The Many Faces Of The British Media
INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, the British media as well as the rest of the world media , have seen an unprecedented amount of change, in quantity, technology, and wider public participation. New media modes have come to the forefront: newspapers and radio have been joined by television and the internet. The speed of transmission has increased, and many more readers/viewers participate both passively, and actively.
The overall aim of this paper is to explore current-day British media language, and how it has changed, or is changing, and how this affects people’s view of the world. Also, to look at the reverse, at how the new British media may be affecting language. Of course, in all this, language is inevitably interwoven with broader trends and issues.
Three main topics provide the cornerstones of the present paper, and these make up the three chapters.
Chapter I, Mass-media in Britain, contains subchapters which outline and discuss how British media has evolved and changed in recent years.
Chapter II, New alternative British Media models, explores various ways in which British media is realized at the current time, focusing on the representation of particular topics such as Web media so popular nowadays . We will show how these can influence the perceptions of readers or the audience.
Chapter III , Future Media in UK- BBC iPlayer, looks at the high-tech level employed by the British Media and analyses its success and downfalls.
Each chapter of this paper therefore has a separate main theme. However, in another way, the chapters overlap, in that certain key points recur.
Globalization versus fragmentation may be the most noticeable two-way alternative in British media. News reports leap across the globe in seconds, and this has resulted in some similarities in media styles across widely separated geographical regions. In other cases, the reverse has happened, the immensity of the world has led to a tightening of small-scale networks, resulting in some fragmentation, as people try to maintain local ties and their own identity.
This paper is an attempt to address some fundamental concerns underlying the British media studies. I first outline the academic and theoretical roots of this field. Then I discuss its major disciplinary dimensions and critical issues.
The specific aim of this paper is to set out the approximate sequence of development of the present-day set of British mass-media. It is also to indicate major turning points and to tell briefly something of the circumstances of time and place in which different British media acquired their public definitions in the sense of their perceived utility for audiences and their role in society. These definitions have tended to form early in the history of any given medium and to have been subsequently adapted in the light of newer media and changed conditions. This is a continuing process.
The paper concludes with some reflections on the two main dimensions of variation between British media: one relates to the degree of freedom and the other to the conditions of use.
CHAPTER I. MASS-MEDIA IN BRITAIN
I.1. British media-evolution and perspectives
The domestic media market in the UK is becoming ever more competitive . In broadcasting, the stable relationship that existed for many years between the BBC, a public corporation funded by a licence fee, and the Independent Television sector, a network of private regional broadcasters funded by advertising revenue, has fragmented, as a consequence of the arrival of satellite and cable companies whose main revenues are derived from subscriptions. Particularly significant is the rise and rise of SKY satellite TV and its multi-channel packages, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
The terrestrial stations themselves have also recently entered the digital market place, with varying success. The BBC’s non-subscription Free View service has so far proved moderately successful, delivering more dedicated programming aimed at niche audiences and subject areas.
However, ITV’s ventures into pay-view digital TV, launched as OnDigital in 1998, proved disastrous, being re-launched and then ending up as ITV digital in 2002 after incurring unsustainable losses.
The national newspaper market in the UK has always been a crowded one. There are currently nine daily and weekly up-market broadsheet titles and 10 tabloids that are distributed across the UK. This is by far the largest national newspaper press in Europe and has led some to question whether this is sustainable in a market the size of Britain. Long-term decline in readership figures (down 20% since 1990), rising production costs and falling advertising revenues have placed significant financial pressures across the sector, squeezing certain titles to the margins of viability.
These pressures are also evident at local and regional levels of the British newspaper market and have been exacerbated by the rise of free newspaper titles that are funded entirely by advertising revenue.
This intensifying competition has led to a growing concentration in ownership patterns both within and across British media sectors, as smaller outlets are acquired by multi-media corporations whose economies of scale protect them to some degree from market pressures.
Today, in the UK, the press is still characterised by a metropolitan focus – almost all its national newspapers are published in London, and its diversity, there are 11 national dailies, and 12 Sunday newspapers. Of these, 11 are tabloids, which focus mainly on light news and entertainment, whereas the so-called quality press is more focused on politics, economics and foreign news.
Regional and weekly newspapers, paid-for and free, concentrate almost entirely on local issues. Newspapers are free from political control and funded entirely by cover price and advertising. Working practices in newspapers and the broadcast media have been changed dramatically both by the opportunities provided by new technology and by the political and industrial climate created by the Thatcher government of the 1980s and unchanged in the 21st century.
In the broadcast industry, de-regulation since the 1990s has both fragmented the audience and, conversely, concentrated ownership. There are about 15 regional
commercial television licenses, though ownership is concentrated; hundreds of commercial radio stations, although the sector is characterised by large-groups; and there is also a new wave of community radio stations.
Television viewers can also access 24-hour news stations such as BBC 24, SKY News and CNN via cable and satellite and web sites complement many, if not most, of the news outlets.
The distinctive character of the UK media, metropolitan, historically rooted in an early emancipation from political party control of the press, thoroughly commercial in structure and organisation, yet with a seminal public service broadcasting institution at its core, is unique.
News time is time in relation to place: what matters is the fastest news from the most distant – or most important – place.
In the evolving British media landscape, opportunity abounds. The roots of British media studies are traceable in the inquiries about the relationship between media and culture. The early attempts to this direction started during the 1920s following the rise of British mass media forms like radio networks, newspapers and magazines of mass circulation, and after mid 1930s with the advent of television media.
The initial studies into British media were influenced by the Eurocentric obsessions on high cultureclaimed by many to be “the best that has been said and thought.” The media of the time were assigned the role of representing that high culture ignoring the world outside Europe and colonies of European powers. The period was marked by widespread British hegemony in media production and circulation with news agencies like Reuters and BBC, which projected the image of “media as powerful and influential, media as vehicles of nation-state or class propaganda, media as exemplars of modern technologically sophisticated professionalism”.
Development of academic media discourse, nevertheless, was remarkably slow during these formative years because it lacked a specific theoretical direction as a result of what Denis MacQuail (2002) calls “the absence of a fixed disciplinary base”.
Postmodernism promotes the worldview that the present is the age when identities are determined by “whose information is disseminated fastest” . It further recognizes the role of mass media in integrating people by reducing boundaries of space and time. It acknowledges the presence of multiple technologies as vehicles creating more spaces and more possibilities of switching across them. According to Carl Eric Rosengren, “As new media for communication have been created, the old ones have become specialized, but none have been completely eliminated”.This notion fully applies to British media’s evolution.
More than any other technologies for mass communication, contemporary media allow for a greater quantity of information transmission and retrieval, place more control over both content creation and selection in the hands of their users, and do so with less cost to the average consumer.
The Internet serves as the best example and, through digital convergence, will form the backbone of most future mediated communication. The Internet was designed to be decentralized, meaning that control is distributed to all users who have relatively equal opportunity to contribute content. The increased bandwidth of the Internet further enhances users’ ability to become content producers and to produce material that is fairly sophisticated at low cost. In addition, many of the new technologies in UK are more portable and, therefore, more convenient to use compared with older mass media.
These characteristics of the new media are breaking the foundations of our conception of mass communication. Today, media institutions are changing such that mass production is less mass. The explosion of available channels afforded by the new technologies contributes to the demassification of the media by diffusing the audience for any particular media product. This has resulted in channel specialization, and the old model of broadcasting to the masses has given way to market segmentation and targeting to niche audiences.
