Biographical Profile of a Global Media personality (producer/director/news person/critic/ social media-influencer/musician ). Part 1 – Global Media Icon Biopic (a) Write a (400- 600) word (3-4 paragraph) proposal pitching your best idea for a biopic of a global media figure of your choice. As above this individual can be a producer, director, news person, critic/ social media-influencer, musician even actor. You must however make a case as to how this individual’s output will help you explore key themes that we have encountered thus far. Indeed, your piece should expose/explore but also critique the work of your chosen personality. These would include cultural imperialism, cultural globalization, glocalization, the propaganda model (Chomsky), Orientalism (Said), postcolonial theory (Fanon) and any other related and similarly applicable themes that you can argue are relevant. *Keep in mind that your subject can absolutely be an American national (though international or immigrant individuals are especially encouraged), that you must make a case for how their work relates to the broader globe, either through reach, audience, representation or by some other metric you can argue for. (b) Of this (3-4) paragraph proposal, dedicate (1) paragraph to a brief review of (1) of the articles that appear in your working biblio. In other words, discuss how one of your chosen reference articles frames/treats/explores the work of your chosen subject. (c) Attach to the end of this proposal, a minimum (3)-article working bibliography. (d) Creatively title and subtitle this draft. Please keep in mind that you can absolutely change/rework this title as you feel the need to. Capitalizing on Global Entertainment Media INTRODUCTION: ENTERTAINMENT INCORPORATED Entertainment is produced within a capitalist mode of production. A mode of production refers to the ways in which production is organized in society. Capitalism is the world’s dominant mode of production; it is the dominant mode of producing and distributing entertainment in nearly every country on the planet. Capitalism is an economic system in which goods and services are produced for sale (with the intention of making a profit) by a large number of separate firms using privately owned capital goods and wage-labor (Bowles and Edwards 1985: 394). In the twenty-first century, TV shows and films are made by waged workers employed by a number of production firms and sold (or licensed) as a commodity to consumers (i.e., other media corporations and viewers). The means of producing, distributing, marketing, and exhibiting most TV shows and films are owned by media conglomerates, not by governments or the workers themselves. The studios in which workers create and assemble entertainment are private property; so too are the distribution and exhibition channels that carry entertainment to consumers. Audiences are transformed into commodities by media corporations and sold to advertising clients. Media corporations coordinate TV and film commodity production, distribution, marketing, and exhibition using technology, labor, and financial resources within and between many nation-states. All media corporations—whether based in China, Canada, India, South Korea, France, Poland, or the US—produce and sell entertainment as a market commodity. In order to maximize their profit, media corporations are ‘consciously denationalizing from their domestic origins in the course of developing genuinely global strategies of operation’ (Sklair 2001: 48). Entertainment media is primarily produced, distributed, exhibited, and consumed as a commodity within a world system in which media corporations compete to control the copyright to TV shows and films, the means of media production, distribution and exhibition, and audience attention. Which basic capitalist logics influence the production of entertainment media in society? Who are the main corporate players in entertainment industries, and what are the relations between them? Which economic and cultural processes shape the actual production, distribution, marketing, and exhibition of TV shows and films as commodities? What are the distinctive qualities of entertainment commodities? How do media corporations attempt to profit-maximize at the expense of rivals by competing to control markets? What is convergence? How do horizontal and vertical integration 59 strategies shape entertainment content? What is the difference between a transnational media corporation (TNMC) and national media corporation (NMC)? Where are the world’s most powerful media firms based? What is the power relationship between US and non-US media corporations? To answer these questions, this chapter discusses the capitalist entertainment industry and some relevant topics and developments in the transnational capitalist economy of entertainment media. Curtin (2005) argues that ‘further development of the scholarly literature regarding media globalization will require more careful attention to the institutional logics of media organizations’ (156.) This chapter examines how entertainment media is shaped by capitalist logics and the goals of media corporations. The first part of this chapter discusses how some of capitalism’s basic logics shape the existence of entertainment media, describes the roles and goals of the major corporate stakeholders in the capitalist entertainment industry (producers, financiers, distributors, marketers, and exhibitors), highlights the unique