The story behind Universal Pictures

The medium that I chose as my favorite, in a previous blog, was movies. I was asked this week to research and write about the company behind my medium. As you probably guessed, there are many companies behind movies, like Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Pictures, Miramax Films and Paramount Pictures to say the least. I decided to pick Universal Pictures as the company I would research. In my opinion I believe Universal Pictures comes out with the best movies, like Alpha Dog, Good Shepherd, The Break-up, and Miami Vice.

According to Hanson’s “Mass Communication, Living in a Media World”, synergy in a business world means that a combined company can offer more value, cost savings, or strength then the two companies could separately.

There is synergy at Universal Pictures. It is more then a movie company; it has three parks in Orlando, Hollywood and Japan. Universal Pictures also has many corporate partners: Volkswagen, Chase, Coca-Cola, Nestle Waters, PowerAde, Kodak, MasterCard and Minute Maid. These companies help each other with cross promoting their products. This is very important because advertising is one of the major sources of revenue for the media. Universal Studios merged with NBC Universal in 2004. Bob Wright who is the vice chairman of General Electric (one of the big six media companies) is also the Chairman and CEO of NBC Universal.

As you can see, Universal Pictures deal mostly with movies, but takes on other medias after merging with NBC Universal. This proves how a combined company can offer more then two companies could separately. Before taking this class I never realized that all the companies that deal with the media have all merged to form “The Big Six Media Companies”. I would have thought that this would have been considered forming monopolies, but they obviously argued that synergy helps smaller companies stay in business.