Studies On The Development Of The Media Industry In China

Based on the related theories of industry convergence, this article attempts to study the transformation, reformation and development of the media industry in China, providing a theoretical reference for the establishment of the media industry's controlling system and the improvement on industrial operation efficiency. At present, China is at the critical point of actively promoting cultural industry development and prosperity. With the deep propelling of cultural system reformation, the development of media industry in China, as an essential part of the cultural industry, is proceeding with the reformation of media system shoulder to shoulder. How to achieve the transformation of media from public to industry, from external transfusion to internal accumulation, and from administrative monopoly to marketing competition, is the question crying for an answer of Chinese media industrial reformation, as well as the starting point and foothold of this article's research.The adjustment of industry structural system caused by industry convergence has been widely carried out, along with the industrial reformation under digital technology almost disorganizing the original media industry's order. Those lead to the huge changes in marketing structure, marketing pattern and government rules; at the same time, the relation between supply and demand in media industry and the operation efficiency of media enterprises have optimized and improved fundamentally. What's more, the development of science and technology is bringing about radical changes to the future of media industry, even directly accelerating people's spirit and material life to a higher level.For all that, we should be aware that the fundamental position of Chinese media industry is the "mouthpiece of the CPC and the government". Since now China is at the time with many sharp conflicts, the media industry is supposed not only to shoulder the developing responsibility, but to undertake the special mission of guarding the society and public, and burdening the reform risks and costs. It is now confronting great pressure and difficulties as the late-developing region of reform. Thereupon, this article aims at exploring the transforming road for the media industry of China and seeking the construction and development of the mega media industry.The article is divided into nine chapters. Chapter One takes an overview of the international and domestic background and the purpose of this writing, including relevant introduction about the writing ideas and primary research method. Chapter Two is the review of correlated theories and literature, founding the theories and literature for analysis of the whole text. Chapter Three comes up with questions, and then deeply analyzes and dissects the reasons for media industry convergence from aspects of techniques, marketing and enterprises, etc. Chapter Four and Chapter Five do the analysis, thoroughly teasing both the foreign and domestic media industry's converging paths upon method, starting point and trend. The two chapters emphasize the current problems faced with the media industry of China and provide alternatives for the development of the industry in China according to that in Western countries. Chapter Six to Chapter Eight mainly focus on solving and deepening the problems. Chapter Six comprehensively teases and concludes the experience on collectivization of media industry on the stance of media convergence inside the industry, offering some tips and directions for media convergence. Chapter Seven illuminates the visualization of the mega media industry based on the media convergence and at the same time, goes deep into the analysis on the key areas like the "Convergence of Three Networks (telecom, internet and cable television network)". Chapter Eight re-scans the regulations of media industry and correlative industries in China from the perspective of nation development and industry structural adjustment, pointing out that the meaning of media industry convergence and development is far beyond any of that in other generalized industries, which refers to the security of our nation's economy and ideology. The necessary adjustment and innovation of managing framework is the system demand and significant guarantee for media industry convergence of China. Chapter Nine is the researching conclusion of the whole article, and it visualizes future researching fields and trends.The article concentrates on answering the following four questions for the convergence development of media industry in China:first, what's the current situation of the development upon the media industry in the world and in China; second, under the influence of emerging technologies, how will the emergence of competitive monopoly market affect our media industry on optimizing the marketing structure; third, what are the steps and ways from media convergence to the construction of mega media industry; fourth, with the rebuilding of regulation and introduction of competition, how does the government propel the optimization of marketing structure through policy implementation.By analyzing the questions above, we reach the following conclusion:First, the industry convergence is the inevitable trend of the development in information communication, In the information age, the industry convergence promoted by information technology, internet technology and communication technology has significantly changed the media, communication and other industries. Compared with the industry convergence in traditional industrial age, it occurs more frequently in information age. From the perspective of enterprises and market, whether it's the competition pressure, the variation of industry barrier, or the improvement of property versatility, industry convergence, propelled by technology and multi-strength, is on the way from convergence to the construction of mega media industry, to promote the development and prosperity of related industries.Second,"Media Convergence" constitutes the key thought of development for Chinese media enterprises and the marketing structure of media industry needs optimizing. After the large-scale centralization for more than a decade, developed countries and districts have formed a series of super media groups, including News Corporation, Viacom Corporation, Walt Disney Company, Bertelsmann AG and Vivendi SA, etc. with the feature of "Cross-media, Cross-industry and multinational management" as their business model, covering the whole industrial chain. These large media groups are both the leaders, practitioners of the global labor division and the main market players of media industry convergence. By reviewing the