Future of Creative Industries - Implications for Research ... - Europa

Another feature of the large corporations is that they tend to cover more than one sector of thecreative industries and to work on an international scale. For example, Time Warner activitiescontain magazine and book publishing, production and distribution of cinema and TV films,distribution of sound recording, operating cable TV networks and systems. Viacom, Disneyand News Corporation show similar spans (see as well table 1). Bertelsmann (Germany) andPearson (Britain) undertake publishing activities in numerous countries (according to Caves,2000).Table 1: Leading media groups worldwide – Turnover in millions USD and breakdown ofturnover by activity, in % (2003)CompanyTurnover2002 inmillionsUSDFilmandProgrammesVideoBroadcasting&CableProgrammingMusic Publishing Internet& MultimediaCable &TelecomsSony( 5 ) 72081 10.1 ( 1 ) - 7.5 - 10.4 - 77.7Time Warner 39565 27.7 ( 1 ) 21.3 - 14 21.7 19.5 -Vivendi 32182 23.6 ( 1 ) 16.3 19.5 23.6 2.2 35.5 2.8UniversalWalt Disney 27061 27.2 ( 1 ) 40.4 ( 1 ) 8.7 - - 23.7Viacom 26585 15.4 22.2 58.4 - ( 1 ) - - 6.6Bertelsmann 21219 ( 3 ) ( 4 ) 26.5 16.1 38.9 ( 2 ) - 21.7News Corp. 17474 25.7 ( 1 ) 41.5 ( 2 ) 27.5 ( 2 ) - 5.3Lagardere 10033 ( 3 ) - 7.3 - 38.2 ( 3 ) - 54.5MediaSource: European Audiovisual Observatory Yearbook (2004), vol.1, p.27Notes: ( 1 ) Included in “Films and programmes”; ( 2 ) Included in “Others”; ( 3 ) Included in Broadcasting & CableProgramming; ( 4 ) Included in Music; ( 5 ) Year at 31.03.2002.Besides the conglomerates, which represent the big ‘promoters’ of the already consecratedartists, there are though small or independent companies having often a ‘gate keeping’function for the new talents. In some fields such as the record industry, these companies, socalled ‘pickers’, are oriented to identifying and promoting new styles of music and types ofperformers. In other fields, for instance art galleries, the difference between pickers andpromoters is related to the extent and quality of auxiliary promotional services (Caves, 2000,p. 158).Generally speaking, the profit seeking sector in the creative industries follows the institutionalpatterns of the ‘new economy’ as depicted by Florida in ‘The rise of the creative class’(2002): the venture capital model is typical in starting new companies, which as they growand become successful are often bought out by big companies. In this way, the entrepreneursproduced the creative work and bring it into the market. Another key feature of the neweconomy is the outsourcing of the manufacturing to specialized subcontractors – the so calledmodular manufacturing system. Within the creative industries this trend is met for instance inthe film sector, where the specialized work carried out formerly by a big studio is nowoutsourced to independent services firms (editing, lighting, recording/sound, film processing,etc.) (see annex 1).Others1.2.2. Non profit organisations (NPOs)The non-profit sector embraces primarily the high culture area as the organizations within thesector have a major goal of producing cultural value (Caves, 2000; Throsby, 2002).According to Caves (idem, p.225-226) the non profit organizations are frequent in the fields7