The present day media is consumed in lots of different ways. The online media platform is vastly expanding and more and more people are starting to consume most of their media through the internet. BBC iPlayer and ITV player are being widely used across the UK as a way for people to watch their favourite programmes and a way to catch up with any TV shows they may have missed in the past week. TV and radio are still a large part of the public’s daily media consumption and the BBC and ITV are some of the main channels people watch in the UK. The running of these major corporations are owned in different ways and therefore emit different media experiences. In this report I will talk about how the media is shaped at the moment and the strengths and flaws that may have come with it. I will also talk about how I think the media should be shaped for the better in the future and how this may help improve the public’s experience within the media.
STRUCTURE AND OWNERSHIP
The first thing I studied was the way in which media companies were owned and the structure which was put in place. I decided to research the BBC to see the way in which a business owned by the public was ran. Below you can see a small part of my research: 
As you can see from the facts above, the BBC made a revenue of over £5 billion in the 2011/2012 period and this income was mainly from the TV license fee. As the BBC is a publicly funded company, they do not need adverts in between programmes and this means that there are no breaks in any programmes featured on any BBC channel and each programme lasts the full 30 / 60 minutes. As the BBC is funded by the public, it needs to have the public’s interest at the very core of its business. This means that it cannot be politically biased at all where as a privately owned company (such as the DMG Media Group) can be.This however, does have its benefits. By covering all political aspects, the BBC is able to draw in a lot of the public’s attention whether they are a right wing or a left wing supporter – by being able to do this, the BBC is bringing in more and more viewing figures which is a key part of an expanding business.
There are other benefits of publicly owned companies like the BBC such as the fact that there is a higher budget which they can work with, which means more and more media outlets for the public to enjoy.The BBC would use this budget to create their TV shows, as they do not commission someone else to do it for them. As the BBC is publicly funded, their programmes have to cater for all of the license fee payers, which means that there will more than likely be something on one of the BBC channels or radio stations that you will enjoy – resulting in a higher variety of shows to choose from. The debts that publicly funded companies may get into will not be as detrimental to the company as they would be if they were privately run, as there would be more investors in the company, which makes it a lot easier to get out of.
However although there are a lot of benefits of a publicly ran company, I did manage to find weaknesses. After researching this topic for quite a while, I found a lot of area’s were saying that publicly funded companies lacked editorial independence. Journalists for publicly funded companies may just be the ‘mouthpiece’ for the people in charge and in this sense, will not be able to fully write what they feel and would have to stick to what the public may want to hear. Also, unlike privately funded companies, businesses like the BBC are not able to make on the spot decisions about large matters as they are owned by the government. This means that any changes put forward would have to be approved by the government before they were done. This in a way, restricts publicly funded companies as to what they can do as they know that they will need to get approval of their choices. I have also studied private companies, such as The Daily Mail Group. (seen below) These companies are owned in a different way to organisations such as the BBC, therefore emitting a different media experience to the public. By being a privately funded company, being able to make your own decisions and quickly, may be a very big bonus to they way their media creations are absorbed. 
I mainly focused my research of private ownership on one main company, the Daily Mail Group (DMG Media). The DMG is owned by one person, Lord Rothermere who inherited the company from his father in 1997. The company owns many media platforms such as The Daily Mail, Wowcha, Jobsite and Teletext Holidays and their average revenue, as stated on their website is £1,060 million, a fraction of what the BBC are making. Rothermere himself has benefited very well from owning a media company, as his net worth is estimated at over £720 million.
By owning a private company there are a lot of advantages that you have that public ownership are not entitled to. Like I stated in the BBC’s drawbacks, media organisations owned by the public would have to get permission to change anything about the brand before they went ahead with it, where as a private company such as the DMG are able to make decisions quickly and change any aspect of their company within a fraction of the time. As the public do not have an input into the running of a privately owned company, there is no pressure on the media company to create products to suit everyone and they can be a lot more picky with what they create. This can be seen with TV channels such as Really (a reality based TV channel) Viva (Music and Reality) Challenge (game shows) and Dave (comedy).
