Ownership
Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)
There are two different types of
broadcasting the first is Public Service broadcasting and that is all about
serving the public when broadcasting things. When the BBC was first set up in
1926 it only broadcasted radio but wanted to remain free of the government and
commercial use nevertheless so it set up the license fee to fund it. The reason
being is they didn’t want to be funded by the government in case it might be
used as an instrument of propaganda and didn’t want to be funded be commercial
use either as they didn’t want to exploit the public or even be in it just for
making money so the set up the license fee to escape these pressures. The point
of being of the BBC was to educate, inform and entertain the public whilst
leading the public taste in presenting the best of human knowledge, endeavour
and achievement and also to bring the nation together as one man by doing so
they would be serving the public rather than using the public as an instrument
to make money as a commercial broadcasting company would do. Up until 1936 they
only broadcast radio but then in 1936 they started broadcasting television as
well and until ITV came along in 1954 they were the only company on the air
having a ‘monopoly effect’ on the market but this changed when ITV came around.
Commercial Broadcasting
When ITV came around it was the first
commercial broadcasting and other than the BBC the only company on the air but
there was a big difference between the BBC and ITV, the nature of the audience.
With ITV because it is a commercial broadcasting company the main aim is to
make money and how do they make money? By selling their product which is us,
the audience. The audience is the product they are selling and they make money doing
so by allowing adverts to be played by big companies trying to sell their
products so by competing for views they are really competing for more product
to sell to the companies. In reality commercial broadcasting companies don’t
care about what the audience wants like public service broadcasting does,
commercial broadcasting only wants views for product to sell however although
this is what they want when ITV was set up it was placed under some laws and
regulations. These laws and regulations were that ITV had to show a certain
amount of hours a week for religious, children’s, news, documentaries and
educational programmes along with others but the trouble is that these
programmes don’t get a lot of views and commercial broadcasting companies would
rather do it but as the years have gone on the amount of hours they have had to
show has decreased but they still have to show some and when Channel 4 came
about in 1982 it was set under some other regulations. Channel 4 is a
commercially funded public service broadcaster which doesn’t make much sense.
They have a remit to be innovative, experimental and distinctive. When Channel
4 was first set up ITV was given their advertising space but because it
targeted such a minor audience, which is unusual for a commercial broadcasting
company, nobody wanted to advertise on it so there would often be no adverts
played and it seemed it would not be able to make money from it at all. As the
years went on Channel 4 seemed to become bigger and started to become popular and
going into the 21st century it even gained its own rights to the
advertising space on the channel but is it the same as it used to be? As the
years have gone on Channel 4 has become less of a public service broadcaster
and more a commercial broadcaster but it still has to maintain the remit that
was placed upon it when it first started so it still maintains some of its
original qualities.
Corporate Ownership
With companies there can be some risks to
it like how if it went bankrupt you would have to lose your money and fortune
but this is where corporate ownership comes in. Corporate ownership is where
someone sets up a company and then the company becomes an entity of its own so
if the worst did happen you would not have to pay the price for it a good example
of the would be News Corp. As successful as News Corp is if the worst did
happen and it went bankrupt because Rupert Murdoch set it up as a Corporate
Ownership he would not have to risk losing his fortune if the company itself
went under and then collapsed so by doing this he has protected himself from
risk of losing his fortune by setting the company up as its own entity by using
corporate ownership. Most companies will do this especially if they are under
private ownership but what is private ownership?
Private Ownership
Private ownership is rather simple, it
is simply where a company is not owned by the government and not run by them
either, most big corporations will be privately owned and a good example of
this is once again News Corp where Rupert Murdoch privately owns the company.
However when a corporation is set up it will often be run by a board and have a
chair person, for example in News Corp Rupert Murdoch will be the chairman of
the company but the board could vote him out, but if they wanted to do that they
would have to buy all of his shares and the person that owns most of the shares
would be the majority shareholder.
