MIGRAIN: Hesmondhalgh - The Cultural Industries

Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet 168: David Hesmondhalgh’s ‘The Cultural Industries’. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets

Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks:

1) What does the term 'Cultural Industries' actually refer to?

The term ‘cultural industry’ refers to the creation, production, and distribution of products of a cultural or artistic nature.

2) What does Hesmondhalgh identify regarding the societies in which the cultural industries are highly profitable?

They tend to be societies that support the conditions where large companies, and their political allies, make money. These conditions being: constant demand for new products; minimal regulation outside of general competition law; relative political and economic stability; workforces that are willing to work hard.

3) Why do some media products offer ideologies that challenge capitalism or inequalities in society?

Companies try to outdo each other to try and satisfy audience desires for the shocking, profane or rebellious in order to secure audience members when competing with eachother.

4) Look at page 2 of the factsheet. What are the problems that Hesmondhalgh identifies with regards to the cultural industries?

• Risky business
• Creativity versus commerce
• High production costs and low reproduction costs
• Semi-public goods; the need to create scarcity

5) Why are so many cultural industries a 'risky business' for the companies involved?

> Audiences are unpredictable
> It's impossible to predict how well a product will do, partly due to the fact companies cannot completely control the publicity a product will receive. Judgements and reactions of audiences, critics and journalists etc. cannot accurately be predicted.

6) What is your opinion on the creativity v commerce debate? Should the media be all about profit or are media products a form of artistic expression that play an important role in society?

I believe that media products that aim to be creatively stimulating over profitable are important to the diversity of media products. It's essential for products to be unique and artistic as there needs to be an artistic freedom in society that should be reflected in our media. Not only this, they could perhaps also bring in a large audience and become profitable due to the nature of the cultural industries as unpredictable.

7) How do cultural industry companies minimise their risks and maximise their profits? (Clue: your work on Industries - Ownership and control will help here) 

Conglomerate ownership is a way of offsetting risk. Vertical integration and diversification is used in order to spread the risk and maximise profit; however if the parent company isn't experienced in certain areas or lacks expertise, it may not be as successful. Diversification means companies can keep up with a constantly changing and evolving industry and not fall behind due to new competition. For example, due to the rise of the digital age, media companies have had to diversify into streaming and other internet driven distribution.

8) Do you agree that the way the cultural industries operate reflects the inequalities and injustices of wider society? Should the content creators, the creative minds behind media products, be better rewarded for their work?

I do believe that the creative minds behind media products are essential in creating diverse and entertaining products in the media, and so they should be better rewarded.

9) Listen and read the transcript to the opening 9 minutes of the Freakonomics podcast - No Hollywood Ending for the Visual-Effects Industry. Why has the visual effects industry suffered despite the huge budgets for most Hollywood movies?

Not much money goes to the visual effects company because visual effects companies are locked into an amount after bidding for jobs no matter what actually happens in the production.

10) What is commodification? 

The transforming of objects and services into commodities.

11) Do you agree with the argument that while there are a huge number of media texts created, they fail to reflect the diversity of people or opinion in wider society?

I believe that there has been an improvement in attempting to reflect the diversity of society in media texts in recent years. For instance, more TV shows have POC and WOC leads and there is a larger acceptance for LGBT characters. 

12) How does Hesmondhalgh suggest the cultural industries have changed? Identify the three most significant developments and explain why you think they are the most important.

• Digitalisation, the internet and mobile phones have multiplied the ways audience can gain access to cultural content. This has made small scale production much easier for millions of people (think self-representation + prosumers).
• Powerful IT and technology companies now work with cultural industries to understand and produce cultural production &consumption. These companies (e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Google,Amazon) are now as powerful and influential in cultural industries as traditional companies such as News Corporation, Time Warner or Sony.
• Huge increase in the amount companies spend on advertising which has helped to fuel the growth of the cultural industries.