Blog #11

·       How are the three basic structures of mass media organizations - monopoly, oligopoly, and limited competition - different from one another?

Monopoly occurs when a single firm dominates production and distribution in a particular industry, either nationally or locally. At the national level, AT&T ran a rare government-approved-and-regulated monopoly-the telephone business-for more than a hundred years until its breakup in the mid-1980s. Monopoly situations have been more plentiful, occurring in any city that has only one newspaper or one cable company. The federal government has encouraged owner diversity since the 1970s by prohibiting a newspaper from operating a broadcast or cable company in the same city, many individual local media monopolies have been purchased by national and international firms. Just a few firms dominate an industry, in an oligopoly. The book-publishing and feature-film businesses are both oligopolies, each has five or six major players that control the majority of the production and distribution in the industry. The production and distribution of the world’s music is basically controlled by just four international corporations like Warner Music (US), Sony (Japan), Universal (France), and EMI (GB). Oligopolies often add new ideas and product lines by purchasing successful independent companies. Limited competition, also called monopolistic competition, characterizes a media market with many producers and sellers but only a few products within a particular category. Hundreds of independently owned radio stations operate in the US. The commercial stations feature a limited number of formats such as country, classic rock, or contemporary hits.

·       What are some of society's key expectations of its media organizations?

Economists pay attention to a number of elements from how media make money to how they set prices and live up to society’s expectations. Many corporations now adapt their practices to new Internet standards. Economists, media critics, and consumer organizations have also asked the mass media to meet certain performance criteria. Some key expectations of media organizations include introducing new technologies to the marketplace, making media products and services available to people of all economic classes, facilitating free expression and robust political discussion, acting as public watchdogs over wrongdoing, monitoring society in times of crisis, playing a positive role in education, and maintaining the quality of cultures. Economic analyses permit consumers and citizens to examine the instances when the mass media fall short.

·       Why has the federal government emphasized deregulation at a time when so many media companies are growing so large?

Government regulation had often been denounced as a barrier to the more flexible flow of capital. Deregulation led to easier mergers, corporate diversifications, and increased tendencies in some sectors toward oligopolies. This deregulation and decline of government oversight sometimes led to severe consequences, such as the collapse of Enron in 2001, the fraud cases at telecommunications firm WorldCom and cable company Adelphia in 2005, and the widespread financial crises that began in 2008 and set off a worldwide recession. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted most restrictions on how many radio and TV stations one corporation could own.

·       How do global and specialized markets factor into the new media economy? How are regular workers affected?

Global and specialized markets factor into the new media economy by being cheaper and more portable. From outside and inside the nations borders they are able to reach people. Regular workers are affected by allowing companies to go internationally, which means less jobs on the home front and more jobs for the people in the other countries. Also the global and specialized markets do allow companies that lose money to make money internationally.

·       Using Disney as an example, what is he role of synergy in the current climate of media mergers?

Synergy typically refers to the promotion and sale of different versions of a media product across the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate. It also refers to global companies like Sony buying up popular culture-in this case, movie studios and record labels to play on its various electronic products. It is extremely important because it creates the most money in the current climate of media mergers and until Disney started to expand/synergize, began to make large amounts of profits and advance technological innovations.

·       Why have Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft emerged as the leading corporations of the digital era?

Amazon’s entrée is that is has grown into the largest e-commerce site in the world. Amazon has begun shifting from delivering physical products to distributing digital products and down on its digital devices. Apple’s strength has been creating the technology and the infrastructure to bring any media industries. Apple has a hand in every media industry. Facebook’s strength has been its ability to become central to communication and social media. As Facebook’s number of users approached one billion worldwide in 2012, the company still struggled to fully leverage those users into advertising sales, particularly as its users move to accessing Facebook via mobile phone. Facebook lacks hardware devices to access the Internet and digital media. Google, which draws its huge numbers of users through in search function, has much more successfully translated those users into an advertising business worth more than $42 billion a year. Google is moving into the same digital media distribution business that Apple and Amazon offer, via its Android phone operating system and its Nexus 7 tablet. Microsoft, one of the wealthiest digital companies in the world, is making the transition from being the top software company to competing in the digital media world with its Bing search engine and devices like its successful Xbox game console and its new Surface tablet.

·       What is cultural imperialism, and what does it have to do with the United States?

American media are shaping the cultures and identities of other nations. American styles in fashion and food, as well as media fare, dominate the global market-a process known as cultural imperialism. Many international observers contend that the idea of consumer control or input is even more remote in countries inundated by American movies, music, television, and images of beauty. Consumer product giant Unilever sells Dove soap with its “Campaign for Real Beauty” in the US. U.S. dominance in producing and distributing mass media puts a severe burden on countries attempting to produce their own cultural products. American TV producers have generally recouped their production costs by the time their TV shows are exported. This enables American distributors to offer these programs to other countries at bargain rates, undercutting local production companies that are trying to create original programs. American popular culture often contains protests against social wrongs, such protests “can be turned into consumer products and lose their bite.” The harshest critics have also argued that American cultural imperialism both hampers the development of native cultures and negatively influences teenagers, who abandon their own rituals to adopt American tastes. The exportation of US entertainment media is sometimes viewed as “cultural dumping” because it discourages the development of original local products and value systems.

·       What do critics and activists fear most about the concentration of media ownership? Hoe do media managers and executives respond to these fears?

The harsh critics say that it slows the development of native cultures and negatively influences teenagers and force them to adopt American ways is what critics and activists fear most about the concentration of media ownership. A universal culture will bring the world more together as one big family unit, which allows for better communication between all of the members of the world.  Media managers and executives fear political fall out and ever rising expectations in that ads and products would raise the hopes of poor people but not keep pace with their actual living conditions. The exportation of US entertainment media is sometimes viewed as “cultural dumping” because it discourages the development of original local products and value systems.