scholarly journals Public policy, independent television production and the digital challenge

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Doyle

Television production is a vital component of the media and a sector whose performance has important cultural and economic ramifications. In the United Kingdom, the growing prosperity of the programme-making sector – attributable partly to historic policy interventions – is widely recognized as being a success story. However, a recent wave of corporate consolidation and takeovers, characterized by many leading UK production companies being bought out and often by US media conglomerates, has raised concern about the ability of the independent production sector to flourish in an increasingly globalized and competitive digital environment for television. Although preserving indigenous television production and associated audience access to locally made content remain important goals for media policy, achieving these has become more difficult in the face of trends towards consolidated ownership and ‘the emergence of powerful transnational platforms commercialising cultural goods and services online’ (García Leiva and Albornoz 2017: 10). This article examines the challenges raised for public policy as ownership structures in the television production sector adjust in response to new distribution technologies and to the transformative forces of digitalization and globalization. Focusing on the United Kingdom as an example, it asks do we still need television production companies that are indigenous and independent in a digital world and if so why? What role can and should public policy play in supporting the sustainability of an ‘indie’ sector? Drawing on recent original empirical research into the association between corporate configuration, business performance and content in the television production sector, it reflects critically on historic and recent approaches to sustaining independent producers and it considers how, in a digital world, public policy may need to be re-imagined for a rapidly evolving television landscape.

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (7) ◽  
pp. 939-957
Author(s):  
Gillian Doyle ◽  
Kenny Barr

Recent technological and market changes in the television industry appear to have transformed the corporate configurations which conduce to economic success in the production industry. As a result, many leading independent television production companies in the United Kingdom and elsewhere across Europe have become prime targets for corporate activity and many have been subject to takeover, often by the US media groups. Does this matter? Does the concept of ‘national’ television content still have any relevance in the digital era? Drawing on a multiple-case-study-based analysis of several UK-based television production companies over recent years, this article examines how corporate takeovers in the production sector may affect creative decision-making and impact on the nature and quality of television content. Against a background of increased investment interest from multinationals in indigenous players in the United Kingdom and across Europe, the analysis presented makes a timely and policy-relevant contribution to knowledge.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zlatina Dimitrova ◽  
◽  
◽  

The theoretical research focuses on the educational experience for the formation of media literacy among school-age children in different countries around the world. The article presents various options for the formation of media literacy, based on three educational models. According to the first model, media education is represented in the form of a compulsory subject in schools, which is studied by students in different grades. According to the second educational model, media habits are acquired within the interdisciplinary (integrated) approach – the use of the media in traditional school subjects, including native and foreign languages, literature, social sciences. The third model offers practical and informal integration of media education as a supplement and replacement of specific subjects or the intersection between them. The article examines in detail the media training opportunities offered in Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland and Spain, as their experience in media education is applied in a number of other countries around the world. Special attention is paid to the first steps in the introduction of media literacy training among students in Bulgaria, which is carried out only in the last 5-6 years.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 588-595
Author(s):  
Elaine O’Callaghan

The Supreme Court in the United Kingdom has held that it is not contrary to public policy to award damages in tort to fund a commercial surrogacy in another jurisdiction where this is lawful. This significant decision, in the case of Whittington Hospital NHS Trust v XX [2020] UKSC 14, will potentially have an impact on the regulation and reform of surrogacy law in the United Kingdom, Ireland and internationally. The judgment delivered by Lady Hale draws attention to multiple inconsistencies in the law, and it highlights, in particular, the need for effective regulation of domestic surrogacy. Legislators face an important and imminent challenge to reconcile the reality of commercial surrogacy with a deficient legal framework. This article seeks to highlight some of the important issues which this case has raised when considering regulation and reform of surrogacy law.


