INDUSTRY
Industry is defined as an economic company that processes and manufactures goods. These industries can produce anything from animate objects, to television, film and radio.
Hesmondhalgh (2013) quotes how these industries have now acquainted themselves with large conglomerates. These small businesses work together to produce and circulate different media.
These institutes are typically heavily structured, forming a relationship between business, government and separate institutes.
An example of a media industry is the British Broadcast Company (BBC) which is a government-funded broadcast public service. The BBC is formed of different media institutes, including television, radio and news.
The up rise of industries occurred at the start of the 20th Century, where new media technologies were aligned, forcing merges and policies to change.
Legislations worked as a favour for larger cultural industries. Regulations such as the television licence meant that each household had to pay a licencing fee, to help support the government funding of public service (Hesmondhalgh, 2013).
The British Broadcasting Service (BBC) is funded by this government regulation, leading other broadcast services to be marginalised as they require they would still require television licence.
This meant the BBC became a dominant industry, competing against other institutes such as Channel 4 and ITV.
Castells 2008 expressed how there is seven conglomerates that dominate media, these include:
Walt Disney
Comcast
Tim Warner
Sony
Amazon
And News Corporation
These corporations carefully control the content produced to adhere to their ethos. These allows content to further revenue and further dominate the media.
VERTICAL INTEGRATION, SYNERGY AND CONVERGENCE
Industries are built from a series of elements, including:
Diversification: This is where companies vary and expand their products produced. Particularly, diversification in this content focuses on manufacturing and electronic companies merging or buying new media and leisure.
Integration: Media content works and collaborates with one another. This leads to synergy:
Synergy: Organisations cooperate to cross-promote and sell their products. For example, Warner Brothers paired with AOL to produce Harry Potter franchise.
Convergence: Content expressed and flows smoothly across multiple media platforms (Jenkins, 2006).
Vertical Integration: Separate companies work together to produce, distribute and exhibit particular media content. An example of this can be seen in the works of the Saw franchise:
1. Evolution Entertainment produced Saw with collaboration of Twisted Pictures.
2. Saw was then distributed by Lionsgate.
3. Saw ride is featured at Thorpe Park, who is owned by Merlin Entertainment.
4. Merlin Entertainment is owned by The Blackstone Group.
The use of vertical integration allows circulation and brand identity to be spread through icons, characters and narratives across all media.
Furthermore, vertical integration allows old and new content to be accessed and populised.
BUILDING THE MEDIA FRANCHISE
A franchise refers to a chain of consistent homogeneity goods that are evenly distributed and pre-produced (Johnson, 2013).
A franchise can be either commercial businesses, or media texts
These franchises are produces by media conglomeration, where product multiplicity occurs. Typically, these conglomerates will collaborate with social partners to extend franchise brand to find different markets.
An example of this could be Stranger Things:
Stranger Things collaborated with Top Shop to produce merchandise and was campaigned using gorilla marketing (set up a famous scene in the windows of Top Shop in Piccadilly Circus).
Franchise is significant in productive organisation and relationships within the creative industry. The seriality of franchise builds suspense and loyalty through multiple publications, which prevents loss of sales and increases social hype.
Johnson (2005) expressed that franchise building is useful in the industrial world; “used by fans, it is rather a way of separating those texts that are of interest or could be included within a canon of sorts constructed by a specific set of viewers”.
Franchises typically use horizon integration to further their sales. This refers to when the company produces multiples to further content production. This appears through serials:
Geraghty quotes Gray how seriality “brings textuality” through breaks, which then causes “boundaries between texts and their interpretations”, this meaning the text remains “open and incomplete”.
Asserted perpetuated hermeneutic produces a hyperdiegesis world, allowing audiences to creatively speculate and analyse to produce what they think or want to happen (Hills, 2003). This typically entices a loyal fan-base.
However, cult-television can also engage similar loyal fans – cult-television is where a televisions series largely and quickly populated amongst society. This is particularly evident amongst box sets where binge watching can occur.
Binge watching: Defined as watching multiple episodes in a short and rapid space of time.
.This is obviously apparent in recent pop-culture such as Stranger Things, which has an increasing fan database, and is engaged as a box-set (whole series released on Netflix at once).
Devoted fans would further their research and love to look for paratextuality (Gray, 2010). Transmedia series are complemented by further media such as DVDs, mobile and video games, comics, etc. The use of reading these further engages audiences and allows for the media to expand platforms.
CASE STUDY: JAMES BOND AS A TRANSMEDIA ANOMALY
The Bond franchise doesn’t duplicate Henry Jenkin’s ideology on ‘world building’; rather, James Bond produces a coherent world where a repetition of events can occur.
Within the Mark Gallagher of Atenna blog expresses how Bond is unconventional. Rather than having story and character progression, James Bond seems to lack character aging, reminiscence or even acknowledgement of the future beyond the film.
However in comparison to other transmedia, such as Marvel, “coherent universes for their pool of characters to roam” are built.
So how exactly is James Bond transmedia?
Bond is transmedia because all stories presented on different platforms will interconnect with each other.
An example of this is showcased in Spectre, the latest of the Bond franchise. Here, references to all past 23 films can be easily recognised. Columb expresses these references in his blog, which can be viewed here.
However, with the anomaly of character progression we see in Bond, the biggest segment of transmediality is between the films and the games.
To understand the character, content and story of the world built within the games, interaction with the films are needed.
Particularly, nostalgia of previous films is present within 007 Legends (2012). Meaning paratextuality from previous other media, such as the films or books, helps fully engage understanding of the texts.
However, not all games are canon with the film, but rather work individually. When Daniel Craig was cased as James Bond in Casino Royale in 2006, many fans were unsettled by this. Therefore, EA Games partnered with Eon Production to produce James Bond 007: From Russia with Love. This game allowed fans to interact as Sean Connery’s Bond, within the Bond world.
The importance of history and nostalgia within transmedia is enticing new and old audiences. If nostalgia is introduced, it makes audiences feel more connected and personal with the text. The history provides a sense of understanding with further contextualises the text presented.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Columb, S. (2015, November 1st). How Spectre References all 23 Previous James Bond Films, FlickeringMyth.com. Retrieved https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/11/how-spectre-references-all-23-james-bond-films/
Gallagher, M. (2015, June 30th). James Bond: A Transmedia Anomaly?, Antenna. Retrieved from http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2015/07/30/james-bond-a-transmedia-anomaly/
Geraghty, L. (2009). American Science Fiction Film and Television, Oxford: Bloomsbury Publication.
Gray, J. (2010). Show Sold Seperately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press.
Gray, J. and Mittell, J. (2007). Speculations on Spoilers: Lost Fandom, Narrative Consumption and Rethinking Textuality, Participations Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 4(1). Retrieved from http://www.participations.org/Volume%204/Issue%201/4_01_graymittell.htm
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013). The Cultural Industry. (3rd ed.). London: Sage Publication.
Hills, M. (2003). Fan Cultures. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, H. (2006).Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press.
Johnson, D. (2013). Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: NYU Press
Johnson, C. (2005) Telefantasy. London: BFI.