A Study On The Operational System Of Media Market In China

Media market is the combination of the whole economic relations among media structure, media audience and advertisement traders of media, in which the subject consists of media organizations as supplier of media products and services, social public as consumer of media products and media advertisement traders; the object consists of media products and services, which act as trade and communication objective of media market. The subject and the object of media market are its own fundamental elements. The operational system of media market can be defined as the organic body of mutual adaptation and restriction as well as automatic coordination and organization among the market elements directly functioning in media market such as cost, competition, supply and demand, interest rate, salary etc. The operational system is mainly represented in the form of cost mechanism, price mechanism and competition mechanism. The introduction of media market system indicates the formation of the buyer's media market, which is not only the revolutionary result of media market's environment, function and role in our country, but also the motivator spurting media's vigor and the road sign of media's sustainable development in the 21st century. The three stages, namely "institution", "institution and industrialized management" and "media industrialization" present the epitome of the reforms of our country's media in the new era, whereas the emergence of media products' feature, the booming of media market and the aggravation of media's competition act as the outer characteristic of the reforms. Only when the media market is analyzed thoroughly can we recognize the accomplished and would-be reforms of all sorts in the media market, and comprehend key words of the media's development in the new era, such as urban newspaper, independent issuance, collectivization, separation of production and broadcasting etc.Media market and media industry coexist and their research achievements usually overlap. Media market research is an important research field in media economy.Western scholars enter the field relatively earlier and their research generally undergoes a process from the sum-up of experiences to the construct of the theory. In the 1950s, American scholars published a series of monographs on media market and media industry such as Media Economic—Theory and Practice edited by Alison Alexander, Media economics—Understanding Markets, Industries and Concepts written by Alan B. Albarran etc. Few of them have been translated into Chinese up to now. As far as the known documents are concerned, this kind of research mainly concentrates on the behaviors of media enterprises in the west (here mainly refers to the U.S.), whose methods are case study and symbolic statistics. On account of the peculiarity of news system, Chinese media differs greatly from western media in their living environment, function and role etc. The differences make it difficult using western research achievements for reference. In China, by the early 20th century, the research by Chinese scholars such as Ge Gongzhen, Xu Baohuang and Shao Piaoping had discussed print, advertisement, issuance, marketing, cost, and profit model of newspaper. But their researches were confined to the sum-up of experience in operation. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, our media system was borrowed from the Soviet mode. Chinese media oriented itself as the role of "ears, eyes and mouthpiece" for Chinese Communist Party, but denied the economic functions and industrial nature of the media. Hence, the research at home on media market was nearly blank between 1949 and 1980, but it became more and more fruitful thanks to the policy of reform and opening up (already expounded in the preface). However, most of research achievements about media market in China analyze market in terms of the knowledge from media management or media industrialization, but few of them are systematic. Some researches with the topic of "media market" merely depict it superficially by introspection at large; yet scarcely analyze its system. My dissertation attempts to research the system of media market's operation thoroughly by relatively systematic means counteracting the limitation of media market at home and abroad.The body is divided into five chapters. The preface is relatively independent, which makes a quantitative analysis of the research achievements about media marketin China since the 1980s, aiming at sorting out the accomplished research achievements and knowing about the status quo of research and its tendency. The first chapter is the conspectus, generally discussing the meaning and analyzing the features of media market. Chinese media market has three fundamental features: information market, typical public market and main market of attention resources. This chapter depicts the media's second marketization in China since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, and claims that Chinese media market has been basically formed on the levels of ideology, system, operation and market benefit, which is firmly associated with the economic marketization, social informationalization, the inner demand of media itself, and the reforms of media's roles and functions. On this basis, the chapter analyzes the overall characteristics of the media market's operation system in China, including the multiplex structure of market object, the multiple restrictions of market subject and the coexistence of market and non-market elements. The second chapter expounds cost mechanism, the third price mechanism and the fourth competition mechanism. They compose the main point of this dissertation, in which the author creates a new concept "media cost transfer", and exhaustively analyzes the cause, mode and object of its emergence. The transfer of media production cost to social cost and private cost are both realistic and inevitable. Here the media, as a resource possessing the property of public goods, has plights in its power and duty. The third chapter discusses the price mechanism of media market. The author considers that the price of media products in China has properties of vagueness, obvious level, up-to-dateness and uncertainty of effectiveness. The factors affecting the price of media products are very complex, mainly including the factors in media itself, media market and social economy. The chapter analyzes the ways of pricing, price adjustment and subsequent effects of media products, and then accordingly explains the collusion phenomenon of media price in China. At present, in China, the open price agreement of media products, media "Cartel" and establishing of media groups are all specific forms of media price collusion. Media price collusion integrates media resources. Meanwhile, it makes new barriers for media market and imposes a double effect on the operation of media market. The fourth chapter focuseson the competition mechanism. The theoretical bases of media competition include the scarcity of media resources, the limited intellect of media producers and consumers, the substitutability of media products, and the expectation of media managers for society. In the new era, the Chinese media competition can be divided into four stages, namely, extensive competition, homogeneity competition, collective competition and integrated competition. The last section of this chapter discusses competition behaviors and strategies of Chinese media in different market structures on the basis of general market competition theory.The fifth chapter researches government rules and regulations for media market, which are necessary by media's natural monopoly feature, the outer uneconomic situations and unbalance of macro-structure in the media market, the peculiarities of media and media products. The second section of this chapter sorts out and sums up theories about government rules and regulations, mainly including structure, behavior and technology statutes. Making statutes is also the primary way to intervene media for western governments. The last section discusses Chinese government's present rules and regulations for media in detail. The author gives macro-consideration and provides concrete suggestions for Chinese government's present rules and regulations for media as they have defects in the subject, objective, system and behavior of rules and regulations.