Background Feature

Background feature

The British Broadcasting Corporation has accumulated one of the largest multimedia archives in the world.  At the start of the BBC the company has taken a leading role in opening up the benefits of new technologies to big audiences.

The BBC was founded on the 20^th October 1922 by John Reith and George Villiers, in 1927 as a public service.  John Reith, the first general manager of the BBC and later, as it passed from private to public ownership, its first Director General. He defined public service as “primarily a standard and an outlook and only secondarily a form of administration”. The BBC was able to maintain its distinctive “standard and outlook”, and to define its own version of the public sector administration to which Reith referred, for more than fifty years.

It started with BBC Radio in 1922 as many amateur stations had closed.  The BBC took the opportunity and started its first daily radio service in London called 2LO.  After much argument, news was supplied by an agency, and music drama filled the airwaves for only a few hours a day.  In May 1932, the BBC moved from its studio in Savoy Hill.  The BBC commissioned a purpose built centre.   At the time it was one of only two in Europe.  

In November 1936, change happened. The BBC was the first broadcaster in the world to provide a regular ‘high definition’ television service.  Programmes of the kind we see today, such as drama, sport, outside broadcasts and cartoons, all featured, but not for long. The outbreak of war in 1939 brought programmes to a sudden halt.

BBC faced national competition from ITV who launched in 1955 as a result of the Television Act 1954.  The act created the Television Authority to regulate the industry and award franchises. There were six franchises started in 1954 for television, these were broadcasted in London, the Midlands and the North of England. There were two broadcasters one called Thames that was for weekdays and London Weekend which was for the weekends, having two broadcasters meant that there was only friendly competition that favoured the owners.

 

 This paved the way for the establishment of a commercial television service in the UK; it was made up of numerous companies providing a regional television service and would also generally provide programs to the network as a whole. Before this the BBC's television service had been running with no challenge for almost two decades and was fast gaining popularity due to customers eventually being able to afford televisions.  The regional broadcasters were the first major rival to the BBC its main aim was to bring diversity to television supplied by the BBC.  The beginning of commercial television created great controversy.  Churchill dismissed it as ‘a tupenny Punch and Judy show’.

The BBC audience share dropped to 28%.  Despite this, competition made the BBC up their game to be able to successfully compete; this forced the BBC to revamp its drama and news presentations as it was trying to match trends set by ITV. In just two years, ITV had won over 72% of the audience share from the BBC.

                               

A few years ago BBC faced controversy in recent years BBC has faced some controversy; in 2008 Ofcom the main regulator in the UK fined the BBC £400,000 for eight separate breaches of the Ofcom program codes, in each of these cases the BBC had fixed competitions. Only a year earlier, Ofcom had fined the BBC £50,000 for falsifying the results of competition on the program Blue Peter.    A recent that was conducted on the BBC stated that 40 percent of license fee payers believed that the BBC does not provide value for money.

 

In the late 1990s the BBC invested in new internet services - such as BBC News Online - and prepared for the launch of digital television by introducing new channels in order to keep up with competitors.

The BBC which is a vertically integrated company as all of its channels are from one company, over the years BBC has turned into a cross media company as they have a website which is www.bbc.co.uk and BBC iPlayer which allows people to watch programmes they need to catch up on – which obviously has made them more appealing to their audience, as it gives them more choice.  It also provides eight national TV channels  these include BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC News, BBC Parliament, as well as radio broadcasting, BBC Online and BBC iPlayer,  BBC also have the magazine Radio Times.

The BBC's main priority as a company in the public service media sector is to deliver high quality programmes, content and services, fewer repeats and fewer cheap programmes like other commercial channels.  It is clear that the BBC have overcome many obstacles over their ninety years. For instance in the media sector there are limitations on cross media ownership and regulations, which were made by the broadcasting Act 1990 and the 2003, these regulations have cause many problems for the BBC over the years.

In conclusion, it is clear that the BBC acts almost as a media conglomerate, as it is a company, that owns many companies in various mass media, such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet. The British Broadcasting Corporation once had a monopoly position in the broadcasting sector, but due to demand it faced competitors like ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and BskyB – these channels also operate across different sectors to offer a wide range of services to households in Britain. Also the switch to Digital meant that the audience have more choice now, than they have ever had before.