Media

1. Media Institutions
How the media industries’ processes of production,
distribution and circulation affect media forms and
platforms?

2. When talking about the media, what do we mean by the 'Big Six'?
The ‘Big Six’ are a group of companies who control a large amount
of the media across America. The ‘Big Six’ measured in 2011
controlled 90% of the overall media across America which is a major
increase from the recording of only 28 years prior in 1983 in which
50 companies owned 90%.

3. Who are the 'Big Six'? What other companies do they own?
The ‘Big Six’ are the six leading companies controlling around 90% of the
media across the whole of America. The six companies are:
GE, News Corp, Disney, CBS, Viacom and Time Warner.

4. Find an example of a major media product
that each of the 'Big Six' have produced within
the last year, and research key information
about these productions (budget, cast (if
relevant), advertising campaign, release dates
etc.)

5. GE:
GE is a co-owner of Universal studios and within the past year they produced
‘Jurassic World’ (2015); the sequel to the 1993 film ‘Jurassic park’. The initial
budget of this film was 150 USD and from the release date of June 10th 2015 they
had received an income of worldwide box office gross of $1,670,400,637. The cast
of ‘Jurassic World’ included famous actors like Chris Pratt who himself would hold
a very high contracted fee but overall the film of Jurassic World profited highly
therefore creating a large income for universal studios which again goes back to
the ‘Big Six’ due to its co-owners of ‘Big Six’ members GE.

6. News Corp:
News Corp are owners of the FOX broadcasting network and in the
previous year FOX have has success in the television show ‘Empire’.
Empire started in 2015 and had an initial budget of around 4 million
and it has been quoted to have quadrupled in profit from its release
date in 2015. Terrance Howard is a very well-known actor who also
would hold a highly feed contract and this is also the same for many
other actors and actresses of the show ‘Empire’. Furthermore, the
money in which is made her again leads back to the ‘Big six’.

7. Disney
Disney are the owners of Pixar and they have produced this
year ‘Finding Dory’ from the ‘Finding Nemo’ series. Finding
dory received an income box office gross of 930.8 million
USD. The official statistic of the ‘Finding Dory’ budget is 200
million USD which is alike too other ‘Big Six’ members digital;
media productions by having a vast profit income.

8. Viacom
Viacom are owners of Paramount Pictures who have a variety of recently released
successful productions and one to name is ‘Star Trek Beyond’. Star Trek Beyond
was a phenomenon once in the box office as it was a modern creation of the
great Star Trek saga. The budget investment was around 180 million USD and in
the North American Box office they took a profited income of nearly double at
270 million USD. The high CGI cost of the film limited the allocation towards
casting budget therefore many huge names were left out but they were able to
acquire other actors who still are very well known like British Actor Simon Pegg.

9. Time Warner
Time Warner are the parent network of the Warner Brothers. The Warner Brothers have many
highly acclaimed motion pictures of many years and some well-known names are ‘Suicide Squad’,
the whole Batman series and most notably the Harry Potter saga. One smaller but well known film
produced by the Warner brothers under Time Warner is ‘The Lego Movie’. ‘The Lego Movie’ had a
budget of only 60 million USD which is lower than the norm of media productions of its level but
it was used productively as they received a box office income of around 470 million USD. The
casting of ‘The Lego Movie’ was amazing within the budget as they have double digits worth of
well acclaimed actors and actresses in the production, consisting of well-known names like
Morgan Freeman, Will feral, Chris Pratt and multiple other household film names.

10. CBS
The CBS corporation withholds many channels in which lots
of successful shows and sports have been produced and
presented across their network.