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 20th 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.
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