Obviously, as with any company, there are some downsides to private ownership. A lot of privately owned companies have to please their investors which means they need to make a profit to stay in business. This could result in the company being bias in what they create to make the investors happy. Most private companies are politically biased which can deter some members of the public from engaging in their product. Private companies such as the DMG thrive from advertising, which means if no advertisers were interested then their revenue would decrease significantly. This would result in decreased standards and services to the public.
REGULATION
There are a lot of regulatory bodies in the media, however there a few main ones which I have decided to talk about. 1. Ofcom 
Ofcom is the main regulator for all TV and radio stations. The public are able to ring up Ofcom and complain about a programme or radio show that they have just listened to which they may have found to have been offensive. Here are some examples:
At the start of February 2014, Ofcom received complaints about Castle FM – a radio station broadcasting to a small area in Scotland. Three of the listeners of this radio station alerted Ofcom to offensive language that they had heard on the station over three days. The words included swear words during music tracks which should have been blurred out.
On the 18th February 2014, Ofcom received fifteen complaints about the BBC News at One’s report on the clashes between the police and anti government protesters in Bangkok as the police tried to take back government ministries that had been occupied by anti government protesters. The complainer’s told Ofcom that there were disturbing images in the reports and that they should not have been broadcast that early in the day. Ofcom also noticed that it was the school holidays. – This issue has been resolved.
During the start of January 2014, Ofcom received a complaint about a Peace FM presenter making offensive comments about former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon shortly after his death. Due to the Licencee unable to provide a recording of this, this issue is still in breach.
2. The Press Complaints Commission 
The Press Complaints Commission has a large code of practice which all British newspapers and magazines must oblige by. To see this, follow this link: http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html Just like Ofcom, the Press Complaints Commission receives complaints from the public about any problems they find in Newspapers and Magazines and then tries to resolve them so that the public receive a better media experience in the future. Here are some examples:
The PCC received a complaint about the Metro newspaper stating that a graphic accompanying one of its articles about cancer rates was very misleading. The graphic showed a woman breastfeeding and it gave an impression that breastfeeding increases the rate of getting cancer. – This issue has now been resolved.
A man complained to the PCC about an article in the Daily Mail this month stating that a photo of him has been published with some information about his private life without his permission. – This issue is now resolved.
In February, a man complained to the Press Complaints Commission on behalf of Zdzislaw Molodynski about two articles published in the Huffington Post. He claims these articles are misleading and inaccurate. There were apparently comments in the articles supposedly said by Mr Molodynski, however he denies making these comments. – This has now been resolved.
There are a lot of advantages with media regulation. One example is the fact that by a regulatory body on hand, disturbing images (graphic, pornographic etc) can be censored, which is saving children and adults from seeing it. They can also censor out scenes of people drinking alcohol and taking drugs before the watershed so that only specific people of the right age are able to see them. There is also the fact that censorship stops plagiarism. One of the main advantages of media regulation is the fact that it protects the privacy of people. Without regulation, the media would be able to say anything about anyone.
There are however, some disadvantages. In complete contrast to the first advantage, people may say that if the regulatory bodies completely censor out sexual images,then children and teenagers would rely completely on lessons and it would become difficult to teach children about things such as the dangers of an STD. Freedom of speech may become compromised due to heavy regulation. Also, live television would be incredibly hard to regulate as someone could easily slip up and say or do something offensive. As well as all of these there is the strong fact that many people deem different things offensive. One person’s list of things they may not want to see on TV may be fine for someone else, so regulatory bodies will have to take this into consideration. However, as you can see from both of the examples above, the regulation of media companies seems to be working well. They are easy for the public to get in contact with and tend to resolve issues quickly and efficiently. To me, this regulation works perfectly well to and I would suggest to keep it the same in the future.
LEGAL, ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES
Legal, Ethical and Social issues appear in the media all the time, some of which make the headlines in the news. The Leveson Inquiry (The phone hacking scandal) was one of the main issues featured in the media since 2010. Below you can see the link to my research into the topic.
