Audience Practise essay

How does your own experience of media consumption illustrate wider patterns of audience behaviour?

Media consumption illustrates wider patterns of audience behaviour. The big five consists of Disney, Columbia pictures, Universal studios, Warners Bros. and Paramount pictures and are the media giants of Hollywood. They are also referred to as conglomerates that dominate the film landscape who have acquired many subsidiaries. For example, in 2019, Disney acquired Fox which made Disney the largest shareholder over the media/film market, with a total of 27%. This being said, this small amount of oligopolies have the benefit of vertical and horizontal integration which is helping them slowly dominate the worlds market share of film.

Streaming services have been increasing over the years and have increased rapidly over the Covid-19 Pandemic. With everyone locked up at home with no wear to go, an opportunity was introduced to all streaming services to provide a variety of new and already existing movies all available on SVOD (streaming services on demand). A good example of this is Netflix and Disney Plus. Covid-19 has effected this drastically. Considering this obstacle in the media and film market, big and small media companies saw an unpredicted growth in the film and TV industry. This caused for an increase in demand for streaming services. For example in New Zealand, the Covid 19 lockdown and restrictions caused many people to stay at home with nothing to do, therefore, increasing the demand for home entertainment.  From 2019 to 2020, video subscriptions increased by 26% with a total of 1.2 billion subscriptions on new streaming platforms. By the year 2025, there is an estimated number of 1.6 billion worldwide subscriptions . This outstanding growth has also been seen from the launch of Disney+ which has gained over 100 million subscribers since its launch in November 2020. This increase in demand made production ramp up where in 2020 $220.2 billion was spent on making and acquiring new films and TV series Which is 16.5% more than in 2019. However, not just the big media giants were on the train to success. Over the billions of dollars spent on content production, over half of it went to indie filmmakers. The spending of indie content increased by 25.3% in 2020. Having said this, during Covid 19, Box office tickets for the theatre decreased when subscriptions to online devices increased. Over the years the audience has become more and more fragmented. For example in one home the family might own iPhones or iPads and laptops and TVs which creates And uprising of different audiences on different platforms. This fragmented market is still increasing as this technology is more accessible, faster, cheaper and are ad free, hence why audience behaviour is so drastically changing through this media consumption.  Overall, as the audience demand goes up and alters the audience behaviour with their devices as there is so much to watch.

Today 95% of all teens have access to a smart phone and 45% of them say that they are online almost constantly. Social media is now full of an interactive audience, thanks to the Web 2.0 where audiences can actually engage and interact online such as liking or commenting on a trailer of a film. One theory called the Shirky theory - end of audience, States that audience behaviour has changed due to the Internet and ability for the audience to create their own content at home thanks to the lower cost of technology. This new audience doesn't just consume media but also produces it creating the term prosumer. Examples of this are Movie franchise fandoms, fan-pages, reactions to trailers, tweets and anything that can relate to the movie itself even fan-pages for the actors in the film. For example, the Jurassic World movie released on the 11th of June in 2015 created and designed a website which the primary purpose to interact with a younger audience. This website was very creative in that it showed all of the types of dinosaurs in a map of the park and where all of the dinosaurs are located. It also advertised 'free tickets' to go to the park to create a surreal experience for the viewers to make them feel connected in the movie. This movies is now being streamed on Netflix, Hulu, Neon and Apple TV. Overall, the movie directed by Colin Trevorrow grossed $1.670 billion worldwide with A-list actors such as Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. Big film media companies are now using this theory to their advantage by taking what majority of their audience wants and giving it to them. This is the conglomerates listening to what their audience wants and giving them what they ask for. Linking to this is the Hypodermic needle theory, which states that video directors can inject their message straight into the audiences mind. Audiences now are more engaged than ever and more and more people are moving from being consumers to produces such as starting a youtube account. Having said this, youtube has actually taken over Netflix in terms of the amount of streams they get. 

Now with Web 2.0 anyone can use social media platforms making it easy to be noticed and have a following. This reaches the audience more easier especially the younger audience who are always on their smart phones and devices. What we do in the shadows is a New Zealand film which was distributed by crowd funding and had amazing and creative ideas for cross media convergence. A few things they did was turn up at fan events, run art competitions, changed the sign for the new Zealand capital Wellington (changed white w to a red v), They made a trade me account selling items from the vampire house, they did interviews with everyone who asked, had a Facebook account, and they did an online dating vampire profile. This tells us that no matter if you are a huge media giant like Disney who can hold massive gatherings and interviews, small indie filmmakers can also come up with creative ideas no matter their budget. Another example for the movie Jurassic park is the A list Actor Chris Pratt with over 32 million followers on instagram.  He posted the trailer on his account and promoted the movie to all of his followers which created a big deal for the movie in a positive way. 

A disadvantage to this media consumption behaviour has affected the piracy rates on films. This has increased and become more accessible as technology continues to develop. Piracy at first, decreased by 50% due to the new streaming platforms such as Netflix with 208 million subscriptions and Disney Plus with 103.6 million subscriptions and counting. Now that the audience is fragmented and the media world of streaming is saturated with many different platforms and services, the audiences become overwhelmed with the amount of money they are spending on various amounts of streaming services as not one of them contain all of the movies and TV shows. For example, Disney Plus can not show Netflix Films made by them as it is a film only offered by that service. This has led to an increase in piracy rates as many people do not want to be paying for several platforms. A movies with a high piracy rate was What we do in the shadows which had nearly 300,000 illegal downloads which made them one of the most heavily pirated movies. This saturated online market has greatly affected theatre performance and their box office revenues as for example Disney plus offers their audience to buy the movie on their platform the same time the movies comes out in the cinema. This increases competition for the theatres and creates a loss in consumers. 

Through my experiences over Covid 19 pandemic and owning devices, I can clearly see the change in audience behaviour. My whole family and I watch multiple movies per week and are all on our phones constantly while we have been locked up at home over lockdown. We mainly use Disney Plus and Netflix which offer great movie and TV shows to waste some time while at home. I can see that our house is fragmented in which we all watch our own movies on our own devices at the same time. Although I miss outings to the theatre, these new cheap and fast services have created a great distraction for my family over this time. In new Zealand, Netflix in in over 64% of our households which is ad free compared to the Linear TV which is in 74% of NZ households. Still growing, on average 15-39 year olds spend 82% of their time watching online videos which also contains youtube, a service that is replacing the linear TV.