Ownership of Media Companies – Disney, the BBC and The Bath Chronicle

Disney’s a pubic company and is also a conglomerate it has a net income of around $4.555 billion and has share’s of 1.856 billion. As Disney is publicly owned it means that their disadvantage is that they have to follow many people or a charter like the BBC. They also have an disadvantage with limited liability as they are personal labially. Public companies also means they have another disadvantage as they have higher costs for the government which means they have higher taxes. Mainly they do have to share financial documents with the public which also means that competition does get to see there documents. Finally being a public company you dot have to ask lots of shareholders what they think. On the other hand the advantages could be that it provides more jobs. They have to provide a service for the whole country. Disney ventures Disney has many business venture’s and own many companies including 9 walt Disney picture companies for example Touchstone, 5 Disney music companies, Television channels, cable networks, ESPN, Disney interactive groups, holidays and theme parks. Disney are making so many things and spreading their wings into so many different business. With all these business’s it help’s Disney have a massive vertical integration. Disney is well renowned for it’s classical movies and recent movies from the likes of Snow White and Cinderella to Tangled and Princess and the frog. Disney also want’s to travel into different countries and they do this by making cultural movies and having Disney holidays, theme parks and cruises. Whilst Disney make’s many movies we love they have also been criticized for being sexist, ageism and sometimes racist, for example the villain is always old and the princess always being a type of housewife, for example Snow White cleaning the house. In films like Aladdin a song featured in the movie featured a quite rude ‘I come from a land†¦where they cut off your ears, if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.’ When you think of Disney you think fun, light family entertainment not Disney being excused racist, sexism and ageism but in a quote this quote Michael Eisner explains â€Å"We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.† Disney use has very good vertical integration due to how many companies they own. Disney can make movies with their production company, advertise the films and products in their magazine, show it on their television channel. For example Beavis and Butt-Head Do America on costed $11 million to make and made a profit on $70 million, but Disney’s The Lion King made a profit of $1 billion due to them making merchandise, TV show, broadway shows. When films are made by conglomerates they generate more profit than a box office filmed would. Ownership BBC ownership BBC The BBC is neither public nor privately owned, it is a trust and is funded by license payers. On the BBC trust website it has in bold letters ‘getting the best out of the BBC for license fee payers’. This means that the BBC has a charter which tells the BBC the do’s and don’ts. The charter tells the BBC that the content on the BBC must be informative, educational, entertaining and the BBC should â€Å"Bring the UK to the world and the world to the UK†. As the BBC is a trust and run’s on the money that the incense payer give’s them, the BBC can just use the money they make on TV shows etc and put it into other shows they make. The advantage of a trust is that the money can just reused however the disadvantage is that the it has a charter that it must run by however I also see this as a positive ting because they know what things they are supposed to do. BBC services The BBC has multiply TV stations, radio stations, news channels and many other sector’s including online services, interactive media, music, miscellaneous etc Personally I like the BBC because 1. It has no adverts and I suppose the BBC don’t need adverts of products because the BBC is paid for by links payers and people that watch TV mostly hate adverts. However they do play adverts for programs on the BBC. This may increase viewers as it allows them to skip the things they don’t like but also the BBC has some of the best shows on the TV. Since the digital switch over I can only imagine that the BBC lost viewing figures. With the BBC becoming a trust in 2007, I think that the this has helped the BBC run a more organised service. It has gave the BBC strategy and overall it has made the BBC more successful. Since the trust came in in 2007 the trust has approved new services including iPlayer, HDTV, BBC Alba and the digital switchover. Ownership Bath Chronicle The Bath chronicle The Bath chronicle is a public company which means that it has the same advantages and disadvantages of Disney. However as Disney is much bigger, this means the rules are probably less important but still are still used. The newspaper which began in 1760 is now owned by Northcliff media. As the chronicle is a newspaper it must write about things in Bath but it can mention some major things outside Bath but most of the stories are based around local area. So I suppose this must be an advantage as they still have some freewill. I suppose that Northcliff media has Horizontal integration as they buy all different newspapers. The advantage of this can be that they can share the costs of production and management, the production can be done in bulk but may be a bit harder then a TV station or other media sector, as local papers may be made locally and have different content and deadlines and profits could be more. On the other hand disadvantages could include individuality being lost, no competitors left like a monopoly when there’s a lack of competition.