Tom's Media Portfolio
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
When considering what media institution might produce our media product, we had to take into consideration a group of institutions known as "The Big Six". This consists of six major conglomerates who own major film units which recieve roughly 80-85% of all film revenue each year, amounting to billions of dollars from the film market. Below are the Big Six alongside their market share and parent company.
'The Big Six'
 21.65% of Market Share NBCUniversal (Comcast) |  20.75% of Market Share Walt Disney Studios |
|---|---|
 14% of Market Share Warner Bros. Entertainment (Time Warner) |  12.73% of Market Share Fox Filmed Entertainment |
 8.49% of Market Share Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group |  6.18% of Market Share Paramount Motion Pictures Group |
One of the Big Six would be a good distributor to go with, as, since they are major companies, it is highly likely to make a good amount of profit from the film, as the distributor would increase publicity of the film. The problem with the Big Six is that it would be more difficult to get the film greenlit by them, as they would be looking for a film that would make them a large profit, so they would be less likely to pick up an indipendantly made film as it's a big risk. Furthermore, some of them wouldn't pick up the film as they don't usually distribute films of the thriller genre, such as Walt Disney and Warner Bros, who distribute films more fitted to younger audiences, as Disney's top 25 highest grossing films are all U-12 and Warner Bros' highest grossing are, for the most part, 12-15.
Because of this, it seems that if any of the Big Six would take up our film, it would most likely be Paramount Pictures, as their highest grossing films are aimed more towards our target audience, and since they're the most "minor" of the Big Six, they'd be more likely to distribute our film as they would pick up smaller filmmakers to get a profit out of them.
Smaller Distributors
However, since Paramount is still a rather large company, the chance of them taking an indipendant studio, while higher than the rest of the Big Six, is still relatively low. Therefore, we had to look at smaller distributors to find who would be more likely to pick up an independant studio because they are far smaller subsidiaries of the Big Six. For this, we looked for local companies instead of American ones (which all of the Big Six are), as local companies would be interested in supporting British-made films. Out of the smaller distributors, we put it down to one of two: Working Title and New Line Cinema, as they're both small subsidiaries of the Big Six (Working Title is a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, and New Line Cinema is a subsidiary of Warner Bros.).
Decision
Overall, we decided that out of Paramount Pictures, Working Title Films and New Line Cinema; Working Title would be the best distributor to distribute our film. We considered New Line Cinema as it is a subsidiary company, however it is based in America, and would most likely rather support local releases than those done in Britain. We chose working title because it is a smaller company that often works on more independant films, and are based in London with a goal of distributing low-budget films. They aren't paired with any specific film genre, but have distributed thrillers before (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), so them distributing our film wouldn't be unusual.