Content Diversity1

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Consumer Preferences ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Sports Events ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Data Consumer

This chapter considers the programme genres in public service broadcasting. Genres that have been traditionally associated with public service broadcasting — such as education, natural history, science, arts, current affairs, children's and religion — have been in steady decline for over a decade. A shift to on-demand viewing in recent years has further segmented viewing habits. Although the vast majority of viewing continues to be live, some genres are increasingly viewed on catch-up services. Big entertainment shows and sports events often account for the highest proportion of live viewing, compared to drama series, which have the highest proportion of on-demand viewing. These trends point to the increasing complexity of maintaining public service mixed genre provision given an increasing reliance on ‘big data’, consumer preferences, and taste algorithms that may limit the diversity and visibility of a broad range of genres.

Public Service Algorithms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Digital Television ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
The World ◽  
Thinking Differently ◽  
Television Market ◽  
Different Content ◽  
Crucial Part

A prevailing metaphor for television throughout its history has been as a ‘window on the world’, which enables viewers to explore a variety of different content, viewpoints, debates, and landscapes. This was a function largely fulfilled in the broadcast era by scheduling: providing viewers with a mixed diet of programming, albeit at the scheduler's behest. Crucially, within a public service broadcasting (PSB) remit, this window on the world offered viewers the chance to broaden their horizons — taking them from comedy, to news, to drama, to a music documentary, to current affairs programmes. This chapter argues that this variety of offering is a crucial part of what public service algorithms should aspire to offer. This means thinking differently about the data collected and measured for PSB, and using it to set different objectives that escape some of the bounded thinking of a commercially driven, on-demand digital television market.

scholarly journals House of Lords Communications Committee: Public service broadcasting in the age of video on demand

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petros Iosifidis
Keyword(s):  
Business Model ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Video On Demand ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
On Demand ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Streaming Services ◽  
Fierce Competition

This article is my response to the House of Lords Communications Committee Inquiry on ‘Public service broadcasting in the age of video on demand’, which was carried out in 2019. The inquiry was important and relevant as the successful UK public service broadcasters (PSBs) BBC, ITV, C4, C5 and S4C are currently facing major challenges from video-on-demand (VoD) services. These challenges primarily concern competition for content from VoD services in a highly competitive broadcasting market characterized by shifts in audience behaviour. Audiences are watching less scheduled TV as they are attracted by the business model of global streaming services like YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. Fierce competition from mainly US-based, unregulated global VoD players investing billions of pounds in content has escalated programming costs and made it difficult for tightly regulated PSBs with modest domestic UK budgets to compete. This article is largely in favour of sustaining properly funded, universally available PSBs, who can deliver quality and original programming, alongside impartial and trusted news in the era of fake news and post-truth politics.

Children and Public Service Broadcasting

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Livingstone ◽  
Claire Local
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Television Viewing ◽  
Children's Television ◽  
Online Content ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
On Demand ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Television Plays

Much has been said about the future of public service content, the growth of multiple platforms, new market and regulatory pressures, and changing audience preferences and practices, among other widely debated topics. However, little attention has been paid to the role that public service television plays in educating, entertaining, and broadening the horizons of children in the UK. This chapter focuses on how public service television can better serve a child audience that spends on average at least 35 hours per week consuming broadcast, on-demand, and online content. It discusses how children still view public service television on a television set; whether children's television viewing really in decline; the case for online provision of children's public service television; the case for online provision for children of other public service content; and the case for enhancing the ‘discoverability’ of children's public service content.

New Sources of Public Service Content1

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Audiovisual Material ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Financial Barriers ◽  
Content Creation ◽  
Internet Connection ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Catch Up

This chapter considers public service content outside of television. In recent years, there has been a major shift in viewing habits, with more and more people watching material on demand, not just through catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer but also online. Greater broadband speeds have facilitated the viewing of audiovisual material through an internet connection, and the technical and financial barriers to making such content have fallen. Every newspaper, advertiser, campaigning group, agency, corporation, and brand is now in the content creation game. So too are the UK's many and diverse cultural institutions, ranging from national organisations established in statute to diverse local, regional, and charitable establishments; they could prove to be key contributors to a more plural, diverse and dynamic public service media landscape in the future.

scholarly journals The datafication of Public Service Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (69) ◽  
pp. 090-115
Author(s):  
Jannick Kirk Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Key Performance Indicators ◽  
Video On Demand ◽  
Business Rules ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Path Dependencies ◽  
Demand Service

Historically, public service broadcasting had no quantifiable knowledge aboutaudiences, nor a great interest in knowing them. Today, the competitive logic of themedia markets encourage public service media (PSM) organizations to increasedatafication. In this paper we examine how a PSM organization interprets the classicpublic service obligations of creating societal cohesion and diversity in the newworld of key performance indicators, business rules and algorithmic parameters.The paper presents a case study of the implementation of a personalization systemfor the video on demand service of the Danish PSM ‘DR’. Our empirical findings,based on longitudinal in-depth interviewing, indicate a long and difficult processof datafication of PSM, shaped by both the organizational path dependencies ofbroadcasting production and the expectations of public service broadcasting.

Public Service Broadcasting, Hard News, and Citizens’ Knowledge of Current Affairs

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toril Aalberg ◽  
Stephen Cushion
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Commercial Media ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
Media Systems

Public service broadcasters are a central part of national news media environments in most advanced democracies. Although their market positions can vary considerably between countries, they are generally seen to enhance democratic culture, pursuing a more serious and harder news agenda compared to commercial media . . . But to what extent is this perspective supported by empirical evidence? How far can we generalize that all public service news media equally pursue a harder news agenda than commercial broadcasters? And what impact does public service broadcasting have on public knowledge? Does exposure to public service broadcasting increase citizens’ knowledge of current affairs, or are they only regularly viewed by citizens with an above average interest in politics and hard news?The overview of the evidence provided by empirical research suggests that citizens are more likely to be exposed to hard news, and be more knowledgeable about current affairs, when they watch public service news—or rather news in media systems where public service is well funded and widely watched. The research evidence also suggests there are considerable variations between public broadcasters, just as there are between more market-driven and commercial media. An important limitation of previous research is related to the question of causality. Therefore, a main challenge for future research is to determine not only if public service broadcasting is the preferred news provider of most knowledgeable citizens, but also whether it more widely improves and increases citizens’ knowledge about public affairs.

‘Terrible things happen’: Peter Bowker's Occupation and the Representation of the Iraq War in British Television Drama

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Harper
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
British Military ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
Historically Situated ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Peter Bowker and Laurie Borg's three-part television drama Occupation (2009) chronicles the experiences of three British soldiers involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. By means of an historically situated textual analysis, this article assesses how far the drama succeeds in presenting a progressive critique of the British military involvement in Iraq. It is argued that although Occupation devotes some narrative space to subaltern perspectives on Britain's military involvement in Iraq, the production – in contrast to some other British television dramas about the Iraq war – tends to privilege pro-war perspectives, elide Iraqi experiences of suffering, and, through the discursive strategy of ‘de-agentification’, obfuscate the extent of Western responsibility for the damage the war inflicted on Iraq and its population. Appearing six years after the beginning of a war whose prosecution provoked widespread public dissent, Occupation's political silences perhaps illustrate the BBC's difficulty in creating contestatory drama in what some have argued to be the conservative moment of post-Hutton public service broadcasting.

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