characteristics of entertainment media commodities, examines the tension between competition and concentrated, centralized, and controlled entertainment markets, and discusses convergence, horizontal and vertical integration strategies, and synergistic entertainment media. The second part of the chapter examines the transnational political economy of entertainment media. After distinguishing between ‘positional’ and ‘relational’ approaches to power and describing the characteristics of national media corporations (NMCs) and transnational media corporations (TNMCs), I discuss the rise of ‘strategic alliances’ between TNMCs and NMCs based on joint ventures, equity alliances, and licensing agreements. An understanding of how the forces and relations of capitalism and powerful media corporations influence entertainment media is foundational knowledge in global media studies. ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA IN CAPITALISM: MEDIA CORPORATIONS, CLASS DIVISION, COMMODITIES, AND PROFIT Entertainment media is an integral part and product of many capitalist societies in the present age. In all capitalist societies, profit-seeking media corporations own the means of media production and distribution, a class division between media owners and waged cultural workers exists, and commoditized media goods are made to be bought and sold in markets. In capitalist societies, privately owned media corporations—not governments—are the dominant owners of the means of producing, distributing, and exhibiting entertainment media in society (Chan 2005a; Epstein 2006; Flew 2007; Scott 2005; Meehan 2010; Wasko 2003). The goal of all media corporations is profit-maximization. In order to generate profit, they bring money, technology, media, and hundreds (if not thousands) of people together in productive social relations. Though media corporations comprise many people, they are recognized by law as one person, with rights and responsibilities. Viacom employs thousands of people, but is recognized as one person. So too are Walt Disney and Time Warner. The legal fiction of the media corporation as a singular person allows CEOs, board members, and shareholders to enjoy limited liability for the conduct of the corporations they govern. As rights-bearing people, media corporations can exercise their rights against other people (and governments). 60 CAPITALIZING ON GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA Though media corporations exist to profit-maximize on behalf of their CEOs and shareholders, they have privileges and liabilities distinct from those of their owners. To diminish concerns about their power, they do many things to build a positive public image. Viacom donated $1 million tax-deductible dollars to support the construction of a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC (Robertson 2007). In 2010, Disney donated more than $198 million tax-deductible dollars to various children’s charities. Through the media platforms they own, media corporations regularly represent themselves as good corporate citizens, but it is important to note that they are primarily organized in order to, and are legally obligated to, maximize profit. Media corporations pursue the goal of profit within a class-divided society in which the ownership of, and access to, private property is unequal. All capitalist societies are divided between the financial and industrial owners of the means of production (‘the ruling class’) and the people who must sell their labor in exchange for a wage (‘the working class’). A mere one percent of the world population controls at least forty percent of the world’s total wealth (Stiglitz 2011). The richest one percent of the US population controls at least twenty-three percent of all US wealth (Reich 2010). Media corporations are institutionalized expressions of the class divisions in capitalist societies. The representation of the corporation as a single person conceals the thousands of waged working people that are employed by them, and the specific contributions that they make. The structure of media corporations is based upon a class division between the owning class (the few people who own and manage the corporation) and the working class (the many people who sell their labor power to that corporation in exchange for a wage). The owning class is a small group of people who own the property rights to entertainment media, and the means of producing, distributing, and exhibiting it. This class includes the chief executive officers (CEOs) and shareholders of media corporations. Rupert Murdoch, the founder, chairman, and CEO of News Corporation—the world’s second largest media conglomerate—is a member of the owning class. Forbes magazine says that Murdoch is the 38th richest US citizen and the 117th-richest person in the world. His net worth is $7.6 billion dollars. Media owners have power. They possess the exclusive right to create, control, rent, sell, and use the entertainment capital they own in whatever way they choose. The owning class—shareholders and CEOs—live off the profits generated by the media corporations they own and the labor of the thousands of waged workers they employ. Distinct from the owners of media corporations is the working class. Unlike owners, the majority of cultural workers do not own the means of entertainment production, distribution, and exhibition. They do not own studios, TV networks, retail systems, or the copyright to the TV shows and films they