Sky

"British Sky Broadcasting Group plc” or Sky as it is commonly known, is a TV broadcasting company and is the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK. On top of being a TV broadcasting company, Sky also have a lot more services to offer to the UK including: broadband, telephone services, radio stations, Xbox 360 compatibility and can be used to record programs and films if the owner purchases Sky Plus. There are other sky services that you can acquire if you pay extra money such as Sky Movies, Sky Sports, Sky Plus, Sky HD, Kids Channels and other channels broadcasted by Sky that can’t be seen on Freeview. Sky has a lot of its own channels such as Sky1, 2 and 3, Sky Atlantic, Sky News, Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, 4 and News as well as a wide range of Sky Movies channels and Challenge. As well as their own channels they broadcast many other major channels like BBC 1, 2, 3 and other BBC channels, ITV 1, 2, 3 and 4, Channel 4, E4, Comedy Central, Dave, ESPN, Living and many others.

Sky was formed in November 1990 when Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting merged due to financial struggle for both TV companies. The Astra 2A satellite was launched at a new orbital position allowing British Sky Broadcasting to broadcast a lot more channels and radio stations, this is when British Sky Broadcasting become known simply as Sky or Sky Digital. Since then Sky has only improved with the addition of more channels as well as Sky Plus which allows viewers to pause, rewind and fast forward Live TV as well as allowing them to record TV programs and watch them at a later date. Also Sky HD was released which allows you to watch programs in HD quality as well as having all the Sky Plus features. Since then Sky have even released “Sky 3D” and have created several channels which broadcast programs in 3D. Sky Sports has also massively developed since its inception after Sky paid over £300 million for the rights to broadcast Premier League games and it has been the main broadcaster of the Premier League since its inception in 1992. Since then Sky had acquired the rights to broadcast from other English football competitions such as English League Cup matches (shared with BBC), UEFA Champions League matches (shared with ITV) and some games from the lower English leagues. As well as this they have acquired the rights to broadcast some football matches from other leagues in other countries including Scotland, Spain, Germany and Italy. On top of the many football games broadcasted by Sky Sports, they also broadcast some major sporting events in other sports such as Tennis, Rugby and Golf and recently they have purchased the rights to broadcast Formula 1 games in the next season, shared with BBC. Sky Movies is another series of channels owned by Sky which are there to broadcast movies that have been released for about a year or more. There are over 10 Sky Movies channels each of which has a particular genre of movies to broadcast, for example Sky Action will broadcast action films and Sky Horror will broadcast horror films. Although to acquire Sky Sports and/or Sky Movies, an additional fee must be paid on top of what the customers pays per month.

News Corporation currently owns 39.1% of Sky. News Corp also fully owns Sky Italia, about 78% of New Zealand's SKY Network Television Limited and b.net of Croatia and Montenegro. News Corporation founder and owner Rupert Murdoch was Sky’s non-executive chairman but stepped in 2007 and was replaced by his son James. On 15 June 2010, BSkyB announced that it had rejected an offer from News Corporation to take full control of the company. News Corp had offered 700p per share for the remaining 60.9% of shares that it did not own. BSkyB said that it would only consider offers of at least 800p per share. In July 2011, News Corporation withdrew its bid to take full control of BSkyB following the News of the World phone hacking scandal. The takeover was an essential part of News Corporation's business strategy, it would have made possible integration with other entities such as Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia and overall would have been brilliant for News Corp. British Sky Broadcasting is a “public limited company” which means they are a limited liability company that sells shares to the public in United Kingdom company law, in the Republic of Ireland and Commonwealth jurisdictions.

Overall I think that Sky are a brilliant TV company who charge reasonable prices for their services and their services are of a very good quality, they broadcast loads of channels and programs from all over the world and provide endless hours of entertainment. I think it’s unfair for Sky to take criticism because of things that their part-owners News Corporation have done.

Structure and Ownership of the Media Sector: EMAP

EMAP Limited is a British multi-media company who specialise in the production of business-to-business magazines and the organisation of business events and conferences.. EMAP stands for East Midland Allied Press. EMAP was founded in 1947 after an existing newspaper company was passed over to the owner’s son “Richard Pattinson Winfrey”. The company was formed by the merger of the Northamptonshire Printing and Publishing Co., the Peterborough Advertiser Co., the West Norfolk and King's Lynn Newspaper Co. and commercial printing sections at Rushden, King's Lynn and Bury St. Edmunds.

