Ownership Concepts and Funding Types

Ownership Concepts:
Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)
In the 1920's the British government wanted to set up a radio broadcasting system. A man called Lord Reith decided to look over to the US to take influence from the US model and they didn't like it. They thought it was full of low quality content to attract mass audiences. The UK government decided they did not want to fund broadcasting companies directly because they were scared they could be called bias by the public so they decided to set up the licence fee the public would pay which would go straight to the broadcasting companies. Lord Reith was named the first director general of the BBC and said "We have founded a system based on public service rather than public exploitation." The BBC's remit is to "Inform, Educate and Entertain" in that order.

Commercial Broadcasting
In 1955 under the Churchill government they conservatives decided they wanted to make a new TV channel to rival the BBC. So they founded ITV to b e a commercially run channel but they weren't aloud to do what they wanted they set regulations they had to meet. For example when they first started ITV had to show 8 hours of religion programs a week, now it is only one. In 1964 BBC2 was founded and in 1982 Channel 4 was founded which was originally funded from the levy from ITV.

Global Companies
Media ownership is increasingly concentrated into the hands of a small number of companies. 95% of the worlds media is owned by a handful of companies. A number of companies which is owned under the same ownership is called a conglomerate.

Vertical Integration (owning stuff in different sectors)
The tenancy for all the sectors within a media industry to become part of of the same company. EG. Film industry, distribution company and cinemas, these cannot be owned by one person or one company. Many countries have laws against this.

Horizontal Integration / monopolization
The tenancy for a company to try to increase it's market share by either buying rival companies within a sector or by making rival companies go bust by out competing them.

Funding Types:
The Licence Fee
The Licence fee is a system mainly used by the UK which first came around in 1926 to fund the BBC because if the government funded it with tax money the citizens of the UK would complain that the BBC could be potentially bias towards the government.

Subscription
Over the last 10 years subscription services such as Netflix has risen in popularity due for value for money, you can pay less than £10 a month and get access to a very wide range of films and TV shows. This is popular especially in the UK because you don't need to pay a TV licence fee to have services such as Netflix.

One-off payment to own product
Services like Sky offer a service called Sky Movies where you can buy or rent films for a certain price. Methods like this use to be popular but are not so popular anymore because of services such as Netflix and Disney Plus.

Pay per View
Services like Sky Sports offer one of payments for events such as boxing. These tend to be successful because they only normally do this with really popular boxers like Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua which attracts mass audiences because their is normally no other way these can be watched, legally anyway.


Sponsorship
Sponsorship is a very popular way to increase a companies revenue. This is different from normal ads because these are places in at specific places and before a specific show. For example if a toy company wants to reach out t a specific audience, eg. kids. They will put their advert just before a popular TV show so it can appeal to as many members of their target audience as possible.

Advertising
This way of funding is the most popular way to do. Most TV shows, ones that are not government run have adverts between their shows or in between running shows and what they'll do is put random adverts in this gap. Companies will pay the TV companies to have their advert put in these gaps and the plan for them is to get as many people to buy the product as possible.

Product Placement
A product placement is where a company pays money to have their product on screen. For example Apple could pay £10,000 to have all of the actors in the production to have IPhones. This way of funding can be very successful because some viewers of films really look up to actors in the films and would want to buy the things they own.

Private Capital
This way of funding is that the producer/director/creator would fund their project themselves.A man called Robert Rodriguez famously funded one of his early films by volunteering himself for science experiments, he raised around £3500 for doing this.

Crowd-funding
Crowdfunding had became a very popular way for start up directors to raise money for their films and TV shows. A website I found called 'www.crowdfunder.co.uk' is a website that crowdfunds all types of projects including TV and film. The film 'Wish I was Here' made in 2013 raised over 3 million dollars from 46,000 people. On average that's around $65 dollars per donation and this film made over 5 and a half million dollars worldwide.

Development Funds
Companies like the British Film Institution (BFI) are known for giving people developments funds. Development funds is a loan system that covers the cost for production, obviously the whole production process for TV and film. The film Great Expectations (2012) was funded by the BFI  and made over 5 million pounds worldwide.