Although existing British media institutions are well positioned to adapt to these changing conditions, the fact that the new British media shrink the size of the audience for any particular channel is likely to create opportunities for others. That is, if smaller audiences mean reduced costs of production and distribution, then more content producers will be able to enter the media market. In the near future, the issue may be less about what media companies are doing to people and more about what people are doing with the media.
This is one reason why we find new media holding great potential as a resource for British press freedom and freedom of expression. They serve as a platform for dialogue across borders and allow for innovative approaches to the distribution and acquisition of knowledge. These qualities are vital to press freedom. But they may be undercut by attempts to regulate and censor both access and content.
As follows we will provide in short lines some advantages and less fortunate characteristics of the choice for one media or another, in order to underline the interconnectedness among all of the media in shaping the large picture of the British media diversity.
The book medium
Technology of movable type
Bound pages, codex form
Multiple copies
Commodity form
Multiple (secular) content
Individual in use
Claim to freedom of publication
Individual authorship
The newspaper medium
Regular and frequent appearance
Commodity form
Reference to current events
Public sphere functioes and less fortunate characteristics of the choice for one media or another, in order to underline the interconnectedness among all of the media in shaping the large picture of the British media diversity.
The book medium
Technology of movable type
Bound pages, codex form
Multiple copies
Commodity form
Multiple (secular) content
Individual in use
Claim to freedom of publication
Individual authorship
The newspaper medium
Regular and frequent appearance
Commodity form
Reference to current events
Public sphere functions
Urban, secular audience
Relative freedom
The film medium
Audiovisual technology
From public performance to private experience
Extensive (universal) appeal
Predominantly narrative fiction
More international than national in character
Subjection to social control
From mass to multiple markets
Television
Very large output, range and reach
Audiovisual content
Complex technology and organization
Public character and extensive regulation
National and international character
Very diverse content forms
Radio
Flexible and economical production
Flexible in use
Multiple contents
Relative freedom
Individualized use
Participant potential
Recorded music (phonogram) media
Multiple technologies of recording and dissemination
Low degree of regulation
High degree of internationalization
Younger audience
Subversive potential
Organizational fragmentation
Diversity of reception possibilities
The Internet as a medium
Computer-based technologies
Hybrid, non-dedicated, flexible character
Interactive potential
Private and public functions
Low degree of regulation
Interconnectedness
Ubiquity and delocatedness
Accessible to individuals as communicators
I.2. British newspapers , broadcast media and new age media
British Broadcast television – is going through a period of change with increasing digitilisation and interactive media cooperation. The biggest broadcast TV stations remain the BBC and SkyTV but these are supplemented by 250 cable and satellite TV stations and 1,100 independent television production companies.
This is a rapidly growing sector with cable and satellite and independent companies doubling in the period 2000-2008. This is a broad profession where 34% are freelance and people are judged by the quality of their work rather than their formal qualifications. Despite this, 70% have at least an undergraduate degree.
British Radio – the airwaves are dominated by the BBC , which has 12 distinct radio channels.
Interactive media – comprises collection of areas including web and internet, offline multimedia, electronic games and interactive TV.
Game design – the UK has one of the largest gaming industries. 48 of the world’s most profitable studios are based in the UK. The industry has been growing to7.5% from 2009-2012.
Some of the main Bristish Media organisations: the British Media Industry Group ,Cable Communications Association , ITV Network Centre, National Association of Press Agencies .
Some of the major industry bodies: Commonwealth Press Union, Institute of Local Television, Radio Joint Audience Research.
The major occupational/professional groups: Association of British Editors, British Society of Magazine Editors.
The main trade unions: Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union.
The UK Television
The five national networks (excluding satellite)
Cable and digital
Five national networks in the UK.
The main British TV channels are:
BBC 1 – since 1936, general interest programmes.
BBC 2 – minority and specialist interests.
ITV – broadcasting is approximately 33% informative and 66% light entertainment.
Channel 4 – since 1982, 15% educational programmes, encourages innovation and experiment.
Television viewing in Britain- overview
The most popular leisure pasttime
Average viewing time is over 25 hours a week
TV productions continue to win international awards
Half of the programmes are bought abroad
Children’s TV has been very active( Blue Peter on BBC 1)
“Youth TV” has been started recently
Presentation of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)
Six national stations.
Broadcasts: BBC 1, 2, 4, BBC News 24, BBC Choice, BBC Parliament.
Radio Channels.
No advertising.
Worldwide television services (BBC World, BBC Prime)
The division of programmes
Light entertainment (variety shows, soap operas, situation comedies, game shows)
News/current affairs
Documentaries
Children’s TV
Music
Sport
Films/TV movies
Drama/plays
British favourite TV shows
“Are you being served?”
“Bless me father”
“Fawlty Towers”
“Mulberry”
“Yes, Prime Minister”
“Blackadder”
“Chef”
“Holmes
The brief history of British radio
1922: BBC started daily broadcasting on 2LO on 14 Nov. The first voice was Arthur Burrows, reading the news.
1922: 15 Nov: 5IT and 2ZY became first BBC stations outside London.
1967: On 30th September, BBC radio reorganisation launched Radio's 1,2,3 and 4.
1967: "Third Programme“ and"National Programme" replaced 2LO. The "Regional Programme", an alternative service, started later this year.
1973: Birth of independent (commercial) radio, with LBC and Capital Radio in London.
1988: First commercial station 'split' frequencies.
1990: IBA split into ITC 1991: Radio 1 goes 24 hours on 1 May.
1992: Launch of Classic FM, Britain's first national commercial radio station.
1993: Launch of Virgin 1215.
1995: Talk Radio began broadcasting on 14 Feb.
1996: New rules on cross-media ownership heralds further change in the radio industry.
The most popular British radio stations are:
Clare FM
Anna Livia
Live 95
Welsh Radio International
Imperial College radio
Capital FM
BBC Radio 2
The division of British newspapers
The most important British newspapers are:
Belfast Telegraph
The British Media Review
The Electronic Telegraph
The Guardian/The Observer
The Independent
The Mirror
North Wales Newspapers Online
The Scotsman
The Times
Some of British tabloids:
Anorak, an irreverent tabloid
The Daily Mail, light-weight daily
The Mirror
The Daily Star, Not exactly high brow!
The Telegraph hard to hold, easy to read
Periodicals in Britain:
7,000 different periodicals
Classified as “ consumer general interest” ,
“special interest”, “ business to business”
The most popular periodicals:
The Radio Times
Woman`s Own
Smash Hits
Q
Big
Therefore, media of the United Kingdom consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. But the UK also has a strong music industry.
The UK has a diverse range of providers, the most prominent being the state-owned public service broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Regional media is covered by local radio, television and print newspapers. Trinity Mirror operate 240 local and regional newspapers in the UK, as well as national newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror.
The organisation Reporters Without Borders also compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organisation's assessment of their press freedom records. In 2011-2012 United Kingdom was ranked 28th out of 179th countries, which was a setback from the preceding year.
In 2009 it was estimated that individuals viewed a mean of 3.75 hours of television per day and 2.81 hours of radio. The main BBC public service broadcasting channels accounted for and estimated 28.4% of all television viewing; the three main independent channels accounted for 29.5% and the increasingly important other satellite and digital channels for the remaining 42.1%.
