TR 1:10 p.m. Review Materials for Exam #2

Josh Tehrani, Hikari Leon, Adam Parks, Andrew Carey

Jack Powers

Intro to Media Industries

17 November 2015

The Radio Industry

-       Lost radio as a local medium

-       455 Radio Market. Most Markets Today will only have people live on air for 2 Hours.

-       Very first commercial radio station in the country (1926) KDKA in Pittsburgh Penn.

·      First Host was Frank Conrad; built a transmitter at home

-       A New York Radio Station offered “toll broadcasting”: they let you walk into the station you’d pay and then be broadcasted.

-       The two ideas combined, Programmed radio combined with companies who wanted to send out a message. Within two years the business boomed.

-       Radio Stations have different classifications

·      FM: Frequency Modulation: the number of waves, there are a lot more waves. Sound quality is a lot better than AM but the radius does not go as far. Three categories for FM. A license is the equivalent to local. B is the equivalent to regional, C is clear. Frequencies go from 88-108, as reserved by the FCC.

·      AM: Amplitude Modulation: waves are bigger and stronger but less frequent. Much larger range but sound quality is less. AM can get three classifications. Clear Channel license allowed to have 50000 watt transmitters, heard for thousands of miles, sunlight messes with signal but it is better at night, Signals travel north to south, they are roughly heard two thirds of Canada and one third of the US. Regional goes about 30 miles. Local goes about 5 miles.

-       Federal Radio Commission- passed by congress to regulate radio (Radio Act)

-       Communications act of 1934- established the FRC, and regulates the communications industries, applies to over the air media. The rules weren’t updated until 1996.

-       1998: Communications Decency act: made it a crime to have anything indecent on the Internet, repealed about a year later

- Key demo for radio 18-34 years old

Dramatic formula

• - Exposition/introduction
  • introducing characters, settings and plot
• - Rising Action
  • character development, explains plot, introduces conflict
• - Climax
  • reaching the biggest point of interest, turning point, peak of conflict
• - Falling Action
  • events after peak of conflict, characters still develop
• - Denouement
  • reaching the resolution, solved problems, conclusion

Stock characters

• -reluctant hero
  • hero who doesn’t want credit, selfless, modest
  • Harry Potter, Superman, Batman,
• -comic sidekick
  • Ron Wesley, Patrick Star from Spongebob
• -nerdy girl
  • Velma in Scooby Doo, Penelope in Criminal Minds
• -wacky neighbor
  • “The Middle”, Timmy Turner’s neighbor Dinkleberg, Kimmy Gibbler from Full House, Mr. Heckles from Friends
• -wise old man
  • Dumbledore, Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid

Stock Situations

• -bitter rivals
  • harry potter and voldmort, Mr. Crabs and Planketon
• -dysfunctional nuclear family
  • Modern Family, the Middle, Everybody Hates Chris, Full House
• -middle child
  • Malcom in the Middle,
• -team of three
  • powerpuff girls, the plastics from mean girls, john tucker must die, harry ron and hermonie
• -ill-fated lovers
  • Romeo and Juliet, Vampire Diaries, Jane the Virgin, Fault in our Stars, Jack and Rose from Titanic
• Plot
  • events that occur in story
• Theme
  • central idea behind plot
  • meaning/ significance
• Genres
  • tragedy
  • comedy
  • mystery
  • action/horror
  • reality
• Sports as drama
• incorporates dramatic events and character ties into sporting events
• ex. One Tree Hill, Friday Night Lights

Tricky Accounting: Studios usually engage in tricky accounting to prevent handing out too much money. For example:

1: Studios promise actors a percentage of the profits, knowing full well that most movies do not make a profit

2: If a movie is made on a 100 million dollar budget, but was distributed for a cost of 1 BILLION, the movie would have to bring in 1.1 billion to make a profit

Theater extortion: Theaters are prevented from getting a cut of the revenue of the movies they show. Usually they keep the profits from concessions and tickets sold.

Fake reviews:

• Studios will come up with fake movie reviewers to boost the popularity of their movies.
• The number of fake reviews online, or those paid by companies, reached 10-15 percent at 2014.