Global Ownership
With global ownership this happens when a
company owns many assets overseas as well as others in their own nation, that
way they are not restricting themself nationally and are instead going global
with their company creating global ownership. There are 6 big companies that
have global ownership and are regarded as the biggest going from low to high
there is; Viacom with $22.96 billion assets, News Corporation with $54.384
billion assets, Time warner with $66.524 billion assets, The Walt Disney
company with $69.206 billion assets, Sony with $137.7 billion assets and
finally regarded as the biggest company with global ownership, General Electric
with a grand total of $751.216 billion assets. A lot of these companies are
predictable on what they own and how they make their money such as The Walt
Disney Company own a lot of media based companies such as Walt Disney Pictures,
Touchstone Pictures, Marvel Studios, Buena Vista international and many more
and how Sony own all the PlayStation consoles, Sony Pictures Animation, Sony
Pictures Digital Networks, Columbia Pictures and many more. This also applies
to Time Warner and News Corp in how it’s predictable in how they make their
money such as Time Warner own HBO, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros and
many more and when it comes to News Corp again it owns many companies such as
20th Century fox, Sky, and a lot of Newspapers and magazines such as
The sun, The Times, The New York Post, Fiji Times, The Australian and many
more. For these companies it’s predictable for how they make their money and
similar to Viacom although not many people have heard of it but it owns
companies such as Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, MTV, Nick Jr. and many more
but however with General electric it owns many companies but most of its profit
is from non-media companies such as General Electric energy, General Electric
Appliances and general Electric Technology Infrastructure among other but it
does own media companies such as NBC universal, Bravo, A&E Television
networks and many others. The point here is that these companies are massive
and between 6 companies they own most of the world’s media and this is a
daunting thought that every time you purchase a form of media it is likely to
be going to one of these 6 companies no matter what you buy.
Vertical Integration
There are two types of integration and as
it suggests it is the mixing of two or more companies when they come together more
often than not by being bought out by one of them. Vertical integration is
where a company buys all of the stages in a product line, looking at cinema
distribution if a company were to own the production company, the distributer
and the expedition section this would be an example of a fully successful
vertical integration, however there are laws to prevent full integration so
companies cannot do this anymore. Time Warner who own Warner Bros studios also
own Warner Bros distribution and used to own Warner Bros cinema village, this
shows them owning all stages of the process however they have since had to get
rid of Warner Bros cinema village due to the laws and restrictions preventing them
from keeping it as they weren’t allowed to have full vertical integration. Now
that we have covered vertical integration we can move onto horizontal
integration.
Horizontal Integration
With
horizontal integration unlike vertical it doesn’t cover all stages of the
process instead it concentrates on one. For example when Disney bought Pixar
animation this would be horizontal integration as they are both production
companies so they are working in the same stage of the process and they would
work across to try and own all of the companies involved in the production
process, although there are laws against this again to try and prevent
companies from doing so if it were to happen it would create what’s called a
monopoly effect and they have been accounts of this happening in the past.
Monopoly
A monopoly effect occurs when a company
owns all of the competition in the production line it’s in, for example if
Disney owned all the production companies it would have a monopoly effect but
there are laws against this although companies have done it before. The BBC
done it when it was first set up in 1936 but this was purely because it was the
only company out there and there was no competition for them however this
changed when ITV came along. A monopoly effect is more desirable for a company that’s
interest lies in making money more than a company like the BBC where it’s a
Public service broadcaster but this is how it happens and now in the modern age
there are laws to prevent this from happening.
Sources of funding
for film and TV in the UK
·
License fee – The BBC runs off a
License fee instead of commercial funding
·
One off purchases – Going to the
Cinema, Buying a DVD or even a free view box
·
Subscription – Sky or Virgin both run
off a subscription based fee for their services is subscription based
·
Pay Per View – Sky box office gets
paid for each view a film will get
·
Sponsorship – X factor is sponsored
by certain products and will have an advert played at the start and end of each
ad break
·
Advertising – Spot ads will appear on
commercial channels in between a program
·
Product placement – BMW might pay for
James Bond to drive their newest car in the next big Bond film
·
Private capital – Individuals who
will invest in films to return profits
·
Finical aid and development funds –
BFI lottery funding for certain films such as the Kings speech is funded by the
lottery
·
Crowd Funding – Some smaller
companies might ask for donations to fund future projects another term for this
is ‘kickstarting’
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