Sales of newspapers have fallen since the 1970s and in 2009, 42% of people reported reading a daily national newspaper. In 2010, 82.5% of the UK population were Internet users, the highest proportion amongst the 20 countries with the largest total number of users in that year.
Media centres and organizations
London dominates the media sector in the UK: national newspapers and television and radio are largely based there, notable centres include Fleet Street and BBC Television Centre.
Manchester is also a significant national media centre and is historically considered the London outpost for television and newspaper activity. The Guardian national newspaper was founded in Manchester in 1821, and was known as the Manchester Guardian until 1959. In the 1950s, coinciding with the growth in television, the Granada Television franchise was set up by Sidney Bernstein. Consequently, the Granada Studios were the first purpose-built television studios in the United Kingdom. The franchise produced television programmes such as Coronation Street and the Up Series. Both the BBC and ITV will base a number of departments such as BBC Sport and ITV Studios at the new MediaCityUK facility in Salford and Trafford from 2013.
British media key centres
Edinburgh , Glasgow and Cardiff are important centres of newspaper and broadcasting production in Scotland and Wales respectively.
The BBC, founded in 1922, is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and Internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates numerous television and radio stations in the UK and abroad and its domestic services are funded by the television licence. Other major players in the UK media include ITV plc, which operates 11 of the 15 regional television broadcasters that make up the ITV Network, and News Corporation, which owns a number of national newspapers through News International such as the most popular tabloid The Sun and the longest-established daily "broadsheet" The Times, as well as holding a large stake in satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting.
The UK publishing sector, including books, directories and databases, journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies, has a combined turnover of around £20 billion and employs around 167,000 people.
Newspapers
Traditionally British newspapers have been divided into "quality", serious-minded newspapers (usually referred to as "broadsheets" because of their large size) and the more populist, "tabloid" varieties. For convenience of reading many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids.
In 2008 The Sun had the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK at 3.1 million, approximately a quarter of the market. Its sister paper, the News of the World, had the highest circulation in the Sunday newspaper market, and traditionally focused on celebrity-led stories until its closure in 2011.
The Daily Telegraph, a centre-right broadsheet paper, is the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers. The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet and the Financial Times is the main business newspaper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper. Trinity Mirror operate 240 local and regional newspapers in the UK, as well as national newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror.
Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership. The tabloid Daily Record has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper outselling The Scottish Sun by four to one while its sister paper, the Sunday Mail similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market. The leading "quality" daily newspaper in Scotland is The Herald, though it is the sister paper of The Scotsman, and the Scotland on Sunday that leads in the Sunday newspaper market.
Magazines
A large range of magazines are sold in the UK covering most interests and potential topics. British magazines and journals that have achieved worldwide circulation include The Economist, Nature, and New Scientist, Private Eye, Hello!, The Spectator, the Radio Times and NME.
Broadcasting
Radio
Radio in the United Kingdom is dominated by the BBC, which operates radio stations both in the UK and abroad. The BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in 33 languages globally. Domestically the BBC also operates ten national networks and over 40 local radio stations including services in Welsh on BBC Radio Cymru, Gaelic on BBC Radio nan Gàidheal in Scotland and Irish in Northern Ireland. The domestic services of the BBC are funded by the television licence.
The internationally targeted BBC World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, though from 2014 it will be funded by the television licence. The most popular radio station by number of listeners is BBC Radio 2, closely followed by BBC Radio 1. Advances in digital radio technology have enabled the launch of several new stations by the Corporation.
Rather than operating as independent entities, many commercial local radio stations are owned by large radio groups which broadcast a similar format to many areas. The largest operator of radio stations is Global Radio, owner of the major Heart and Galaxy radio brands. It also owns Classic FM and London's most popular commercial radio station, 95.8 CapitalFM. Other owners are UTV Radio, with stations broadcasting in large city areas and Bauer Radio, holding radio in the North of England.
There are also regional stations, like Real Radio and the Century Network, broadcasting in some main parts of England, Wales and Scotland and a number of licensed community radio stations which broadcast to local audiences.
Television
Analogue terrestrial television in the United Kingdom is made up of two chartered public broadcasting companies, the BBC and Channel 4 and two franchised commercial television companies, (ITV and Channel 5).
There are five major nationwide television channels in the UK: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5—currently transmitted by analogue and digital terrestrial, free-to-air signals with the latter three channels funded by commercial advertising. The UK now has a large number of digital terrestrial channels including a further six from the BBC, five from ITV and three from Channel 4, and one from S4C which is solely in Welsh, among a variety of others. The vast majority of digital cable television services are provided by Virgin Media with satellite television available from Freesat or British Sky Broadcasting and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview and all of these channels can be accessed via a cable or satellite provider, such as Virgin Media or BSkyB. The entire UK will switch to digital by the end of 2012.
Channel 4 is similarly chartered to the BBC, with a remit to provide public service broadcasting and schools programs, however it runs commercial advertisements to provide a revenue stream. It produces a single analogue channel, currently branded as Channel 4.
The commercial operators rely on advertising for their revenue, and are run as commercial ventures, in contrast to the public service operators. The ITV franchise transmits the analogue channel known as ITV1 (in England, Wales, Scottish Borders, Isle of Man and Channel Islands), STV (In Central and Northern Scotland), and UTV in Northern Ireland. Channel 5 transmits one analogue channel.
The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Internet in the United Kingdom is .uk. The most visited ".uk" websites are the British version of Google followed by BBC Online.
CHAPTER II. NEW ALTERNATIVE BRITISH MEDIA MODELS
II.1. British Media between Prestige and Popularity
The expression ‘new media’ has been in use since the 1960s and has had to encompass an expanding and diversifying set of applied communication technologies.
Further, we will point out the difficulties of saying just what the ‘new media’ comprises, by bringing together three elements: technological artefacts and devices; activities, practices and uses; and social arrangements and organizations that form around the devices and practices.
Much of the same definition applies to ‘old media’, although the artefacts, uses and arrangements are different. As far as the essential features of ‘new media’ are concerned, the main ones seem to be: their interconnectedness, their accessibility to individual users as senders and/or receivers, their interactivity, their multiplicity of use and open-ended character,and their ubiquity and ‘delocatedness’.
Our primary concern in this paper is with mass communication, which is
closely related to the old media and seems thus to be rendered obsolete by new
media. The still ongoing ‘communications revolution’ is seen by some as a revolt
against mass communication, an idea that has a long history.
The mid-1980s discursive emergence of British 'college radio' as a discrete broadcast sector in Great Britain was founded on college stations' embrace of UK punk during the late 1970s. While commercial rock stations rejected punk on aesthetic and affective grounds, college DJs continued to support punk's offshoots into the early 1980s, nurturing an oppositional sensibility regarding commercial broadcasting and mainstream tastes.
The stunning debut of cable television channel MTV in 1981 introduced a potential crisis in self-consciously oppositional college radio communities, because as part of its programming, MTV promoted UK post-punk and 'new music' bands that had previously received most of their airplay from college stations. MTV's success sparked a parallel programming trend on commercial radio, which journalists labelled the 'New British Invasion'. The various responses to MTV and the 'New British Invasion' on the part of US college radio practitioners extended and consolidated the ethos that college radio embodied in its embrace of punk, helping to cohere the sector as a cultural imaginary. These responses also suggest that 'alternative media' theorists might profitably include college radio in the future development of alternative media models.
