American Idol (Take 2)

This may not be all that surprising, but it's worth pointing out. Cross-promotion is advertising one product through different channels. On the March 12 episode of American Idol, which airs on FOX, Jim Carrey showed up in the audience dressed as an elephant to promote his new film "Horton Hears a Who." The film was produced by Blue Sky Studios. News Corporation owns both the Fox Broadcasting Network and Blue Sky Studios. This was an easy way for New Corporation to start promoting "Horton Hears a Who" early on without high advertising costs.

Ryan Seacrest actually addresses this directly, laughing when he asks Carrey during the episode, "This wouldn't be a Fox film, would it be?" Carrey replies, "It's a little bit of cross-promotion. When you do a movie with Fox, you're contractually obligated to do a certain amount of that." Check out the clip below:

American Idol

As media corporations try harder and harder to economically benefit themselves, they are taking their own products and transforming them from simple entertainment to brand cultures.

American Idol is a great example of this. So, we participate in the process of choosing each season's American Idol, but we're also buying into the American Idol brand- we pay to vote, buy albums, concert tickets, t-shirts, DVDs... and so on. Companies have really figured out how to tap into their consumers' interests and increase sales in all of their industries. This gives the media companies the ability to make tons of money off of consumers based on one successful brand. Some people might argue that because we're buying into every aspect of one brand, that gives the media corporations a reason to minimize the new content they're putting out. They can spend a minimal amount of money while making more and more.

American Idol is different every season. This is one of the big successes of shows like this. Yes, the concept is the same, but the whole show changes from season to season as new hopefuls audition. On top of that, the Top 10 go on a summer tour after the show has concluded.

The American Idol website is the perfect place to see just how the brand is being marketed and sold to consumers. The website does dedicate space to its advertisers, but the interesting thing is that the site seems to be advertising its own brand. You can click a link to download (and pay for) Idol performances, go to the American Idol store, join the Idol community where you can participate in discussion boards, buy Carrie Underwood stamps, and much more. They're really creating an "American Idol World" with all of this, and fans are loving it.

Convergence Culture

"Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide" is a fascinating book by Henry Jenkins. Jenkins addresses the changes that are going on as media intersect. Information is being communicated across a number of media platforms and consumers are fighting to take more control over their media exposures.

One of the points that Jenkins makes is that companies are primarily concerned with their bottom line. These huge corporations have interests across the entire entertainment industry and they can maximize profits by selling one brand in all different industries: so, they can make movies, music, and television programs all based off of one successful brand.

This helps to explain why we get things like High School Musical and Hannah Montana. These brands are marketed and sold through movies, CDs, television shows, radio, etc.

Jenkins' "Convergence Culture" is a great tool that clearly explains this cultural shift in the media. I found this section about media ownership particularly interesting, but the rest of the book makes some excellent points and connections with pop culture such as Survivor and American Idol. Check it out at Amazon.

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"Made of Honor" Preview Seen First on ABC. Surprise, Surprise.

Media outlets often use their own programming to advertise their other projects or productions.

I'm fairly up-to-date when it comes to movie theater release dates. I had never heard of the new Patrick Dempsey romantic comedy, "Made of Honor," until I was watching an episode of ABC's "The Bachelor" on April 7. The Bachelor, Matt Grand, and his date for the evening went to a movie premier for their "one-on-one" date. During the episode, several clips of "Made of Honor" were shown as Grant laughed and his date cried at the film. This was the first time I had heard anything about this film, and the rest of the episode's commercial breaks featured advertisements for the film as well, which is to be released May 2. After that, the advertisements starting running much more frequently on many different networks.

Also, the lead character of this film is played by Patrick Dempsey- one of the star's of ABC's successful drama, "Grey's Anatomy."

When I went to ABC's website, it was littered with ads and videos promoting "Made of Honor" and I actually had to watch a movie trailer as I searched for information about "The Bachelor."

None of this is coincidence. Disney owns Buena Vista Home Entertainment, which is distributing the film, as well as ABC, which is promoting the film. Here we see an excellent example of a media corporation utilizing interests in multiple industries to promote and sell their product.

photo found at: sidereel.com

Writer's Guild of America President Speaks About Media Ownership

This video from YouTube features the west president of the Writer's Guild of America, Patric Veronne, speaking about media ownership. While the video mainly focuses on media ownership's effects of writers, it features many useful facts and statistics, especially at the beginning. Perhaps most shocking, Veronne points out that in the last twenty years, the media climate has undergone drastic changes- corporations are acquiring more and more media outlets and becoming larger and larger themselves. Today, the majority of our media exposures are owned by one of about six huge corporations.

You might say, "so, what?"

When this happens, we eventually only see what these conglomerates want us to see. These companies are only looking out for their interests. Therefore, the content that is available to the consumer is limited to what is gong to increase the company's bottom line. Only six companies are actually controlling the publics media exposures. That doesn't leave a lot of room for new ideas.

High Concentration of Media Ownership

As you can see from this illustration, a few very large corporations own an enormous number of media outlets. For example, The Walt Disney Corporation has interests across several industries. Disney owns the ABC network as well as many local broadcast networks. Several cable television networks belong to Disney as well, including ESPN and SOAPnet.

For a list of all of Disney's interests as well as other conglomerate's interests, please go to the Columbia Journalism Review's website by clicking on the "Who Owns What" link to the right.

The idea of media conglomeration has to do with this idea of a few huge corporations owning a very large number of outlets and how this effects the media exposures of the public. Each conglomerate is looking to grow its interests and increase its bottom line and believe it or not, this affects you. This blog will be dedicated to showing these different effects.

photo found at: http://libreria.sourceforge.net/library/Free_Culture/images/media-concentration-cl.png