2021 ◽  
pp. 55-60
Author(s):  
Martha Gershun ◽  
John D. Lantos

This chapter seeks to understand the motivations of people who offered to donate a kidney to a stranger. It explores the degree of emotional relationship that was essential to justify the claim that donation provided a psychological benefit to the donor. The chapter also mentions a law in the United Kingdom called the Unrelated Live Transplant Registry Authority which required organ donors to provide proof that they had a relationship with the recipient. In the United States, however, there is no federal legislation or public policy regulating stranger donors. The chapter then turns to discuss a study led by nephrologist Aaron Spital showing how attitudes within the transplant community gradually shifted from almost universal rejection of stranger donors to their gradual acceptance. It assesses the struggles that nephrologists went through in trying to determine whether such altruists were noble or irrational. Ultimately, the chapter offers a unique glimpse into the motivations of an altruistic donor and into the forms of skepticism that doctors and psychologists bring to evaluations of such donors.


2019 ◽  
pp. 172-194
Author(s):  
Adrian Briggs

This chapter examines of the role of the lex fori in English private international law before proceeding to examine the rules of the conflict of laws applicable in an English court. Issues for which the rules of the conflict of laws select the lex fori as the law to be applied include grounds for the dissolution (as distinct from nullity) of marriage, even if the marriage has little or nothing to do with the United Kingdom; or settlement of the distribution of assets in an insolvency even though there may be significant overseas elements. Where the rules of the conflict of laws select a foreign law, its application, even though it is proved to the satisfaction of the court, may be disrupted or derailed by a provision of the lex fori instead. The remainder of the chapter covers procedural issues; penal, revenue, and public laws; and public policy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Oluwadare, Sunday Victor

Purpose: A great number of people in the world today, live and work outside the shores of their nations of origin. It is imperative to investigate how they are faring in the face of job satisfaction/dissatisfaction and the divergent cultural environment of their sojourn in order to correctly harness their inter-cultural usefulness across the globe. This research investigated the factors that influenced the relocation of Nigerians to the United Kingdom and sustained them there, in spite of their job experiences and culture shock.Methodology/Approach: Methodology triangulation of both questionnaire survey on seventy-six participants and six in-depth interviews was employed. Reflexivity, thick description and grounded theory were the approaches engaged in the data analysis and Interpretation of results.Findings: The findings revealed that multiple reasons like education, economic, socio-political and personal, are ‘pushing’ Nigerians from home and ‘pulling’ them to the United Kingdom. It was also discovered that the Nigerians in the United Kingdom, are experiencing different forms of job dissatisfaction and culture shock but for some salient reasons, they adjust fairly well to the environment.Keywords: Self-initiated expatriates, job expectations, culture shock, and socio-cultural adjustment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roxana Bratu ◽  
Iveta Kažoka

This article explores the symbolic dimension of corruption by looking at the metaphors employed to represent this phenomenon in the media across seven different European countries (France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom) over 10 years (2004–2014). It focuses on the media practices in evoking corruption-related metaphors and shows that corruption is a complex phenomenon with unclear boundaries, represented with the use of metaphorical devices that not only illuminate but also hide some of its attributes. The article identifies and analyses the metaphors of corruption by looking at their sources and target domains, as well as unpacking the contexts in which media evoke corruption-related metaphors.


Author(s):  
Mary Gilmartin ◽  
Patricia Burke Wood ◽  
Cian O’Callaghan

This chapter discusses the issue of belonging. It first focuses on citizenship, which is often described as formal belonging. While citizenship is regularly framed as ‘natural’ and ‘common sense’, it is argued that it is never fully stable or secure. This is shown in practice through the example of the United Kingdom and Ireland, specifically, how the Brexit vote has had knock-on consequences for how citizenship and belonging is being re-imagined in both places. This is contrasted with the practice of citizenship in the United States, where, despite effusive expressions of unity, articulations of belonging have a deep history of division and exclusion. It considers both the barriers to formal belonging experienced by undocumented residents of the United States and the ways in which citizens themselves struggle to achieve inclusion and equality in the face of increasingly explicit intolerance.


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