TV Companies Ownership

Sky

British Sky Broadcasting (better known as SKY TV or BSkyB), was formed in October 1990 specialises in telecommunications and media industry. The company was formed when Sky television and British Satellite Broadcasting, who were both struggling financially, merged to become BSkyB (Sky) and now has over 10 million subscribers.

Sky is listed on the London Stock Exchange with News Corporation owning a controlling 39.1% of the company.  In 2010, News Corporation launched a takeover bid but withdrew the bid in July 2011 because of The News of the World’s alleged phone hacking scandal, causing the newspaper to be shut down. ITV has been the subject of a flurry of rumoured take-over and merger bids since it was formed. For example, on 9^th November 2006, News International announced that it had approached ITV about a proposed merger. The merger was effectively blocked by BSkyB on 17^th November 2006 when it controversially bought a 17.9% stake in ITV for £940 million. The plan would see News International Group acquiring Sky’s stake in ITV plc in exchange for Sky taking full control of Channel 5. However, no move materialised and News International Group sold Channel 5 to Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell in July 2010.

Sky has had a lot of criticism of how it influences TV and how they make more money.  On 12th July 2011, former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown claimed that Sky’s majority owner, News Corporation attempted to affect government policy with regards to the BBC in pursuit of their own commercial interests (i.e. BSkyB). He went further, in a speech in Parliament on 13th July 2011, stating:"Mr. James Murdoch, which included his cold assertion that profit not standards was what mattered in the media, underpinned an ever more aggressive News International and BSkyB agenda under his and Mrs. Brooks’ leadership that was brutal in its simplicity. Their aim was to cut the BBC license fee, to force BBC online to charge for its content, for the BBC to sell off its commercial activities, to open up more national sporting events to bids from BSkyB and move them away from the BBC, to open up the cable and satellite infrastructure market, and to reduce the power of their regulator, OFCOM. I rejected those policies." Also a lot of people aren’t happy that when you by a Sky box, you have to buy Sky Sports and Sky News in a way of Sky getting more money. Even if you have Sky Sports and Sky Movies, you might still have to pay to watch live boxing and the latest movies on Sky Box Office which is overpriced in my opinion. They also get a lot of money through companies and business’ wanting to advertise on Sky and wanting to sponsor some of their programmes.  Also a TV license costs £145.50 and they have over 10 million subscribers and their tax bill equals to 7% of their revenue, so a lot of money is coming in and not a lot going out which is key factor in their success.

BBC

British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is probably the biggest cross-media companies in Britain. Founded on New Year’s Day 1927, ever since then the BBC has gradually got bigger every year until they are as big as they are today. Currently owned by Lord Patten of Barnes (Chairman) and Mark Thompson (Director-General).  The BBC is funded differently to other media companies. They get their money through the TV licence. For their TV channels they get £7.96 per month per household, for their radio stations they get £2.11 per month per household, for their online services they get £0.66 per month per household and for other costs they get £1.40 per month per household. Another way they get funding is when a programme like Strictly Come Dancing, where the viewing public pay to ring in vote for their favourite acts, the BBC earn lots of money from these phone in shows and if you want to ring Radio 1 to ask them to play a song there is a fee you have to pay to phone or text in.

One of the BBC’s main selling points is that they are very diverse with their numerous TV programmes. BBC One is quite adult contemporary as they quite often record shows like The News, Eggheads, Bargain Hunt e.t.c. BBC Two is also adult contemporary as record shows like Coast and Weakest Link however they record shows like Mock the Week and Match of the Day 2 which swings the target audience towards male’s over 25. BBC Three is aimed at 16-34 year olds and mainly specialise in comedy programmes e.g. Family Guy, Little Britain, Gavin and Stacey, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps e.t.c. They also often air live music from festivals e.g. Glastonbury and Radio 1’s Big Weekend.  BBC Four is also adult contemporary as it shows a lot of history documentaries, live performances of classical music like BBC Proms and a lot of animal documentaries e.g. Life and Blue Planet.

There has been a bit of controversy within the BBC for many reasons. Firstly there is the licence fee which some people think is overpriced. However I wouldn’t mind paying that much because it means the BBC can make better quality programmes because they will have a bigger budget and it means there are no adverts during shows. However there are some negatives, people with lower incomes pay more for their licence fee because they can’t pay it all at once they charged more for delay of payment and get charged and extra fee for paying on their credit card because they can’t afford any other type of payment. Also now because a lot of channels have an online player and very little adverts are played on the online channels so people are paying licence fee to have no adverts when the likes of ITV have an online service which has little adverts shown. Secondly there was a big deal over political correctness within the BBC so throughout all their programmes from Question Time to Match of the Day; they can’t be biased to one person or team or group e.t.c.  The BBC also can’t advertise because of the licence fee. The reason is that it is a public service broadcaster and not a commercial broadcaster so the public don’t want to be paying their hard earned money for a load of adverts.