Teen-Queens

For the Media Hegemonies project, some complications arose. I do not know if we just did not understand the project, or if it was the group itself, but the project just did not work out.

I worked with Robert, Elisha, and Caitlin for this project and we all contributed our fare share of hostility. I think it may just be because we are all sick of this class and all the work we have to do in general, but we knew we still needed to do this project.

At first my group had decided to study the ownership that Viacom has. It seemed like an alright idea, but when I read the syllabus, our plan did not make sense to me. I was trying to follow the syllabus correctly and choose a theme and map the ownership that relates/influences our chosen theme. My group however, just basically wanted to complete the project – ok. We then decided not to map Viacom because we wanted to do something original other than the big six media owners.

We decided to map the media ownership of celebrities. We chose Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen because they have been in the media business their whole lives and are apparently the most well known stars alive. It fit perfectly because these twins have built an empire from the ground up. They have accomplished so much and have undoubtedly influenced today’s media.

We decided to turn to media for information on the girls. We browsed You Tube, and after finding many tribute videos to the girls, found what we were looking for. “The Fabulous Life of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen” was our number one source of their media ownership – along with their official website.

We discovered that the Olsen’s were co-presidents of a billion-dollar-a-year business that markets the twins themselves. This business produces and sells millions of Mary-Kate and Ashley dolls, books, school supplies, videos, make-up and accessories, CD/players, games, electronics, beddings, fragrances, and clothing. They girls have stared in the most television shows and movies than any other child stars. They have sold over 40 million dollars worth of direct-to-video movies and have an agreement with Wal-Mart to dedicate 1400 sq. feet of store space to Mark-Kate and Ashley products. The girls are also co-presidents of their own production company, Dual Star Entertainment Group.

We believe that the Olsen twins are an excellent example of media hegemony because of their influence on ‘tweens’ and teenagers of all generations. Everyone has heard of them, and because of this their empire is growing stronger everyday.

I read the assignment another time, and realised that we were supposed to make a poster – but we did not. I got a bed feeling because I knew we were not actually completing the project, so I took it upon myself to make a quick poster in Photoshop to go along with our theme.

Although we did do a lot of work researching for this theme and spent a lot of time discovering the Olsen’s media ownership, there was a lack of information and our points were blurred and had no strength. My group decided to ditch the Mary-Kate and Ashley theme and settle for a simple completion of this project. We now re-started this project and focused on the media ownership possessed by Time Warner.

We found that Time Warner owns the Atlanta Braves, the Atlanta Hawks, 82.4% of CNN, Live from the Situation Room, Larry King live, Anderson Cooper, TBS, TNT, The Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, Court TV, animation 25% of A&E, the licensing for Loonie Toons, digital boxes owned by, local news channels, new line cinema corp. time, Turner Home Entertainment, Braves Clubhouse, People, Sports Illustrated, Essence, Southern Living, Cooking Light, Parenting Magazine, Mad Magazine, Popular Science, AOL, an alliance with Google, Movie Phone, Map Quest, the NASCAR, the PGA, 50% of DC Comics, 50% of America’s Talking, Oxmoor House publishing, Sunset Books, Little, Brown and Company, Time-Life Books, Warner Books, 50% of Central Comedy, Warner Brothers Television, Asia Week, The Warner Brothers Stores, 50% of Bravo, Baby talk Magazine, Warner Brothers motion pictures, and all of the Six Flags Amusement parks.

When looking at all of this information, it is shocking and astounding to see that one company owns so much, without having the majority of the public know. Upon completion of this project and many days of reflection, I feel I have learned a lot about media ownership. It is scary. One company, one entity is in charge of a large portion of media that not only I, but also the world consumes, and only a few more major companies own the other portions of media not owned by Time Warner. Does this vast media hegemony take away diversity from our media? In some sense it does. These huge media corporations manufacture all the media we see, and because of this the possibility of different points of view in media is put at risk. But at the same time, there is still freedom of speech and the right to creativity in Canada, enabling all points of view to be spoken. I suppose in the long run, all media will be coming from one source because the world is all about money. One company will buy another company and will begin to own everything.

I feel that if there were more people who will not be bought out in the media business, the future of Canadian media will be brighter. What media needs are a dose of integrity and a sense of pride.

Cited Work:

Hazen, Dan, and Julie Winokur. We the Media. New York: The New York Press, 1997.

Life Decisions International- Press Room. Life Decisions International. Retrieved October 19, 2007. http://fightpp.org/show.cfm?page=press&action=display&ID=129