Independents - These companies are funded by themselves and are not owned by other companies. As an independent company it can be hard to maintain funds and they have no backup if a project does not result in profit.
Some of the advantages include:

• You have full control over the company
• Clean slate to start with when building a new brand
• No restrictions

Some disadvantages are:

• Tight budget
• Job stability is inefficient
• Lack of reputation

Cross ownership - This is when an organisation owns more than one media sector, an example of this is the News Corp, who own 20th Century Fox, Fox News, The Times, Sky, News of the World and many others.
Here are a few advantages:

• Synergy, the company can self advertise itself
• Wider distribution
• They have acces to information about target audiences

There are also dissadvantages:

• If the company becomes too big and therefor a conglomerate, the companies are forced to split by the government

Mergers - This is when two companies combine to create a new single company. There could be many reasons for this to occur, including lack of funds and merging in an attempt to create more money. An example would be Comcast and Time Warner.

Some advantages include:

• Joint knowledge and experience
• Added reputation

Here are some disadvantages:

• Could result in failure if main reason is lack of funds

Takeovers - This is when a company takes control of another company, this normally happens when one buys the other. Bigger companies will often buy out smaller companies in the same sector to eliminate competition. An example of this would be Markus Pearson's Minecraft, being sold to Microsoft for $2 billion, shares for Microsoft and a place at the company too.