Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models



Download 4.05 Mb.
Page2/4
Date03.02.2018
Size4.05 Mb.
#39499
1   2   3   4

BBC – The BBC has been around for almost a century. The first broadcast was in June 1920 on the radio and it captured many peoples imagination, and also marked a turning point in the British public’s attitude to radio. John Reith was appointed general manager of the BBC in December 1922 and under his exceptional leadership the BBC grew dramatically. Reith’s aims at the BBC were to educate the public, but also entertaining them and using the platform for campaigning and social action. The 1920’s saw the BBC become a professional broadcasting organisation for radio, and saw the end of amateur radio enthusiasts. In the 1930’s the BBC continually invested and developed.
The first experimental television broadcasts were aired in 1932, and the BBC became the first broadcaster to begin a regular scheduled TV service in 1936, but television broadcasting altogether was suspended from 1 September 1939 until 7 June 1946 because of the Second World War. However, the BBC’s radio broadcasting remained during the war, and it began to put a lighter feel to their presentation to keep up the public’s morale during the war.
The radio was still very important during the 1950’s because television sets were expensive, and early in the decade the world’s longest running radio soap opera was born, it was called ‘The Archers’. Blue Peter, a programme for children, was also born in the 1950’s, and it still runs today.
The 1960’s saw the birth of colour in television, and also the birth of many famous BBC programmes, such as ‘Doctor Who’ (which still runs today) and ‘The Forsyte Saga’ (which became the first British television programme to be sold to the Soviet Union).
In 1974, the BBC’s teletext service, Ceefax was created initially to provide subtitling, but it developed into providing news and becoming an information service. In the 1980’s the BBC created a soap called ‘Eastenders’, which still runs today. During this decade a reporter for the BBC in Africa, called Michael Buerk, alerted the world through the BBC News Channel to a famine of biblical proportions in Ethiopia, which ultimately le the Bob Geldof’s International Live Aid concert in 1985, which was masterminded by the BBC.
In the 1990’s Princess Diana’s funeral was broadcast by the BBC, and it was watched by nineteen million people, the largest outside broadcast ever mounted by the BBC.
CBBC, a television channel showing children’s programmes, was created in 1985. However, it was split in 2002 to create CBeebies, a channel aimed at very young children.
In the 2000’s the BBC embraced the digital revolution by introducing ‘BBC iPlayer’, which is an online service you can get on your mobile or computer, and it allows you to catch-up on shows that have been played on a BBC channel in the last thirty days. The BBC have also increased their radio services during the decade, and you can now listen to the BBC’s radio stations on your computer or phone.

Sky – The history is Sky begins in the 1980’s, when the company was founded by Brian Haynes, and it was called Satellite Televsion (SATV). In October 1981 SATV began test transmissions on the Orbital Test Satellite after the European Space Agency allowed the company to test the satellite for commercial television. The low-powered satellite forced it to broadcast to cable systems rather than directly to individual satellite dishes.
SATV began regular transmissions in April 1982, becoming Europe’s first ever cable and satellite channel. However, it was only able to broadcast in certain countries, excluding the UK, and due to their poor audience SATV suffered financially.
In June 1983, the shareholders of SATV agreed a five million offer to give News International 65% of the company. News International was run by Rubert Murdoch, who would play a key role from this part on in SATV’s future.
In January 1984 SATV was renamed to Sky Channel. Murdoch expanded its broadcasting hours and also the programming line-up to provide a mix of English-language sports and entertainment shows, along with music programmes.
The viewing figures in December 1983 were 291,470, but in April 1987 just over nine million were viewing the Sky Channel via cable viewing. Despite the increase in viewership, the company continued to lose money, and for the year of 1987 alone £10 million was lost.
Murdoch bid for the satellite broadcasting licence in 1986 but lost out to BSB. Murdoch tried to join BSB after failing with his bid, but he was rejected.
In 1989 the Sky Network was born, which was a four channel Sky Television package. This was after Disney pulled out of a deal with Sky, which hurt the company’s viewership. In May of 1989 Sky prepared to give away set topboxes and dishes to new customers in a bid to gain more customers, but this venture was not helped with the failed Disney deal looming over the company’s head.
In 1990, Sky Network and BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting) were in financial difficulty, and in November that year there was a 50:50 financial merger, with a management takeover by Sky. The new company formed what we have today, BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting), and all of BSB’s channels were scrapped in favour of Sky’s channels.
BSkyB began to sell off some of their satellite’s to cover some of the company’s losses. The company also brought on board New Zealand television executive Same Chisholm to manage the day-to-day operations and build the subscriber base, and the company then began to move into profit.
BSkyB became the UK’s largest digital subscription company, and by mid 1994 BSkyB was in three and a half million households in Britain. Fast forward to today, and Sky is installed in thirty six percent of households in the UK and Ireland, with over ten million subscribers.
Sky, like the BBC, has embraced the digital revolution and now they offer a lot of products to catch-up on your favourite programmes (Sky+), and Sky also has apps for your phone or gaming consoles where you can watch their programmes via their app.