You can see the full, official report, here: http://goo.gl/sx3s9d
However, to really focus in on how bad the issues in the media can be, I took my focus elsewhere and started studying the topic of how women are represented in the media. Ever since TV started, women have been shown as ‘the assistant’ or are never seen to be having lead roles in TV series or even news bulletins – until recently.
Miss Representation, a documentary all about how woman are shown in the media, shows just how much women are downgraded when placed in front of the public eye. Below you can find a link to the documentary.
http://goo.gl/KOoF1T The way women are treated in the media raises some questions. What makes women different from men? Why is it harder for them to get a lead role? Why are women shown as weak and in some cases, worthless? Women are exploited in the media all the time, they are criticised for the way they look: their hair, their body shape and even features that they cannot change. Not only would this make them feel very self concious, it would make them want to change what they look like and that should not be the case. 
In non-fictional media, women are shown as the helper to the main, lead role – usually a male. The women who are lucky enough to get a role in front of the camera are usually very pretty, skinny girls who will be role models to the younger generation of females. There seems to be a wall in the media which stops ‘average’ looking girls from even getting a chance to host or even co -host TV programmes such as the news and gameshow and even adverts are choosing who appears in their commercial based on looks rather than talent – that is if they even have a chance against the male population. Below is a chart from the Women’s Media Centre in the USA showing the percentage of Male and Female roles in newsrooms from 1999-2013. 
As you can see, the percentages have near enough stayed the same. Women are less than half the percentage where as males are well over half. After a brief change in the percentage from 2004-2006, which saw the percentage of women in the newspaper newsrooms climb, they have once again dropped and are even lower than where they started in 1999. If we take a look at the trend on this chart and think about the future, we can see that the percentage is more than likely going to keep dropping, meaning that Women may have even smaller appearances on TV and smaller job roles. This report can be found here: http://goo.gl/tyN5WL 
We can also see how badly women are represented in the media in magazines. From a young age, girls are seeing females on the covers of magazines looking their impression of ‘perfect’ however in reality, these photos have been photo shopped to make the women look like a size zero with perfect skin, perfect make up and perfect hair. The women are usually posing in a sexual way, showing of a lot of skin. Young girls grow up believing that all females look like that and aspire to become one of them. Males are also growing up seeing women being exploited in this way and therefore have really high expectations of how a girl should look. For this reason, women who are over a size 10 are slated for their size through the TV, in magazines and by the public. Seen as it is incredibly hard for women to get a job in the media, more and more of them are using magazines as a way of getting themselves seen. I have been able to find some extra videos which talk about the way women are represented in the media and you can watch them below:
However there are ways to help stop this. There are currently campaigns all around the world trying to get women to have the same rights as men in the media and, in some cases, this is working. Campaigns such as the End Violence Against Women Coalition (which you can find more about here: http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/ ) have created their own hashtags which they are trying to get noticed by many people around the world. The #everydaymediasexism hashtag is a place where members of social networking sites can share when they have seen sexism in the media and some of these will go in the campaigns debates. They also have the #sexistpress hashtag, which in their own words: “Taking our work as inspiration, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has also announced that she is compiling her own report to ministers on sexist media.”
EMPLOYMENT
Employment is a key part of any media industry. There are a huge amount of jobs in each part of the media sector and each job is incredibly important. From a runner to an editor, each job in the media has a key role which helps in the running of such important companies. Below is a list of some of the main jobs in the media and a description into what they have to do.
Journalist: writes, reports and broadcasts current important information on news channels, websites and any other information sharing platform. Journalists can be freelance or work for a company.
Website Developer: creates websites for companies and businesses. Website developers can be freelance or work for a company.
Camera Man / Woman : in charge of the camera angles and the shots which are taken for a TV programme.
Radio Producer: Produces content for radio DJ’s. These include jingles and transitions between songs, such as adverts etc.
Photographer: usually freelance, photographers are available to take photos for any sort of media, from news reports to celebrity pictures.