The resulting map shows the regions of Britain where each news outlet is most popular.
If we take a look at some of the results, they’re not that surprising. In Scotland, for instance, The Scotsman is quite popular. And BBC News has a solid presence across the entire region. Looking closely at London, though, you’ll see a multicolored circle covering the city. Londoners apparently read a massive variety of different news outlets, more so than any other area of the country.
Source: http://www.mediawatchuk.org.uk/
II.2. Web media
II.2.1.Interactive media
Interactive media is the integration of digital media including combinations
of electronic text, graphics, moving images, and sound, into a structured digital computerised environment that allows people to interact with the data for appropriate purposes. The digital environment can include the Internet, telecoms and interactive digital television.
Because there are many people involved across all sections of the information industries in UK, media and computer programming together with telecommunications and broadcasting, it is difficult to take an overview. It used to be that each represented a minority within its own sector.
Online media was seen in Britain as part of the traditional production methods and business models. Interactive broadcasting fulfilled the same function for the broadcast industry. Online editing of web site content was the new branch of journalism and publishing. Interactive law, interactive graphics, interactive health and so on followed the same pattern. They shared the important characteristic of being interactive change agents within their areas.
Source: http://www.mediawatchuk.org.uk/
Change Agents are people with the vision and skills to implement a change in organisational culture or business practice. Now, the digital revolution has quietly pervaded all business areas and specialisms. It is integrated into each role.
All people are expected to have a basic mastery of using interactive media platforms for their jobs. Many need to learn how to use more specialist applications within their work. More people in management roles are expected to be able to direct, co-ordinate, conceive and manage the development or updates to digital programs through internal or external teams.
The digital revolution has affected all facets of life. Each of the specialisms had a digital inroad created by the change agents. But one of the key characteristics of change is that it causes resistance from the traditionalists.
They can delay change and even deny it by building barriers. They tend to
have the upper-hand in influence within their own sector and even higher levels such as government and other administrations. Their traditional mindsets work, often unconsciously, against the new ways of thinking that do not fit into what have become the accepted categories.
Education and training can help to ensure wider understanding and acceptance of interactive media industry in Britain. Change agents needed protecting and nurturing within organisations and discipline specialisms as the digital revolution progressed.
The traditionalists lack credibility with the change agents because of the mindset clash—and then so much more hinges on this communication barrier. This may explain why some ‘emerging’ countries that have embraced the information society have been able to leap ahead with initiatives in the interactive media.
The process of change in the British media happened in waves. When the innovative practices became the norm, the change agents have succeeded. So the measure of change lies in looking at the differences in British media.
In terms of the digital revolution this means checking on how many digital functions have been integrated into core business practice in each of the mediatic areas.
All the subject specialisms are contributing either to e-business (synonymous with e-commerce), or e-communication. They are trying to sell services or goods and trying to get information of different types to people and events or news.
However, a lot of the impetus for change came from a completely different direction, not through internal change agents, and the business people had to take stock and react to the market.
That is characteristic of revolutions as they happen on many fronts. The amazing speed of growth of such younger generation social media sites in UK such as Facebook and Twitter took the traditional media by storm.
Word of mouth, exchange of views, recommendations and criticisms in blogs, tweets and Facebook sites drove spending on the better, more socially acclaimed products and services, menwhile negative criticism had its adverse impact. This was a wake-up call for businesses and their marketing departments. Not only are they trying to keep a watchful eye on the news they convey and which might put them in a bad light, that they are trying to use it to their advantage by proffering special incentive news through the social channels.
The social side of messaging together with the feature of allowing others to access the messages has had spin-offs in affecting behaviour, affecting attitudes, affecting much more than sales. It hasn’t only been businesses that had the wake-up call. Much as the social media can and had been used positively, it can be used for negative social engagement too, so that ‘online grooming’, ‘online bullying’, and ‘online slander’ have all been utilized detrimentally.
II.2.2.Forums
With the rise of social media, many people have claimed that forums are becoming obsolete, a relic of dial-up Internet in the late 1990s. But as most of us already know, that is far from the case.
Forums fill a role that cannot be fulfilled by other social media – many to many conversations centered around topics.
There is a substantial difference between forums and social media. At the same time there is a huge amount of ignorance about forums and their place in the eco-system.
"I believe that Twitter and Facebook are the training wheels of the true, deep internet experience. On forums most people use imaginary user names. Who you are in the real world, how big your bank balance is, how pretty or handsome you are, does not matter on a forum. What matters on a forum is the worth of your intellect, the merit of your thoughts and your ability to communicate them.”
"Unfortunately, they are not very pretty. There are legacy issues in how pretty they can be made because of how arcane the software is. But if you look at them for what they are — as vehicles for many to many communication — forums are the best applications of many to many interaction.
"Facebook is not many to many. It is me and my friends and at any given time it’s me communicating with my friends or me participating in the communication of my friends. We are never all in it together because I may not have friends that overlap your group of friends."
Forums are designed for a multiplicity of people to communicate with a multiplicity of people and they are done in an organized fashion with a taxonomy that makes sense. "If you go to a standard forum you will find an index. There’ll be a section that has an introduction for new members and a section to put your complaints. You’ll find the subject you are interested in is broken down into various sub-headings. It is very easy to find the information and, specifically, the conversation that you are looking to create or participate in. What forums allow you to do is the sum total of everything you can do on the internet. “
"On a good forum you can read a review. You can have a member do a tutorial on how to jailbreak a phone or how to hack something. You can have your typical Q&A threads. You can post a question to the community. You can also share. There are very few places that have this aggregate of knowledge. “
"Facebook allows you to share social linkages. You see pictures of your friend’s new born child and you get to congratulate them. Linkedin captures your work history; who you have worked with and the chronology of your work experience. Twitter allows you to broadcast to your followers.There is nowhere else [besides forums] on the internet where your passions, your hobbies and your knowledge base is sufficiently given credit for."
Forums are highly valued by search engines. On a forum if you showed up as a new member and in your first several posts there were links to a commercial product you would be ridiculed, insulted, banned and the link would be removed.
Forums are the only class of site other than Wikipedia type sites that has a built-in peer review mechanism. Search engines have already looked at and identified this process as a very powerful form of curation of good answers. There is a framework of well-understood conduct that you must abide by.
Forums, with their roots in the pre-internet days of networked modems, are the largest repository of high value, user generated content on the internet. Despite their somewhat unfashionable status it is impossible to imagine a worthwhile or particularly useful internet existing without their presence.
Forums might never be cool enough to have movie like "The Social Network" (film made about Facebook network), but there is a chance that they might receive a more love and respect than they do at present in the British media.
II.2.3. Social Media , blogging and videocasts
Social media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. By applying a set of theories in the field of media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure) there was created a classification scheme for different social media types Britain in 2010.
According to media specialists, there are six different types of social media in UK: collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter), content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms. Social media network websites include sites like Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and MySpace.
In a recent study by Omnicom Group’s Brodeur and Marketwire about how journalists in UK use blogs, it was found that blogs are a regular source for journalists for improving the speed of reporting news as well as guiding tone, but not for improving quality:
Over three quarters of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue
Nearly 70 percent of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis
One in four reporters (27.7%) have their own blogs
About one in five (16.3%) have their own social networking page
Almost half of reporters (47.5%) say they are “lurkers”
Over half said that blogs were having a significant impact on the “tone” (61.8%) and “editorial direction” (51.1%) of news reporting
With this kind of insight,we cannot imagine why a company that has engaged in media and public relations activities would not start a company blog or at least a blog powered media room. Companies that are already blogging would do well to make sure it is not some perfunctory task disguising itself as a legitimate form of transparency, but a real effort at providing insight and value.
