Week 2: Political Economy

The lecture and readings this week (by Paul Long & Tim Wall and Ien Ang) focused on political economy, which relates to many sides of media institution, such as where the economic value of a media product comes from, who has ownership (and why that matters) and how they are affected by policies and governments/leaders. It is also important to look at who is paying for media at production level, because this often has an impact on the content we consume. This is commonly known as ‘commodity relations’. Long and Wall (2012) explain that large media companies try to balance their forms of income between advertising and cover price or subscription paid by the audience in sales. This can be exemplified in magazines and newspapers, where the cost of production is very high in comparison to cover price. This is to ensure the product reaches more audiences (as they will be more willing to buy a cheap product), which advertisers will pay more for - and this eventually results in profit. In this case, the product’s content would be determined by the types of audience the advertisers want to reach. This is similar to Ien Ang's process of 'textualising', which relates to how TV network ratings determine when and what programmes are scheduled to connect audiences with advertisers (Ang, 1991). For example, many television networks get their income through advertising, but HBO is a subscription cable network and so it has the freedom to broadcast programmes like Game of Thrones, Sex in the City and True Blood, all of which feature nudity, sex, violence and strong language which is uncommon on most broadcast networks - or at least less frequent. The cable network is not restricted by CEOs and board members who are concerned about content driving consumers and advertisers away because its audience is directly paying for the content they make because it is what they want to see. It could be said that these subscription services are more successful forms of marketing and communication because the institutions running them already know they have the audience’s attention. My research question on political economy would be ‘What effect does regulation within subscription TV networks have on the content of their programmes?’, and I could use HBO programmes as case studies for content analysis to see how much ‘inappropriate’ content is broadcast in one day or in one time slot. I could also compare this with the content put out by public service broadcasters like the BBC, and use a content analysis to discuss what kind of ‘informative’ and ‘educational’ programming they show.

---

Chapter 2 ("Audience-as-market and audience-as-public") in Ang, Ien (1991) Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge.

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) ‘Political Economy of the Media’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson. pp. 172-185

McQuail, D. and Windahl, S. (1987). Communication models. 1st ed. London: Longman.