Creative Media Production TV & FilmRESEARCH LOG

Unit Title / Name:
Project Title
Research Question
Owner ship and funding the TV industry
Method of research

Account

Research Findings:
Other television companies such as British Sky Broadcasting are funded through subscription and pay-per-view means. Sky is also a publicly owned company so it has shareholders that own shares in the company and can be consulted in the decision making process and also share in the profits and losses of the company. Sky operates a range of services and subscriptions and these services start from above £20 per month. These services are increasingly multimedia so people can have Sky TV, Broadband and Mobile apps. Their Sky Box Office and internet TV services bring in further income by allowing viewers to watch certain programmes for an extra pay per view fee. For example a recent Rolling Stones concert could be watched live by paying a one off charge and now Premier League football matches are being offered on a pay per view basis whereas before only those who subscribed to Sky Sports could watch them.
Many have accused Sky of being too dominant in the TV market and having a monopoly that means there is less chance of competition being able to thrive. It has even been investigated by the Competition Commission for this reason but the commission found that there is little that can be done in the face of Sky’s market power. Competition has increased in the form of subscriber streaming services for film and television shows such Netflix and Love Film but these do not have the same market share as Sky.
Ownership and funding in the TV and film industries is complex and includes many different means of making income from the licence fee to shareholders to ploughing existing profits back into the business. Concerns over the dominance of a limited number of companies are justified with huge multimedia, multinational conglomerates controlling much of the market and making it hard for other companies to emerge and compete. This is a major issue for the media because TV, film, print and radio play such a huge part of many people’s lives and it is undesirable for so much of it to be controlled by so few.
Further Research and Changes to the Research Plan:
Evaluationof Research Process and your findings