With clients of companies that use blogs as a communication and engagement channel, there has always been done a minimum of template optimization. A review of the web analytics for many of those clients shows their blog in the top 5 referring sources of web site traffic.
On the topic of new media and journalists, there is another study of interest involving over 2,000 British journalists on how they use new media. Findings include:
While almost a third of journalists do not cover blogs, more than a quarter report regularly reading five or more blogs to research desired topics, and nearly 70% follow at least one blog regularly.
More than a quarter (28%) of UK journalists visit a social media or networking site, such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, at least once a week, while more than 44% visit at least once a month.
Nearly 16% of journalists receive five or more RSS feeds of news services, blogs, podcasts or videocasts every week, and about 37% receive at least one regular RSS feed.
While more than half of journalists never seek audio or video material from corporate websites, nearly 20% say they seek such material at least once a month.
While a large majority (76.9%) of journalists report that they use local newspapers to follow news, some 64% report that they use Google or Yahoo! online news services.
Optimizing media content whether it is text, images or video as a process gives a much larger footprint on the web. ie, it casts a wider net in which to capture those (consumers and journalists alike) who are looking for information, for solutions, for trusted resources.
In the end, it is about making it easy for the audience to find the right information and act on it. In the case of the media, it is becoming a trusted information source as well as providing information in formats that make it easier for the audience to be informed. In the process, their effort makes it easier for them to write a feed-back.
Brand monitoring in UK through media
Social media measurement: Attensity, Statsit, Sysomos, Vocus, SocialFlow, Simplify360
Communication
Blogs: Blogger, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, Vox, WordPress, Xanga
Microblogging: Dailybooth, FMyLife, Foursquare, Google Buzz, Plurk, Posterous, Qaiku, Tumblr, Twitter
Engagement Advertising & Monetization: SocialVibe
Location-based social networks: Facebook places, Foursquare, Geoloqi, Google Latitude, Gowalla, The Hotlist, Yelp, Inc.
Events: Eventful, The Hotlist, Meetup.com, Upcoming, Yelp, Inc.
Information Aggregators: Netvibes, Twine (website)
Online Advocacy and Fundraising: Causes, Jumo, Kickstarter, IndieGoGo
Social networking: ASmallWorld, Bebo, Chatter, Cyworld, Diaspora, Facebook, Google+, Hi5, Hyves, IRC, LinkedIn, Mixi, MySpace, Netlog, Ning, Orkut, Plaxo, Tagged, Tuenti, XING, Yammer
Collaboration/authority building
Collaboration: Central Desktop
Content Management Systems: E107 (CMS), Drupal, Joomla, Plone, WordPress
Diagramming and Visual Collaboration: Creately
Document Managing and Editing Tools: Docs.com, Dropbox.com, Google Docs, Syncplicity
Social bookmarking (or social tagging): CiteULike, Delicious, Diigo, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, folkd, Zotero
Social Media Gaming: Empire Avenue
Social navigation: Trapster, Waze
Social news: Digg, Chime.In (formerly Mixx), Newsvine, NowPublic, Reddit
Research/Academic Collaboration: Mendeley, ResearchGate, Zotero
Wikis: PBworks, Wetpaint, Wikia, Wikidot, Wikimedia, Wikispaces, Wikinews
Entertainment
Game sharing: Armor Games, Kongregate, Miniclip, Newgrounds
Media and entertainment platforms: Cisco Eos, Myspace, YouTube
Virtual worlds: Active Worlds, Forterra Systems, Second Life, The Sims Online, World of Warcraft, RuneScape
Multimedia in UK
Livecasting: blip.tv, Justin.tv, Livestream, oovoo, OpenCU, Skype, Stickam, Ustream, YouTube
Music and audio sharing: Bandcamp, ccMixter, Groove Shark, The Hype Machine, imeem, Last.fm, MySpace Music, Pandora Radio, ReverbNation.com, ShareTheMusic, Soundclick, SoundCloud, Spotify, Turntable.fm, 8tracks.com
Photography and art sharing: deviantArt, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Zooomr, Webshots, Pinterest
Presentation sharing: Prezi, scribd, SlideShare
Video sharing: Dailymotion, Metacafe, Nico Nico Douga, Openfilm, sevenload, Viddler, Vimeo, YouTube
Reviews and Opinions
Business reviews: Customer Lobby, Yelp, Inc.
Community Q&A: ask.com, Askville, EHow, Quora, Stack Exchange, WikiAnswers, Yahoo! Answers
Product reviews: epinions.com, MouthShut.com
Optimization
Social Media Optimization: SocialFlow
British Facebook users can also claim to have hundreds of friends in their network, yet sometimes find it difficult to name half a dozen people that they have actually met in their local neighbourhood. While social networks have helped people to meet like-minded contacts online, they have had a more limited role in developing face-to-face contact in communities.
But gradually, social networks are beginning to have a bigger role in building community and catalysing neighbourhood co-operation and social action in Britain as all over the world.
For instance, the post-riot clean-up Twitter campaign was one example of how social media can be used to inspire people to get involved in community life.
Social media can play an important role in supporting and mobilising communities. And one national organisation that has used social media to encourage community action is Keep Britain Tidy. The organisation's partnerships support director Fran Hayes told participants how it uses existing social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to help change people's habits nationally and organise local litter pickups.
Keep Britain Tidy media campaign had almost 9,000 followers on Twitter and 2,000 on Facebook. The organisation has encouraged its Twitter followers to take photos of litter in their areas and share them as a Twitpic. It has also launched a closed Ning forum where people can turn conversation and debates into action. As a consequence, Hayes said that the organisation considers that social media provides a safe environment for "mobilising people who are upset about litter". He said that the momentum provided by litter picks could snowball and benefit the community further by encouraging locals to collaborate on future projects.
Paul Twivy, of Your Square Mile, an organisation that is building communities both on and offline in 16 UK locations, has worked with some important users of Facebook who have failed to realise its potential for community action. "It hadn't occurred to them that they could set up a Google or Facebook Group for their street" he noted.
But it is not just social media that can be used to mobilise communities in Britain, online blogs and forums can have a similar effect.
A 2010 study of the social impact of online communities explored the ways in which people communicate online using citizen-run websites, the impact of that communication, and the implications for local service providers. It focused on three well-established sites around London: Brockley Central, East Dulwich Forum and Harringay Online.
It found that 42% of respondents say they have met someone in their neighbourhood as a direct consequence of using the website. Three quarters of respondents felt that participation on the local site had a positive effect on whether or not people pull together to make improvements to their area, while 69% felt that participation on the local site had strengthened their sense of belonging.
The research concluded that neighbourhood sites appear to be playing a consolidating role, building a stronger attachment on already-sound foundations. They help to raise and debate local issues transparently and provide a channel and encouragement for people to get involved in civic and community issues.
But the research also suggested that there is a limited crossover of activity from online to physical communities. Overall, only 13% of respondents said they have been involved in formal groups or organisations locally in the past year. "It seems likely that local websites can both stimulate and reflect a latent demand for informal opportunities for collective involvement, very much on a dip-in dip-out basis," said the document.
