To display my vast knowledge on the subject of cross media ownership I shall first start off with a megacomglomerate of which I hope we have all had an experience with at some point. Disney
Yes, that's right, the well known children's company Disney, famed for their love of killing parental figures in movies (ala the lion king) and selling sex to teeny boppers( ala the Jonas brothers, parodied at the bottom of this post), as well as as a reported global intake of $35 BILLION A YEAR.
"Hu-huh, now what you want to do is burn them all Hu-Huh!"
The Walt Disney Picture company was founded by Mr. Walt D himself, whom before the company was created was already widely known in the entertainment business as a filmmaker and entrepreneur. after co-founding the business with his brother he set about making his legacy move from films to a whole host of other companies and creating an empire based on the entertainment business and much more.
"Cor blimey Mary Poppins, I am sterotyping the working class la dee dee laah doo doo"
The film production companies owned by Disney are a great source of income and brand recognition, From their self branded Walt Disney pictures which creates all the live action Disney features to the recent purchase of the Marvel production house which grants them access to all the iconic superheroes they could ever want to translate to film (see the recent releases of Marvel films in the buildup to The Avengers to understand what i mean) As well as the big hitter Touchstone pictures, which has came up with gems such as Who framed Roger Rabbit (a personal favourite from my youth) and TRON. This gives them a net in the film industry that has been cast wide and allows them have their hands on many productions at one time creating productions for all different kinds of target audiences around the globe.
Come on kids! Don't go outside! ITS MICKEY
Network Television is another good earner for Disney as they concentrate on their own self titled Channels such as kids channel the Disney Channel and its 500 identical cousins of Disney Channel +1, Disney Movies and a host of other variations that allows them to promote their own TV shows produced mostly in house on cheap budgets with actors usually owned in some way by Disney, the rise of stars such as Hannah Montana and Lizzy McGuire are testament to this.
Self titled channels aside Disney Also have the History channel and the Biography channel as well as owning Lifetime and all its subsidiaries. Network and Cable TV channels prove to be good acquisitions for companies looking for cross media success in that it allows them to market products subtly and bring in new viewers for their products that may not have been exposed to them via feature length movies.
Another part of their Entertainment arm is that of animation houses. They hold majority shares in possibly one of the biggest and best Pixar responsible for some of the more groundbreaking 3D animated movies of the last decade. As well as the self titled Walt Disney Animation studios which since it's conception has churned out some of the best animated features of all time (even if some are a bit anti-semetic or racist, youknow...FOR KIDS). Having these companies have benefited the Disney mega corp by putting them at the forefront of children's minds for decades and is one of their strongest areas of income. as well as winning them a host of awards and recognition in the industry from these trusted animation brands.
Music has been a sector that Disney has gotten their teeth stuck into and have found ways to self promote their TV shows and artists or cash in on the clamber for some of their more musical creations whether they be soundtracks or original theatre productions, having an established presence in the music world allows them to have more of a monopoly on their target audiences and add to the list of merchandise they can produce from something as simple as a kids TV show.
The crew of the High School musical Franchise...
From the self titled Walt Disney records which deals with most of the older music e.g. the Jungle book (I wannah be like you-oo-ooh) and the releases of the FAR TOO POPULAR high school musical....musicals. Mammoth records which dissolved into Hollywood records which owns the musical "careers" of Selena Gomez and Hilary Duff. (those musical genius's). Buena Vista Records, and Walt Disney Music Publishing, which tends to only deal with their film soundtracks and more recently Marvel soundtracks and releases. This gives them a strong presence in the music scene and allows them to have an intake from the money available to the often stellar careers of their self made proteges. Ala Selena Gomez (who has her own Disney Kids Show) and Hilary Duff (star of the Disney Channels, The Lizzie McGuire Show)
WATCH US, LOVE DISNEY
Arguably one of their biggest companies people do not associate with the Walt Disney Mega corp is that of the American Channel ABC, this gives the company a news outlet, sport coverage, more kids shows and a whole host of other useful chat shows and high profile guests appearing on another facet of their company.This gives them a whole other audience to cater to (by having very non Disney programmes feature on ABC) and by using the ABC channel and other channels under their control they can often self promote via news coverage, review shows and chat shows bringing more attention to whatever release they have coming out at the moment.