produce. The majority of News Corporation’s more than 50,000 employees do not own the conglomerate. The almost 50,000 animators in China, India, Singapore, South Korea, and the Philippines that Walt Disney, Time Warner, and Sony regularly outsource jobs to do not own the animation studios they toil within (Mukherjee 2011). Cultural workers live by selling their labor power—the mental and manual capabilities required to achieve specific tasks—to media corporations as a commodity in exchange for a wage. Like all workers, the workers employed by media corporations need an income to fund their base CAPITALIZING ON GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA 61 subsistence needs. They sell their labor power to their employers in exchange for the money they need to pay their rent/mortgage and utility bills and to buy food and clothing. They also use their wages to sate cultural wants: a ticket for the latest blockbuster film, a copy of a new video game, or admission to a play. There is nothing manifestly ‘coercive’ about the exchange relationship between media corporations and workers. The market treats media corporations and workers as ‘free and equal’ individuals, buyers and sellers of commodities (labor-power and finished entertainment products). But the outcome of this manifestly ‘free and equal’ exchange relationship is a situation that favors the power and profit-interests of media corporations. Through this exchange relationship, media corporations gain control over the labor power of their workers for a set period of time. Once hired and under contract, workers are legally obliged to submit to the media corporation’s right to direct their skills and talents in whatever way they decide. A finished entertainment product—a TV show or film—is the result of the exchange relationship between media corporations and the workers they employ. Many waged workers collaboratively produce TV shows and films, but they do not ‘own’ them: the media corporation they are employed by does. Intellectual property law enables media corporations to divest workers of the creative products of their intellect and effort and exert proprietary control over what workers produce: TV shows and films. The world’s most powerful media corporations are gigantic holding companies for copyrighted TV shows and films—the commodities produced by the waged cultural workers they employ. Marx (1977) deems the ‘cell form’ of the capitalist mode of production to be the commodity: something produced for exchange in a market. Schiller (2007) defines commodity as: a resource that is produced for the market by wage labor. Whether a tangible good or an evanescent service, universally enticing or widely reviled, a consumer product or a producer’s good, a commodity contains defining linkages to capitalist production and, secondarily, to market exchange. (21) Media corporations hire waged workers to produce TV shows and films to be exchanged in markets as commodities. The ownership of TV shows and films by media corporations and the exchange of these as commodities in markets depend on copyright: a set of state-granted exclusive rights that regulate the reproduction and use of a particular creative expression (see Chapter 3). In order to profit-maximize, media corporations sell TV shows and films in many commodity forms through various market exhibition ‘windows’ to many consumers in many countries over time (Wasko 2003). Profit is the difference between the total amount of money a media corporation spends to produce an entertainment commodity (costs) and the total amount of money generated by a media corporation through the sale, licensing of the rights to, or reproduction of entertainment (revenue). If the amount of money a media firm accumulates by selling an entertainment commodity (revenue) exceeds the amount of money spent in making it (cost), profit is made. Time Warner’s HBO, for example, profited by selling Game of Thrones (2011), a medieval fantasy TV series, to TV networks in many countries. HBO spent approximately $50 million dollars making Game of Thrones; it charged TV networks in many countries about 62 CAPITALIZING ON GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA $2.5 million for every episode they broadcast (Szalai 2011). The revenue HBO collected by selling the global rights to Game of Thrones far exceeded the cost of manufacturing it: HBO profit-maximized. With profit, CEOs can do a number of things: they can engage in price wars with competitors to reward brand-loyal consumers with low prices, discounts, or perks, or they can increase the wages of their workers to reward them for a job well done. But what they usually do is pay dividends to shareholders. A dividend is a sum of money derived from profit which a media corporation pays to shareholders. In 2011, for example, Viacom, CBS, Time Warner, and Walt Disney paid big dividends to shareholders (Szalai 2011). ‘Returning value to shareholders is a commitment we take very seriously,’ said CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves (cited in Szalai 2011). The CEOs of media corporations also take a huge cut of profits by paying themselves massive salaries and bonuses. In 2010, the world’s thirty highest-paid media CEOs earned an average of nearly $22 million each, an increase of thirteen percent over 2009 (James 2011). Seven of the top ten highest paid people in the US are media CEOs. In 2011, Viacom Inc.’s CEO, Philippe Dauman, was paid $84.5 million. CBS