A huge part of what Jenkins talks about it technological convergence and how it relates to horizontal integration, on a corporate level. I happen to have a family member that is an executive at Viacom and I know that Viacom, which owns MTV, does not just do TV.
“Technological convergence is attractive to the media industries because it will open multiple entry point in to the consumption process and at the same time, enable consumers to more quickly locate new manifestations of a popular narrative.” They are involved in well over 50 countries with TV shows, films, videos, books, music, fashion, news, video games and much more. They are constantly trying to cover every inch of new territory that technology opens up for its consumers. As soon as blogs came about, they had blogs for TV shows, etc.
“What emerged are the new strategies of content development and distribution designed to increase the “synergy” between the different divisions of the same company.” Viacom is in the constant struggle to develop new media content to draw in new customers/consumers and keep their loyal ones attached. The Star Wars example is where after the movie was released, a ton of revenue ended up consistently coming from toy figures soundtracks, merchandise, comics, and other ancillary sales.
All of this combined has revolutionized our consuming culture, turning it into participatory culture. They wanted to get their media content from more channels and ultimately create and distribute their own media. This was to soon only be further developed with the Digital Age of video cameras, voice recorders, copiers, printers along with the web to basically be their own media-producing conglomerate.
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1 comment:
It was interesting to hear about Viacom and their motives and how it links to participatory culture.
-Starfish
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