Lecture 1: Introduction
➢ What is entertainment?
○ At the heart of the entertainment experience lies enjoyment, a product of
numerous interactions between conditions on both the user's and the media's
side.
➢ Pop Entertainment Defines Our Culture
○ Popular culture (or pop culture) is generally recognized as a constantly evolving
set of practices, beliefs and values that are dominant or ubiquitous in a society at
a given point in time
○ Entertainment media is one of the most powerful vehicles to accentuate or
challenge traditional values and norms, in (non) stereotypical portrayals of
characters who either represent the dominant culture, or those who do not
ascribe to its values.
➢ The Entertainment Industry
○ The Entertainment Industry is used to describe the mass media companies that
control the distribution and manufacture of mass media entertainment, with the
intention of selling or otherwise profiting from creative works or services.
➢ Lasswell's Linear Model of Communication
○ Speaker -> Message -> Medium -> (Design) -> Audience -> Effect
■ Effect of message
■ Effect on audience
➢ Vorderer, Klimt and Ritterfield (2004)
,➢ Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model
○ Three factors predict children's media use (1) disposition, (2)
developmental level, (3) social environment
○ These three factors can also influence the effects that media may have on
knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behavior.
➢ Entertainment Interactivity
○ Lean back (passive)
○ Lean forward (active)
➢ Connectivity
○ Refers to social connections forged or maintained through mediated
communication systems
➢ Marketing Localization
○ The process of translating an entertainment product into different
languages or adapting a product for a specific country or region
➢ Blockbuster Strategy
○ Powerful content producers make huge investments to acquire, develop
and market a small number of concepts with strong hit potential, and then
use the revenue from these products to make up for the middling
performance of their other products.
○ Blockbusters are expensive to produce, very cheap to reproduce. Costs
of duplicating and distributing entertainment are relatively low.
○ Publicity and marketing costs are not proportional to the budget of the
movie.
➢ Long Tail Strategy
○ Selling lower volumes of many hard to find items instead of only selling
large volumes of a few popular items
○ "If people can find and afford entertainment products that are more
closely tailored to their individual tastes, they will feel less drawn to hit
products. In this online age, companies that stop focusing on selling the
lowest-common-denominator products and address niche audiences will
prosper."
➢ Blockbuster versus Long Tail
○ The tail will get longer and fatter (users will seek their individual
preferences through recommendation systems) and the head (products
designed for mass appeal) will shrink.
○ Many products in the tail were blockbusters. Many products from the tail
generate no profit, 90% of the profit comes from the head.
➢ Natural Monopoly
○ Large share of audience for popular products are of light-users,
meanwhile large share for niche products consists of heavy users. Thus,
hit products monopolize niche products (natural monopoly). Niche
products are known by people who are also familiar with the popular
, products, which they usually prefer, but niche products are necessary to
increase variety.
➢ Cumulative Advantage Process
○ Successful songs, films or games are not necessarily better, people
simply tend to like what other people like. Quality products will eventually
flow to the top, but success is manageable. Early winners have an inside
track for future successes.
○ Winners and losers get free publicity: top-grossing films are seen as
good, whereas films with lower than expected attendance are seen as
losers. Early winners (even by a very small margin) show huge
differences in the long one compared to second place.
➢ Escapism
○ The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities,
especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.
○ Escapism through video games might proportionate users with the
empowerment they are lacking or rarely find in the real world.
○ Escapism might attempt to explain how media, particularly narratives
presented through media, may provide some sort of transient mental
retreat for users who feel uncomfortable in their actual lives and social
worlds.
➢ Five Assumptions of Uses and Gratifications
○ 1) Entertainment selection and use is goal-directed, deliberate and motivated.
○ 2) Users take the initiative when selecting entertainment to satisfy their desires.
○ 3) Social and psychological factors mediate users' choice.
○ 4) Entertainment competes with other alternatives for selection and attention
○ 5) People are typically more influential than the media in the relationship, but not
always
➢ What is entertainment?
