Hello there, my name is Ken and I work for the Media Institute and in
today’s vlog, I will be outlining key terms that will be used in this vlog and
explaining the ownership of the film company, 20
th Century
Fox.
The whole company is owned by Rupert Murdoch and 20th Century Fox is a
subsidiary to 21st Century Fox, a rather large conglomerate, in which 20th
Century Fox operates with different media platforms such as film and
television.
The structure of the conglomerate is that a larger conglomerate
owns a smaller conglomerate; 21
st Century Fox owns 20th Century Fox
which in turn own their own subsidiaries 20
th Century Fox TV, Fox
Home Entertainment etc. Before delving into more detail of 20
th
Century Fox, we will have to learn some
key terms that is associated with 20
th
Century Fox:
Conglomerate – A big company made
up of smaller companies. These smaller companies have their own specialty i.e.
Radio and TV
Independent – A company that is
self-run and self-funded and is usually not part of a conglomerate. They make
product without relying on another company. They will however, may need a
conglomerate to distribute their products or outsourcing their marketing and
distribution.
Cross media ownership – When a
conglomerate owns companies that make different media. This means they can
cross promote their film/product across other companies. This increases its
publicity and can help in maximizing profit.
Commercial – A company that aims
to make a profit; this applies to most businesses.
Public Service Broadcaster – PSB
is funded by public money to broadcast their productions.
Join Venture – Works together
with other companies and collaborates to produce and distribute.
Profit – The main
objective of media production is to make money.
Target
Audience – A target audience is something a company plans the film
for. An example of a target audience would be for a romance genre would be
mainly women. However, target audience is not entirely the correct projection
for finding out about the demographic.
(
Relevant?) 20
th Century Fox is a company that shows progression in
terms of business size, albeit with bumps in the road. Throughout their history, they have had enough
resources to constantly change their logo (Which has no relevance to the situation) and to gain their own subsidiaries.
They were first named Fox Film Corporations and only switched to 20
th
Century Pictures due to bankruptcy during the year of 1930 when the original
owner William Fox was jailed. By then however, the merge between Fox Film Corp
and 20
th Century Fox proved successful very early on, overtaking
some of the bigger competition i.e. RKO and MGM (MGM being the biggest studio
in Hollywood at the time).
The operating model of 20
th Century Fox is that they have
conglomerates that support their pre-production, production and post-production
departments. This allows the company to cross promote their productions through
their subsidiaries. 20
th Century Fox have their own subsidiaries,
which allow them to create different products through different departments.
For example, Fox TV could make an advertisement for an upcoming movie; that way
they will have more publicity from both their marketing in the film department
and the marketing from the television advertisement.
The 3 main department of
the film production of 20
th Century Fox is the studio, where they
produce the film; script writing, music production, actor auditioning. They
then have their distribution department in which the marketing and demographic
planners arrange how the film is going to be distributed. Finally, they display
the films in their cinema chains. Each of the production process has their own specialties and tasks to do for the production of the films.
20
th Century Fox produces multiple
products through their own
film department to their different sections of media. They produce film, music,
television series, and radio shows/talks and being a subsidiary to 21
st
Century Fox, they technically make magazines and newspapers through News Corp. They
are however mainly known for their production of films. They have a variety of
genres that they make for their films. This allows them to cater to a mass
audience and in turn, allow them to create a maximum profit they can make. Having
the different subsidiaries allows them to create different media and in turn allow
them to cross promote their products through each of their departments. Their
media can sometimes target niche groups but it tends not to gain them much
profit.
The type of
genres that 20
th Century Fox covers a wide variety,
from action, horror, thriller, romance and more. Each film is in the form of
feature length films and the trailers that are made for each of these movies
tend to be quite progressive in intensity and other trailers tend to be quite
light of heart. In other words, the trailers that 20
th Century Fox
creates are appropriate for the movie made. The target audience is more generalized compared to indie companies who usually target smaller groups of
people (niche) compared to that of 20
th Century Fox who target mass
audience.
This determines their
market position. 20
th Century Fox is an extremely successful
conglomerate and are internationally known. This can be compared to an
independent company such as Warp. Warp is an independent film company and
obviously not as large as 20
th Century Fox but are still widely
known for their films that have been considered some of the best. 20
th
Century Fox is a part of an even larger conglomerate, which in turn allows them
to become even stronger in their market position compared to smaller companies
who are not owned by larger conglomerates. 20
th Century Fox are able
to cross-promote their products through their conglomerates. Being a
conglomerate themselves, they can further promote their products through their
own subsidiaries and in different forms of media.
20
th Century Fox’s
market position is quite solid. They are
clearly a successful business and have produced a number of films and other
products through their subsidiaries. An example of being able to become
successful; they are a conglomerate, which allows them to cross-promote and
create cross-ownership link between their subsidiaries. This way, they can
promote and advertise an upcoming product in each others departments’ i.e.
upcoming film can be advertised on television or on graphic mediums. Compare an
independent company to a conglomerate; conglomerates have a higher chance of
becoming more well than independent. This is due to the fact that independent
companies do not rely on another company to do their works. They may have to
rely on a conglomerate to distribute their films, unlike a conglomerate that
can distribute their own products on their subsidiaries.
Warner Bro. is 20th Century Fox's main
competitor because of being on par in size and the ability to promote their products just as well. However, 20th Century Fox is a part of a larger conglomerate (21st Century Fox/News Corp) and are technically able to cross-promote within an even larger audience with the use of different media. The different media coverage that 20th Century Fox has allows them to gain a better advantage than Warner Bro. at generating revenue. 20th Century Fox has more influence due to their connection to 21st Century Fox/News Corp.
