Issues and debates

Issues and debates

Tastes and decency: Tastes and decency is a guideline created by Ofcom, this guideline is in place to make sure that no broadcaster present any content which may be offensive against a good decency or taste. Another reason why this guideline is in place is to prevent any type of encouragement to crime  as well as leading to disorder which may be very offensive to the public in society and feelings. Licensees must also take information about the guidance which is provided within section 1 of the ITC programme show, this also relates back to the use of bad taste in humour and language which may be offensive to some viewers. Finally in relation with the ITC’s family viewing policy on no circumstances are material that are unsuitable for children aloud to be shown before 9.00pm, advertising also has separate rules which can be found in rule 22 part C.

For example the comedy show “Family Guy” features bad humorous jokes which can be offensive to religion and race however they also include content such as bad language so therefore this content isn’t appropriate for children and must be shown over 9.00pm, however “family guy” did included a song about weed and how it should be legal however this is illegal in UK and the song is encouraging viewers to rebel against the law.

Quality and standards: Quality is the excellence of a channel as well as all the programs they produce, and standards is a certain expectation of a programme, for example is it meant to be that explicit? Or is it too explicit?

According to broadcasters in 1999 quality wasn’t up to standards and was classed as failing as a survey which had included more than 450 people that took part in. This then resulted in 70% of people felt as if the quality of TV output had diminish ever since 1994. According to statistics more than a quarter of people had agreed it’s got a lot worse and a low as one percent of people said they agree quality has improved within the period. People say that the reason for the poor quality was less money, a managing director had opinion saying “It’s very upsetting that even as inflation is still occurring, we are being told to create the same content of the programmes for less money than last year at the exact same standards”.

Public service broadcasting & the free market ethos: This is a broadcasting which gains funding’s publicly from the TV licence which will have a total cost of £145.50, in return the channel would then need to show programs which entertain, educate and inform the public as well as providing public services. The BBC is a broadcaster in which does this and has values such as honesty, this means the BBC must put the audience as first priority at the heart of thinking, and they must also present creativity within their content, celebrating diversity and lastly offer value for the customer’s money.

Divers is extremely important for the BBC as UK has many different races and religion within UK who do pay for their TV license and would then receive the same as everyone else. The BBC is owned by the government and is known as a public service broadcaster since the public pay for the BBC from their TV license. Since the BBC is a public service they must make sure they don’t provide any biased content. I personally think the BBC is one of the very best examples of public services as the BBC has been around for many years and was the first channel to ever be setup in UK and has regulations about their content which is important to the public.

Free market ethos: The free market ethos is slightly different from public service broadcasting as a free market ethos would not need any type of payment to broadcast which then allows a load of new audiences to be formed. There are also issues with free market ethos as since any company is allowed to form a channel and broadcast their content to the public, there could possibly be some content which viewers may find distressing or un-exceptable. The broadcasting Act 1996 was then invented to replace the old broadcasting act 1990 in order to allow more television companies to broadcast their own shows. Some example of free market channels are Dave, Really, Sky, MTV, Disney XD and E4. The 1996 Act does also include restrictions to what can be shown on the channels. If there was no restrictions companies would broadcast anything they want and this could lead to TV being low quality as there will be a lot of arguments and complaints which could shut down channels. Free market ethos can be positive as this allows channels such as Really which features ghost adventures and can be quit scary to younger viewers.

Ownership and access: Ownership and access is having the ability to own a piece of content which only you can access unless you choose to give access to the content to another person, for example channel 4 has ownership of the Simpsons as part of a contract and is aloud to broadcast it on television however if channel 4 didn’t have the any documents or ownership of the Simpsons and broadcasted the show this would then lead to illegal consequences such as heavy fines but the original owner.

Regulation and the free market: Regulations are the governing of videos and programmes and would then prevent the public mostly younger viewers from seeing anything innapropiete, and if the programme is found guilty of doing this they would be held responsible and would either be fine or delete the programme from being broadcasted. One of the regulators that deal with complaints and misuse of broadcasting is Ofcom where they invented the watershed which allows broadcasters to show content which may be inapropiet for children, the watershed starts at 9.00pm and at this time children should be in bed asleep meaning they wont see the explicit content. The film and video regulator is BBFC in which they lay down some rules to make sure only people who are a certain age can view the content. For example The hunger games , as this featured one of the contestants got hit by a spear and was then cut out, so all we saw was the spear being thrown and the person laying on the ground well as before we would see the person be hit by the spear. The free market is content in which is streamed/uploaded or downloaded for free, content from the free market is not regulated and can be watched by anyone meaning young kids could watch inapropiet content online, an example of free market is you tube or twitch.

Ratings wars: Ratings wars are when two primetime shows compete against each other to get more viewers so they can survive for another season and so they can obtain more funding, this mostly appeals to reality shows like the un-datebles which need to gain high enough ratings in order to continue the seasons and get more funding or they would be cancelled. Shows such as Britain got talent and the X-factor compete against each other to obtain viewers create a fragmented audience since both these shows are featured at the same time.

Effects of on-demand services: On demand TV service is away to catch up on any show you missed, for example the ITV hub allows you to view shows which have recently been broadcasted. This also means the when shows are competing they must look at the views obtained from broadcasting as well as the views gained from on demand. This then effects the viewing habbits of television shows as now people have on demand they can watch the programme whenever they feel like it and will miss out on the TV viewing. This is good news for the public as they can view their favourite programme whenever they feel like it, on the other hand this is bad news for the product creator as they may receive bad reviews since not many people are viewing the broadcast on TV and are watching it whenever they feel like it and some TV programmes may feel as if it is unpopular to the public which could lead to cancellation of the show.

The effects of streaming media online: Streaming videos online is a way for the public to freely search up videos, films and programmes online and download them for free from the internet, however this can be really negative as the quality of the film can be low and could also be classed as illegal viewing downloading from pirated websites which can put cinemas out of business. This means the media will lose money as people will no longer need to pay for the film since they can get it for free.