In contemporary media practice many issues are raised by media ownership. All media, whether it is film, music or print is owned by a company. These companies, which can be 3-4 depending on the scale of the media hold the rights to publish and distribute their work; an example of this being Disney buying the rights for the Star Wars saga, in 2012 for £2.5 billion from LucasFilm.
The first issue which is presented from media ownership is that of piracy. Piracy is the illegal distribution of media without the permission of its owner/ the company. This could be through downloading or streaming the film online or the filming and sale of pirated DVDs. Piracy has had a huge boost in its popularity in recent years with the film industry and its companies taking a direct hit from it. The film industry last year was recorded to have lost nearly £3 million due to piracy alone. Advances in technology, such as cheaper equipment at a higher quality, whether that be the camera or recording material, has meant that it has become easier and more frequent for piracy to occur directly in the cinema; for it then to be put on the internet to be streamed and downloaded from thousands of different websites. This has a direct link to the media owners and companies as it means that profit and box office numbers would decrease, as well as a having a lack in DVD or BluRay sales, due to the easy and unlimited access to the films online, any time. Therefore the movies would end up failing to meet their budget meaning that less and less films would be made due to no guarantee of profit being made from them. Therefore smaller, more independent films like that of 'The Theory of Everything' or any film coming out of the British film industry would be less likely to be made, with only the big blockbuster movies such as Jurassic World being put into production. Pracy hwoever can be prevented with measures such as that of digital encryptions for the films distribution and 3D cinema being used which is known to be increasingly difficult to pirate. Therefore, stopping the widespread piracy of films in the cinema.
Another issue which is raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice is that of the Hollywood conglomerates dominating the films industry. Due to companies like that of MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Sony and Disney etc being multi million pound industries they are able to release lots of titles and have vast amounts of money to market and distribute them. Therefore this results in the continual production of sequels and bad films whose only appeal are the budgets, names and stars. Furthermore, cinema chains like that of ODEAN and VUE shows these films much more than the other smaller independently made ones. This gives cinema goers limited choice in cinemas which would ultimately lead to a lack of audiences and also a loss in profit of the film industry as a whole. Going on from this, the British Film industry is put at a large disadvantage with it also being rumoured to be a 'dying' enterprise.
However, in order to tackle this organisations like that of the UK Film council have been created and forced to act in recent years. This organisation is funded by the Lottery and has everyone's £1 of lottery money invested going to the films helping them generate around £5 from each. This has included films like Bend It Like Beckham, Adulthood, This is England and The Last King Of Scotland.
Although, the surrounding issue concerning the UK Film Council is that in 2010 the government announces that the scheme was going to be axed. This meant that smaller budgeted films like those mentioned above wold in the future not be made, meaning the British film industry would again be at risk of being shut down, and the cinemas being ruled by American Conglomerates.
Overall, we can therefore see that although there are issues concerning all companies and media owners like that of piracy, the main issues surround the growing size of larger conglomerates and their eventual take over of the cinematic world.