Flouch told participants at the event that online platforms were good to encourage the habit of communicating with other community members. He added that people do not necessarily have to have any other motivation than wanting to chat. "Logging into a website for half an hour creates a habit of people communicating with their neighbours."
The participants did briefly discuss the fact that too much of an emphasis on online communities can exclude those not online. Most agreed that online communities are not a the maximum one could get from the experience.
The study has highlighted how social networks and online forums are fast becoming recognised as an important tool in community development and the range of tools available to practitioners.
II.3. What New Media Is Not
We will be able to differentiate the media use in UK and what the media is not, by answering to the following questions, regarding citizens’ implications as users:
Inside or outside the home?
Individual or shared experience?
Public or private in use?
Interactive or not?
New media , on the one hand, is a broad term also in British media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century that refers to on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content.
Another important promise of British new media seems to be the "democratization" of the creation, publishing, distribution and consumption of media content. Another aspect of new media is the real-time generation of new, unregulated content.
Most technologies described as "new media" are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive. Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, video games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs.
But new media does not include television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or paper-based publications – unless they contain technologies that enable digital interactivity. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is an example, combining Internet accessible digital text, images and video with web-links, creative participation of contributors, interactive feedback of users and formation of a participant community of editors and donors for the benefit of non-community readers. Facebook is an example of the social media model, in which most users are also participants.
We must say that it is much less easy to distinguish these media from each other than it used to be. This is partly because some media forms are now distributed across different types of transmission channel, reducing the original uniqueness of form and experience in use. Moreover, the increasing convergence of technology, based on digitalization, can only reinforce this tendency.
Newspapers are already widely accessible as text on the Internet, and the telephone system is edging towards delivery of media content. The clear lines of regulatory regime between the media are already blurred, both recognizing and encouraging greater similarity between different media.
Another important aspect, globalizing tendencies which are reducing the distinctiveness of any particular national variant of media content and institution. Fourthly, the continuing trends towards integration of national and global media corporations have led to the housing of different media under the same roof, encouraging convergence by another route.
Nevertheless, on certain dimensions, clear differences do remain. There are some obvious differences in terms of typical content. There is also evidence that media are perceived differently in terms of the physical and psychosocial characteristics.
British media vary a good deal in terms of perceived trust and credibility. There still remain two enduring questions. First, how free is a medium in relation to the wider society?Secondly, what is a medium good for and what are its perceived uses, from the point of view of an individual audience member?
CHAPTER III. CASE STUDY: Future Media in Britain
BBC Worldwide iPlayer
Social Media is changing the way organisations like the BBC are engaging with audiences. Previously audiences received their news by watching the major news bulletins, or turning to the BBC homepage in the morning.
For growing numbers of people, their social networking sites have become their main portal, and the online space where they spend most of their time. As a result they will only engage with BBC content if it is shared with them via their network. This means that the BBC and others have to be in these spaces, sharing, engaging and providing good content there, with the hope that this will bring audiences back to the BBC, audiences who have maybe got out of the habit, or do not feel there is anything of interest to them there.
Many BBC programmes, news and non-news now have Facebook fanpages, Flickr groups, YouTube videos, and Twitter accounts. By engaging in these spaces, the BBC hopes it is more likely to find the best content to include in its output. But it also hopes other people will find this content via these social networks and will come back and spend time with BBC output as a result.
The BBC has a long international history. The BBC World Service (then the Empire Service) began broadcasting overseas in 1932, and today offers service in 28 languages.
In addition the core BBC service has expanded internationally, offering TV channels in over 100 countries. The BBC World News channel is available in 300m households globally.
Finally there is a British diaspora that is already familiar with the BBC. As a result it is a strong international brand, and the BBC’s website is an important source of news in a number of markets.
The BBC is the leading news site in its British domestic market. However, in global terms some of the international markets where BBC is present, are small, and its leading positions do not necessarily translate into a material traffic contribution.
The consumption of news (measured by news site page views) per online user varies dramatically. It is almost 30 times higher in the UK than in Romania for example, perhaps because many internet users in Nigeria depend on mobile devices and cybercafés. In practice online news is less important in such markets relative to traditional media than in it is in markets making heavier use of the internet.
Consequently, though the BBC is important as an online news source in these countries, these countries are less significant to the BBC in terms of traffic.
Conversely Germany is the Corporation’s 5th largest source of traffic, though the BBC is ranked a relatively low 15th amongst news sites there.
Of course the BBC is not a commercially driven organisation, so the absolute number of page views may be of less significance than the contribution traffic in a particular country makes to the Corporations’ societal goals.
The mobile site works on a range of devices and screen sizes .
The BBC News website is available on mobile phones and other wireless devices.
For this , the reader must go to the web browser on his electronic device and type in www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile. The site is designed to work on a range of mobile devices and screen sizes, whether the phone is a touchscreen one or whether a keypad or trackball. When one browses the mobile site, what the reader sees will be tailored to the device he/she has in hand, for example the way it is moved around the news sections and the number of images one sees. The mobile site offers a large range of news sections. BBC UK has made it easy for users to skim through the news headlines and summaries for easy update on the stories of the day.
BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer, commonly shortened to iPlayer, is an internet television and radio service and software application, developed by the BBC to extend its former RealPlayer-based and other streamed video clip content to include whole TV shows.
BBC iPlayer left Beta and went live on 25 December 2007. On 25 June 2008, a new-look iPlayer was launched, originally as a beta-test version alongside the earlier version. The site tagline was "Catch up on the last 7 days of BBC TV & Radio", reflecting that programmes were unavailable on iPlayer after this time (with some exceptions), which was later changed to "Making the unmissable, unmissable". The BBC state on their website that this is due to copyright reasons. In May 2010 the site was updated again, to include a recommendations feature and a "social makeover".
In February 2011, the BBC iPlayer was once again modified to include links to programmes on other television channels. Since the launch it showcased programmes on ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, Channel 4, E4, More 4, Film 4, Channel 5, 5*, 5USA and S4C. The feature was added to the search function and the channels function. When a user clicks on a programme by another broadcaster, they are redirected to the relevant broadcaster's catch up service (either the ITV Player, 4OD or Demand 5).
Specific applications for mobile platforms were launched in February 2011. These were initially for the iOS and Android devices, where the launch would have the biggest impact.
Source: https://iplayer.bbcworldwide.com/
During its development, iPlayer was formerly known as Integrated Media Player (iMP), Interactive Media Player, and MyBBCPlayer.
The original iPlayer service was launched in October 2005, undergoing a five month long trial of five thousand broadband users until 28 February 2006. The iPlayer was heavily criticised for delay in its launch, rebranding, and cost to BBC licence-fee payers, because no finished product had been released after four years of development. A new, improved iPlayer service then had another very limited user trial which began on 15 November 2006.
The iPlayer received the approval of the BBC Trust on 30 April 2007, and an open beta for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 was launched at midnight on 27 July 2007, where it was announced that only a fixed number of people would be able to sign up for the service, with a controlled increase in users over the summer.
The BBC has also been criticised for saying that the iPlayer would 'launch' on the 27 July 2007, when what was on offer was simply an extension of the beta to an open beta, admitting more users in a controlled manner. This was done reportedly to allow British ISPs and the BBC to gauge the effect of the iPlayer traffic on the Internet within the UK.
