Sarah WatsonMedia StudiesWarner Brothers Brief

Warner Brothers was originally founded by three brothers, who immigrated with their parents to North America following the 18th century Commonwealth. Their first encounter in the theatre business was using a film projector and screening films in theatres in Ohio, as well as Pennsylvania where they opened their first theatre in 1903.
Most of the developments of Warner Brothers have been characterised during significant events in the 20th century. For example, in 1930 before the Second World War, they focused many of their productions on the process of cartoons and animations. The most popular string of cartoons is the series Looney Tunes, a Schlesinger product from his own studio after his separation from Harman and Ising in 1933. It wasn’t until 1944 that the cartoons were then created as a unit division and renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons. This era gave audiences an introduction to cartoons, which softened the inevitable war that would occur years later.
During World War II, the vast majority of films produced in this era were war films, which later proved to be boring for audiences at that time due to the disappointment of never being able to escape the tragedy of the war. However, this choice to ignore the audiences responses and the continuum to produce them, this cost Warner Bros. a lot of money in the process.
Prior to the Second World War, Warner Brothers formed partnerships with other companies in order to broaden their audience base and hope for the chances to raise profits from their productions made with other companies contributing to development and distribution. A key example is the partnership with the company Time Inc. in 1989. The merge proved promising in the beginning, after the magazines brought a lighter tone to the company and this appealed to larger audience scales, yet the main source of income regardless was the film and music units provided by Warner Brothers. There was a tone of hostility upon this merger when Paramount Communications enforced a takeover bid for Time Inc. worth 12.2 billion American dollars and at the same time they were forced to acquire Warner a 14.9 billion dollar stock offer. However, when brought to court with this case, Paramount Communications lost, were forced to withdraw the offer and the original merger of Warner Time was allowed to proceed as before.
Another company that merged with Warner Brothers was DC Comics, which was the results of trying to configure the possibility of drawing in the power of stars in the industry and producing films based around characters that already have a large audience appeal, like Superman and Batman. Therefore, the adaption of Warner Brothers through the 20th century has been very difficult in order to appeal to all aspects of audience’s entertainment desire, yet the mergers within the industry have allowed there to be a mixed variety of productions.