Unit 1 (Script): Introduction and Ownership (1)

Intro: (SAM) (Music starts playing) Hi, my name’s Sam; and no you haven’t just clicked onto one of those over-dramatised news reports with their over the top graphics and presenters that have no idea what on Earth the technology does, that’s right I’m going to be talking to you plain and simply about the corporation 20^th Century Fox and its owner, Mr Rupert Murdoch.

Overview: (SAM) First I’m going to be talking to you about the ownership. 20^th Century Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch, (Music stops) who would’ve guessed, (Music starts) and also 21^st Century Fox (Music stops) (which he also owns). (Music starts) He is the head of a bi------g corporation called NewsCorp. NewsCorp owns lots of big companies like 20^th Century Fox, The Times, The Sun and the list goes on. All of these companies working under the watchful eye of NewsCorp are part of a conglomerate. (Music stops) Yes I have said that right. (Music starts) An easy definition for this word is that it’s a company made up of other companies. Simple as that. For example, the BBC is a conglomerate. It has TV channels like BBC 1 and BBC 2, it has Radio Channels such as BBC Radio 1, 2,3,4,5 and 6. It also produces films under the name of BBC Films such as Jane Eyre starring big names such as Mia (Music stops) Wasikowska (struggles pronouncing name), haha moving swiftly on. (Music starts) All of these separate organisations are part of the BBC.

(SAM): Let’s move onto some simpler stuff. Independence. 20^th Century Fox is NOT an independent company. There are two main reasons for this. A) The company is still owned by NewsCorp and Rupert Murdoch and B) it doesn’t make, edit, and produce the films all on its own. 20^th Century Fox and most other big name production companies usually collaborate on projects. For example 20^th Century Fox recently collaborated with DreamWorks Studios on the “critically acclaimed film” (Music stops) Penguins of Madagascar; a spin-off of the mildly popular Madagascar franchise. (Music starts) Nah all credit to them both for making the films but seriously (Music stops) that zebra will be applying for his pension soon. (Music starts) Collaboration projects on films are normally a repeating pattern. Other companies 20^th Century Fox have collaborated with in the past are Marvel on X-Men, Lightstorm Entertainment on Avatar and Blue Sky Studios on the films Rio and Rio 2. In fact, from 2010 – Present Day (September 2015 flashes up on screen), Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiary (I’ll come onto that in a moment) has collaborated on every single film that it has made in that time. If you were listening you will have heard me mention yet another ridiculous word, subsidiary. A subsidiary is one of the companies in a conglomerate. So 20^th Century Fox, The Times and The Sun are all subsidiaries of NewsCorp, the conglomerate.

SAM: Hopefully you are learning things as I go along, (Music stops) well because that is the main purpose of this video in the first place.

SAM: (Music starts) Cross Media Ownership? (Music stops) Nope, ok that’s another thing for me to talk about then. (Music starts) 20^th Century Fox is actually a Cross Media Company as it produces Film and TV, video games, comics, books and a bit of merchandise thrown in for the ($$ Kerching sound effect). Now, they can actually take advantage of producing so many different products. For example, in the video games that they produce they can advertise the films they produce, in the comics/books they can put a reference to any other books/comics that are available from them. This is called Cross Promotion.