"The new generation of UK media power players are going straight to their audience via web" www.mediaguardian.co.uk, Monday July 14 2008.
How have media institutions responded to the opportunities offered by new and digital media?
Media institutions are beginning to suffer due to the free content, flexibility and portability that the internet allows. Therefore TV broadcasting institutions like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and print institutions owned by Rupert Murdoch, have made use of new digital media, in order to reach their audiences and keep hold of them.
In TV broadcasting, institutions have now made their shows available from their website in order to keep their audiences. These are called catch up services; BBC I player is the most popular accounting for 98% of catch up service internet traffic. Others include 4OD by Channel 4 and ITV player. Due to the introduction of web 2.0 the internet has give audiences more freedom and power and this has led to more demands in what they want. Catch up services mean that audiences don’t have to stick to scheduling giving them the choice to view it when they please. This also gives new audiences the chance to view shows as they might have not been able to view it in the past due to scheduling. This shows how the freedom that broadcasting shows on the internet can guarantee audiences for these institutions to keep them alive.
New and digital media developments led to the deregulation of TV into digital channels, and this has provided a way for institutions to broadcast more on TV. Now most of the first 5 channels have HD channels and time shift channels. For example channel 4 has 11 channels, 3 are HD allowing audiences to view shows in better quality for their digital TVs and 3 are time shifted allowing audiences to view a show an hour after it was first broadcasted. These technological developments allow institutions to reach and give more freedom to their audiences without the use of the internet.
As social networking has become very popular in the last few years, with sites like Twitter and Facebook, TV institution ITV attempted to join in with the new and digital craze. In 2005 they bought Friends Reunited, one of the first social networking sites, for £175m but 4 years later sold it at a loss for £25m. This shows how difficult it is for institutions to get into the e-media platform to keep business alive, but also how fast moving the e media industry is; Like Myspace, a site could be big and popular and in a few years forgotten about.
C4 attempted a more successful business decision again in the digital TV sector in order to keep profits alive. They joined Emap to create 4Music, a music channel that brought 28m revenue.
As TV content is free online, many assume audiences always expect free content and will do things like opt out of the license fee so institutions like the BBC will lose out, but that isn’t always the case and there are possible opportunities for the institution to benefit from it. Micropayment is a small business for paying small fees for TV content, which has often been criticised as audiences are too comfortable with watching free content. However, according to the entertainment company, Freemantle Media, their research says audience are “willing to pay small amounts for on-demand TV programmes from 5p up to as high as £2”. This infers that pay-walls and micropayments could have a successful place online because the institutions will benefit from the audience who are willing to pay for an online service. This has been a similar idea of Rupert Murdoch who has added a pay-wall for his successful and well regarded online version of the news newspaper, The Times (thetimes.co.uk/tto/news). The success of the pay-wall hasn’t been fully analysed but the institution expected a loss of 90% of consumers, but so far has only lost a third. Therefore, if institutions decide to put up a pay-wall for TV it would be beneficial as it is clear that audiences are happy to pay for TV if they choose not to stick to scheduling.
Newspaper institutions could benefit from citizen journalism, something that the introduction of web 2.0 and active audiences has allowed. As audiences can now produce their own content and post it on line, newspaper institutions can use some of their user generated content to help research events that should be in the news. For example the journalist researching the Ian Tomlinson case was successful because he embraced the “mutualisation of news. The guardian journalist, Paul Lewis, came across someone who had filmed Tomlinson getting beaten up by the police and later that day Tomlinson died of a heart attack. Without the user generated content from the citizen journalist, the police wouldn’t have discovered what had happened to Tomlinson. This shows how media institutions can optimise existing content online for themselves.
Ability to add comments
Audiences might expect free content from now on- the might have to continue to make it free- cant make profits
Audiences want more interaction
BBC add chat service
Will this mean institutions constantly have to adapt to audience’s needs
Marxism- powerful obtaining audiences
Pluralism- more freedom and choice in terms of audience consumption
Murdoch and Myspace
News content online
The Daily newspaper- online only
No comments:
Post a Comment