Corporation CEO Leslie Moonves took $57.7 million, including a $27.5 million bonus. Liberty Media Corp’s CEO Gregory B. Maffei accumulated $87.1 million (Lublin 2010). Discovery Communications’ CEO David Zazlav raked in $42.6 million; Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, received $31 million; Roger Iger, CEO of Walt Disney, took home $28 million; Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, banked $26.1 million (Hagey 2011). In addition to paying themselves immense sums of money, CEOs re-invest a portion of their profit back into the means of production through mergers, acquisitions, and capital upgrades. THE INDUSTRY STRUCTURE, OR WHO DOES WHAT? CAPITALIST CIRCUITS AND VALUE CHAINS Private ownership of the means of production and distribution, a social class division, the commodification of media content, and the pursuit of profit shape the social existence of entertainment media in all societies that have been integrated into global capitalism. According to Marx (1977), capitalism is not a reified thing, but a system in motion. At its most basic, capitalism is a dynamic ‘circuit’ that entails the following practices: corporations use money (M) to purchase as commodities (C) the means of production (P) (labor, technology, and resources) to produce commodities (C’) that are sold for more money (M’) on the market. Part of the total money generated through the sale of commodities is retained as profit (shareholder dividends and CEO salaries and bonuses); another part is re-invested back into the means of production. This basic circuit underlies the production of TV and film commodities. Media corporations use money (M) to purchase as commodities (C) the means of production (P) (labor power and technological resources) to produce new entertainment commodities (C’) that are sold for more money (M’) to consumers. Part of the total money generated through the sale of entertainment media as a commodity is retained as profit; another part is re-invested back into the means of production. Pressured by market competition, media corporations accelerate this circuit, turning money into entertainment commodities, and then back again, into more money. CAPITALIZING ON GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA 63 Marx’s circuit model of capitalism is a useful starting point for conceptualizing the dynamic set of processes through which media corporations use money to produce TV show and film commodities, sell them to consumers in markets, and resultantly generate more money to start the production cycle anew. There are many media corporations involved in the production, distribution, marketing, and exhibition of any one TV show or film in all societies. All media commodities are produced by numerous media corporations, which interact in a number of interdependent circuits and through a set of interacting stages. Porter (1985) conceptualizes the stages involved in making commodities as a ‘value chain.’ TV shows are conceptualized, physically assembled (produced), packaged and marketed, distributed to exhibitors, and then transmitted or carried to consumers. Films are created, shot and produced, marketed and distributed, and exhibited to viewers through a variety of exhibition windows such as theater chains, DVDs, and digital files. The chain of activities that bring TV shows and films into the social world as commodities is not coordinated by individual consumers, but by many corporate stakeholders. Hundreds of profit-seeking corporate ‘players’ are intermediaries in the circuits that comprise the overall value chain. They conduct ‘the business’ of entertainment media. The main players who bring TV shows and films into the world are production companies, financiers, distribution companies, marketing companies, and exhibition companies. Before being released for public consumption, a TV show or film will have already been influenced by the business calculations and cultural perceptions of production companies, financiers, distributors, marketers, and exhibitors. In the following sections, I describe how the structural roles and goals of these players shape the existence of entertainment media. Production companies conceptualize, produce, and sell TV and film content. They organize and administer the financial and physical infrastructure for producing media content. They raise financing for projects, hire waged cast and crew members, manage a division of cultural labor, and schedule and monitor tasks from pre- to postproduction. Many production companies are subsidiaries of larger media conglomerates: ‘independent’ production companies often operate under contract as affiliates to large conglomerates. Within production companies, executives, directors, or a group of writers propose and pitch story ideas. The story may be original or derived from an existing work such as a novel, comic book, video game, TV show, or film. Avatar (2009), for example, was based upon an original screenplay written by James Cameron. The globally popular Hunger Games (2012) film was derived from science fiction novels written by Suzanne Collins. The Resident Evil film franchise takes its story from the popular Japanese survival-horror video game by the same title. The A-Team film (2010) was adapted from a popular US TV series that was originally broadcast to US and transnational viewers in the mid-1980s. Christopher Nolan derived the story and characters of Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) from DC comic books. No cultural worker employed by a production company is a completely autonomous creator: they do not get to make whatever TV show or film they want to make. In fact, the creative autonomy of every cultural worker hired by a production company—directors, actors, script writers, and others—is constrained by external financial pressures. 