Marketing & Distribution

Research Question 1

This franchise uses a multitude of cross-media convergence methods for both business and artistic reason.

This comicbook was released in conjunction with the first Avengers film. This was designed to milk the success of the Avengers film by giving readers more of the flavour of those films.

Following the Avengers’ release in 2012, Marvel began production of the television show Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which would explore a post-alien invasion Marvel Universe. The show would be used to tie-into the films, giving the release of the films extra promotion.

Research Question 2

For a while there, it seemed like piracy was over. The major media conglomerates had figured it out. Thanks to broadband internet and adequate streaming technology, it was easier to access movies and TV and music legally than to turn to peer-to-peer file-sharing.

Streaming media has been successful. But possibly it’s been too successful. Where there was once only Netflix and grainy clips with a Divx watermark on YouTube, there are now dozens of streaming services in operation or slated to launch soon. Such as: Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Spotify, Apple Music, Disney+, Apple TV+, Quibi, CrunchyRoll, the Criterion Channel, YouTube Red, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Music, Tidal, CBS All Access, Crackle, Sling, PlayStation Vue, ESPN+, DC Universe, Aereo (RIP), Seeso (RIP), VRV, Boomerang.

These services generally cost between $5 and $15 a month, and if you were going to pay for all of them, you’d end up paying about as much as a monthly cable-TV subscription. This still led to piracy because illegally downloaded movies and TV shows are free!

So you could pay for a dozen different services to try and consume every new series and album and movie you’re interested in legally. Or you could pay for it on home video, if it’s even available (The Office is $84.99 on Amazon right now). Or you could just pirate it.

Research Question 3 

Stay-at-home Britain appears to be becoming a nation of streaming pirates, with traffic to illegal movie and TV sites surging since lockdown measures were introduced. 

Stats: 

• In the last week of March, visits to film piracy sites were up by 57% compared with the last week of February. Sites allowing viewers to illegally watch TV shows and series saw a 29% increase across the same period.
• In total there were more than 300m visits to sites allowing film and TV content to be downloaded illegally last month.
• As the nation stays home, viewing levels are soaring, with households watching an average of five hours more TV each week than before lockdown, according to the TV marketing body Thinkbox.
• Family nights in are also back on the agenda, with shared TV viewing up 37% since lockdown began. Shows including Channel 4’s Gogglebox (up 41%), and channels such as Sky Cinema, which has lots of family-friendly films (up 48%), have benefited.

Research Questions 4

The survey of 1000 adults 

Stats:

• About half the people had pirated content at some point in their life, but only about 10 per cent of people say they pirate today.
• Only about 3 per cent of people prefer to pirate as their main source of content," he says, which he sees as a hardcore rump.
• Today, about 80 per cent of Vocus' peak-time traffic is for legal streaming sites like Netflix and YouTube.

Research Question 5