Discussions

Textbook:

Managing Electronic Media : Making, Marketing, and Moving Digital Content, 01th Edition

By: Van Tassel, Joan

Discussion Instructions
Please write 200 words about each of the topics below. Make sure your original posts are thoughtful and
substantive.
Thoughtful means you consider the topic in light of your reading and your experience. Perhaps you do
some additional research.
Substantive means you add something new to the discussion that relates to the topic and provides
illuminating information about it.
You might emphasize a particular aspect, recognize a pattern, link it to something else in the discussion,
the course, the text, or from your research.
In light of your reading and your experience and perhaps some additional research, discuss the following:
1. Entertainment and Media Industry – Reading: Chapters 1, 2, & 6
Discuss the common characteristics of entertainment and media industry segments.
On page 52, your text looks at some shared economic aspects of entertainment and media industries.
Discuss two of these, making sure you understand what the economic terms mean (You may need to do
some additional online research).
2. Market Research – Reading: Chapters 1, 2, & 6
Discuss the differences between the ways in which online media companies or business units and
traditional media enterprises gather information about their viewers/users/consumers.
3. Leadership and Management – Reading: Chapters 3, 4, 5, & 14
For leaders and managers, discuss the differences between managing creative people and traditional
workers. What are the similarities?
Consider which of the theories/approaches of leadership and management are best suited for leading and
managing creative people and projects. Which are least suited?
4. Legal and Regulatory Issues in Media Management – Reading: Chapters 3, 4, 5, & 14
To what extent are leading entertainment and media businesses constrained by legal and regulatory issues?
To what extent are they helped?
What are the conditions that determine the balance between constraint and aid?
5. Digital Assembly Line – Reading: Chapters 7, 8, 9, & 10
Compared to the industrial assembly line, which integrated mechanical assembly, what effects on the
content production industries do you think a digital assembly line will have?
(Think in terms of hardware, software, creativity, time-to-market, and profitability.)
6. Marketing Windows – Reading: Chapters 7, 8, 9, & 10
Why do marketers adopt release windows in the order they do?
What events could change the order of release windows?
Why is the long tail important and how could it affect the content you decide to create?
7. Content Management and Disruptive Innovation – Reading: Chapters 11, 12, & 13
Discuss ANY ONE of the following:
If you create content for yourself or your company, under what circumstances would you use Digital
Rights Management – DRM?
When might you not use DRM and why not?
OR
Find an example and discuss a disruptive innovation that altered the value chain of a product or class of
products of the entertainment and media industry – either historical or from your own lifetime.
8. Content Business Model – Reading: Chapters 11, 12, & 13
The business model for a content product or class of products has four components. Find a content product
of interest to you and discuss its marketers’ content model, marketing model, distribution model, and
revenue model.