AS Media Homework - Unit 2 Section B - Careers in the Media - Skillset

1. What’s happened with employment on terrestrial TV?

The employment levels have decreased from 23,700 in 2004 to 20,800.

2. What does this suggest about the traditional TV industry?

It is becoming less popular.

3. What’s happening in the interactive media sector?

Although there was a small employment drop due to a decrease in the web and internet workforce, the interactive media sector is still the largest audio visual sector numbering 48,600.

4. Where is the industry predominantly based?

London and South East.

5. What’s the proportion of women working in the media? Where do most women work?

38% percent of women make up the workforce. Most women work in terrestrial TV.

In Skillset’s ‘Survey of the Audio Visual Industries' Workforce 2005’ it revealed that since 1990, more women have entered the industry than men, and more black or ethnic minorities have entered the industry than whites.

In a similar survey from 2003 it revealed that just under two-thirds of people working in the media are under 35, two-thirds of all people working in the media have a degree and a quarter of those have a degree in media. Only 46% of those working in the media earn over £30,000 a year.

6. What does this suggest about the media industry?

It suggests that the industry attracts educated young people, ethnic minorities and has predominantly more women. It also suggests that the average salaries in the media are below the national average.

7. What does it suggest about media representation?

The media is represented as a very glamorous, rich and british industry. This informations suggests that this representation is wrong.

Media Studies Homework 7/9/09

Audience - Collective group of people reading any media text.

Institution – An established organization or company, e.g. the BBC, that provides media content, whether for profit, public service or another motive. This involves you understanding of the media as a business, the relationship between institutions and the public and media as a form of power.

Q. Think about the number of ways you can ‘read’ something produced by the BBC?

TASK - Go to the Doctor Who website.

HYPERLINK "http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/"http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/

Q. How can you, as a member of an audience, 'engage with' or 'view' Doctor Who...? How many different forms of ‘media’ are offered?

A. It is very interactive; you can watch clips, read text, look at images, play games and also listen to pod casts. You can also create trailers and doctor who comics.

The name we give to this coming together of different ‘media’ is your third keyword:

Convergence - Hardware and software coming together across media, and companies coming together across similar boundaries. This makes the distinction between different types of media and different media industries increasingly dubious.

Q. How would you usually watch an episode of Doctor Who? TV, perhaps? Now think of the other ways you can watch an episode...

On BBC iplayer, on the Doctor Who website, on Youtube.

Q. What links these formats?

A. They’re all digital, your fourth keyword...

Digital technology has led to increasing uncertainty over how we define an audience, with general agreement that the notion of a large group of people, brought together by time, responding to a single text, is outdated and that audiences now are ‘fragmented’.

Key Points to remember...

In media studies we focus on ‘the contemporary’.

Q. What does this mean if, for example, we are to study the film industry in Britain?

A. You study the films that are out at the moment.

We are also keen to focus on convergence as a key agent of change.

Q. Why is it so important?

A. Because it’s one of the most important things that’s happening now.

Q. How does the film industry 'converge' with the Internet?

A. Many films now have a website or websites dedicated to that film where you are engaged through many different types of media. You can also watch films on the Internet on certain sites. There are also many pictures on the Internet that are published by a film and some unofficial ones too, and finally, you can read articles and reviews of a film.

Finally, we are interested in how things are changing.

Within the context of not only conv dicergence, but also ownership, technologies and globalisation.

More key words – ownership and technologies are pretty straightforward however…

Globalisation means - The shift in media distribution from local or national to international and the whole world at once. Culturally, describes the process of ‘sameness’ over the world, typified by the availability of McDonalds in most nations.