64 CAPITALIZING ON GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA Some of the world’s largest audio-visual production companies are based in the US. These include ABC Studios (Walt Disney), Warner Brothers Television and CBS Television Studios (Time Warner), Fox Entertainment Group (News Corporation), Paramount Pictures and MTV Films (Viacom), and Universal Studios (NBC-Universal). But audio-visual production companies are based elsewhere too: Cuatro Cabezas (Argentina), Crawford Productions (Australia), Globo Filmes (Brazil), Brightlight Pictures (Canada), Orange Sky Golden Harvest (China), Vision Quest Media (France), Grundy UFA (Germany), Balaji Telefilms (India), Cinecittà (Italy), Nordisk Film (Iceland), Kadokawa Pictures (Japan), Esperanto Films (Mexico), Motek (Netherlands), Regal Entertainment (Phillipinnes), VID (Russia), Five Star Production (Thailand), Abu Dhabi Media (Abu Dhabi), and Film4Productions (United Kingdom) are all examples of non-US production companies. All production companies, regardless of where they are located, are reliant upon financing. A production company’s transformation of a story concept into a TV show or film commodity depends upon access to money. TV shows and films cannot and will not be made unless financiers seed a large sum of money to the production. A financier invests money in entertainment production with the expectation that a finished TV show or film will generate a return sum of money—over time and space—that exceeds their original investment. Financing is the single most important factor determining whether or not a TV show or film story concept will be made into a commodity, because TV shows and films are very expensive to manufacture. Screenplay development costs money; the labor of directors, screenwriters, and actors costs money; set building, wardrobe development, make-up, and transport cost money; special effects and musical score design cost money; editing costs money. TV shows and films cannot be manufactured without a tremendous amount of money behind them. Thus, before production can begin, executive producers—the people in charge of production companies, and who are responsible for securing financing—must consult with a number of potentially interested financial players—conglomerates, banks, venture capitalists, states, and advertisers—about the profit-potential of the story concept and whether or not they would be interested in supporting it. The production of TV shows and films is ‘financialized’: it is subject to a host of pre-emptive financial valuations and speculations which instrumentalize entertainment media as a means of increasing returns for investors. Like other industrial sectors, the entertainment and culture industries are integrated into world financial markets and geared toward serving the goals of a number of financial actors. Entertainment financing comes from a variety of sources. A significant amount of financing for entertainment media is provided ‘in house’ by the vertically and horizontally integrated media conglomerates which ‘parent’ a large number of production and distribution companies. Large media conglomerates own distribution companies as subsidiaries, which act as financers to production companies. Film and TV distribution companies are quasi-banks to production companies: they lend money to them in return for content rights. They incur huge debts in order to finance production because they expect that, over time and space, the finished TV show or film will generate financial returns that far exceed the debt. A portion of the required finance can also come from ‘out-of-house’ sources such as banks, governments, and even advertisers CAPITALIZING ON GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA 65 (Basu 2010; Vogel 2007). Global banks, private equity firms, and venture capitalists invest in, operate hedge funds for, and grant lines of credit to TV and film production companies (Avery 2006; CFO Staff 2005). In early 2012, Sun Media Group and Harvest Fund Management established Harvest Seven Stars Media Private Equity, an $800 million Chinese equity fund that supports the production of entertainment media in China and in other countries, with the goal of maximizing returns for investors. This equity fund provided financing to the 2012 global hit film, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Cieply 2012). State-supported TV and film financing agencies such as the United Kingdom’s EM Media and Germany’s Bavarian Film & Television Fund also provide financing to production companies (Epstein 2005). Advertising companies may co-finance production through product placement deals. On behalf of their clients, ad firms pay production companies to display or feature a branded product in a finished film or TV show. Advertising companies indirectly finance TV shows by paying TV networks to expose targeted audience groups to the advertisements scheduled between TV shows. Thus, advertising firms—the primary source of revenue for TV networks—influence the kinds of TV shows conceptualized, produced and exhibited. All financiers—studios, TV