Underline the key terms
Curran and Seaton argue that media industries are generally controlled by a small number of powerful companies whose main purpose is to create a profit. Evaluate this theory of power and media industries. Refer to Woman and Adbusters in your response. [30]
Knee jerk reaction
The media industries are controlled by powerful companies to a high extent, but some industries are independently owned and not for profit
Plan
Vertical integration - where an organisation owns other organisations at different stages of production and distribution
Horizontal integration - where an organisation owns other companies at the same stage of production, eg Reach PLC specialise in newspapers
Multimedia integration - integration that involves digital technologies
Monopoly - one one company owns the entirety of a media industry
Power and profit (power is the ability to influence the market)
Circulation (how many copies are distributed)
Cover price
Stereotypical representations
Advertising revenue (30%)
Minimising risk
Conglomeration (where one company buys out another company)
Diversification (where a company branches out into a sector they do not specialise in)
Anti capitalism
Hegemony (the norms and typical expectations of society that we generally consent to)
Mass vs niche audiences
Digital convergence (the coming together of previously separate industries thanks to digital technologies)
This answer will use a rigid framework of facts to make its points. Therefore, you must know the facts!
Woman
- Produced by IPC, a both horizontally and variegated company.
- Vertical - IPC also owns the means of production, including a significant amount of printing presses, a clear example of power
- Horizontal - specialise in magazine production, including other women’s magazines such as Woman’s Realm
- IPC acquired a number of other magazines such as Woman’s Realm to buy out the competition, minimise risk and maximise profit
- Target demographic of 30-50 yo working class British white female housewives
- 12 million woman’s weekly magazine sold in UK in 1960s
- Mass media
- A straightforward and stereotypical representation of women
- ⅓ of a magazine’s revenue comes from advertising (typically)
- Weekly circulation of 3 million copies circa 1960s (50x more than Adbusters modern worldwide circulation!)
- Cover price circa 1964 + 7d (80p in modern money)
- Cultivates a hegemonic, capitalist and stereotypical ideology surrounding women to reinforce hegemonic norms and to minimise risk
- Complete lack of diversity or reference to 2nd wave feminism again minimise risk
Adbusters
- Adbusters cover price varies from issue to issue, though the most recent RRP is £10:99
- Adbusters has no adverts, which explains the high cover price
- Adbusters is not-for-profit
- A niche and ill defined target audience
- 2022 circulation 60,000 (worldwide)
- Anti-consumerist ideology
- First published in 1989
- Canadian magazine though internationally distributed
- Originally a subversive newsletter than became a magazine in 1992
- A bimonthly release frequency is typical of independent magazines
- Total lack of brand identity with a different masthead for every edition
Introduction
DAC - definition, argument, context
Curran and Seaton argue that the media industries are dominated by the concepts of power and profit, and, with a few notable exceptions it is hard to disagree with them. In this essay I shall argue that the media industries are completely predicated on a cut-throat system of profit and domination in a highly capitalistic system. However, there are a few notable examples that challenge this notion. To explore this idea I shall use the examples of Woman magazine, a mass market women’s weekly magazine first published in the 1930s and still published today (the edition I shall make reference to tis the August 1964 edition), and a 2016 edition of Adbusters, an anti capitalist not-for-profit politics/arts magazine that subverts the notions of power and profit
Indicative content provided by the exam board
Questions 4, 5 and 6: Indicative Content
This is an extended response question. In order to achieve the highest marks, a response
must construct and develop a sustained line of reasoning, which is coherent, relevant,
substantiated and logically structured.
The content below is not prescriptive and all valid points should be credited. It is not
expected that responses will include all of the points listed.
AO1 and AO2
In evaluating Curran and Seaton’s theory of power and media industries, responses are
likely to discuss some of the following:
• The extent to which the magazine industry is controlled by a small number of powerful
companies
• The extent to which companies within the magazine industry are primarily driven by
profit
• Concentration of ownership within the magazine industry (oligopolies/monopolies)
• Horizontal integration
• Vertical integration
• Conglomerate ownership
• Diversification
• Risk aversion
• The nature and effect of historical changes within the magazine industry (e.g. the extent
to which new technologies have facilitated a democratisation of the magazine industry)
4. In evaluating Curran and Seaton's theory, responses may refer to some of the following aspects of Woman and Adbusters:
• the extent to which IPC (publishers of Woman) dominated the magazine industry
or particular sectors of the magazine industry during the 1960s
• the extent to which IPC was able to establish control over the magazine industry
through a series of acquisitions and mergers (e.g. the merger between Fleetway,
Odhams and George Newnes in the early 1960s)
• the extent to which IPC’s ownership of large-scale printing presses enabled it to
gain and maintain control of the magazine industry
• the extent to which the content in the set edition of Woman magazine supports
the idea that IPC’s primary purpose was to make profit (e.g. whether articles
such as ‘Are You An A-Level Beauty?’ and the Hitchcock interview, as well as
the problem page are primarily commercial in their appeal and purpose)
• the extent to which advertisements such as the Max Factor advertisement and
the advertisement for the Women’s Royal Army Corps support or challenge the
idea that Woman magazine was primarily profit-driven
• the role and position of publishers such as Adbusters Media Foundation in the
contemporary magazine industry
• the extent to which smaller, independent publishers that operate outside the
commercial mainstream are able to challenge or co-exist alongside more
powerful media companies and conglomerates
• the political purpose of activist magazines such as Adbusters and the extent to
which this is the exclusive preserve of smaller, less powerful media companies
within the magazine industry today