Key Players for BBC and Sky

BBC – One key player at the BBC was Greg Dyke, who was the BBC Director General from 2000 until 2004. Dyke replaced John Birt as the Director General in the BBC, and he was famously quoted as saying he would ‘cut the crap’ from the BBC. What Greg Dyke was referring to was the complex internal market that his predecessor had introduced at the BBC, which make employee’s turn away from making programmes for the BBC and instead turn them into managers. Dyke reduced administration costs from 24% of the total income down to 15%. Greg Dyke was popular among the BBC staff, and his management style was reportedly seen as being more open and risk-taking than his predecessor. Jonathan Gifford, who worked for BBC Magazines in BBC Worldwide experienced both John Birt’s and Greg Dyke’s management styles. He said ‘Dyke came across well. He was direct, sensible and approachable. His vision for the BBC was inspirational’.
Greg Dyke had two major achievements during his time at the BBC. In 2002, he introduced the Freeview terrestrial digital transmission platform with six additional BBC channels, and he even persuaded Sky TV to join the consortium. By mid-2007, Freeview could be seen by more than half the population.
In 2001, Dyke controversially described the BBC as ‘hideously white’, based on statistics that showed the BBC’s management structure was 98% white. Dyke said ‘The figures we have at the moment suggest that quite a lot of people from different ethnic backgrounds that we do attract to the BBC leave. Maybe they don’t feel at home, maybe they don’t feel welcome’. Greg Dyke then set a target that by 2003, 10% of the BBC’s UK workforce and 4% of management would be from ethnic minority backgrounds. In September 2004, Dyke won an award for his remarks at Empower Scotland, which fights against racism.
The Hutton Report signalled the end of Greg Dyke’s reign at the BBC. Dyke resigned on 29 January 2004, after the publication of the report. Hutton described Dyke’s approach to checking news stories as ‘defective’.
Dyke was interviewed by GMTV a day after his resignation, and said ‘We were shocked it was so black and white… We knew mistakes had been made but we didn’t believe they were only by us’.

Another key player for the BBC was Greg Dyke’s successor, Mark Thompson. Thompson replaced Greg Dyke as Director General of the BBC after the decision to appoint him was unanimous among the BBC Board of Governors. The appointment was widely praised. On his first day, he announced several management changes.


In 2007 it had emerged that the BBC had been involved in a number of editorial guidelines breaches. Thompson submitted his report to the BBC Trust, and he outlined to BBC Trust the actions he would take to restore confidence in the BBC. Thompson was interviewed by Gavin Esler for Newsnight, and he said ‘From now on, if it [deceiving the public] happens we will show people the door’.
In October 2008, Thompson cut short a family holiday to return to deal with the Russell Brand Show prank telephone call row. Thompson took the executive decision to suspend BBC’s highest paid presenter, Jonathan Ross, from all his BBC work for three months without pay. However, Thompson reiterated the BBC’s commitment to Ross’s style of edgy comedy, saying ‘BBC audiences accept that, in comedy, performers attempt to push the line of taste’.
Thompson was the Director General of the BBC when it announced it would share the rights to broadcast all of Formula One’s Grand Prix. Mark Thompson was accused of having a pro-Israeli editorial stance. In May 2011, Thompson ordered the lyrics ‘free Palestine’ in a rap in BBC 1 Extra to be censored. In January 2010, Thompson was criticised over his £834,000 salary, which identified him as the highest paid employee of any public sector organisation in the UK. Mark Thompson resigned in early 2013, saying ‘It is the appropriate time to hand over to a successor’.

