Production, Distribution and Circulation

Made, sent out, and passed on

This topic looks like it should be a list of facts about the media business, and it is easy to answer it that way and score little. The examiner is not asking you to list companies. The question is about how the WORKINGS of the industry shape the media products themselves. ⭐⭐ There are three processes, and together they cover the whole life of a product. PRODUCTION is how a product is made and paid for. Who makes it, and where the money comes from, whether that is advertising, a subscription, a licence fee, or a straight sale. DISTRIBUTION is how it is sent out and made available to an audience. In a cinema, over the airwaves, on a shelf to buy, or online and on-demand. CIRCULATION is how it then spreads once it is out. How audiences find it, share it, recommend it and talk about it, which today happens largely online. ⭐⭐ And here is the idea that turns the three into an argument rather than a list. THE WAY A PRODUCT IS MADE, DELIVERED AND SPREAD SHAPES WHAT THE PRODUCT ITSELF IS. A thing built for a single cinema night is made differently from a thing built to be streamed on demand; a thing paid for by advertising is shaped by the need to gather an audience that advertisers want. ⚠️ One thing to know before you start. Unlike other parts of this course, this topic has NO named theorist. You argue from the processes themselves, not from a framework, so do not reach for one. Carry one question through the module: how has the way this product was made, delivered and spread shaped what it is?

Three things that shape a product

Take any media product and look at it through these three processes. Each column is a stage in its life, and each leaves a mark on the product itself.

Tap the two about getting it out

Tap the TWO decisions that are about DISTRIBUTION, getting a product to its audience, rather than about how it was made or how it spreads afterwards.

• The company decides to release the film in cinemas first, before anywhere else.
• The company chooses to put the whole series on a streaming service on one day.
• The company pays for the series out of the money from subscriptions.
• Fans post clips online and recommend the series to their friends.

Why a bingeable series is built that way

A series is made for a streaming service that releases every episode on the same day. How does that method of distribution most likely shape the product itself?

• The episodes are written to flow straight on from each other, with cliffhangers that keep an audience watching several in a row
• It makes no difference at all to how the episodes are written
• It forces every episode to be exactly the same length as a cinema film
• It means the series must contain more advertising breaks

Words for the media industry

Six terms the industries question expects you to use precisely. Each names part of how a product reaches and spreads to an audience.

Match each choice to its effect

Two that online delivery changed

Select the TWO ways that online distribution and circulation have changed the media products people make.

• On-demand access lets audiences watch whenever they like, so products are built for viewing at any time rather than at a fixed slot
• Because audiences spread products by sharing them online, products are increasingly made to be easy to share and to talk about
• Going online has left the form of media products completely unchanged
• It has meant that products can now only be released in cinemas

Link a process to its effect

An industries question is answered well when you connect a PROCESS to an EFFECT on the product, and answered poorly when you just describe the business. ⭐ So make points in two halves. Name the process and the choice: it was funded this way, distributed that way, circulated in this manner. Then say what that DID to the product: its form, its pacing, the platform it suits, the audience it courts. A point that stops at the first half is only description. The marks are in the second half, the effect. ⭐⭐ And keep the three straight, because they are easy to blur. Production is the making and the money. Distribution is getting it OUT to people. Circulation is how it SPREADS once it is out. A fan sharing a clip is circulation, not distribution, even though both move a product towards an audience. ⚠️ Remember there is no named theorist here. Do not answer by naming a framework, and do not borrow one from the media language or representation topics. Argue from the processes themselves, which is exactly what this part of the course is testing. One more thing. Talk about the product as an industry object, not its plot. Whether it streams, who pays for it and how it spreads are the point, not what happens in the story. Keep the one-line test to hand: how has the way this product was made, delivered and spread shaped what it is?

Order the journey to an audience

Put the stages in the life of a media product into the order they happen.

• The product is produced: made and paid for by a company
• It is distributed: sent out and made available on a chosen platform
• Audiences access it on that platform
• It circulates as audiences share it and recommend it to others
• How well it did feeds back into what the company chooses to make next

Build the industry point

A company puts its new series straight onto a streaming service for everyone to watch at once. Assemble the point that would earn marks.

The media industries run

Five quick decisions about how the industry shapes its products. Three lives.

A cake stall and a supermarket

Leave the media aside for a screen. Picture a home cook who bakes very good cakes, and think about what changes when the cakes have to reach people two very different ways. At a weekend stall, the cook sells to whoever walks past that morning. The cakes can be soft, fresh, delicate, decorated by hand, and eaten the same day. How they get to people is short and simple, so the cakes can be exactly what the cook would most like to make. ⭐ Now the cook wins a deal to supply a chain of supermarkets. Suddenly the same recipe will not do. The cake has to survive days in a lorry and a week on a shelf, so it is made firmer and with things added to keep it. It has to look identical in every shop, so the hand decoration goes. It has to be a size and price the shops want. ⭐⭐ Notice what happened. The cook did not change the cake because the recipe got better. The cake changed because the WAY IT REACHES PEOPLE changed. The route to the buyer reached back and reshaped the thing itself. And how people hear about it changes too. At the stall, word spreads by a neighbour saying it was lovely. In the supermarket, it lives or dies by catching an eye on a crowded shelf, so it is designed to do exactly that. ⚠️ Hold that picture. A media product is the cake. How it is made and paid for, how it is delivered, and how word of it spreads all reach back and shape what the product itself becomes.

Complete the industry process facts

How a media product is made and funded is its _____. How it is then sent out and made available to audiences is its _____. How it spreads once it is out, as audiences share and recommend it, is its _____. The place or device on which an audience receives it, such as a cinema screen, a television or a phone app, is its _____. When the same product is made to work across several of these at once, that joining together is called _____.

Advise on three product plans

A small company is planning a new drama and wants advice on how its industry choices will shape the product. Work through the plan with them.

• They will fund the drama by selling advertising slots within it, and they ask what that means for the kind of drama they should make.
• They are choosing between a fixed weekly broadcast slot and an on-demand release, and they want to know how the choice would change the writing.
• They want the drama to spread widely by word of mouth online after release, and ask what that means for how they build it.

Explain how the industry shapes a product

Explain how the processes of production, distribution and circulation shape a media product and the platform it appears on. You may use any media product you know, or invent one, and you do not need a named theory.

• Explain what production covers, and how a funding choice can shape a product
• Explain what distribution covers, and how the release route can shape the form a product takes
• Explain what circulation covers, and how building for sharing can shape a product
• Use the idea of platform to say how a product may be shaped to suit the device it is received on
• Keep each point in two halves: name the process and the choice, then say what it did to the product
• Finish by drawing the three together to show how the way a product is made, delivered and spread shapes what it is