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The Hollywood Reporter: An Industry Trade Publication

The Hollywood Reporter (THR) is an American publication for film, television, and entertainment industries. The magazine is a hybrid, offered both in print and online, and offers a wide range of articles on popular culture film and television. While the articles are not as numerically oriented as some from Forbes or Time magazines might be, they provide relatively critical discussion of the art and industries. The attached articles below are examples of The Hollywood Reporter as it can relate to each aspect of media creation in the digital age.

Content Creation

Production

Mandates and Regulation

Distribution and Aggregation

Technological

The Hollywood Reporter has had its fair share of scandal and controversy in its years of operation (founded in 1930 as a trade paper). One of the more interesting ways the magazine intersects with the entertainment industry is through hosting a variety of award shows for television and film. The magazine also features lots of coverage on awards like the Emmy’s and the Oscar’s, further establishing industry norms of value in the Hollywood awarding systems.

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Industry Lore

“Rather, industry lore describes myths regarding what audiences like or don’t like and explains how these beliefs become entrenched and seemingly unalterable.” (162)

In media industries, creative workers have some amount of agency over their work. Yet, the similarity in many of our media show the power of society and culture in creating industry lore that guides creative personnel’s thinking. Examples of this include the exclusion of black families from horror films, the dividing of books into chapters, and the inclusion of guns/violent acts in videogames. These are all things that guide the creators based on ideas about what can be popular, as well as what messages can be sent with these texts.

One of the most obvious examples of industry lore is the exclusion of women as action heroes (or any women in action films being objects of the action regardless). Much of the lore in our media is created by the leading executives and corporations in the industry (and the media that has been embedded with the lore impresses its ideals on everyone in the society). When your executives are lacking any diversity in class, race, gender, ability, or sexuality, only one perspective of seeing the world is created, along with the industry lores that will accompany those singular opinions. This type of lore can be seen most clearly in television, film, and videogames. Texts that break this lore include Tomb Raider, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Jessica Jones. Many of these texts have proven extremely successful, like Wonder Woman, and have challenged industry lore keeping women in disadvantaged roles in media.

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Regulation of Media Industries

In “Understanding Media Industries” written by Timothy Havens and Amanda Lotz, they state, “Although media industries may not face substantial state enforced regulation they are still very much regulated by an array of assumptions and perceptions about the nature of their products… In this case, commonly held beliefs by media workers—about what audiences want, what might worry advertisers, and what might succeed (by commercial measures)—impose strict regulation on the possible range of media products created.” (Havens 70)

Besides broadcasting, which is much more government regulated in America and most other places in the world due to its use of radio waves on the electromagnetic spectrum, most media regulations on content and ratings are created by the industries, companies, and individuals creating/distributing content themselves. Most industries have created formal regulations, while companies and individuals tend to lean on informal self-regulation, which is based on what will sell.

Copyright laws are crucial regulations that largely govern the economics of various media industries. Copyright laws have been around since the invention of the printing press in the 1600s, and have become complex and adjusted with time. However, the digital age threatens the power of the copyright, as material sharing and distribution is much easier, and new businesses models are beginning to challenge this copyright law setup further.

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Economics in Media Industries

Economics can greatly influence the creation of media texts and products. Advertising plays a large role in many media industries, and affects content produced. Netflix is an example of non-advertiser supported media platform. Netflix subscribers pay a monthly fee for content licensed to Netflix from other TV and film studios, and additionally content created by Netflix. Netflix streams (and for some content provides a download option) television shows and films across genres, companies, and national borders. The economics of Netflix have made its own content creation and distribution a profitable endeavor for the company. Its wide distribution reach, and ability to provide an infinite number of shows to a wide subscriber base cheaply made this possible.

Pandora is an example of advertiser-supported media. Pandora has dual revenue streams, as one can pay a monthly fee for advertiser free listening, and as a company just purchased by Sirius, the satellite radio giant, this might change Pandora’s economic and content strategies once again. Pandora allows its free users to stream music stations and artists with ads, while the paid subscription allows for offline listening and other features. Pandora uses a model similar to freemium content, advertising the paid subscription regularly in between other ads. Ads are also specialized to stations and users. While artists are fighting music streaming services for their percentage of the profits, it seems unlikely that these services are going anywhere.

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Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor was an actress beginning in the 1940s. She is still considered one of the most classic Hollywood beauties, and some of her most popular films include Cleopatra, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Place in the Sun. She auditioned for two film studios, and both Universal and MGM offered her contracts. She accepted Universal’s offer. After one small role, and a year, they terminated her contract. She then received and opportunity at MGM in Lassie Come Home, and after a trial period, was then offered the seven-year standard contract of the time. She went on to have success with MGM, and was critically acclaimed, working with other industry stars like James Dean. Taylor began to lose popularity as she aged, not fitting into the Hollywood stereotype.

