Media Distributions & Marketing

Media Distributions & Marketing

Distribution

Example of a film having multiple runs giving the audience a
wider choice of viewing time 

The distribution of media products is how companies ensure that their film or TV series is as widespread as possible this involves having their films to have as many runs as possible in a large amount of cinemas or broadcasting a show to more than one channel.
By doing this companies optimise the chances of making profit as having a film available at multiple cinemas makes it open to a wider audience and having as many runs of the film as possible it gives audiences a choice which time is most favourable to them increasing the chances of them seeing the film.


Another way of successfully distributing your film is to have it released at the most favourable time of the year for its genre for example if the films genre was horror then they may try to have the film released around Halloween.

Marketing
Film companies also use marketing to increase the profit from the film. They do this is marketing a film increases its status and peoples awareness of it.
there are two main types of marketing used by corporations to market their films:
Viral Marketing
This technique is mainly on the internet and involves the spreading of the film on existing social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Guerrilla marketing
This technique uses low cost and unconventional marketing strategies to raise awareness for a product e.g. unscheduled stunts before the products release.

An example of a film that has used this method of marketing is Borat, by holding fake press conferences and also released the first 4 minutes of the film on YouTube a week before the release of the film allowing it to be spread virally over the nation.

Media Institutions

Media Institutions

Media Institutions are the handful of companies that can develop high quality media texts and products and distribute them widely and easily.

Its outstanding how few companies have control over the mass of media that is produced each year for example in the USA only five major institutions have control over nearly all the 'visual media' such as TV and films.

Examples of leading media institutions:
(top) 20th century Fox
(bottom) Universal

Critics argue that the concentration of media ownership offers an individual or a company a huge amount of influence and could result in a loss of variety in media products.

 

These media institutions are able to stay dominant in their fields by making the largest profit from their film. They do this by making their films seem more professional than others in order to make audiences more willing to watch their product. For these large corporations there are simple steps to ensure that your film looks professional to an audience one of these steps is to advertise your film often to a large target audience which I will cover more detail in the next blog.
An example of a media institution is Warner Bro's which buys up companies that produce and distribute films so when they have created a film buy using the film producing companies they can then use the sister company to distribute the film with ease.
For a list of the biggest six media institutions click on this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_conglomerate

How men are represented in the genre of thriller(pending)

How men are represented in the genre of thriller

 

In Thrillers the dominant characters are male and are very stereotypically presented as strong, tough and heroic. In these films the male is shown as the hero, for example in the taking of Pelham 123 the main protagonist (Denzel Washington) manages to deal with the hijacking of a train by using his intellect to save the lives of the passengers enhancing the stereotype of men being clever and cunning. 

Audience Research Methods

Audience Research Methods

National Readership Survey- http://www.nrs.co.uk/
the NRS provides readership estimates for the UKs biggest newspapers.

American Broadcasting Company- http://abc.go.com/
ABC is a broadcast television network created in 1943.

Broadcasters Audience Research Board-  http://www.barb.co.uk/
BARB is the official source of television viewing figures in the UK. They continually develop new ways of measuring what the UK are watching.  

Bookseller- http://www.thebookseller.com/
Bookseller is a company that provides news on the book publishing industry and provides the latest press reports about he publishing sector.

New ways to measure audience is using new technologies such as social networking sites, online forums and YouTube which help give media companies to easily compose an accurate measure of audience.






Types of research
Quantitative-  quantitative research is mainly number based, has closed questions to generate exact answers and very factual e.g. questionnaires

Qualitative- qualitative research includes an analysis of  existing products, open questions to generate answers open to interpretation and individual preferences e.g. interviews or focus groups.

Considering Audience
Audience Engagement- this describes how an audience interacts with a media text. different people react in different ways to do the same text.

Audience Expectations- these are the ideas the audience have in advantage of seeing a media text. this particularly applies to genre pieces. don't forget producers continually play with or shatter audience expectations.

Audiences

Audiences
An audience is an individual or group of people who read or consume any media text.
Audiences are important because without them the film would produce no profit meaning there would be no media.
The mass media is becoming more competitive to attract more audiences in different ways and stay profitable.
the belief that audiences receive messages during viewing films is long gone. Two theorists Katz and Blumler proposed from their research on audience behaviour that audiences use media for different reasons

1.Information
Finding out events, satisfying curiosity and gaining a sense of security through knowledge.

2.Personal identity
Reinforcement of personal values, finding models of behaviour and an insight into ones self.
e.g. Facebook or twitter

3.Integration and Social Interaction
Insight into circumstances of others; social empathy, identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging, interaction, enabling contact with family, friends and society.

Demographic- is the age, race ,gender, class/status and nationality of the audience.

Psychographic- audiences interests, beliefs and habits.

Niche films are ones that would not have as much marketing or the resources to spend on the production of their film and so they have a small target audience.

Mass films are one that have a large audience and are usually created or backed by the large film companies biased in Hollywood, America.
Mass audience those who consume mainstream or popular texts such as soaps and sitcoms or media and communication that targets a very large group of people. e.g. Top Gear or Friends

The introduction on new technologies such as mobile phones and the internet is meaning that media texts are harder to notice this impacts the people marketing the products and so the media text must gain attention to itself by being louder and more extravagant than the competing media sites.

Audience research is a major part of any media company's work. they use questionnaires, focus groups, pre-film screenings and spend a great deal of time and money finding out who would be interested in their product.

from this link
http://www.thinkbox.tv/server/show/nav.914
I have learnt about how audiences are categorised.

Group A
-lawyer
-doctors
-scientists
-well paid professionals

Group B
-teachers
-middle management
-fairly well paid professionals

Group C1
-junior management
-bank clerks
-nurses
-'white collar' professions

Group C2
-electricians
-plumbers
-carpenters
-'blue collar' professionals

Group D
-manual workers such as:
-drivers
-post sorters

Group E
-students
-unemployed
-pensioners