LO1 - Task 1: Script Draft

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.