Elizabeth Taylor was one of the first images of a modern celebrity. Her image was cultivated and mastered by MGM due to her contract, and during a time of rising paparazzi the public began to have a “private-eye” into her personal life, or what MGM decided was her personal life, as a way to increase her popularity and thus film viewership. While studio contracts have changed with the times, the interest and connection to the personal lives of celebrities has remained an industry norm.

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Mandates in Media Industries

One media company that has a commercial mandate is 21st Century Fox, the conglomerate that owns, Fox Media Group, 20th Century Fox, National Geographic (partially), Hulu (partially), and Star TV, among others. In determining this company’s mandate, we find that Fox pays for content through many different ways of consumer and advertiser contributions, relying on the popularity of their content with a targeted audience demographic. This media serves the interests of its owners, the Murdoch family, and those who feel adequately and appropriately represented enough by its content.  21st Century Fox defines success by profits.

Like many media companies, Fox’s media content and texts are largely affected by their commercial mandate, and the audience they feel they profit the best by serving. Fox is largely associated (especially Fox broadcasting) with serving conservative, male, white, hetero, able-bodied audiences. Yet, Fox produces and distributes one of the most popular left-leaning animations in history, Family Guy, and having sold its television arm and film studios to Disney, a market targeting children and tweens of different demographics, also reflect the complexities that go into the production of media texts, even by companies that serve commercial interests.

To sum up the example of media conglomerate Fox, from Chapter 3: Media Industry Mandates in Understanding Media Industries, the authors state, “Mandates then, shape the operation of media industries in many ways, including whether and how various segments of the public are served, the kinds of content that the industry produces, the organization of the industry (whether it is a monopoly, an oligopoly, or competitive), and the role that the industry plays in business and civic life.”

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Mass Customization

“Mass customization—in comparison with  to mass production—calls attention to the fact that these commodities are still produced in factories for large numbers of people, not crafted for individual consumers, but that they are more varied and targeted to buyer preferences than traditional mass-produced goods.” (Havens 17)

In Understanding Media Industries, the authors give specific social and economic changes that have contributed to a transition from mass production being the industry norm to a generation of mass customization. Mass customization refers to the trend for more content produced, and a wider variety of ideologies explored within that content to target niche audiences. Online streaming of many forms is an excellent example of this. Classically, my first thoughts of mass customization bring up Netflix and Pandora.

However, magazines were arguably the first industry to begin marketing to more niche audiences, dating back to the 1960s and 70s. As a child, I enjoyed magazines like Highlights and American Girl, as  tween I had a joint subscription of Teen Vogue and Seventeen, and as a media student in college, I have considered getting a subscription to something like Rolling Stone. Magazines are targeted to direct audience demographics of age, gender, and social class. Now, magazines are still in the transition from print to digital, just as many other industries are also experiencing a much more harsh transition, like the DVD business. But the variety of options for consuming the medium combined with the large numbers of incredibly niche magazines competing for content, stages the magazine industry as a more historical example of mass customization than online streaming services.

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GAMING IS THE FUTURE; the future is now

The PwC reported on predicted industry growth and decline over the next 5 years in media and entertainment. PricewaterhouseCoopers is a multinational professional services network, headquartered in London providing audit, tax and consulting services. In their 18th annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook they predict the direction (speaking in terms of macro finance) that each media industry is heading by analyzing the dynamics of each segment in different regions and on factors that affect those dynamics, “PwC says it obtains historical information primarily from ‘confidential and proprietary sources.’” (Spangler)

These reports can be interpreted in different ways. In “Entertainment and Media Industries Are Nearing Revenue Plateau” the article makes the argument that industry growth will be minimal in many cases, highlighting the firm’s acknowledgement of the industry as a whole reaching a plateau or point of small growth.

In the “2017 Top Markets Report Media and Entertainment Snapshot,” the U. S. Department of Commerce International Trade Administration uses much more boastful information, indicating that the dominating American Media industry is on a path of extraordinary growth. However, one thing to note in both articles, and something becoming increasingly mainstream and much less of a niche market, are the expansive and high dollar video game and virtual reality markets. “Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) permeate nearly all M&E sectors and have been the fasted growing of the sectors discussed here…VR offers lifesaving applications in health care and innovative solutions in education, as well as across other sectors. eSports has become a global phenomenon and is expected to surpass $500 million in 2017, and could reach $1.9 billion in 2018.”

Globally, the industry is predicted to be worth around $180 billion by 2021. The gaming industry is quickly overtaking film, television, and music as the most popular, widespread, and popular industry, crossing barriers and population segments with ease. Video gaming is a perfect example of the extraordinary impact our technologies have on economics, lifestyle, and perception of reality. Without the technology advancing gaming, there would be no industry, unlike other industries that struggle with technological change, like newspaper and magazine.