Ownership

Ownership

Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)

In the mid 20’s Britain looked across the water to see America’s commercial broadcasting which basically exploited people using terrible programmes to expose them to adverts. Britain did not like this at all and in 1925 John Reith issued a statement which said the main purpose of British television (BBC) would be to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ and also ‘remain free from government and commercial pressures’ , but how could this be done with no ad or government funding? With the introduction of TV in 1936 it was decided that people would have to pay a small fee for the BBC service in the form of what is known as a TV licence. Public Service broadcasting provides a service unlike commercial media which exists purely for ads to target people.

Commercial Broadcasting

In 1954 the UK introduced the first commercial broadcaster which is the ITV network. Unlike PSB commercial broadcasting provides a service to the advertisers by using programmes which appeal to the masses in order to show off their products to largest target audiences. America had already done this for 30 years or so using drama filled soap operas, to attract women, to sell them soap!! However ITV is still regulated by PSB guidelines which instead of filling the channel with crap, they have to contain a portion of educative or informative material. With the introduction of more commercial channels to the UK these regulations have reduced. In 1982 A channel was set-up to be commercial but has to contain ‘innovative programmes and target minority audiences’ but how could a commercial channel target minority audiences and still have funding? Channel 4 contains a concoction of both commercial and public service broadcasting, with both the adverts and innovative programming and therefor niche audiences. In the 80’s ITV was still a regional channel which had networks in each county I.E. – ITV Anglia, each of these regional set-ups gave a slice of money to produce channel 4, in return each of the regional ITV channels were able to produce adverts for their own region on channel 4’s network during the breaks recouping their money from the funding.

Corporate Ownership

A corporation is an entity in its own right, so one person cannot be liable for a corporate.

Private Ownership

Private ownership is property which is owned by non-governmental legal entities.

Global Companies

A global or multinational corporation is a company which is registered as having operations in trading in more than one country. There are many examples of this, the most famous being Nike or Coca-Cola.

Vertical Integration

Vertical Integration describes when a big media conglomerate owns businesses in all the sectors of an industry. A good example of vertical integration is in the film industry. As if a production company make a film they sell it to distributors for a price, distributors will then sell it to exhibitioners like cinemas for a higher price than what they bought it and like-wise for the cinemas who choose the price of films to make a profit on top of that when selling to consumers. Warner Bro’s used to own all of these assets (production, distribution and exhibition) but this was disallowed due to the profit being made and not shared.

Horizontal Integration

Horizontal Integration can be also shown with an example of the film industry. News Corporation own 20^th century fox. If they bought, say, Universal they would be increasing their market share of the film production sector.

Monopoly
there are laws against monopoly’s where you cannot control an entire market. Media companies are constantly trying to monopoly yet it is illegal to own the whole control of a single market, I.E Fox couldn’t buy out every other production company as then it would own the whole production market.

 

Sources of funding

Licence fee – Your standard TV licence – pays for the BBC

One off payments – Such as buying a DVD

Subscription – When you subscribe to a media service I.E Sky

Pay per view – Pay for individual media broadcast such as sports events

Sponsors – Tv programme sponsors such as cheeky bingo and Jeremy Kyle

Advertising – Spot adverts on commercial channels such as the ITV

Product placement – When a company pays for a famous individual to use their product such as James Bond and BMW

Private capital – Individual investment from rich individuals such as Warren Buffet, use their own money to invest.

Financial aid / development funds – As when the BFI hand out lottery funding money

Banks – your standard loan of money from the bank

Crowd funding – donations from supporters and fans who each gives a small amount which in total adds up to a fair bit. A good example of this is a lady called Amanda Palmer who raised 1.2 million through crowd funding.