BEMT at NYU: The Catch-All Business of Media Minor

BEMT serves as a cross-school minor. It resides in the Stern School of Business and requires you to also take classes in the Tisch School of the Arts and the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. To fulfill the minor, you must take eight Stern credits and eight Steinhardt and/or Tisch credits.

I really enjoy doing a cross-school minor because I get to learn from professors beyond my home school. They work in fields I may not get a glimpse into otherwise. Also, adjunct professors often teach BEMT classes. They work at NYU part-time and have full-time jobs in media. I find it so rewarding to build connections with these professors. They provide hands-on lessons and have a keen understanding of how the industry actively operates.

At the start of the 2024 school year, I took a class entitled Movie Marketing. It is a two-credit Stern class that concentrates on how films are budgeted, advertised, and distributed. One part of this class I really enjoyed was that independent assignments adapted to individual interests. We started by choosing one of our favorite films. From there, we analyzed its worldwide grosses, competitive sets, and creative positioning. I decided to focus on Lady Bird. It was so fun determining my comps by genre, directorial influence, and talent.

This project required some quantitative work, which isn’t something I usually enjoy. However, because the numbers were coupled with storytelling, I found the exercise exciting. Later on in the semester, we were tasked with selecting a film that was released 15+ years ago and marketing it as if it were released today. I chose Notting Hill and had a blast coming up with experiential marketing campaigns and collaborations that could promote the movie to modern viewers.

During the spring of 2024, I took a class called Business of Broadway. It is a two-credit Stern class that explores what Broadway is, its key players, and the financial layers of production. My main assignment for this class was a group project. Our goal was to hypothetically put on a Broadway show of our choice and consider the strategy, budget, and marketing processes.

My group decided to put the Disney film Tangled on Broadway. I was in charge of developing our mock campaigns. As a Media, Culture, and Communication student, this role allowed me to creatively apply my marketing skills in a new field. When each group presented, the other groups acted as investors. We ranked the presenters’ pitches, so we competed for funding just as we would in the real world. My group got second place out of fourteen groups, which we were very proud of!

Now that I have completed my Stern core, I am taking Steinhardt and Tisch credits. This semester, I am enrolled in Business Structure of the Music Industry. Although we are only a couple weeks into the material, I have already learned about artist management, record production, and types of labels. Every week, we start by talking about live shows we have been to and why they resonate (or don’t resonate) with us. My professor does a great job of connecting our current experiences with the class content. This makes new concepts much easier to absorb. I haven’t taken any music classes before this one. I appreciate how BEMT encourages me to investigate fields I hadn’t previously considered.

One of the many reasons I love NYU is that it fosters academic creativity and flexibility. Not many schools motivate students to dip their toes into as many potential career paths as they please, but BEMT exemplifies just that. While these are a few examples, you can check out BEMT courses like Sports Economics, Producing for Television, The Future of Streaming, and Media Audiences, just to name a few. You really can make the minor exactly what you want it to be and figure out what industries you like most, which is what college is all about.