How is TV funded?
What are you getting?
Television has massively grown over the past few years due to the advances in technology and the growing demands for content and channels. This means the ways in which they are funded and structured has largely changed since the production of TV.
There are three different types of Television:
Public Service Broadcasters -will show programmes that are informative and entertaining and aim to improve society. BBC is the single PSB in the UK that has no links to the government and is completely public. The annual cost of a colour TV licence is £145.50 (as from 1 April
2010). A black and white TV licence is £49. BBC uses its funding to pay for the many
services that it offers. Since the BBC’s move to Media City in
Salford, spending rose by approximately £15 Million in its last year. The BBC is expanding, therefore more money
is being earned by staff rather than stars and talent costs have also reduced
in recent times. Modern time effects decisions on how much
funding the BBC can receive as there has been a political debate on whether the
license fee should increase as the UK is in recession.
Commercial -will air advertisements at intervals in programmes and have sponsors for some shows aiming for the shareholders to receive profit. For example, ITV is owned by itvplc. It also has network programmes that show popular subjects in shows (entertainment, drama, sports, etc.). Conglomerates work with ITV to broadcast PSB programmes with Granada as a news provider under different regions. ITV have a selection of portfolio channels along with it's main one (such as, ITV2 ITV3 and ITV4).
Government owned -this means a channel can become an independent self sufficient company that runs itself yet is owned and set up in 1977 by the government. Channel 4 was set up by the government after it was realised that more diverse programming needed to be available to young people. It is a commercial channel but is
publicly owned. It is known for being able to air programmes that are
controversial as it doesn’t receive any public funding. It is also a corporate
company as it is not run by the government but is governed by directors. They do not generate any profit as all money
made by the company is used to develop new programmes and channel content. It has many channels and services, including
Film4 which supports film making in the UK. The company invests in the UK’s Creative
Economy massively by working with and training talent in the industry.
New Technologies
And new developments
Due to the Spectrum Scarcity, the digital switchover was set up to eliminate this. Digital TV is a new technology in the UK
that allows more channels to be accessed via one set-top box or digital ready
TV. This is because there is more room in the bandwidth.
High Definition (HD) is a new development
allowing higher quality picture and sound on screens that have a large number
of pixels (720-1080p). The programmes, however, must be transmitted in HD and
so many broadcasters such as BBC and Sky now have HD ready channels.
The option to record, rewind and pause live
TV is now available. They are stored in computer like hard drives with the TV
box. This means programmes can be recorded and watched at another time.
On demand, is a new service that allows
certain programmes to be viewed at different times from the TV schedule. This
can be online, via the set-top box or even on gaming platforms such as the Wii
and Xbox.
Mobile phones can now be used to watch television on the move.
It us unknown on what the future of TV is but it is speculated that the TV will become more like a PC platform as new developments show the online world is heavily impacted the way in which people now watch programmes. Furthermore, due to much political debate, as the UK is currently struggling in the economy, the license fee may be reduced so a wider audience can be reached.
