Dan Freeman may only be 20-years-old, but the independent filmmaker has spent the better part of three years struggling to produce a cartoon.
'Because I'm not a huge player, 'no one gives a crap' mainly is my problem,' Freeman said.
He feels that his inability to pay co-workers the generous salaries they could command from larger studios has contributed greatly to the continuous delays on his project.
Indeed, budget problems are one of the toughest issues facing many independents in the entertainment industry. What often makes things more difficult is that independents have to compete against major media corporations such as Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, General Electric, Bertelsmann and News Corp.
These six corporations have bought out most other media outlets in the past decade. They also own many of the independent studios that exist today, often making even 'independent' media producers dependent upon these corporations to some degree.
However, these mergers and buyouts have occurred only recently. James Baughman, a professor and director of UW-Madison's School of Journalism, explained this phenomenon.
'Since the 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission and Congress have relaxed a lot of restrictions on the number of media outlets, specifically broadcast licenses, you can own,' he said. 'And these culminated in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which accelerated the deregulation of the business.'
The 1996 Telecommunications Act loosened regulations on the number of radio stations a media corporation could own. It also expanded the percentage of television audiences that media corporations could access, effectively increasing the number of stations a corporation could own. These deregulations, among others, allowed media conglomeration'or concentration'to occur in most forms of mass media from entertainment to news.
Since these mergers and buyouts have occurred only recently, it's unclear what the permanent effects they may have on various media will be, especially in the realm of entertainment.
'Most of my favorite movies of this past year have not made their money back in the box office and probably won't make too much money back in DVD sales because they're not marketed enough,' Freeman said. '[The studios] hold all the power right now, and it leaves no room for people who want to make a film that says something.'
However, Baughman questioned whether conglomerations really do have a significant impact on what movies will be successful and whether they dictate what the entertainment industry produces. He noted most of the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture this year were made by divisions of media conglomerates, some of which are considered 'independent' in the entertainment industry.
Despite this, Baughman does have some reservations about the potential effects of conglomerations in the realm of news media.
'We're not in the news business anymore, we're in the information and entertainment business, and that to me becomes a slippery slope,' he said.
Michelle Nelson, an assistant professor of journalism at UW-Madison, is also concerned with the 'pressure on profits' and its detriment to the news and entertainment industries. However, she believes there are potential benefits to be had from media conglomeration. Conglomerations are able to save money by owning and operating multiple stages of media production, which in turn could produce benefits in the form of savings for consumers.
'In theory, those savings would be passed along to consumers,'she said. 'I don't know if in reality it is.'
Though conglomerations may seem to be ready to set up media monopolies, this is unlikely thanks in part to the Internet. Calling the future of the industry 'hopeful,' Nelson said the Internet has become a medium that often undercuts the power of media conglomerates by allowing true independents such as Freeman to cheaply make and release their projects.
'Certainly, the millennials, your generation, you grew up with the technology, and you understand how to create a podcast or an entire episode or a movie much cheaper and how to get it on the Internet,' Nelson said.
Freeman intends to release his cartoon on the Internet, and will be relying upon the versitile medium for marketing as well as sales.
'I need to get this out. It's this urge that I can't really explain or justify logically,' he explained. 'So, if I can do that and make it so that I can keep sharing it without giving myself nervous twitches and bankrupting myself every time, that would be a dream come true.'
