TV Industry Contexts: blog tasks

1) BBC's mission statement is 'Inform, Educate and Entertain'. This means to enlighten the public about worldly events, share new information with the aim to help them learn new things and offer pure amusement.

2) The BBC is funded by a TV licence, which is paid for by the public as it is a public service broadcaster. As of now, the licence fee is £159 a year and every household is required to pay it in order to watch live broadcast TV or BBC iPlayer.

3) In order to meet its public service broadcasting responsibilities, the BBC must provide a balanced amount of information, support learning for people of all ages, produce creative output, have diverse content by representing all races and ethnicities and to reflect the United Kingdom, its culture and values to the world.

4) Regulation is when a piece of media is moderated to ensure that all rules set in place are followed correctly and that inappropriate content is not broadcasted to audiences. The BBC is regulated by OfCOM (the Office of Communications). OfCOM oversees all media channels and produces a code of conduct that all media channels must follow. In the event that this code of conduct is not followed to expectations, there is a risk that they may have their licence to make content removed and they can also be fined heavily. This includes what can be shown before the 9pm watershed and various other quality standards. Even though OfCOM is instructed by government, it is independent which means that the BBC can remain impartial and does not simply broadcast what the government tells it to.

5) Both Doctor Who and His Dark Materials help the BBC meet their mission statement (Inform, Educate and Entertain) by including aspects such as time travel, parallel universes and space to teach audiences about different features of science and technology. They also reflect real-life problems, such as a patriarchal, controlling government (symbolised through the Magisterium in His Dark Materials), therefore informing audiences on problems taking place in the world today. Lastly, both TV shows have interesting, flawed characters with deep, intricate storylines and have action-packed plotlines within every episode, which ultimately provides entertainment for those watching.

Grade 8/9 Extension Question:

1) To stay relevant in a streaming TV age, the article proposed that BBC needs to step up and change to match the public's liking. In today's day and age, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Now TV are rapidly gaining subscribers, and are proving to be the biggest competitors against BBC iPlayer. This is due to the variety of TV shows and movies each and every one has to offer, and how they are available for up to months or years at a time. To compete with this, the BBC attempts to make iPlayer more like Netflix, which is described as "way ahead of everything else". The BBC hopes to attract more younger viewers, add more boxsets and archive footage, feature shows that haven't shown up on TV recently and get rid of the 30-day expiration periods.