The open beta incorporated a media player, an electronic programme guide (EPG) and specially designed download client, and allowed the download of TV content by computers assigned to a United Kingdom-based IP address, for use up to thirty days after broadcast. However, it was available only to users of Windows XP.
This was a controversial decision by the BBC, which led to a petition against the decision being posted on 10 Downing Street's e-petition website. The petition reached 16,082 signatures on 20 August 2007. The response from the Government was:
“… the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings. “
On 16 October 2007, the BBC announced a strategic relationship with Adobe, that would bring a limited, streaming-only version of the iPlayer to Mac and Linux users, and Windows users who cannot or do not wish to use the iPlayer download service, such as Windows 9x users. The streaming service was launched on 13 December 2007. Most programmes can be viewed for up to seven days after broadcast, unlike the thirty days provided by the download service.
Since January 2008, iPlayer has supported Mozilla Firefox under the Microsoft Windows platform for downloading content.
Before the iPlayer had even launched, it was announced that the BBC, alongside ITV and Channel 4, were intending to launch a new video on demand platform, provisionally named Kangaroo. It was intended that Kangaroo would complement the video on demand services that these channels were already offering, including the iPlayer, by making programmes available once their "catch up" period expires. The Kangaroo project was eventually abandoned after being blocked by the Competition Commission early in 2009.
Following a deal between the BBC and cable television provider Virgin Media, the iPlayer service was made available through the provider's on-demand service. The cable service launched on 30 April 2008, and keeps the look and feel of the BBC iPlayer program.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the BBC revealed that as of 8 April 2008 the iPlayer had so far cost £6 million to develop.
On 23 August 2008, a new feature, Series Stacking, was announced. This feature started being rolled out on 13 September 2008, and allowed viewers to watch previous programmes from selected series until the series has ended, with a limit of up to thirteen weeks after first broadcast. Not all programmes will form part of the stack, however. The BBC Trust has permitted 15% of content to be offered as part of the stacking service; soaps, news bulletins and review-based programmes will not be stacked, nor programmes containing material of a legal nature, such as Crimewatch.
On 19 December 2008, the BBC released, as part of the iPlayer Labs feature, iPlayer Desktop for Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. This moved the download service away from the previous P2P based distribution model and onto an HTTP download model.
On 20 April 2009, the BBC incorporated high-definition streams and downloads of some content on the iPlayer. There are plans to roll out the HD streams to devices such as the Virgin Set Top Box, but no date has yet been set. A BBC iPlayer application for the PlayStation 3 was announced by Sony in August 2009 and was released on the 1 September 2009 along with the Firmware 3.0 update to coincide with the launch of the slimline PlayStation 3 .
Another version of iPlayer was released in late 2009 as a 'channel' for the Nintendo Wii. This shows only low definition videos of BBC shows up to seven days after their release on television.
On 28 July 2011, BBC Worldwide released an international version of the iPlayer.
Source: https://iplayer.bbcworldwide.com/
BBC Worldwide has been launching its global iPlayer service via an iPad app that has been made available in 11 countries in Western Europe, US, Canada and Australia. The service offers a limited amount of content for free, supported by pre-roll ads and sponsorship, but its core business model is subscription, with users paying €6.99 (£6.14) a month or €49.99 a year in UK. The 11 launch countries are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.
The global iPlayer app includes some features that are not in the UK version, including the ability to stream shows over 3G as well as Wi-Fi, and a downloading feature to store programmes on the iPad for offline viewing. "We think we have a load of unmet demand for BBC and British content internationally," said BBC.com managing director Luke Bradley-Jones. "This is not a catch-up service: this is a video-on-demand service. We will have content from the last month, but also the best from the catalogue stretching back 50 to 60 years."
Users will be able to search for specific shows or browse genres including comedy and drama, but BBC Worldwide has also hired a team of editors to curate the international iPlayer.
Their focus will be on pulling together themed collections around specific shows or special events. An example of the former is Doctor Who, which is getting separate collections of episodes based on individual Doctors – The Tennant Years, The Ecclestone Years and so on – as well as one focused purely on episodes featuring the Daleks. "There is at least 1,500 hours of content there from day one, and it will be growing by at least 100 hours a month," said Mark Smith, the global iPlayer launch director at BBC Worldwide. "Most audiences know the big shows like Top Gear or Doctor Who, but maybe not so much about other shows, so we have been working hard on how we surface that content."
At launch, the 11 countries have been seeing the same iPlayer homepage and collections, but over time, there will be scope for the global iPlayer team to flag up different content based on local demand.
BBC Worldwide sees the offline viewing and 3G streaming features as key selling points for the global iPlayer service.
According to Smith, the development team worked closely with Apple on the offline feature. "When we were doing our user testing, the use case was picking six shows before going on a long journey, and leaving them to download to the iPad overnight," he said. "The way the device works, though, is it hibernates and stops you from doing that: you wake up the next morning and only half a show has downloaded. We have managed to override that functionality, and Apple are comfortable with us doing that."
Smith stressed that users will be warned about the likely battery consumption of doing this, though: they would be best advised to leave their iPad plugged in overnight in these cases.
BBC Worldwide is not subject to the same requirements to support a range of devices as the BBC in the UK, so for global iPlayer, this was a purely commercial decision. "We hope that this service becomes multi-device, multi-platform and multi-territory over time, but as a premium-but-niche service, we did not want to go in with both feet from day one," said Bradley-Jones. "We're spending the next year in a pilot-type phase focusing on one device, to make a clean and very compelling experience. We have a great relationship with Apple in terms of the promotional commitments they'll give us too."
Apple's iPad currently takes the lion's share of the tablet market, which was also a key factor in BBC Worldwide's decision. However, if Android tablets become more popular during the year-long pilot period, Bradley-Jones expects to port the global iPlayer app across then. For now, the global iPlayer will not be available as a desktop web service.
At launch, 60% of the global iPlayer content has been produced and commissioned by the BBC, while 30% has been commissioned by the BBC but produced by independents. The other 10% is entirely non-BBC content, including ITV's Primeval, and Channel 4's The Naked Chef and Misfits."We see this as a best-of-British proposition," said Bradley-Jones. "If we get this right, it's a very exciting opportunity to provide a window onto our world: the cultural and entertainment space in Britain. To do that well, it can't be just BBC content. We really hope it will be much broader."
How will the global iPlayer's content fit in with windows for broadcast and DVD? BBC content will generally transmit first on terrestrial channels in the 11 countries, before appearing on the iPlayer.
Once shows are added, they will generally stay available for the long-term, although "a handful of top brands" will receive different treatment to take into account DVD releases or specific terrestrial scheduling initiatives.
Bradley-Jones said that the cost of Hulu and Netflix subscriptions was one of the factors in deciding how much to charge for the global iPlayer – which hints that when it does launch in the US, it will be around the $7.99 mark.
Users of the iPlayer app in the UK may wonder when or whether the download and 3G streaming features will make their way into that. The two apps are being developed by different divisions of the BBC, so Bradley-Jones and Smith preferred not to speak on behalf of the UK iPlayer app's team, but Smith did point to the advantage of being only on one device as one reason why the global iPlayer is getting these features first.