Sky – Sky has one main key player, and that is Rupert Murdoch, who has been with the company since the beginning. Murdoch is the founder, Chairman and CEO of global media holding company News Corporation, the world’s second-largest media conglomerate, and its successors News Corp and 21st Century Fox after the conglomerate split in June 2013.
Murdoch formed BSkyB in 1990 after he merged his old company, Sky Network with BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting) after the two companies were in financial difficulty. By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of over $5 billion.
After he formed BSkyB, they quickly dominated the British Pay-TV market ever since. Although Murdoch has formed a very dominant company that is worth billions, he has not been far from controversy. In 2011, Murdoch came under fire because a newspaper he owns, News of the World, was caught up in a phone hacking scandal. Murdoch has always said that he never had any idea of what was going on at the paper because since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that the News of the World was ‘just 1% of this’, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid, and he added that he had not considered resigning.
On July 2013, Exaro and Channel 4 news broke the story of a secretly recorded tape. The tape was recorded by Sun journalists and in it Murdoch can be heard telling them that the whole investigation as one big fuss over nothing, and that he, or his successors, would take care of any journalists who went to prison. He said ‘Why are the police behaving in this way? It’s the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing’.
In the UK today, his media empire remains under fire as investigators continue to probe reports of other phone hacking.
In 2011, Sky suffered a 15% fall in profits, with only 40,000 signing up in three months which was its lowest subscriber rate for five years, and this was due to the phone hacking scandal in which Murdoch’s companies were involved in.

Virgin – Another commercial Director I’m going to look at is Richard Branson, who is the founder of the Virgin Group, which is made up of four hundred companies, making Branson the seventh richest person in America (according to Forbes magazine).
In 1970 Branson set up his own mail-order record business, and this led him to open a chain of record stores in 1972 known as Virgin Records (later changed to Virgin Megastores). The Virgin brand expanded very quickly, and during the 1980’s Branson set up Virgin Atlantic and also expanded his Virgin Records music label. In the 1990’s Branson expanded even more, creating a train business called Virgin Trains, and then he created an airline business called Virgin Airlines. In the late 1990’s Branson also created a mobile network, called Virgin Mobile.
Richard Branson has also had his share of controversy though, with many people criticising his business strategies. Branson’s business empire is owned by a complicated series of offshore trusts and companies. Branson has also came under criticism by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation organisation for profiting from selling trips to SeaWorld and similar theme parks that hold dolphins, whales and other sea life in captivity for entertainment purposes.

Technologies Sky and BBC offer their viewers

Sky – Sky is a great example of a company who have embraced the digital revolution and reaped all of the benefits, with no drawbacks. Sky introduced apps for your mobile phone, Smart TV, gaming console, and tablet, which allow their viewers to watch Sky on their device just as they would from the actual Sky box. This allows Sky to reach a far greater audience, as not many people like sitting in front of their television all of the time, it enables Sky’s customers to watch the service lying in bed, or on the go. Some of Sky’s apps include; Sky+, SkyGo, SkyService, SkyMovies, SkyWiFi, SkySports, Sky Sports Live Centre, and Sky News.
Sky have also recognised and embraced the importance of social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They have used these social media websites to display their advertisements for their latest deals or whatever programme is new to a Sky channel.
Sky has introduced technologies such as Sky+, which allows its subscribers to record, pause and instantly rewind live television at their own pleasure. The system works by using an internal hard-drive inside the Sky+ box. For example, this allows its subscribers to watch live television, pause the programme during the break to make a cup of tea or go to the bathroom, and then come back and fast-forward through the break.
Sky used a £10 per month subscription fee for Sky+, but the fee was discontinued for subscribers from July 2007, but will continue for Freesat from Sky use.
Sky also introduced HD versions of all of their usual channels. This will introduce high-definition channels for all of the channels that their subscriber is currently getting in their package. The fee for this is £10 a month, however it only gets the viewer the high-definition version of the channels that they already get in their package, so it’s basically £10 extra on top of your usual cost, just for a higher definition.
Sky also own NowTV, which is intended to be a rival towards Netflix. NowTV is an app you can get on your mobile phone, tablet, gaming console, Smart TV or through your computer. It is a streaming service owned by BSkyB, but you can also get all of the channels you get on your television through the app. Customers can also buy a NowTV box, which is basically a little box with a remote that you can hook up to your television and use the NowTV service that way. Some examples for fees involving the NowTV service are £10 per month for unlimited streaming of movies, £10 for a 24 hour pass to all of the sports channels, or you can simply just rent or buy a single movie (prices vary) from the SkyShop.