For example:
Having Zac Effron (douche) in a new movie from Disney? Stick him on an ABC chat show such as Jimmy Kimmel and have the two plug it for about twenty minutes. Instant gratification as well as spreading your advertising to a different audience.
ABC even has its arm in the digital news revolution to have on demand quick access to all their breaking stories at the touch of an electronic button. Too good to be true! This allows them to upload little gems of BREAKING NEWS such as this:
Football, Icehockey? Dont worry...Mickey has you covered.
Sports as it is a major pass time in many countries across the world has not been neglected as they own the company ESPN, A worldwide provider on a host of channels of sports news and action action make this another sector Disney has managed to gain a hold on. From owning half the rights to show the English Premier League to the latest extreme sports and dedicated 24 hour sports news channels online and on TV even allows them to compete with companies such as BskyB and the BBC.
Other examples of Disney's cross media ownership would be its Online interactive (which contains the Various websites and interactive experiences such as computer gaming and the likes) and Merchandising Outlets(which handles the totally not sweatshops and the distribution of merchandise to all the Disney stores and Disney owned stores around the world) but as I am trying to stay on course of more Film production and media I will leave that to perhaps another apprentice to talk about.
These are just some of the bigger examples of Cross media ownership that the Disney business has its hands on and without going too far into detail on each I feel I have at least shown and understanding of what a cross media company would own and a few examples as to why they would stretch into these markets.
"How are the media industries of Gaming and the Internet interlinked with not only themselves, media industry as a whole"
Gaming: Shot to popularity in the late 80's early 90's with consoles such as the Sega Megadrive and Super Nintendo Entertainment System , at its routes it was a simplistic medium and the games produced were minor endeavours with simple graphics and sounds achieved by a few individuals with a knowledge of basic coding. It was sneered as an industry by the already established business's i.e. film/music world. But is now earning more annualy then both combined.
Although this picture to the untrained eye seems quite complete they miss out any console that is PC based.
See the full picture here!
The 2000 period pushed gaming forward leaps and bounds by the invention of bigger and better hardware allowing for more complex games, bigger productions and therefore budgets. The teams responsible for creating these games grew from small crews of a few people to full production teams, bringing in a whole manner of different sectors for pre and post production, from artists and designers, programmers, voice actors and motion capture teams, audio teams and composers sometimes utilizing full orchestras, to things like marketing and publicity.
Zelda II: The adventure of Link (NES, 1987)
Mass Effect 3 (PS3, Xbox, PC 2012)
Internet: Started off as a pipe dream way back in the year 1969 of having computers communicating with each other over great distances, networks both big and small connecting to create a web of computers and their data. The internet itself went from its early days as a purely data based information tool with simplistic sending of data, to something we can better recognize today.
A digital image showing the data sent around the world via the wonderful medium of the internet.
As the technology of web browsers advanced we started to see more and more information and entertainment based websites (of which I will be focusing on) using an integrated program, Flash which brought around the Flash format for animated vector graphics, to make videos animations and create simple games. As demand for this grew flash became the standard for most websites and an industry of entertainment was born.
Many new things were available for the first time, free bite-size entertainment in the form of digital shorts and youtube video's, free journalism in things such as user review sites, reviews from 3rd party sources and most of all SOCIAL NETWORKING which gave us a platform from which to socialise online with friends and made the task of communicating and sharing with your peers simplistic and addictive.
(check out my 5 websites post for an example of some of the websites you can access on the ever expanding web)
Twitter, Its facebook status's for celebrities
You know what this website is.
