Media industries: cultural industries (David Hesmondhalgh). The high-risk, high-reward nature of cultural production, and the strategies firms use to manage it: maximising audiences, integration and conglomeration, formatting, stars, genres and franchises.

What this dot point is asking

OCR names David Hesmondhalgh as the theorist for the cultural industries. His argument explains why media companies behave as they do: cultural production is high-risk, so firms use a recognisable set of strategies to manage risk. You need those strategies, the ability to apply them to set products, and the judgement of whether risk-minimisation comes at the expense of creativity.

The answer

Cultural production is high-risk

This single fact explains the rest of the theory. Because most products lose money, firms organise everything around reducing risk and maximising the chance of a hit.

Strategies to manage risk

Hesmondhalgh identifies recognisable strategies:

• Maximising audiences: aiming products at the widest possible market to spread costs and improve the odds of a hit.
• Integration and conglomeration: vertical and horizontal integration and owning many businesses to control the chain and spread risk across a portfolio of products.
• Formatting: relying on proven, repeatable elements, stars, genres, sequels, franchises and adaptations, that audiences already recognise and trust.

The result is an industry that strongly favours the safe, familiar and repeatable.

The tension between risk and innovation

Crucially, the industries also depend on innovation and difference, because audiences want novelty too and a market saturated with identical products fails. So there is a constant tension between repetition (to manage risk) and difference (to attract audiences), which links directly to Neale on genre as repetition and difference. This tension is why even franchise films and formatted shows must feel somewhat new.

Evaluating Hesmondhalgh

Hesmondhalgh explains the dominance of the safe and repeatable, but a balanced answer notes that independent and public service producers, and digital participation, allow more creative risk, and that innovation is still essential. This connects to Curran and Seaton on diverse ownership widening creativity.

Examples in context

A strong answer names the specific strategies Hesmondhalgh identifies and applies them to set-product detail, then judges the tension between risk-minimisation and creativity.

Try this

Q1. Explain why Hesmondhalgh describes cultural production as high-risk. [5 marks]

• What the marker wants. Uncertain demand, expensive to make but cheap to copy, most products fail while a few hits pay for the rest (AO1).

Q2. Explain how the producers of one set product manage risk, using Hesmondhalgh. [10 marks]

• Cue. Name the strategies (maximising audiences, integration, formatting with stars, genres, franchises) and apply them to the product, noting the need for some difference (AO2).