Task 1: Understanding the Creative Media Industry Structure

When it comes to the media industry, there are many areas of work, the major sectors of the industry are:

·         Film - The collective creation and distribution of feature length sound and moving image productions via cinemas, the internet and home media. Universal Studios is a major company in the film industry that has been creating and distributing films for over 100 years!

·         Television and Radio - The collective creation and distribution of sound and moving image productions through analogue and digital transmissions which are picked up and made accessible to the public through home media devices such as set-top boxes and personal radios. One of the most popular television and radio companies is The BBC which has been providing its services of quality media through television and radio the Great British public for 91 years.

·         Interactive Media - A specialised media that relies on a user's input to provide a products output, it engages the user the product and allows them to interact with what's happening with a controller of some kind; the internet, video games and home media devices like DVD players are considered interactive media.

·         Video Games - The dominant variant of interactive media, users are fully immersed in an enjoyable interactive experience by using a controller to play out an adventure; they are extremely popular and are distributed on cartridge or disc based platforms that run on video game consoles like the Nintendo 64 and the SEGA Mega Drive.

·         Animation - A specialised area of the Film, Television, Interactive Media and Video Games industry which is all based around creating the illusion of movement through a series of moving images created by hand or on a computer.

·         Publishing - The preparation, issuing and distribution of printed media for sale to the general public; these publications can be books, magazines, research papers and many other forms of print media.

·         Press - The press is a section of the mass media industry that focuses on presenting current news to the public via television, radio, interactive media and publishing.

·         Advertising and Marketing - Advertising and marketing is all about the promotion of products to the general public all with intensions of making the product renown and popular to increase sales; advertising and marketing companies are commissioned by other companies to endorse their products, they use all the above forms of media to promote the products.

·         Photo-imaging - A media industry that focuses on creating and editing photographs and other graphics for all the above forms of media, they specialise in visual language and printing high quality designs on a large scale.

All of these companies are either horizontally or vertically integrated. A company that is horizontally integrated is part of a group of similar companies that are merged together in order to work with each other to produce products; this is usually done to share resources, increase popularity/market power and reduce costs of international trade (if one of the companies is located in another country), all done with intentions of selling more products and maximising profits. Vertical integration is when a big company (that is usually well known) purchases other subsidiary companies, this benefits the big company because they get a healthy share in the subsidiary companies' profits and it increases their market dominance, it also benefits the subsidiary companies by gaining them popularity which results in more customers and higher profit margins; in theory everybody wins, but it is mostly the big company that ends up with the most money in pocket. The Disney corporation that specialises in all areas of the media industry is an example of a company that uses vertical integration, it's a big and famous company that has purchased other companies in the media industry such as LucasArts and The History Network in order to increase market dominance and profit, as of now they own over 129 companies via vertical integration!

 

In the following article I am going to talk about Nintendo, company that specialises in the video game media industry; and Marvel, a company that specialises in the comic book publishing industry. First I'll talk about Nintendo.

Nintendo started out as a small business in Japan in 1889, they originally produced and marketed Hanafuda playing cards, a game which has been played in Japan for over 400 years. After producing an officially licensed set of cards depicting Disney characters in 1959, the company became famous and started to expand their market to new business ventures including a taxi service, a chain of "love hotels", instant rice food, vacuum cleaners and toys; all of these ventured failed eventually apart from the toy making, this was all Nintendo had left after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as the playing card industry had became over saturated with no one buying them anymore. Nintendo struggled to stay in the industry only making toys due to the other companies such as Bandai and Tomy working in Japan as competition, due to the introduction and success of the video game industry in Japan, Nintendo decided to invest and released the "Colour TV-Game 6" and "Colour TV-Game 15", two home video game consoles that got them into the media industry; this went onto the global release of arcade games such as "Radar Scope", "EVR Race", "Mario Bros" and most famously "Donkey Kong" in 1981, the money raised from these releases lead to the production and distribution of the "Game & Watch" handheld consoles and the "Famicon". The "Famicon" went on to sell incredibly well in Japan selling over 500,000 units within 2 months, so Nintendo made the important decision to distribute it globally as the "Nintendo Entertainment System" (or NES); the American video game industry had crashed in 1983 due to bad quality games at high prices being released, Nintendo created quality control procedures to make it so this didn't happen so when the NES was released in 1985, it became an instant hit which in-term gained Nintendo universal acclaim and saved the American video game industry. With once programmer Satoru Iwata running the company, the rest is history.

Nintendo Enterrainment System on left, Nintendo Famicon on right

Ever since the "Colour TV-Game 6" was released in 1977, Nintendo have stayed in the video game media industry and ever since the "Famicon" came out 30 years ago, Nintendo have been regarded by many as the best in the business. Nintendo are a 'first party developer', this means that they manufacture video game consoles for the public to purchase as well as video games exclusively for said consoles, this resulted in the creation of brilliant video game consoles such as the "Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or SNES) and the "Nintendo Gameboy", and beloved video game franchises such as "Super Mario" and "Pokémon"; doing this secured future sales of Nintendo consoles because if people want to play the next instalment of their favourite franchise then they'll need the new console too, this is very apparent when the launch of "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD" game came out on the "Nintendo Wii U" console, the console's sales increased by 94% in a week! The target demographic for Nintendo's products has been for those aged 9 to 24 years old ever since 1977, however if you look at some of the games being produced then you'd be fooled into thinking that the target audience is a lot younger, especially when you look at the Nintendo franchises like "Kirby" and "Nintendogs"; from day 1 Nintendo have followed the principle of making video games fun and easy for everyone to play, by making games that look family friendly and are easy for anyone to be able to play, Nintendo have been able to appeal to a massive amount of people from casual gamers to hardcore gamers, making everyone happy.

