The Big Brands that Dominate the Media Industry
The movie industry has evolved rapidly over the years from traditional cinema filming to over-the-top (OTT) platform. An interesting article from Recode, ‘’Here’s who owns everything in Big Media today’’, show an overview of the media landscape. Conglomerate firms like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Disney and Netflix have monopolised the media industry, each with a market cap of more than USD $150 billion.
Presently, these big media companies control most of the market share and own majority of the businesses in the entertainment industry, be it production studios, film enterprises, cinemas, cable TVs, etc. Therefore, considering the influence and control exercise by a few big organisations in the media space, many are concerned regarding the outlook of the media industry. The following are potential consequences due to monopolisation.
1. Barrier to entry in the media industry
The media business has always been characterised as an oligopoly. Large media firms have spent years investing in quality Intellectual Property (IP), content, brands and distribution capacity to establish a presence in the industry. Using these dominant positions acquired, they can generate a competitive edge toward gaining a larger market share. This is essentially what independent filmmakers and producers lack access to and eventually lose out.
2. Deprived of innovation in film production
Budget constraint is a major challenge for independent filmmakers and producers to showcase talent in the media industry. Although they possess the potential to create innovative content, but the lack of funding has deprived them the resources needed to exhibit creativity in the media space. This is because a large portion of the budget is being allocated to distributors, marketing companies and other intermediary channels to promote films. Such situation evidently hinders media growth and development, creating stagnation in the industry.
3. Lack of content diversity in the media space
Media consolidation has changed the landscape of the industry toward commercialisation rather than entertainment. Most media conglomerates are profit driven where stakeholder interests come before public interests. The industry has been subjected to crisis due to monotony. Film making is structured in a way to increase revenue rather than the overall development of the entertainment industry. Hence, the audience choice of content and movie selections are not significant anymore due to that fact that concentration of media ownership is in the hands of these conglomerate firms.
Spokkz empowering viewer communities
In view of these pre-existing problems encountered in the traditional media industry, Spuul has launched its own blockchain platform called Spokkz, a crowdfunding mechanism that allow the community to select and fund streaming content projects. The team behind the Spokkz initiative is committed toward creating a decentralised ecosystem that can promote and facilitate community engagement between different stakeholders in the marketplace. This will be the next step toward disrupting the traditional media landscape.
Spokkz is regaining the rights and access that stakeholders should have to engage in the media space. Currently, these conglomerate media firms are in control to an extent neglecting the presence and opinions of smaller players in the market. If the fate of the media industry gets to be decided by just a few large media organisations, shouldn’t we all be concerned?
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