There are a lot more jobs in the media industry and below you can see a picture of a few more of them with their average salary.
As you can see, having a job in the media can be very rewarding in terms of pay.
It can be incredibly hard to make your mark in the media industry due to so little job vacancies and so many people wanting to get into the business. Many people have to go through work experience and trainee schemes which many major companies like the BBC, ITV and even magazines like Vogue and Glamour take part in. however there is an alternative. Self employment.
As part of my research, I met David Parrish – a Creative Industries Consultant. During his talk to not only myself, but a lot of other media enthusiasts, he explained how rewarding being self employed can be. You can read more on David here: http://www.davidparrish.com/
There are lots of advantages with being self employed, like the fact that you have the freedom to work when you want, and to do what you want. You answer to yourself, and therefore make the decisions that you choose, you are your own boss. You get to decide on what projects you want to take on, the things that excite you and the things that you feel would be more challenging and rewarding. However of course, there are disadvantages. If you were employed, you’d be paid whilst on holiday which means you would still be getting an income however by being self employed, you may be loosing earning whilst taking a holiday. There may be more stress on your behalf as you are managing everything, not just one small part of a company. You also may have to spend longer hours on your business commitments, meaning you may be spending less time with loved ones and friends. Being self employed means you’ll be working on your own, which means you’ll be isolated from other people in work.
Although there are a lot of jobs in the media industry, some jobs are slowly disappearing. Jobs in the print business are becoming more and more sparse and the amount of people who work in newspaper print rooms is declining. This could be due to the fact that more and more media content is now going online, meaning that in the future there may not be any need for jobs in the print business. In complete contrast to the lack of print jobs available, more and more jobs that involve the internet are growing, with people needed to keep on top of social networking sites, websites and even Catch up TV services.
However there are two sides to this idea of the print services disappearing and the internet taking over media. Curiosity.com – a fourm website where experts and members of the public can share their opinions on all matters, has a topic about What the future of print media may become like. (which you can find here: http://goo.gl/XflcGP)
One expert, Tillett Wright, said this:
As we can see, Tillett is focused very much on social media and the online world becoming the new way for all media to be shared. We can also how she thinks this, as less and less people are buying newspapers as it is easier for them to go online, at a fraction of the cost. (Newspapers average out at about £0.50, online news websites are free)
Sandy Smolan had the complete opposite point of view:
We can also see where Sandy is coming from, many people like taking time away from the computer or even away from technology all together to relax. They might do this by reading a book, a newspaper or a magazine, but how could they do this if the print services disappeared?
As well as these comments, there are also facts which we can look at which show the trend in the decline of print services and digital and online media production increases. You can see this from the graph below.
There are also charts which agree with Sandy’s theory, that people will get bored of new media alternatives. We can see that from this:
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
The future of the media industries looks bright and prosper. There will always be a need for some sort of media, whether that be the news or social networks, people will want something entertaining and factual around. With current facts to go by, Newspapers will either be non existent in the near future (within 10 years) or they will become once again very popular as the need for the online media dies down. However the latter is more than likely not what will happen. Online media is only just in its infancy, there is so much more to come from this sort of entertainment and therefore it is very likely that the online platform will have people gripped to it in the future.
However to get a media platform in the future which works well, things need to be changed. Here are some suggestions:
- There should be an equal amount of private and public ownership. If this ownership is slightly tilted one way more than the other, this could affect the media itself and things could become very politically bias.
- Gender bias needs to be completely ruled out. Females and Males should be allowed to be doing the same job and paid the same salary for it without the woman having to fight for it.
- Advertising on the front of magazines should be toned down. The ‘laws’ on Photoshopping images (what is right and what is wrong: e.g. making women very skinny) should be respected more and followed very closely.
Overall, the many media platforms we have at the moment are more than satisfactory as there is something for everyone. All of those media platforms are going to expand and even more media platforms will be created which will therefore recreate our media experiences. Will this be for the better? We will have to wait and see.
saskiasteelswright 