networks, distributors, financial institutions, states, and advertisers—want and expect a financial return on their entertainment investment. If a film or TV show is profitable, financiers receive back their principal and a percentage of their initial investment or, alternately, take a percentage of the overall profit. Advertisers are paid with quantified and commercialized audience attention. However, there is no guarantee that a film or TV show will turn a profit or capture an audience. The decision to finance entertainment is always a gamble. In an attempt to minimize risk and maximize returns, financiers try to figure out in advance whether or not a TV show or film will be a hit. Before fronting money, financiers speculate about the profit-potential of a TV show or film. They may ask and attempt to answer some or all of the following questions: which countries and which audience demographic (mass and/or niche) will this TV show or film target (what is the likelihood of this entertainment product connecting with particular audience segments in many countries)? Will this TV show or film serve the needs of advertising corporations (will this product also attract the viewers that advertising firms want to display their ads to)? Which exhibition platforms will be used, and where and when (what exhibition windows will this TV show or film be circulated by, and in what time frame)? How will consumer demand for this TV show or film be cultivated (how will this product be marketed to viewers, at what expense, and through which channels)? Will state media regulators and policies limit or enable the flow of this TV show or film (how might content quotas affect the cross-border movement of this product)? Will cultural conditions impede or accelerate popular receptivity to this TV show or film (will cultural-linguistic differences deter or encourage consumers to watch)? A combination of economic and cultural considerations bears upon the decision to finance, and ultimately to produce, TV shows and films. The economic and cultural concerns of financiers influence both the creative autonomy of cultural workers and the entertainment content they create. Given that production companies largely depend 66 CAPITALIZING ON GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA upon ongoing and amicable relations with financers, many of the TV and film concepts they propose for production will be those they anticipate will impress or be approved by financiers. In an attempt to minimize risk and maximize a return on their investment, financiers will try to influence the content—the genre, the narrative, the ideology, the aesthetic, and the cast—of the TV shows and films they choose to support. Financiers put up money for entertainment projects they believe—or have been persuaded to believe—will maximize financial returns, while shirking and stymying projects they fear will not. By proposing projects they believe financiers will support, and heeding financers’ content concerns, many production companies find that their creative autonomy is substantially curbed. Christopherson (2011) says the cultural workers employed by production companies ‘cannot produce what they want (at least to earn a living). They must respond to what the conglomerates [and financing entities] want to distribute’ (133). The power of financiers to seed money to production companies through a complex deal-making process gives them a significant amount of influence over cultural creativity and media content. Standardized TV shows and films designed to serve the profit goals of financiers are often the result. Yet, innovative TV shows and films with an ‘edge’ (risky, non-traditional, and taboo content) are also produced (Curtin 1999). Despite industry pressures, cultural workers do have some creative autonomy (Hesmondhalgh 2007). Production companies create both standardized and innovative media content, not one or the other. If and when a deal is made between a production company and its financiers, a contract is signed and the production of a story into a TV show or film commodity is ‘green-lighted.’ In the pre-production stage, the story concept is further developed by writers, and every step of the ensuing production of the TV show or film is meticulously planned. The executive producer hires a managerial crew for the project, including a production manager, director, assistant director, casting director, location manager, cinematographer, sound designer, art director, costume designer, storyboard artist, choreographer, and many others. Starring and supporting actors are signed for the production. As the story concept goes into principal photography—the point of no return for financers—more waged cultural workers are hired from a New International Division of Cultural Labor (NICL) to complete a number of tasks (see Chapter 4). Studio sets are designed or constructed. Shooting locations are arranged. The actual production and filming of TV shows and films happens over weeks, months, and, in some instances, years, and often in more than one country. In post-production, scenes are cut, added, and further enhanced with special effects, soundscapes, animations, and other elements. The TV show or film is edited. The completed or finished TV show or film is then prepared for distribution. Distribution companies act as intermediaries between production companies and exhibition companies. Distribution companies are basically wholesalers of entertainment con