Incoming Revenue Among Key Entertainment Companies

When looking into the movie and entertainment industry, perhaps no name is bigger than Walt Disney Co. With fields in media ranging from music to sports, they seem to hold a strong presence everywhere in the industry. From 2007 to 2010, Walt Disney Co. brought in the most revenue among its competitors. In 2007, their annual revenue was $35.510 billion, which increased to $37.843 billion, dropped to $36.149 billion, and then increased again to $38.063 billion in 2010. Throughout this four-year span ranging from the beginning of 2007 to the end of 2010, Walt Disney’s closest competitor was News Corp. News Corp’s respective revenues from 2007 to 2010 were $28.655 billion, $32.996 billion, $30.423 billion, and $32.778 billion.

While Time Warner dominated in terms of revenue from 2005-2008 (bringing in over $40 billion each year), they took a turn for the worse during the recession. From 2008-2009, Time Warner’s revenue nearly cut itself if half, dropping from $46.984 billion to $25.785 billion. Like other companies in the industry, Time Warner was able to bounce back in 2010, increasing its revenue by $1 billion.

All About the Buzz

In Medias Res staff was asked: "What drives revenue growth in this industry (i.e. more units sold, expanding geographic reach, lower costs for manufacturing, etc.)?"

It’s hard to chart revenue growth in the media industry when only some of the money comes from units sold (i.e. ticket sales, DVD-s, Blu-Rays, CD-s, books merchandise). According to RevenueRecognition.com, “newspapers get their lion’s share of revenue from advertisers.” The same goes for magazines and other periodicals, as well as cable TV broadcasting. A lot of the revenue growth comes from marketing the products on television and the internet and sharing ad-space for other products and industries. The more that the public pays attention, the more they are exposed to advertising. And so, the media industry grows.

But it’s not as easy as just having some well-placed ads. Back in the times of Charlie Chaplin, all you needed to sell out your show or newspaper was a cute, scrappy kid standing on a soap-box, calling all the ladies and gents to attention.

To draw a crowd in this industry you need to create a buzz. Today, many people are very vocal about their preferences- if only because to express views today, all you have to do is click the “Like” option on Facebook. Well, it is this sort of online acceptance that is giving branches of the media industry credit where it’s due.

On Paid Content, a poll is displayed (complements of Trendrr, a social measurement company) showing howoften companies are being mentioned on blogs or on Twitter. They compiled a tidy list of 50 popular companies and brands and how often they have been mentioned in the blogs of hipsters and Tweets of tweens.

This representation of “popularity,” while very non-traditional, seems to be pretty indicative of what’s on people’s minds. Of course, the data doesn’t show whether the comments on blogs and Twitter were positive or negative- which is ok, considering that, in this business especially, all publicity is good publicity! It’s buzz like this that brings in revenue to an industry that relies so heavily on advertisement.