Independent Production Companies Research Articles

Inventing Local TV News: A Case Study of Pitt Parade

Local television news is ubiquitous. Today there are more than a thousand local commercial television stations broadcasting in more than two hundred markets. What local stations produce is mostly news programs. While about 90 % of what is seen over a local station originates somewhere else, from either a network or a syndicator of programs produced by independent production companies, about 10% is locally produced. Most of these local programs are news programs and stations have been expanding their newscasting: they do newscasts in early morning, local news inserts during morning network talk shows, news at noon, news in evening, and late at night. Many stations now do an hour's newscast in late afternoon and early evening, with some stations in larger markets doing two hours or more of news. Local television news comprises a large share of mass media news, what W. Lance Bennett calls our only broadly shared window on reality.1 One of assumptions about early years of local television is that little effort went into news. Jim Snyder calls this the light bulb theory of development of local news.2 Citing an article by Jeff Greenfield, media critic for ABC News, and a memo by Av Westin, also of ABC, Snyder writes: Westin and Greenfield seem to think that everyone in local news was just muddling along, doing their craven, mediocre thing until early seventies when, according to Westin, light bulb went on 'over col-

Development Strategies in the Audiovisual Industries: The Case of North East England

CORNFORD J. and ROBINS K. (1992) Development strategies in the audiovisual industries: the case of North East England, Reg. Studies 26, 421–435. It is only recently that broadcasting and the audiovisual industries have come to figure in urban and regional development strategies. During the 1980s, a number of such strategies have developed in Britain's cities and regions. These have drawn on ideas developed within the flexible specialization hypothesis, centred around the clustering of small firms. This perspective is extremely problematical, however, and more recent developments now make it clear that the dynamic of change is driven by quite other forces. Media development strategies have, in fact, emerged as a consequence of regulatory changes which have sought to open up the British audiovisual industry to competition. While local and regional media development initiatives originally emphasized the centrality of an emerging sector of small, independent production companies, more recently they have place...

Petroleum Engineers and Independent Exploration and Production Companies in the Year 2000

Summary This paper contains certain opinions and observations made on behalf of independent exploration and production companies regarding the future of the oil industry and of petroleum engineers. It was prepared at the request of SPE's Committee on Education and Professionalism for presentation at the 1986 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition during the depths of a serious downturn in the industry. While its focus is on the future, this paper will undoubtedly bear the mark of the period during which it was prepared. Because our national security dictates that there must be a future for the domestic petroleum industry, the domestically oriented independent sector will be required to play a key role in that future. Petroleum and the ability to find and extract it efficiently and economically are valuable resources that will not soon nor easily be replaced. Introduction This paper responds on behalf of independent exploration and production companies to several questions posed by the SPE Committee on Education and Professionalism. An immediate challenge was to determine what an "independent company" is and then to determine how to represent such an apparently diverse conglomeration. I have discussed these issues with associates employed by various independent exploration and production companies and hope that my opinions on these topics will reflect their ideas. The following are five questions for which the committee requested opinions.What aspects of the petroleum industry will independent exploration and production companies primarily be concerned with in the year 2000?What significant technical problems will be addressed by the independent sector of the petroleum industry during the remainder of this century?What support will computers provide the independent oil company petroleum engineer in the year 2000, and how should the engineer be prepared to use this technology effectively?How will the functions of petroleum engineers change during the remainder of this century?What qualifications will be required for an entry-level engineering position with an independent exploration and production company in the year 2000? Independent Exploration and Production Companies To address the roles of independent exploration and production companies in the future, it is necessary to attempt to define the composition of that group at the present time. In several commonly used definitions, these companies are described aspurely domestic;with a common management and financial source;uninvolved in transportation, refining, and marketing;relatively small and largely unintegrated;uninvolved in interstate pipeline transportation; andwithout corporate affiliation with an interstate pipeline.1 In today's industry, very few companies could meet all of the above criteria; however, it appears that Definition 4 is a simple approach that can be used to fit nearly anyone's idea of an independent company because of its nonspecific nature. An Arthur Andersen & Co.2 survey of 375 companies handles the "relatively small" issue in Definition 4 by classifying majors as those companies with reserves in excess of 1 billion equivalent bbl [159×106 m3] (15 companies). Give or take four or five companies - or 0.5 billion bbl [79×106 m3] - this would appear to be a suitable line of demarcation. The survey further separates the companies with less than 1 billion bbl [159×106 m3] into integrated, pipeline/utility, and diversified, in addition to independent. Prindle3 states the perplexing problem of isolating the concept of "the independent oil company" well when he qualifies his remarks on the subject with, "Whenever an ‘independent's perspective' is mentioned in this book, it must inevitably be something of a distortion, because the diversity of interests among independents makes any effort to aggregate their viewpoints misleading."