In this report I will be researching the structure and ownership of the TV sector.

I will
mainly focus on the industries that are part of the creative media sector, the different
sizes of these companies and what are; independents, franchises, formats and
conglomerates. I will look at the TV industry for all my information and examples, and
in this industry I will be mainly looking at both Sky and the BBC.
The main difference between any companies is whether or not they are privately
funded or publicly funded. After that different companies can be labelled as different
things depending on how the company is ran or owned. The main labels after private
or public is being either a multinational, independent or a conglomerate. A
multinational company is and organization that owns productions in different
countries, not just their home country, these companies are also referred to as
international companies. An independent company is referred to as being free from
outside control, this means all independent companies are privately owned by
investment shares on the stock. A conglomerate is two or more companies joined by
one corporate group and usually involves a parent company, these are often very big
and multinational, often spanning more than one media sector.
Sky UK Limited is a massive conglomerate company which doesnt just provide TV,
they provide TV, broadband, internet services and fixed line telephones. Sky is a
multinational privately owned company which makes its money from the
subscriptions to sky, the use of their internet and broadband and their fixed line
telephones. Sky is very diverse in how they make their money as it is not just
involved on the media industry.
The BBC is an example of a publicly funded company which was started in 1922 and
stands for British Broadcasting Corporation, it gets its money from the UK TV license
fee. The TV license fee is 145.50 and has to pay by every household that has
access to TV or a way to view TV. The BBC is a very large company and spans all
across the UK, it has six main public purposes which are; sustaining citizenship and
civil society, promoting education and learning, stimulating creativity and cultural
excellence, representing the UK, bringing the UK to the world and the world to the
UK and delivering the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies
and services. All of the purposes means that the company will have to spread wide
and grow to across the world. The BBC has many sectors of development; it gives
us live news coverage, TV programs all day, radio all day and has shops across the
country selling DVDs and merchandise.
Vertical integration is when a company will produce ever part of that product other
than horizontal integration were the company would outsource parts of the media
production to other companies. The BBC is an example of vertical integration
because they keep everything in house and dont outsource any work. They have the
facilitys to produce every step of their media production so they do it. Horizontal
integration is when the producing company hires another company to help with the
production process, this may happen for example by Channel 4, they may need help
in their editing process so they will hire an editing company to help.

Mergers and takeovers are when two different companies combine into one. A
merger is mutual and a takeover is purchasing of one company by the other. A great
example of a merger would be the joining of Sky Television and British Satellite
Broadcasting to make BskyB in November 1990, this then made them the biggest
digital subscription company. An example of a takeover is the takeover of Virgin
Mobile NTL: Telewest to create Virgin Media, the first quadruple play media
company, bringing together television, broadband, mobile phone and fixed line
services. Sky and Virgin are two major competitors as they offer the same services
at competitive prices.
The definition of cross media is when a company owns more than one companies
which produce different forms of media for example Sky offers TV services, fixed line
telephone services, broadband and internet services. The definition of diversification
is when a company offers a form of media on many platforms, for example BBC has
an online service where you can view BBC shows.
Sky and the BBC are two different companies both producing a TV service. Sky is a
huge privately funded company that is a massive conglomerate and sells products
worldwide. The BBC is a massive publicly funded company which is spread across
the world and owns many franchises such as Top Gear. Sky gets its money from the
sales of its products whereas the BBC gets its money mainly from the TV license
fee.
In this report I have explained the TV media sector and what it is made up of, I have
mainly focused on the larger companies as they are well known and easy to find
information on. I have also explained many terms related to the sector and used the
examples to put them into context.

Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_business
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conglomerate_%28company%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_(United_Kingdom)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media
http://www.bbc.co.uk/