media industry in China and comparing it with that in developed countries, we find problem of low-concentration, unbalanced-developing and low-coherence. Studying and judging the development path of media industry in China, we should emphasize marketing structural adjustment, break the market pattern of barriers between different levels, encourage merging and reorganization with capital as the link, cultivate a few large leading media groups of great scale, strong power and wide business, and build the network-type oligopolistic market structure which radiates the whole nation. In the convergence of cross-media, media should pay more attention to the complementation of each other's advantages and the integrity of resources. The convergence not only includes the information resources, but the comprehensive integrity of property right, human resource, operation, management and logistics as well, generating a mutual strengthening effect and scale economy and setting up media brand.Third, the integrative development of mega media industry constitutes its future tendency. Global flattening has made the convergence an inexorable trend, As the gradual merging between information technology and communication technology goes on, the convergence of manufacture and service, content and terminal, and hardware and software should be the successful business model which adapts well to the market demand and acquire profitability, while the clearer cross-convergence model also indicates a direction for media industry's development. The next step for the mega media industry convergence like the "Convergence of Three Networks", should be putting forth effort to propel the convergence with mobile internet by using emerging technological innovation service model like big data and cloud computing and giving up close convergence confined to traditional media industry and telecommunication industry; instead, it needs to bring in more investors and cooperators and run an open and collaborating convergence pattern.Fourth, loosing regulation and building a confluent system make up the reforming thoughts of media industry in China. When facing the current problem of lacking effective arrangement and the great flexibility of public policy system, it is necessary to form an industry regulation system of united, open and competitive facing the domestic related industries, which is also the critical step to improve industry competitiveness. The regulation should focus on behavior regulation rather than structural regulation, with inhibition monopoly and deregulation going in parallel, to break the barriers between industries and create a fair marketing order. Meanwhile, administrative intervention is supposed to be led by economic policies and legal method, stimulating the regulated to enhance their productivity as the goal under the competitive pressure, encouraging the enterprises to promote the process of convergence represented by the "Convergence of Three Networks". From the requests of ensuring the ideology safety, we should draw experience from leading countries, establish a united regulated institution to put forward the switch from vertical industries to horizontal layers, enforce the quality of content vigorously, and explore a new model of maintaining the ideology security, combining dynamically the propaganda value and public interest.The researching innovations we have on the development of media industry convergence are as follow: First, based on the industry convergence theories, we analyze the development problems about media industry in China and expand the applied fields for industry analysis method. By making a general review about the past research, especially the convergence area, we find most of them illustrating from the angle of news transmission, but less from economy method. This article, however, creatively makes up a competition target system for Chinese media industry, quantitatively analyzes the evaluation model with factor analysis, and provides the theoretical basis of the analysis. Meanwhile, we do research on twenty listed media companies in China and evaluate their performance based on the improved TOPSIS method, removing the former method depending only on subject judgment and qualitative description.Second, in the research of exploring the convergence development, we creatively build up a researching framework for mega media industry and provide it with driving factor, future trend and realistic path. In Chapter Three of this article, the reasons of mega media convergence have been systematically demonstrated, mainly including the enhancing of technology innovation, scale economy and scope economy, the strengthening of capital generality and the releasing of government regulation, which gives supports for related studies. Chapter Seven outlooks and depicts in panorama to the technical form, industrial effect and future trends of mega media industry. It also comes up with the convergence's directions and strategies for the mega media industry in a new thought, i.e., expediting the convergence with mobile internet, creating converging model through big data and other advanced technology, building an open and collaborating pattern with internet idea, achieving the integrity of resources in media and related industries, and improving the long-run competitiveness.Third, we focus on the combination between the current conditions of China and special managing policies, and present innovatively the policy thought and specific measures of the convergence regulation for the mega media industry in China. When dealing with the media regulation, this article emphatically analyzes the systematic barriers which constrain the industry development in Chapter Eight, clearly demonstrating the challenges mega media industry can face when separating regulation upon business. Based on the variation trend of international media regulation and combining with our realistic environment, we innovatively raise the progressive reform actions on simultaneously releasing regulation and restraining monopoly, proceeding a horizontally layered regulation, and building a mega media managing institution conforming to the national conditions of China. Particularly in the aspect of delivering content regulation, the article proposes to add a "Content Regulation Committee" under the leading of Party Committee Propaganda Department, to strengthen the content regulation and control of all terminals and ensure the ideology security.Due to the lack of data and documents, we still have much to improve, which is also our working direction in future. We will continue to keep on technology research and regulation study and explore the latest progress of mega media industry convergence.