Ownership and Funding in the TV and Film Industry

Public service broadcasting in the UK refers to broadcasting intended to benefit the public rather than focusing or commercializing society. In the 1920's the UK government began thinking about how to start a type of broadcasting, this was radio at the time as the UK thought radio was a better option for the time. When thinking about this they referred to the U.S commercial model and decided they didn't like the way they were doing it. They said that it produced programmes that were mindless entertainment for the masses. This is when the UK Government decided that they wanted to create programmes that were valuable to the public and educational. They decided that they were not going to fund this directly as this would create accusations about it being a propaganda channel For the government. The way they decided to fund this was 'The license fee' this is when the BBC was born and in 1926 the British broadcasting corporation began broadcasting radio. in 1936 the BBC began broadcasting TV. The Licence fee is what we call a TV licence today but back then would have been for any type of broadcasting. This is called a monopoly.

In the 1950's the UK government decided to introduce a rival television broadcasting company but this time it would be funded commercially. This new TV broadcasting company was called Independent Television (ITV). This company started broadcasting Television in 1954 this creates a Duopoly. However the UK government imposed regulations on ITV which were based on service principles - I.e. Educational content, children's programmes, religious programs and news programmes. A purely commercial company would not want to do this as programmes such as the ones stated do not maximize audience viewer ship. Audiences are the product made and sold by commercial media company's.

The third channel was then created in 1964 and it was called BBC 2. This was then followed by the channel 4 which was created in 1982 this was the fourth channel that was created, This channel was funded by  a levy from the ITV companies. This channel commissioned everything, they did not make any of their own TV shows.

All of these channels were terrestrial television which meant they were on the ground. We now have a thing called satellite TV which is transmitted above the ground using a satellite. We also have the option of cable TV which is below the ground as the cables are ran under the ground. With satellite TV there is the option to purchase and download additional things such as box sets or movies and even pay per view.

Global media is media ownership, this is increasingly concentrated into the hands of a small number of companies. 95% of the worlds media companies are owned by multiple different smaller companies.  A conglomerate is a group of companies all under the same owner ship. 

Vertical integration is the tendency for all the sectors within a media industry to become part of the same company (e.g. the film making industry, distribution companies and cinemas. Many companies have laws against this. 

Horizontal integration is when the tendency for a company to try and increase its market share by either buying rival companies within a sector or by making rival companies go bust by out competing them.

Monopolization is the domination of a market or commodity to the exclusion of others. monopolization domination - social control by dominating.