BBC – The BBC has also embraced the digital revolution to improve their customers viewing experience, and where they can view BBC’s channels and programmes. BBC iPlayer is the best example of how the BBC have used the digital age to their advantage. The iPlayer is an online service that allows you to watch any programme that was broadcast on any BBC channel in the last thirty days, after thirty days however the programme expires on the service and is no longer available. The iPlayer also comes in the form of an app for your phone, tablet, gaming console, or Smart TV. It can be accessed through your computer as well.
The BBC has created many apps which keeps their viewership informed, such as the BBC Sport app, the BBC News app, and the BBC Weather app, and the BBC CBeeBies Playtime app.
The BBC has also made it easier to listen to all of their radio channels. The public can now listen to BBC channels through the radio in their car, through the BBC website, or through the BBC Sports app. However, only sport related BBC radio channels (BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio 5 Live) are available through the BBC Sports app. Some of the BBC’s radio channels are also only available digitally, meaning you won’t be able to access certain radio channels through the radio in your car, examples are Radio 1 Extra, and BBC Radio 6.
Unlike Sky, the BBC have not used social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to advertise their programmes.

Income Generation for the BBC and Sky

Sky – Sky gain their money through their customers subscribing to packages which contain certain channels. There are different types of packages you can get, examples are; The Original Bundle, The Variety Bundle, The Family Bundle, The Movies Bundle, The Sports Bundle, The Complete Bundle. All of the prices for these packages vary, it just depends which package you were to choose.

Sky makes a lot of their money through their subscription service, which all offer a free Sky+HD box and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7” or a £100 reward of the customer’s choice. This all entices people to join Sky. The cheapest bundle available to customers is £21.50 per month, and the dearest bundle stands at £71.25 per month.


Sky also make their money through other ways. For example, all of the Sky channels show advertisements and Sky will receive money for doing so. This, again, adds into Sky’s revenue.
Sky also offers their subscribers pay-per-view events, such as boxing or wrestling matches. The viewer will have to pay a fee to watch the event, and this is another example of how Sky add to their revenue.
Sky has over ten million subscribers in the UK alone, which makes them the largest subscription broadcaster. Sky has been continuously making a profit every year from 2009 onwards, this was after they suffered a £127 million loss in 2008. Even in 2011, when Rupert Murdoch, who owns BSkyB, was caught up in the phone hacking scandal, Sky made a profit of £810 million, although the year before was £878 million in profits. In June 2014, Sky announced its financial figures for the past year. The turnover stood at £7,632 million, and their profit (after tax) was £865 million.
Sky also gain revenue through their Sky Broadband package, which provides an internet service to their customers. The cheapest deal for this is £7.50 per month which gets you up to 17mb, and the dearest package for Sky Broadband is £20 per month, which gives you up to 38mb. In order to install Sky Broadband, the customers will have to install Sky Line Rental as well, which is £16.40 per month on top of the price for the Sky Broadband.
Sky customers will also have to pay £6.95 for Sky to deliver the router. If the Sky customer also installs a fibre connection, it will cost them £30 to activate it.



Download 4.05 Mb.

Share with your friends:
1   2   3   4




The database is protected by copyright ©ininet.org 2024
send message

    Main page