Sky v BBC

BBC – Public Broadcasting

The BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation, it was set up in 1922 under the BBC Royal Charter Agreement, and is funded by the public through people paying their television license. Which is £145.50 a year and they promise that the BBC UK’s service to remain free of advertisements and independent shareholder and political interest. With it being public corporation they are not out to make a profit, they have no shareholders or no owners. They were established to be a service for the public, seeing as it funded by the public they are expecting to see things produced that is family friendly and suitable for everyone. The BBC’s mission statement is inform, educate and entertain, as the programmes they show vary in genre, such as they will have programmes such as astronomy, science, gardening, housing, etc. the list is endless for the genre of programmes they produce. And they employ over 23,000 people.

The BBC is sort of like a conglomerate except it does not own any other companies. They will internally promote themselves such as they will advertise Eastenders on the radio and they will promote Radio shows on the TV.

The diversification on the BBC is that they have many different outlets of media such as Radio, TV, Books and Film.

The performance of the BBC ranges depending on what programmes they broadcast. For example the top two programmes on BBC1, week ending Many 31st were The FA Cup Final: Arsenal v Aston Villa and Eastenders and after than Eastenders had two more episodes in the top 5.

And the top two programmes on BBC2 were Springwatch and Gardeners’ World, and again Springwatch also had two more episodes in the top 5.

The BBC is vertically integrated because all of the channels are from one company, they aren’t bought in from anywhere where else.

At first the BBC didn’t used to have any competition as their channel used to be the one and only channel, then came along ITV, Chanel 4, Sky, Channel 5 and eventually cable, which became part of the global competition tend, this includes streaming, and companies such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple.

Some of the cons of public broadcasting are that you have to pay for a TV license even if you don’t want  to watch that particular channel and another thing is that the programmes that they are showing might not be catered to everyone’s tastes.

The BBC also sells it shows overseas however on such channels as BBC America they still have adverts but the BBC cannot collect the money for these advert as the people over seas are not paying for a license fee to watch these programme’s. In addition to this they sell their TV shows such as old episodes of Top Gear to channels such as Dave and other internal channels.

Sky – British Sky Broadcasting, was set up by Rupert Murdoch in 1990. Unlike BBC it is funded by subscription fees by customers paying for TV packages with paying extra for films and sport, also unlike BBC they offer telecommunication services such as landlines and broadband. It can start at £20 a month for the original bundle and then go up to £36 for a family bundle and then you can add the sports package for £25.50 a month on top of original bundle. And then you have extra for your broadband and phone.

With it being commercial broadcasting it generates all its money from advertising as well as the subscription fees. The reason why they have the adverts is so the audience can be informed of new products and services that are available.

Their mission statement is to entertain, excite and inspire the people who pay their subscription fees. Whereas the BBC said in their mission statement is to inform and educate the audience.

One of the cons to commercial broadcasting the advertising rates may be very expensive for example for the last episode of Friends in the US the advertising rates for just 30 seconds were up to $2 million dollars. So the more viewers/popular a programme the more expensive the advertising rates are.

An example of the performance for Sky1 is that for the week ending 31^st May, The Flash was the most popular programme that was broadcast with almost 2 million viewers for one particular episode, which was the season finale.

As for the sporting events that are shown on Sky they broadcasting sporting events such as The Ryder Cup, The Superbowl and The Masters. Whereas the BBC will only show Wimbledon and the Olympics among other sporting events such as the marathons.

Many of the channels on Sky such as Dave and Gold buy old episodes of Top Gear or Only Fools and Horses to broadcast on their channels.