Over the past 30 years, Nintendo have had to face many rivals and have had much competition. In June of 1982, Nintendo had to face Universal Studios in a massive lawsuit case where the Nintendo game "Donkey Kong" was being sued for apparently copying the 1933 Universal Studios movie "King Kong", during the time of the lawsuit Nintendo were banned from producing any "Donkey Kong" arcade cabinets, video games or any other related merchandise; in December of that year Nintendo's layer John Kirby proved in the New York courtroom of US District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet that Universal had filed the lawsuit knowing that they didn't own the rights to "King Kong" as they had declared it public domain property in 1971, Nintendo won $1,800,000 and became established as a legitimate company that could take the world on. The most infamous competition story in gaming history is that of Nintendo and SEGA from 1988 to 1999, SEGA (a video game company also located in Japan) set out to defeat Nintendo in the video game marketplace by making their system the "SEGA Mega Drive" cheaper, a series of advertising campaigns that attacked Nintendo and created the "Sonic the Hedgehog" video game franchise to be more popular than "Super Mario"; the two companies were constantly battling each other, distributing over 80 million "Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems" and "SEGA Mega Drive", this massive production and distribution of consoles resulted in consumers spending all their money on home video gaming and the arcade industry almost dying out due to consumers spending their money on video games for their home instead of at the arcade, in the end Nintendo came out on top due to its beloved first party franchises while SEGA eventually had to stop producing consoles and now only produce video games.

When it comes down to it, Nintendo is actually a very successful company, it's gone from producing playing cards in the 19th century, vacuum cleaners and instant rice in the 20th century, and video game consoles and games in the 21st century. Sure they've had to fight a few battles along the way, whether it is a giant American company or a fellow video game company back home; thanks to its loyal fan base, ever-present target market and beloved franchises, Nintendo will still be in the video game industry for many years to come.

The other company I'll be talking about is Marvel:

Marvel is an American comic book production company that is currently a horizontally integrated subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. The company was founded in 1939 under the name "Timely Comics", super hero comic books were becoming very popular in America at the time so publisher Martin Goodman founded the company to produce and distribute "Marvel Comics", a comic book featuring a series of short stories for the public to read; after selling over 80,000 issues the company decided to publish and distribute a second issue in the next month, this process continued for 18 years until the "Marvel Comics" became discontinued, in that time however the company had created 3 new franchises: "Human Torch", "Sub-Mariner" and "Captain America" which would take over, thus forming the foundations the company uses to this very day. In 1951, superheroes had fallen out of fashion, to keep the company going they started to produce and distribute more general comic books featuring romance, mystery and comedy as the subject matter; with such a radical change of themes they renamed the company "Atlas Comics" and were able to survive, it wasn't until 1958 that they successfully brought superheroes back in fashion and returned to their routes. The company changed its name to "Marvel" in 1961 to honour the name of their first publication, from then on they gave the world some of its most famous characters including "Spider Man", "The Avengers" and "The X-Men"; with Isaac Perlmutter working as the current CEO of the company, Marvel continues to give the world some of the best media ever made.

Although Marvel as a whole has greatly expanded its franchises over the years into film, animation and video games to name a few, but that main area of the companies work (and what I'll be talking about in this article) is as it was back in 1939: comic book publication and distribution; in fact right now the company is doing this with 75 different franchises on a monthly basis! The majority of these comics have a target demographic of 9-16 year olds around the world, though some are aimed at older audiences; the reason why Marvel are able to make so much money however is because although the comics are written for a 9-16 year old demographic, the majority of people who purchase the comics are usually young adults and middle aged men who grew up reading the comics when they were younger, the comics are written with these people in mind so as to not alienate them because they are responsible for most of the company’s profits, so in theory, Marvel comics appeal to a massive target audience and should have no financial troubles in the near future. The main competition that Marvel has and always will be is the rival American comic book publishing and distributing company DC Comics, the two companies both started in the 30s making widely successful super hero comics that were designed to take each other out; when DC made "The Thing", Marvel made "The Incredible Hulk", when Marvel made "Captain America", DC made "General Glory", and that's the way it's always been. The companies rivalry is still going to this day, the only difference between this rivalry and the rivalry between SEGA and Nintendo I talked about earlier is that DC and Marvel are on good terms; they are constantly teaming up and provide their fans with special pieces of media which pair the two companies property together such as the "DC vs. Marvel" comic book series, doing these kindnesses increases the fan bases of each companies franchises and creates a positive impact which results in more comic book production and distribution for both companies.

Overall then, Marvel has used its organisational structure, its franchises, its target audience and it's rivalry with DC to become one of the biggest companies in the world. Now with the Disney Corporation running the show, the future looks brighter than ever for Marvel.