Media production is dominated by global institutions, which sell their services and products, to national audiences. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Media production is dominated by global institutions such as “The big 6”. These institutions consist with- Disney, SONY, Warner Brothers, FOX, Universal and Paramount. The Big 6 account for 90% of what we read, watch or listen to. This fact shows how dominated these companies are over media.

Disney brought Lucasfilms for 4.6 billion dollars.  Together, the companies created the movie Star wars the force awakens. This is a really important example to support how the media production are dominated by global institutions, purely down to the significant amount of money both spent of the creation of the film and the Box Office returns- notwithstanding the amount spent on merchandise. The budget for the film was $200 million targeting everyone aged 13 and older. As star wars has had many films, ages can range from young to old- thus showing how sequels are a main part of the creation of a dominating institution as it keeps the audience keen, thus spending more money on the films. As of March 6^th 2016 the total amount taken is $928, 842, 219.   

Walt Disney is a media corporation, which is both horizontally and vertically integrated. The way in which Disney is horizontally integrated is because several film companies work with Disney to produce movies so it can offer a wider range of films for different markets. These companies consist on Marvel, Pixar and Touchstone. Marvel and Disney have produced movies such as Spiderman and Iron man. Thus showing how the horizontally integrated companies can sell their services and products to national audiences because fans of marvel and fans of Disney would come together and all watch the film. This creates a bigger fan base producing more money.  However, Disney is also vertically integrated because it produces a film, distributes it and the exhibits it by owning the Cinema Company Pacific Theatres, through TV by owning ABC and ESPN productions, through the Disney stores and then finally the Disney parks.