4.) Discuss the impact of funding on media products.
Nowadays mass media seems to aim towards one goal, profit. Whether that be blockbuster movies, youtube videos, or the news. Media is heavily reliant on ad revenue, private backers, and audience reception; all of which dictate how much money that product will gross. All types of media are seen as an investment, stakeholders invest their money and trust the production to make back on their contributions, and more. The effect of this relationship has affected the actual media product itself, leaning towards the interest of the stakeholders.
An introductory example would be the fourth installment of Hasbro’s franchise’: Transformers the Age of Extinction. This movie cost around $210 million dollars and grossed a total of $1.104 billion dollars. The reality is that $800 million of that came from overseas, with the majority coming from China. It’s quite interesting that a solid chunk of their profit came from one country. This is because the movie was orientated towards the Chinese market. Basically the second half of the movie takes place in Hong Kong and is the prominent backdrop for the action sequences. Scenes where it apparently has no value to the story rather than to promote Chinese brands and celebrities is rampant. China has recently had an economic boom like we’ve never seen before and with the government slightly loosening their grip on businesses, there's opportunity for profit. With that comes a new new untapped market that the studio can profit from.
The hotly debated topic of media and its authenticity is prevalent these days. However, it is important to note the interests that are leaning and dividing platforms left and right. Most local national and local news organizations rely on non public funds to run their platform. These backers have their own agendas and push their beliefs onto these organizations where they then distribute that information to the masses; resulting in the lack of bi-partisan journalism. It’s well known that the more people you have watching, the larger the audience to profit from. The added urgency to accumulate as large of an audience base as possible leads to polarizing and simply disingenuous news articles and headlines. In the age of the internet of things, news companies feel the need to be the first to release breaking news. This can lead to objectively false or unverified information permeating the news cycle. A systematic effect of how news media outlets are financed in the status quo.
Youtube is another platform that has been affected by how the organization is funded. Youtube creators make their money from ad revenue that Youtube establishes by making deals with other corporations seeking to insert their ads on the site. With Youtube being the second most viewed site on the internet and boasting around 2 billion users, it’s understandable why corporations want to advertise to that audience base. The issues arise when corporations start to pull their ads from certain creator’s videos that they deemed inappropriate and not following their company's persona. Youtube has wholeheartedly backed their stakeholders whether their claims were justified or not in an attempt to save their revenue stream. In response, Youtube enacted strict guidelines to what can and cannot be posted and set an algorithm to prioritize the content they deem fit. Effectively, many Youtubers have been demonetised and their channels flagged for insignificant breaches of Youtube's absurd content policy. Numerous content creators have criticized Youtube’s ad policy and how it’s disabling their audience from watching videos that they’ve subscribed to.
As I reiterate, the way media is funded undoubtedly affects the content they produce. Unlike publicly funded institutions like PBS or the BBC, the majority of mass media products are funded by private means. The media companies effectively give up their autonomy and follow guidelines set by their shareholders for the fear of losing funding. It’s up to the individual media organization to find the balance of abiding to investors, and creating genuine content that they want to exhibit to the world.
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