The other obvious question to ask concerns the US, where fans of BBC shows will have to wait a little longer to get the global iPlayer app. “The nature of the agreements with our rights partners are different, and the windows across our existing business are older than they are in Europe. From our side, we have to jump through a few more of those commercial and legal hoops. We could have launched in the US with a product this week, but there would have been a few too many missing parts."
When it does go live in the US, the global iPlayer will sit alongside BBC Worldwide's existing distribution agreements with iTunes and Netflix, among others, rather than replacing them.
BBC Post Production
Overview
BBC Post Production works through a number of contractors to deliver a raft of post production facilities to both the BBC and other clients. Each client (internal and external) has a dedicated editor at the BBC who will know their client’s business and be able to advise them on best service and solution development.
Challenge
Keeping their clients up to date with current developments, showcasing best practice and ensuring that BBC Production is maximising their client relationships are essential parts of their business strategy.
Personal approach to design
They devised a strategic solution which ensured that BBC Production latest news was delivered alongside information directly relevant to each BBC editor’s client base. A newsletter design was then developed that incorporated both of these aspects and made use of hero areas and bold, fully accessible, colours and navigation. Headshots of the individual editors were used to provide a personal approach and dialogue to the communication.
Supported by a microsite
Articles within the newsletters point back to specific editor-led landing pages as well as more general content within the BBC Resources website ensuring users get a personal experience along with a feel for the corporate strength of the BBC brand.
Dispatch and deliverability
Panlogic handles the despatch of the newsletters each quarter using the latest delivery software to ensure high levels of deliverability. Evaluation is measured through standard bounce (hard and soft), click-through and open rates. In addition tracking is provided to determine click through by story by recipient ensuring that story type and layout are maximised on an ongoing basis.
Features and analysis stories are showcased throughout the site and they are displaying the Most Read articles, so that viewers can see what stories are popular at present.
The BBC UK site offers coverage of live news stories for all mobile users, giving an easy way to access quick updates around a major news story. The live page format offers short-form updates related to big stories as they unfold, for example on stories like the Budget and global news events.
If viewers are not sure whether they can access the internet on their device, they have to check with their mobile network provider.
The BBC does not charge users to access mobile content. BBC News apps are iPhone, iPad and Android.
The BBC News app is available in UK for Android smartphones and tablets, as well as for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
The app is free to download. Users must go to Google Play or the Apple app store to download the official BBC News app. Stories are arranged in categories including top stories, UK, world, politics, business, technology, health, entertainment & arts and sport. The app offers stories and video, and viewers can personalise the homescreen by adding and removing news categories to suit personal interests.
Blackberry Apps
BBC has also developed a series of launcher apps for Blackberry phones to give quick access to BBC News on Blackberry smartphones 5 and above. As some BlackBerry connections are routed overseas, BlackBerry users occasionally have problems accessing BBC content that is only available inside the UK. The application will also help to stop this from happening and make sure that, if in the UK, one can access everything that is possible to access.
To install these apps on Blackberry phones , users need to type this address into the web browser on the Blackberry and click on the icons to install the apps http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/bbapps/ . These apps are also available via Blackberry App World.
Breaking news SMS and email alerts
BBC News UK also offers a breaking news SMS alert service to help the public keep up to date with the latest major UK and global events. Each message received will cost between 10p and 12p depending on mobile network and tariff.
All in all, news is a core service for the BBC World Service and delivering news through Mobile Channel was an extension for BBC in the local market. The company recognised the need to maximise the audience coverage and, given the penetration of mobile phones, recognised the opportunity to use this medium to expand the coverage. Mobile is treated by the BBC as an important alternative distribution channel and extension of news medium.
The BBC ran a small-scale trial of the iPlayer for some time. About 15,000 people are thought to have taken part in this with about one-third being regular users.
The BBC's iPlayer has faced criticism from some quarters. In particular, many critics have taken issue with the decision to restrict its use to PCs running Microsoft Windows XP. Versions for Windows Vista and Mac are expected to follow soon.
Many of the comments sent in to the BBC in the wake of the launch called for the iPlayer to work on computers that did not run Windows.
During the 2005 and 2006 iPlayer trials, the DRM system used was based on Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, which led to concerns about cross-platform availability, as this technology is available only for Windows XP. However, some users have managed to get it working using compatibility options in Vista. The BBC emphasises that it "has a commitment to platform neutrality and a remit to make its content as widely available as possible", and that while the initial trial used a Microsoft-based technology, they are constantly looking for new technologies which would enable them to relax the restriction: Ashley Highfield, then BBC's director of Future Media and Technology, explained that "we have always started with the platform that reaches the most number of people and then rolled it out from there". They also point out that not all of the content delivered through the iPlayer will be subject to DRM – live streaming content, for instance, may not need the same level of control, presumably implying that players for Mac OS X and Linux systems could be developed with a restricted range of content. However, a project was started to enable the iPlayer to work with other platforms via the Wine project. Streaming via the BBC iPlayer website is now available in all browsers supporting Adobe Flash. Also, iPlayer Desktop, which allows downloading programmes for later offline viewing, is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
On 14 August 2007, the Free Software Foundation staged a demonstration outside BBC Television Centre. The FSF's Peter T. Brown criticised the BBC for what he claimed was a break from previous tradition: the insistence that, for the first time, BBC viewers would be forced to use proprietary technology to watch BBC programmes.
On 18 February 2010, the BBC updated iPlayer with an SWF verification layer which attempts to close the door on open source implementations of Real Time Messaging Protocol streaming. The attempt was unsuccessful, with most existing open source applications remaining capable of playing or downloading rtmp content from the iPlayer.
The iPlayer project has been encouraged by Mark Thompson, the corporation's director general, as a development as significant as the start of colour TV.
bbc.co.uk/mobile
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre
Source: http://www.mediauk.com
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has intended to provide a development of British media to the present age of information communication technology and the information society. Looking back, we must notice its surprising and interesting faces, since it has told the story not as a narrative with dates and descriptions of events, but in terms of brief sketches of the mass media in UK and their main forms, in chronological order.
It has highlighted their main characteristics in terms of capacity to communicate, uses for an audience and regard by the larger society.
Although the primary distinction is according to a type of technology, equal importance attaches to social, cultural and political factors. Certain technologies survived the evolutionary struggle, so to speak, and some others (not described in this paper) did not make it. The same applies to various uses to which the media have been put. There is no determining logic at work.
Notable is the fact that all the media described are still present today in Britain and in their own way flourishing, despite recurrent predictions that one master medium would drive out weaker competitors. They have all found a means of adapting to changed conditions and new competitors.
In fact, there will be more researches on media processes and effects in the future, undoubtedly with greater focus on the computerized communication systems.
Technological developments as BBC iPlayer, will make researches more dependent on computerized data, disseminated online through digital libraries and networks around the globe. People will be required to devise new techniques of research, new theories will emerge through these researches thereby adding to a greater storage of knowledge.
Consumer news, relatively cheap to produce, has become prevalent in UK as well as in Romania, as news organisations follow the market and value, in particular, their female audiences. Style over substance – ‘infotainment’ – is a constant complaint in the present day media all over the world. Serious investigations, which cost money, have suffered as organisations keep their workforces lean so as to compete more cost effectively.
As a consequence of our study on the most important faces of media in UK, we are able to conclude that the role of the mass media in influencing the development of British society is undeniable and still open to study and research.
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http://www.wrx.zen.co.uk/britnews.htm
http://www.mediareform.org.uk/policy-research
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