Different types of media platforms including digital platform-Sound Recording
What is a music label? What parts of the music recording industry are concentrated? What parts are not? What is a music publisher? What does an artist who is seeking to self-produce music need to consider?
Different types of media platforms, including digital platforms.
How are studio musicians usually paid? How are the primary musicians on a recording paid? How are songwriters paid? What do companies like the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) do? What is an A&R person?
What’s payola?
What is the difference between mechanical royalties and performance royalties? Who gets a royalty if a song is played on the radio? Who gets a royalty if someone buys a copy of a CD with the song on it? What about if someone legally buys a track of a song online from a store like iTunes or streams it on a service like Spotify?
Identify several different ways in which record distributors have traditionally promoted music albums. What advantages have larger companies historically had in music distribution compared to smaller companies? What are some opportunities and challenges for independent artists who want to promote their music?
Be able to identify and provide examples of the major exhibitors for the music recording industry (i.e. traditional music stores, general retailers, etc.).
What are the recent trends in terms of sales or recorded music? (Physical sales and downloads) What are some other sources of income for recorded music?
Know the following concepts related to music piracy: counterfeiting, bootlegging, peer-to-peer computing, digital lockers.
Radio
How does AM radio differ from FM radio? Which one is clearer? Which carries farther? Which one came first? What is the significance of a radio frequency in terms of a broadcaster’s license?
Know the basic patterns of radio listenership in the U.S. (i.e., When and where do most people listen to the radio? Do they tend to listen to a lot of different stations or just a few?)
What is the difference between a commercial radio station and a non-commercial station? What is a “billboard” and where would you hear them on the radio. What is a radio format? Identify some of the things that contribute to a radio format. What are some of the music characteristics that determine whether a particular song matches a station’s format? What is a playlist? What are some of the factors that radio stations consider when they decide whether or not they are going to add a new song to their playlist? Do they tend to be conservative (they don’t add many new songs) or liberal (they add a lot of new songs regularly) in adding new songs to the playlist? What is a format consultant? What is meant by the term “narrowcasting” in relation to radio formats? What types of research do radio stations carry out to figure out which songs to include on a playlist?
What is the difference between a fringe listener and a station’s core audience? What is drive time and when is it?
Is the radio industry concentrated or not? How has the growth of big radio chains been thought to contribute to the homogenization of radio station formats across the country? What does a radio network do? What is a format network? What does a radio syndication company do? How do radio networks and syndicators make money?
Identify and define three different types of radio advertising. Which type usually provides a radio station with most of its revenue? Make sure you know the difference between radio network advertising and national spot advertising.
Identify some of the technologies that compete with traditional broadcast radio. What advantages and disadvantages to these technologies have in comparison to broadcast radio? What is HD radio?
Television
During what decades of what century did television diffuse into American households? (That is, when did it begin to become commonplace?) When was the “Golden Age” of American television? What made it golden? During what decades did the major networks dominate TV broadcasting?
When was cable technology developed? What was it originally used for? When did cable stations that provided content that wasn’t available on the broadcast networks emerge? What is a “superstation”? A cable network? When did cable start competing with the broadcast networks for viewers?
In the cable industry, a cable television system? A multiple system operator? A license fee?
What is the difference between an O&O station, a network affiliate, and an independent broadcast station? Between a commercial and a non-commercial station? What is a station group? Be able to identify examples of each of these.
What is a channel lineup? What are some of the factors that cable and satellite system operators consider when developing a channel lineup? What is tiering?
Identify the goals that programmers try to achieve when they create a program schedule. What is a program block? What is a lead in? Hammocking? Counter-programming? Stripping? Why is creating a program schedule becoming more challenging? Identify some of the techniques that networks and stations are employing to meet this challenge.
Be able to make sense of the following ratings terms: people meter, audimeter, diary, sweeps, household ratings, people ratings, household share, average commercial minute, C3 standard.
Define each of the following stages through which a developing TV program moves: pitch, treatment, concept testing, pilot, preview testing.
When a cable or satellite provider builds a channel lineup, what are some of the things they must take into consideration?
What does it mean to syndicate a show? What is off-network syndication?
Identify some of the ways in which TV producers and distributors have been trying to make additional money from their programs. Where do television programs tend to be available online? How are companies trying to make money off of this type of distribution?
According to cultivation theory, how do the media affect audiences? How have researchers gone about seeking evidence that this effect occurs? What is the mean world effect? What is mainstreaming?
Movies
What is the studio system? The star system? Block booking? How did block booking help the big studios maintain control of the industry from the 1920s to the 1940s? What are A films? B films? Why did the studios sell off their movie theatre chains?
Who tends to go to the movies most often today: younger people are older ones?
Distinguish between the following types of feature films: blockbusters, genre movies and art films.
What does a film production firm do? What about a film distribution firm? Are there more film production firms or film distribution firms? What’s an independent producer?
In the movie industry, what is a treatment? What does it mean to say that a screenwriter is writing a script on spec? What does it mean to say that a film has been given a green light? How are major actors in a film usually paid? What is a back-end deal? In the film industry, what are the guilds and what do they do?
What is a completion bond company? What does a line producer do?
What is meant by the term P&A? What does distributing a film involve? What contributes to the cost of a film?
Know some of the traditional arrangements for distributing the money that comes from ticket sales between the theater and the film distributor. (What is a percentage-above-the-nut deal? A sliding scale?) What sources of revenue are available to movie theatres other than ticket sales?
Be able to identify the following types of market research: title testing, previewing, tracking studies.
Be able to identify each of the following types of movie release patterns: exclusive release, platform release, wide release, saturation release. Which type is currently the most common? With what type of movies is each of these patterns likely to be used? What are some of the things that a film distributor considers when trying to decide on a film’s release date? What is a day-and-date release?
Is the movie theatre industry consolidated or widely distributed? Be able to identify examples of sell-through and rental outlets. How is the way films are distributed to movie theatres expected to change in the near future?
What is the basic principle of social cognitive theory? What famous experiments helped establish this? According to the theory, what factors increase the likelihood that a behavior will be modeled, particularly with respect to media violence? What does the phrase “continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral, and environmental influences” mean? What are some of the ways in which media portrayals are thought to influence audiences’ motivations?
Video Games
Be able to distinguish between console games, desktop or laptop computer games, MMORPG’s, games played on handheld devices, and mobile games. What’s a third-party publisher?
What is advergaming? An embedded ad? Dynamic, in-game advertising?
In the context of media research, what is flow? What are some of the factors that shape whether a player experiences flow or not? How is flow related to enjoyment?
What is construct accessibility? What are some of the factors that help determine how accessible a particular idea or concept is to a person? How does priming work? According to arousal or excitation transfer theory, what happens when someone watches or takes part in an exciting video game? How does this affect their behavior afterward? How does the Generalized Affective Aggressive Model suggest that violent video games might have long term effects?