○ At the heart of the entertainment experience lies enjoyment, a product of
numerous interactions between conditions on both the user's and the media's
side.
➢ Pop Entertainment Defines Our Culture
○ Popular culture (or pop culture) is generally recognized as a constantly evolving
set of practices, beliefs and values that are dominant or ubiquitous in a society at
a given point in time
○ Entertainment media is one of the most powerful vehicles to accentuate or
challenge traditional values and norms, in (non) stereotypical portrayals of
characters who either represent the dominant culture, or those who do not
ascribe to its values.
➢ The Entertainment Industry
○ The Entertainment Industry is used to describe the mass media companies that
control the distribution and manufacture of mass media entertainment, with the
intention of selling or otherwise profiting from creative works or services.
➢ Lasswell's Linear Model of Communication
○ Speaker -> Message -> Medium -> (Design) -> Audience -> Effect
■ Effect of message
■ Effect on audience
➢ Vorderer, Klimt and Ritterfield (2004)
,➢ Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model
○ Three factors predict children's media use (1) disposition, (2)
developmental level, (3) social environment
○ These three factors can also influence the effects that media may have on
knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behavior.
➢ Entertainment Interactivity
○ Lean back (passive)
○ Lean forward (active)
➢ Connectivity
○ Refers to social connections forged or maintained through mediated
communication systems
➢ Marketing Localization
○ The process of translating an entertainment product into different
languages or adapting a product for a specific country or region
➢ Blockbuster Strategy
○ Powerful content producers make huge investments to acquire, develop
and market a small number of concepts with strong hit potential, and then
use the revenue from these products to make up for the middling
performance of their other products.
○ Blockbusters are expensive to produce, very cheap to reproduce. Costs
of duplicating and distributing entertainment are relatively low.
○ Publicity and marketing costs are not proportional to the budget of the
movie.
➢ Long Tail Strategy
○ Selling lower volumes of many hard to find items instead of only selling
large volumes of a few popular items
○ "If people can find and afford entertainment products that are more
closely tailored to their individual tastes, they will feel less drawn to hit
products. In this online age, companies that stop focusing on selling the
lowest-common-denominator products and address niche audiences will
prosper."
➢ Blockbuster versus Long Tail
○ The tail will get longer and fatter (users will seek their individual
preferences through recommendation systems) and the head (products
designed for mass appeal) will shrink.
○ Many products in the tail were blockbusters. Many products from the tail
generate no profit, 90% of the profit comes from the head.
➢ Natural Monopoly
○ Large share of audience for popular products are of light-users,
meanwhile large share for niche products consists of heavy users. Thus,
hit products monopolize niche products (natural monopoly). Niche
products are known by people who are also familiar with the popular
, products, which they usually prefer, but niche products are necessary to
increase variety.
➢ Cumulative Advantage Process
○ Successful songs, films or games are not necessarily better, people
simply tend to like what other people like. Quality products will eventually
flow to the top, but success is manageable. Early winners have an inside
track for future successes.
○ Winners and losers get free publicity: top-grossing films are seen as
good, whereas films with lower than expected attendance are seen as
losers. Early winners (even by a very small margin) show huge
differences in the long one compared to second place.
➢ Escapism
○ The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities,
especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.
○ Escapism through video games might proportionate users with the
empowerment they are lacking or rarely find in the real world.
○ Escapism might attempt to explain how media, particularly narratives
presented through media, may provide some sort of transient mental
retreat for users who feel uncomfortable in their actual lives and social
worlds.
➢ Five Assumptions of Uses and Gratifications
○ 1) Entertainment selection and use is goal-directed, deliberate and motivated.
○ 2) Users take the initiative when selecting entertainment to satisfy their desires.
○ 3) Social and psychological factors mediate users' choice.
○ 4) Entertainment competes with other alternatives for selection and attention
○ 5) People are typically more influential than the media in the relationship, but not
always