Importance of International Market:

• More media consumers world-wide than domestically
• Everything is simplified for the international market: there is less “character development” and more things people understand worldwide (etc. buildings crashing, animals attacking etc.) (avatar, sharknado, disaster movies etc.)
• studios do not produce movies that could not be shown successfully in a foreign market

Script Theft Accusations:

Long history of accusations that hollywood studios steal ideas of movies from writers

-writers propose the ideas to the producers

-producers take idea and make it their own because the writers can’t copyright the idea

-producers own right to expression of ideas

Copyright battles:

• Can only copyright and expression of an idea.
• Studios are taking people’s ideas and making it before it is sold to another studio without making a deal with the person who had idea and without giving them any kind of credit.

Development Hell- When you sell something to a studio that they never produce.  Other studios will resurrect these movies and make them.  Some studios will purchase a script from another studio in order to kill it if they have a similar script.

Writers don’t come up with the ideas- Somebody comes up with the idea usually the producers. Than about 10 writers will work on the script and once they have a script they will take it to the producer.

Importance of Merchandising: Merchandising is important because it brings in a large portion of the profit. Movies are more successful when they can be made into toys and other products- ex. UP (the movie) merchandising tanked because they could not make any toys and products from the movie

Movie writings system:

• Ratings are given by the MPAA
• Members of the MPAA remain anonymous so not to be influenced or bribed by other studios.
• Ratings are based on movie content and sometimes random.
• G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17
• Independent producers have a difficult time getting preferable ratings from the MPAA than bigger studios.

IFPI Digital Music Report 2014

• The industry digital revenue in 2013 is $5.9 billion and know that the difference is about half million dollars
• Between 2012 and 2013 the digital revenue has increased by rights half a billion general trends increase in subcriptions revenuve and about 20 million people paying 
• Most of the digital revenue comes from downloads

Number 1 Album:

Midnight Memories- One Direction 

Top 5 artists:

One Direction

Eminem

Justin Timberlake 

Bruno Mars

Katy Perry

The general trend for music subscription is due to the world smart phone penteration  which is up to 36 percent.

There are 28 Million users of paid subscription based services

Spotify is the number one music streamer in the world

Vevo is the number one music video site

 The global digital growth is 28 percent over 

Vinyl records is making a comeback

• Vinyl sales increased by 32% in the US in 2013    

Who Owns What in Radio

Buckley Radio - owns and operates twenty radio stations in seven markets. In addition, the WOR Radio Network is operated as an independent syndicated programming provider with affiliates in over 400 markets.

CLEAR CHANNEL - Clear Channel and its joint venture partners operate more than 240 radio stations in the U.S., Australia, Mexico and New Zealand  - more than 17 million listeners weekly and a total of more than 2,000 employees.

CUMULUS - Cumulus Media Inc. owns and operates FM and AM radio station clusters serving mid-size markets throughout the United States. As of March 31, 2004, they owned and operated 306 radio stations in 61 mid-sized U.S. media markets. 

Understanding TV Ratings

TV HHs: the Nielsen estimate of the number of television households in the USA

PERS 2+: The Nielsen estimate for the number of people aged 2 and over in the USA

LIVE+SD: The number that watched a program either while it was broadcast OR watched via DVR on the same day

LIVE+7: The number that watched a program either while it was broadcast OR watched via DVR on the same day or plus 7 days 

Ratings: Nielsen uses a ratings point system. 1 ratings point = 1% of the Nielsen estimate for the category being measured (more detail below).

A18-49 or Adults 18-49 Ratings  - this is the advertising demographic advertisers are usually most interested in for primetime shows.  It's the important number in terms of how well a show is doing. 

While TV HHs are a good proxy for how many people are watching, Nielsen also tracks how many people in each household were watching a show. Sometimes you may see something with a VIEWER or Pers 2+ rating. These numbers are just a percentage of the 286,300,000 people estimate.

Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live + Same Day (Live+SD) and Live + 7 Day (Live+7). Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live + Same Day include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AMlocal time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing.

