Ownership and Funding of the Media

Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) -  The BBC are an ideal example as they "walk the tightrope" in terms of funding. This is because they are funded by the public instead of advertising or any Government investment. The aim of the BBC is to inform and educate people as it has no bias view so it says as its funded by the public.

Commercial Broadcasting - This is broadcasting that tries to sell its audience something such as a product or food for example through the use of adverts. Also commercial Broadcasting is a business as it sells ad space to company's effectively. A company that does this is Sky.

Corporate and Private Ownership - Private: Owned by an individual  e.g. the company is owned by one person
Corporate: Is owned by a group of people and is listed as a public company

Global Companies - Multinational companies that can exploit tax loop holes if they have places abroad for example. A good example of Global companies would be News Corp Australia who own a number of companies such as news papers, these are shown in the image to the right. Link can be viewed here

Concentration of Ownership -  As an example 6 companies at the moment own around 90 percent of the worlds media. This cuts out any competition and is also part of the process of Monopolisation. Concentration of ownership allows for synergy to take place (where one product helps another if the company owns two different products for example). This concentration can be seen in how the sun may advertise and run competitions based on promoting the same companies film.

Vertical Integration - Production: Studios sell the rights to distribute the film
Distribution:  Company Buys rights to distribute the film. There is a lot of money to made in this particular sector.
Exhibition: Cinemas sell tickets for people to go see a film and depending on the distribution tickets for that film are sold world wide to all types of cinemas.
Some studios may want to purchase a distribution house (company) in order to help get their because this is where the majority of the money is made.

Horizontal Integration/Monopolisation - This is where a company owns multiple studios while also owning a distribution house. While Monopolisation means that the company takes over other rival companies effectively buying out the competition within that sector of the industry. An example could be Disney buying Pixar studios because they were seen as a rival in terms of animated movies.

The License Fee - BBC for example, the fee is designed to "walk the tightrope" as mentioned earlier, is also payed yearly.

Subscription -  Sky for example sell their service as a package that you pay monthly. These packages can include every channel that Sky offers or people can chose to buy certain ones, such as the Sky movies package. These packages go on top of the standard version and are added to the monthly bill. This basically means that you the customer  pay to be sold to advertisers as Sky also sells add space.



One-off Payment to Own Product -  A good example of this is paying for a DVD of a film you like, once the transaction has been completed you own that film in terms of you get to view it as many times as you want.

Pay Per View - This is essentially paying on top of the subscription service. A great example of this is seen in the sport of Wrestling as they will package off certain fights into the pay per view list, this also gives some control over what the viewer may watch perhaps.

Sponsorship - Being sponsored by a certain product can help being more money in to help fund the programme. An example of this can be seen in Coronation street and Cadbury's chocolate where at each ad break it would be announced "Coronation street, sponsored (brought to you by) Cadbury's (Add their slogan here).

Advertising - Channels sell advertising space to help fund the channel and its programming. This basically sells the audience to the advertisers although the spending power of the audience affects what ads are shown. For example unemployed people wont see ads for Aston Martin cars displayed during day time TV. In addition this affects how much that ad space is to begin with along with audience numbers and peak times.

Product Placement - This is when a product is displayed inside the media text. An example could be James bond drinking Heineken beer in one of the Bond films.

Private Capital - This is raised from friends or loans that the filmmakers get themselves through contacting people for example. This is mostly seen within the indie scene for short films for example.

Crowd Funding - This particular funding can be from websites such as Indie-go-go and Kickstarter that rely on contributions towards the project, these can be rewarded with exclusive gifts for example depending on the amount given by a person. Link to the Kickstarter website can be found here

Development Funds - Financial aid given to certain sectors within the industry for example the British Lottery fund gave out money to young up and coming British filmmakers to help them with their projects. This also includes money from Banks and private funding from an investor.