Ownership and Funding.

Ownership Concepts:

Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)

• Public service broadcast is a broadcaster (e.g. BBC) that broadcasts for the public's benefits rather than for financial gain.The television authority OFCOM has regulations hat certain TV/radio broadcasts are required to include a specific amount of public service broadcasts as their license to broadcast.(link 1)

• The BBC exists to serve the public, and its mission is to inform, educate and entertain. The BBC Trust is the governing body of the BBC, and we make sure the BBC delivers that mission. The Trust is the guardian of licence fee revenue and of the public interest in the BBC.The Trust is separate from the Executive Board which is led by the Director-General. The Executive Board is responsible for the operational delivery of BBC services and the direction of BBC editorial and creative output in line with the framework set by the Trust.(link 2)

• The BBC is run through the licenceing fee which each household in the UK pays. The BBC used its income from the licence fee to pay for its TV, radio and online services, plus other costs, as shown below.Everyone in the UK who watches or records TV programmes at the same as they are shown on TV needs to be covered by a TV licence. This includes TVs, computers, mobile phones, games consoles, digital boxes and DVD/VHS recorders.

The annual cost of a colour TV licence is £145.50 (as from 1 April 2010). A black and white TV licence is £49.

How the licence fee was spent in 2013/14

Between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014 the cost was £145.50 – the equivalent of £12.13 per month or just under 40p per day.

Commercial Broadcasting

ITV, C4 and Five are funded from the revenues from adverts. Funding TV channels from advertising is getting more difficult as the total amount of money available isn't really increasing but the large numbers of channels these days mean that the money is spread more thinly. All 3 currently have quite expensive "public service" obligations (e.g. they have to put minimum amounts of certain types of programs on - these programs are usually unpopular ones as well as expensive so it is hard to make money from adverts in them) as part of their licences to broadcast. 

Global Companies

The media world is ran by main companies. Global companies are companies that own lots of smaller companies such as Time Warner, they currently own around 50 plus smaller companies such as Warner Bros, CNN and New Line Cinema. In the media industry all the companies are practically owned by seven massive companies which can be argued as unfair and it is having owning all the landscape for no competition. The top six companies are VIACOM, News Corporation, Time Warner, Walt Disney, Sony and General Electric.

1. VIACOM
Viacom has a total asset of $22.96 billion dollars and own companies such as MTV,Nick Jr and Comedy Central

2. WALT DISNEY
Walt Disney has a total assets of $69.206 billion dollars and owns such companies like Pixar, Disney Music Group and Marvel Entertainment

3. SONY
Sony has a total asset of $137.7 billion dollars and owns such companies as Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics

Corporate Ownership and Private Ownership

A corporate ownership is when a company or corporation owns a sector that is owned by the government and is separate from its owners making it an separate object. However a private ownership is when they are not owned by the government and are self funded. A good example of a corporate ownership is the BBC and a good examples of private ownership is companies that are independently funded owned by an individual.

Vertical Integration (owning stuff in different sectors)

When a company expands its business into areas that are at different points on the same production path, such as when a manufacturer owns its supplier and/or distributor. Vertical integration can help companies reduce costs and improve efficiency by decreasing transportation expenses and reducing turnaround time, among other advantages. However, sometimes it is more effective for a company to rely on the expertise and economies of scale of other vendors rather than be vertically integrated.

Horizontal Integration / monopolisation

The acquisition of additional business activities that are at the same level of the value chain in similar or different industries. This can be achieved by internal or external expansion. Because the different firms are involved in the same stage of production, horizontal integration allows them to share resources at that level. If the products offered by the companies are the same or similar, it is a merger of competitors. If all of the producers of a particular good or service in a given market were to merge, it would result in the creation of a monopoly. Also called lateral integration.


Funding Types:

The Licence Fee:

Subscription:
Subscription television is where you pay a fee, often monthly, to watch a particular company's television channels. The most popular example of that in the United Kingdom is Sky in which you have a satellite dish fitted and get a television box that can view all of the channels. Then you pay a monthly fee to watch the channels that they supply.Other online subscription services include Netflix, NowTV and Amazon prime.

One-off payment to own product
The main source of one of payment is film rental or DVD purchase as most people steam this has become less and less but now they are making services such as sky on demand where you buy a film you can instantly watch it then they post the DVD to your address so you can keep it in your collection. DVD is a digital optical disc storage format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs can be played in multiple types of players, including DVD players. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions.

LOVEFiLM By Post - amazon.co.uk‎

LoveFilm (stylised as LOVEFiLM) was a UK-based provider of DVD-by-mail and streaming video on demand in the UK and Germany.

Acquired by Amazon.com in 2011, the service had reached 2 million subscribers. It also claims over 70,000 titles, and over 4 million DVD, Blu-ray or Games rentals per month in five countries. Through a series of acquisitions, LoveFilm quickly became the leading online DVD rental and streaming outlet in the UK and Europe.

Pay per View

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is when you gain funding from being supported by a certain brand and/or company, this way the person who is sponsoring can gain exposure by being shown to support a popular brand and the company being sponsored can gain exposure from the company sponsoring if it is popular also. An example of how sponsoring can work is with the Talk-Talk and X-Factor deal, as X-Factor is on at prime time, it is a successful way to gain exposure for whoever sponsors them . 'TalkTalk gets significant mileage out of its wide-ranging association with the show, with the sponsorship proving to be a significant driver of its fast-growing TV service, which has signed up almost 1 million customers to its YouView-based pay-TV operation.'  This is a quote from the news article that reinforces the idea of how effect a sponsorship can be and shows how much money can be invested into a project sponsorship like this, the Talk-Talk and X-Factor sponsorship cost £30 million.

advertising (Spot ads): Example: To many things to say, but most channels do this. Litterally placing Advertisments spaces in between TV shows or intermissions in TV shows or films.

product placement: Example: James bond and Aston Martin. This is litterally where you pay for your product to appear on major publications, such as the example stated earlier.

Crowd funding and sourcing

 from the public getting the public to believe in your product to donate a small amount of money into the media product. An example of how you can do this is through a website called kick-starter it is very effective for people creating a moving image media production that need help to fund it, 7.3million people have backed a Kick-starter project and 2.2million people have backed more than one project. 

Private capital: 
Often with films individuals of substantial worth will put there own money in to developing a film. Many established film stars such as Tom Cruise will often feature in the credits of films under the title of producer meaning they have done exactly that. For doing so the producer will hope to make money back from the selling of the film at cinema and on DVD/blu-ray copies. Some example include the aforementioned Tom Cruise whose first time producing a film was the well known Mission Impossible (1996, Brian De Palma). Sometimes people who originally don't have anything to do with the film industry but have a keen interest will help finance films. An example of such a person would be Megan Ellison, daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison who has produced films like Zero Dark Thirty (2012, Kathryn Bigelow) which have earned her Oscar nominations.

Financial aid and development funds
These are specially set up organisations that aid certain films with there development and funding. An example of such an organisation would be the British Film Institute which invest £26m of lottery funds to aid film development, production and distribution in the UK every year. To obtain such funding from the BFI movie creators will have to apply for the funding they need. If the application is successful then the funding will be received. Recent films the BFI have helped fund include Frank (2014, Lenny Abrahamson).