HOW THE INTERNET & GAMING CROSSED OVER FOR THE FIRST TIME:
The start of the gaming boom from 1995-2000 introduced the first real pairing of computer games and the internet. With games becoming better produced and slowly more engaging, the internet was implemented to create an online multiplayer function, this took the rather solo single player or local multiplayer (which was that many games had and gave the player new contenders or helpful allies to play with at any hour of the day.
DOOM being the first popular game to implement workable online functions (or online multiplayer) to any kind of acclaim. (although this was perfected later in the classic ID software game QUAKE 1997).
MULTIPLAYER UP IN HERE!!! (Doom 2)
With this websites were created to form the competitive side of the gaming industry, these spawned competitions and leagues and even "clans" where communties of any single game could find like minded players to adventure with or pit their wits against in larger numbers and more organized groups and use websites and forums to discuss strategies or just forge friendships. see here for a typical guild web forum.
This spawned a concept for a new type of game, one that would be the definition of these two industries crossing over, the MMORPG, for those of your nodding along and seeming confused this is the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Games that exist consistently online while the player is away a first and a major leap forward, This allowed game developers to basically manage thier own world, and have players create avatars that grow as the timeline of the game does. It is run by the players paying usually a monthly subscription fee or paying for smaller transactions in game on the fly.
An example of this all encompasing game type is the widely popular World of Warcraft a game that at its peaked boasted 15million subscribers to its online world.
One of the internets biggest authorities on the Gaming industry
With the emergance of online gaming review sites, these would review games but keep most of the content completely free. This created alot of "hits" which left many magazine companies in dire trouble and left them scrambling to keep up. The websites had become media outlets themselves and their popularity thrived, due to fan demand for trailers news on a daily rather than monthly basis. Their sudden spring to dominance brought around expos like E3 and PAX as a way to garner hype and show off latest titles and is a major media date in the calendar.
Outlying how much money you will spend on games Since '95
Internet reviewing took on its own form of Journalism and offshoots from that allowed people who wanted talk about subjects that would have a potential target audience but perhaps the publication of a magazine would be too much of a financial challenge. An example would be the website Thatguywiththeglasses, A website that spawned for the reviewing of a small market of people who would want to look back on nostalgic movies from their past. Previously a publication of this would have been nigh on impossible, but has spiralled off into its own albeit small but successfulsub-section of journalism.
To further illustrate how far the gaming has reached into the other businesses' was the film industries capitalisation on the successful franchises of the gaming market, Although now most people know to avoid these game to movie titles they were an easy way for the film industry to cash in on the popularity of certain titles and lure the fans into often lacklustre films.
"I WAS RELEVANT ONCE"
But to accuse the film industry of this cashing in alone would be unfair so, ever so briefly I will explain that the capitalising of popular franchises works both ways with the gaming conglomerate insistence to churn out movie title based games that except in the very RAREST cases have been underproduced and widely criticized, blatant cash-cows.
And without trying to influence your decision do you honestly think that in the gaming community the general concenus of one of the worst games ever made is the movie tie-in game of E.T the Extra terrestrial, the game that nearly singlehandedly sunk the gaming industry before it had started. Coincidence? I think not.
GO HOME E.T, NOONE LIKES YOU.
Internet and Film
The Internet has tangled with the film industry in a far more positive way, as most films using it for viral advertising campaigns (I guess this counts as showing how the advertising companies are inter-linked too, aren't I clever) The example I can think of would be the great advertising for the films:
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
Blair witches use of forged documents and spreading of rumours online regarding the legend of the "witch" created a cult following as film go-ers tried to unlock the mystery of Black hills forest.
DISTRICT 9
The movie District 9 went for a combination of real world and online advertising of the HUMANS ONLY picture becoming widely talked about after popping up on many websites and billboards world wide.
So to conclude,
Although I have not mentioned all the iterations of how The Gaming and Internet Industries have quite rightfully taken their place among the Creative Media Industries this more then illustrates their impact in a few of the Digital media industries big hitters.
