A cutting-edge exploration of media management, media work and media professions, edited by one of the biggest names in the field.

This book is a practical guide to every aspect of managing media businesses. Written by a team of experts and illustrated with interviews from leading industry players, it addresses the unprecedented change and uncertainty facing the industry. Do newspapers, magazines or books have a future? Will terrestrial television or cable services exist as meaningful players in five years’ time? Is there a way to make multiple consumption platforms work together in a way that extracts the revenue needed to support the creation and development of quality content? While more and more content is being published, fewer and fewer businesses are finding a way to do so profitably and sustainably. Your answers to these questions that vex your media or entertainment business will depend on your frame – a frame based on experience gained in days that were less uncertain, less fluid and much, much simpler. Those frames need to be broken if you are to survive in times of such rapid change. This book is based on IESE’s Advanced Management Program in Media & Entertainment, which IESE Business School has been running in New York and Los Angeles since 2011. It combines contributions from leading professors and practitioners, as well as real-life case studies, to establish a base upon which you can start to build the set of managerial tools that you will need to manage fast-changing media and entertainment businesses.

The media are home to an eclectic bunch of people. This book isabout who they are, what they do, and what their work means tothem. Based on interviews with media professionals in the UnitedStates, New Zealand, South Africa, and The Netherlands, and drawingfrom both scholarly and professional literatures in a wide varietyof disciplines, it offers an account of what it is like to work inthe media today. Media professionals face tough choices. Boundaries are drawn anderased: between commerce and creativity, between individualism andteamwork, between security and independence. Digital mediasupercharge these dilemmas, as industries merge and media converge,as audiences become co-creators of content online. The media industries are the pioneers of the digital age. This bookis a critical primer on how media workers manage to survive, and isessential reading for anyone considering a career in the media, orwho wishes to understand how the media are made.

This volume provides rich insight into the nature and practice of media management. Contributions assess the degree to which management of media firms requires a unique set of skills, highlighting similarities and differences of media firms compared with other industries in terms of management practices, HR development and operational aspects. Success and limitations of research on media management theory is evaluated, both drawing on management theory and examining insights from other disciplines. Dimensions for future research are considered along with practical implications for media managers and corporate structures. The book serves as a valuable reference for researchers, advanced students and practitioners in media industries.

The management and labor culture of the entertainment industry. In popular culture, management in the media industry is frequently understood as the work of network executives, studio developers, and market researchers—“the suits”—who oppose the more productive forces of creative talent and subject that labor to the inefficiencies and risk aversion of bureaucratic hierarchies. However, such portrayals belie the reality of how media management operates as a culture of shifting discourses, dispositions, and tactics that create meaning, generate value, and shape media work throughout each moment of production and consumption. Making Media Work aims to provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of management within the entertainment industries. Drawing from work in critical sociology and cultural studies, the collection theorizes management as a pervasive, yet flexible set of principlesdrawn upon by a wide range of practitioners—artists, talent scouts, performers, directors, show runners, and more—in their ongoing efforts to articulate relationships and bridge potentially discordant forces within the media industries. The contributors interrogate managerial labor and identity, shine a light on how management understands its roles within cultural and creative contexts, and reconfigure the complex relationship between labor and managerial authority as productive rather than solely prohibitive. Engaging with primary evidence gathered through interviews, archives, and trade materials, the essays offer tremendous insight into how management is understood and performed within media industry contexts. The volume as a whole traces the changing roles of management both historically and in the contemporary moment within US and international contexts, and across a range of media forms, from film and television to video games and social media.

From newsrooms to sales departments to Internet sites and converged “information platforms,” the business of information has changed and continues to change dramatically. In Managing Media Convergence: Pathways to Journalistic Cooperation, author Kenneth Killebrew examines media management from a fresh perspective, exploring how to best manage creative people in times of change. This new addition to Blackwell Publishing’s Media and Technology series discusses the role of the journalist/broadcaster and other creative people charged with providing information in newly emerging cross-platform environments of converged media. By investigating creativity – coupled with notions of power, convergence, the changing work environment and traditional management methods – Managing Media Convergence unravels the dilemma of how to retain highly creative people. The necessary skill sets to achieve in a converged media world – of those who would manage and those who would be managed – are clarified and contrasted against traditional organizational approaches. Managerial expediency, efficiency, and effectiveness are considered through discussions of best practices and case studies. With the bottom-line focus of today’s media management on increasing profits and cash flow, Managing Media Convergence shows how workers and managers can successfully meet the challenges of the new media workplace.

Digitization and Web 2.0 have brought about continuous change from traditional media management to new strategic, operative and normative management options. Social media management is on the agenda of every media company, and requires a new set of specialized expertise on digital products and communication. At the same time, social media has become a vibrant field of research for media economists and media management researchers. In this handbook, international experts present a comprehensive account of the latest developments in social media research and management, consistently linking classical media management with social media. The articles discuss new theoretical approaches as well as empirical findings and applications, yielding an interesting overview of interdisciplinary and international approaches. The book’s main sections address forms and content of social media; impact and users; management with social media; and a new value chain with social media. The book will serve as a valuable reference work for researchers, students and professionals working in media and public relations.

An essential account of how the media devices we use today inherit the management practices governing factory labor This book argues that management is enabled by media forms, just as media gives life to management. Media technologies central to management have included the stopwatch, the punch card, the calculator, and the camera, while management theories are taught in printed and virtual textbooks and online through TED talks. In each stage of the evolving relationship between workers and employers, management innovations are learned through media, with media formats producing fresh opportunities for management. Drawing on rich historical and ethnographic case studies, this book approaches key instances of the industrial and service economy—the legacy of Toyotism in today’s software industry, labor mediators in electronics manufacturing in Central and Eastern Europe, and app-based food-delivery platforms in China—to push media and management studies in new directions. Media and Management offers a provocative insight on the future of labor and media that inevitably cross geographical boundaries.

"This book provides vital insights into the elements of strategy and their application to media firms. Solidly grounded in theory but not pedantic, it is essential reading for those who make or wish to comprehend choices of media companies." - Robert Picard, University of Jönköping "Insightful, contextually analytical, yet easy to comprehend, Strategic Management in the Media successfully applies the adaptive and interpretative areas of strategic theory in the media sectors. It provides a unique perspective in which common themes linking media strategy and industry environment are thoughtfully discussed." - Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida "...an invaluable asset for students of media management. The use of pertinent examples and case studies throughout brings the analysis to life and contributes to a highly readable introduction." - Gillian Doyle, University of Glasgow This book is a comprehensive, accessible and expert introduction to strategy within a media management context. It is divided into two parts - part one providess an introduction to and overview of the media industry from a strategic management perspective, looking in detail at the sectors that together comprise the industry - newspaper, book and magazine publishing, music, radio and television - and the strategic forces at work in each. This provides the foundation for part two, which analyses a number of strategic topics central to the media sector, such as technological change, organisational structure, leadership, and creativity and innovation. The chapters follow the same structure: the relevant theory is outlined, its application to the media industry is discussed, and case studies from the media industry are used to illustrate the theory and illuminate its relevance for the media field. The cases and examples used come from all sectors of the industry and a range of geographic regions and include News Corporation, Endemol, BBC, Bertelsmann, CNN, MTV, Disney and Pixar.