scholarly journals Beyond catch-up

Author(s):  
Catherine Johnson

The past 5 years have seen a rapid acceleration in the development of online television in the United Kingdom and beyond, with rise in ownership of Internet-connected television sets, smartphones and tablets, increased access to broadband and the growing penetration of transaction and subscription video-on-demand (VoD) services. This article asks how free-to-air terrestrial broadcasters are adapting to a media marketplace in which, according to Ofcom, on-demand television is becoming mass market, through an analysis of ITV Hub – the VoD player for the United Kingdom’s largest free-to-air advertiser-funded broadcaster. Focusing on the mature UK VoD market and the broadcaster whose business model is most threatened by online television, the article combines trade press and textual analysis to demonstrate how ITV has developed a VoD service highly structured by the logics of broadcasting. Centering its analysis on the interface for ITV Hub, the article argues that this increasingly quotidian form of television ephemera offers a vital site through which to understand the changing nature of television as a medium. The article concludes that with contemporary developments in VoD, the distinctions between linear/broadcast and non-linear/on-demand television (flow vs. file, passive viewer vs. interactive user) are breaking down in ways that challenge prevailing arguments that on-demand television can be understood as offering a distinctly different (and more empowered and interactive) experience for viewers.

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 734-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanette Steemers

Focusing on the United Kingdom, this article addresses key issues facing the international distribution industry arising from over-the-top (OTT) digital distribution and the fragmentation of audiences and revenues. Building on the identification of these issues, it investigates the extent to which U.K. distribution has altered over a ten-year period, pinpointing continuities in the destination and type of sales alongside changes in the role and structure of the industry as U.K.-based distributors adapt to a changing U.K. broadcasting landscape and global production environment. At one level, increasing U.S. ownership of U.K.-based distributors and the arrival of OTT players such as Netflix highlight the tensions between the national orientations of U.K. broadcasters and the global aspirations of independent producers and distributors. At another level, video-on-demand (VOD) has boosted international sales of U.K. drama. Although the full impact of subscription VOD (SVOD) on content and rights has yet to materialize, significant changes in the industry predate the arrival of SVOD.


2013 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Bennett ◽  
Andrea Medrado

In this article, we explore the notion of hybrid public service media (PSM) in relation to two interconnected issues: economic and platform hybridity. We examine the creation of PSM content by privately owned, commercially driven independent production companies in the United Kingdom as a hybrid economic arrangement. In so doing, we ask not only whether public service can act as a motivation beyond profit for production cultures and business models, but also whether PSM can be created at a profit without compromising the fulfilment of public service values. In relation to platform hybridity, we study examples of interlinking public service content created, delivered and distributed across multiple platforms (as opposed to merely video-on-demand services). In particular, we are interested in how such multi-platform texts might fulfil public service, but also the way in which multi-platform content creation brings together digital and television production cultures to produce hybrid PSM business models and cultures.


2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 552-553

Lisa M. George of Hunter College and Editor-in-Chief, Information Economics and Policy reviews “Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age”, by George Brock. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the past, present, and future of the news and journalism industry, and considers how journalism can flourish in a new communications age by exploiting developing opportunities, with a special focus on the United Kingdom. Discusses communicating whatever we please; the newspaper industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the broadcasting era and the decline of newspapers; the development of the Internet; rethinking journalism again; the business model crumbling; credibility crumbling; the Leveson Inquiry's judgment; the generation of creative energy to rebuild with new materials; and clues to the future. Brock is Professor and Head of Journalism at City University London.”


2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-910
Author(s):  
Robert E. Goodin ◽  
James Mahmud Rice

Judging from Gallup Polls in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, opinion often changes during an election campaign. Come election day itself, however, opinion often reverts back nearer to where it was before the campaign began. That that happens even in Australia, where voting is compulsory and turnout is near-universal, suggests that differential turnout among those who have and have not been influenced by the campaign is not the whole story. Inspection of individual-level panel data from 1987 and 2005 British General Elections confirms that between 3 and 5 percent of voters switch voting intentions during the campaign, only to switch back toward their original intentions on election day. One explanation, we suggest, is that people become more responsible when stepping into the poll booth: when voting they reflect back on the government's whole time in office, rather than just responding (as when talking to pollsters) to the noise of the past few days' campaigning. Inspection of Gallup Polls for UK snap elections suggests that this effect is even stronger in elections that were in that sense unanticipated.


2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2008
Author(s):  
Carl F. Stychin

Over the past decade of Labour government in the United Kingdom (U.K.), the regulation of sexual orientation through law has frequently been explained by its supporters through a nar- rative of progress and even emancipation. The most recent junction in this journey came in 2007, with the coming into force of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations on 30 April 2007.1 These Regulations contain measures pro- hibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods, facilities and services, education, the use and disposal of premises, and the exercise of public functions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Freedland ◽  
Jeremias Prassl

Abstract: Recent years have seen a radical shift in the practice and profile of the labour economy in the United Kingdom consisting in the considerable growth of the so-called ‘Sharing Economy’ or ‘Gig Economy’, better identified as the ‘On-demand Economy’. From that starting point, it is argued that a corresponding change seems to have occurred in the set of concepts which the labour/ employment law of the United Kingdom uses to analyse and to characterize the work relations and work contracts which are created, made, and operated within this rapidly growing sector of the labour market. Two recent high-profile Employment Tribunal decisions in the Uber and Citysprint cases, and a decision of the Court of Appeal in this same area in the Pimlico Plumbers case have served to confirm the legislative creation of a third intermediate category of ‘workers’ who benefit from a set of employment rights which is more limited than that enjoyed by employees but which is nevertheless very important. This crystallization of labour law’s newly tripartite taxonomy of work relations has occurred very largely in the context of the on-demand economy, and is beneficial to those located in that sector. This is, however, a rather fragile conceptual structure.Keywords: employees, workers, ‘sharing economy’, ‘on-demand economy’, recent cases in UK.


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