Households Using Television (HUT): The percentage of all television households in a survey area with one or more sets in use during a specific time period. The sum of the average ratings for a given time period will sometimes be higher than the HUT number because of households viewing multiple programs at the same time. If a household is watching two programs, it is counted toward each program rating but only once toward a HUT number.

What TV Ratings Really Mean (Nielsen Media Research)

-sample of more than 5,000 households, containing over 13,000 people who have agreed to participate

-Meters are installed on TV sets to measure what is watched

-The People Meter is a box, about the size of a paperback book, which is placed on or near each TV set. Each member of the family gets their own meter to measure when they're watching tv.

-Diaries are another way to measure who's watching what

-Nielsen uses sample selection to choose who's picked for research

-Telephone coincicdentals are random phone calls from nielsen that ask people what they're watching at the time.

Big Sound Recording Companies:

Universal: 43.47%

Sony: 22.78%

Warner: 21.12%

Others: 12.61%

These companies own a % of the sound recordings.

Each company owns operated smaller record labels.

Phonograph:

·         Invented by Thomas Edison

·         Originally marketed as a dictation recording machine for secretaries

Berliner:

·         Edison’s Competitor

·         Took the idea of the photograph and used it to record music

·         Create the vinyl record

The Victrola

·         Created by Berliner

·         Furniture piece with a record player

·         Became widely popular and could be found in nearly every American home.

Nickelodeons

·         First American film/music arcades.

·         Created a market for sound recording

·         You had to insert a penny or nickel into a machine (think like Dave and Busters arcade) to listen to a music recording or watch a mini film.

Cylinders vs flat disks:

·         Cylinders were 3d cardboard cylinders covered in wax. They had engravings of sound recorded into them. A needle would travel over the engravings so the recorded sound could project.

·         Disks took the same concept of the cylinders, but instead it was flattened. The needle traveled from the perimeter to the inside of the disk to project the sound as well (Berliner’s idea)

Impact of radio on sound recording industry:

·         Radio was widely introduced in 1923

·         Record player and record sales plummeted nearly 50%

·         People opted to listen to live radio broadcasts over recorded tracks

Importance of Jukebox during The Great Depression:

·         The jukebox helped boost record sales nearly 500% by 1939

Rock and Rolls importance:

·         The counter culture of the 1950’s – did not have its own style or music genre.

·         Rock and roll burst onto the scene and found its desired market within this American subculture.

·         Gave people a sense of identity through unique sound of music

·         Has maintained its position as #1 most listened to genre of music in America today.

RIAA (Recorded Industry Association of America):

·         A trade organization that represents the recording industry in America.

·         Founded in 1952.

Organization of the industry:

·         Talent: recording artists that have their own unique sound and image. Also includes sound writers, arrangers, and lyricists.

·         Distribution

Tuesday and Thursday 110-225

Disney sets revenue records

·         Disney is doing very well, setting a record of $52.5 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in net income.

·         Doing well in TV than in in kovies

·         Stars wars release on Dec 18 can possibly be beneficial for Disney

·         Disneys Parks and resorts asset showed a 10 percent rise in revenue to 4.36 billion.

·         Basically Disney is doing well

2014 Studio Profitability

·         Walt Disney studio profit went up 101% making 1.7 billion

·         20^th century fox profit went up 33%

·         Warner Brothers profit went down 6%

·         NBC Universal profit 47%

·         Sony profit went up 66%

·         Paramount went down 27%

2014 Theatricl Market Statistics

·         2014 was a mix year for the studios

·         Walt Disney and Sony did well while Paramount  Warner Brothers did not do so well

·         Sold in global box office revenue was $36.4 billions

·         The number of tickets sold has declined and have not seen increase in 20 years.

·         Internatinal makert 72 percent for the entire market, overall revenue

·         China is the number one interntional market

·         Most frequent movie goers are 18-39

·         Trends in gender, tickets sold have

been mostly to women than men.

Hollywood is producing higher highs, lower lows

·         Studios made hits or nothing at all

·         “Spectre,” the latest James Bond thriller was Hollywoods biggest openings of the year.

·         Movies like “The Walk” and “Steve Jobs” turned out to be a flop

·         Studios are hoping that 2015 sets a new high

·         Looking forward to Star Wars releaseing on December 18^th