EMAP is owned by Guardian Media Group and Apax who acquired EMAP after EMAP sold some of their assets to Bauer for a large of money, the remainder of the company was taken over by the companies. EMAP are a multi-media and multi-national media company because their media brands span many areas of the media and they are multi-national because they operate in areas outside of their main area (UK). Some of EMAP’s subsidiaries include AME Info FZ-LLC, Cap Motor Research Limited, De Havilland Information Services Limited, Glenigan Limited, Groundsure Limited, International Advertising Festival Limited, Planet Retail Limited, Torcello Publishing Limited, Trade Promotion Services Limited, Worth Global Style Network Limited, WGSN Inc and some of their own EMAP-based subsidiaries. EMAP used to have its own radio station where they owned several other radio stations but it eventually became Bauer Radio and was owned by Bauer Media. EMAP has 20 magazines in its business-to-business portfolio including: Architects' Journal, Architectural Review, Broadcast, Construction News, Drapers, Health Service Journal, Local Government Chronicle, Nursing Times, Retail Week, Recycling & Waste Management and Screen International. Some of the events they organize include: Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Drapers Fashion Summit, Retail Week Conference, World Retail Congress, World Architecture Festival, Media Festival, Supply Chain Summit, Broadcast Conference, HSJ Conference, LGC Conference, RAC Conference and a few more.

EMAP is a privately owned company which means it has shareholders with limited liability and its shares are not on offer to the general public like they would be if it was a public company. As their shares aren’t available to the public they have to generate money from other sources. It is very common for small companies like EMAP to be privately held because they wouldn’t generate much money from shares because they’re not very large companies and aren’t as popular as some of the public companies out there.

EMAP are only quite small in comparison to some media companies and their target audience is a lot less vast than that of some of the large conglomerates such as News Corporation and Disney. As a result of this they do not have a massive influence in the media but instead in their own section of the media (business magazines and business events). Their magazines can have an influence on their audiences, for example Broadcast magazine is aimed at people who work in TV and radio industry and EMAP and their owners are the ones who decide what goes in these magazines so what they put in may influence the readers. A small company is unlikely to include media bias in their works but it is always a possibility and it is unknown as to whether EMAP’s magazines are biased or not. They have no real involvement in TV except possibly for advertisements for their events or magazines, other than this they have no involvement in TV so do not spread their influence in to the TV side of the media. EMAP do not own a lot of assets in different areas of the media and are not recognized worldwide like some of the large conglomerates so that also limits their influence because may think their opinions don’t mean anything because not that many people will know of them.

In 2006, EMAP was criticised by Ofcom for its “lack of control” over Kiss FM and as a result brought its radio division under the control of consumer media head Paul Keenan. Keenan was already the overseer of EMAP's magazines, television, events and international activities, but radio stations such as Magic and Kerrang had until then been in a separate division under managing director Dee Ford. EMAP Radio was heavily criticized and given a record £175,000 fine by Ofcom in June 2006 after a number of listener complaints about 'The Bam Bam Breakfast Show' on London's Kiss FM. The complaints were made about the use of foul language at breakfast and on a prank telephone call, which was broadcast without the victim's consent. Ofcom described the prank as "the most serious case of unwarranted infringement of privacy it had heard". This says that even the smaller companies who don’t have a particularly big influence in the media can be heavily criticized just for making a simple mistake and shows you how seriously people take cases like that. Of course at some point after this, EMAP’s radio division (EMAP Radio) was sold to Bauer Media Group and became Bauer Radio.

Overall I think EMAP are a good media company, as good as any company of their size, and they used to be an even better company before they sold their radio division. Also being a small company means no big influences in the media like the large conglomerates have which means very little bias which is better for the public because they’re not being made to believe what a company wants them to believe. Also them being a smaller company means they don’t own a massive amount of assets in different areas of the media which makes it easier for the smaller companies to acquire assets and become more successful.

Structure and Ownership of the Media Sector: Time Warner

Time Warner is one of the world’s largest multi-media, multi-national, conglomerates and was formed when Time Inc and Warner Bros merged. Formerly AOL Time Warner before AOL was made a separate independent company by the government in December 2009. Some of its subsidiaries include: New Line Cinema, Time Inc, HBO, Turner Broadcasting System, The CW Television Network, Warner Bros, Cartoon Network, Boomerang and many more.

Jeffrey L. Bewkes is the chairman and CEO of Time Warner Inc. There are also six senior vice presidents with functional titles: Paul T. Cappucio, General Counsel, Patricia Fili-Krushel, Administration, Gary L. Ginsberg, Corporate Marketing and Communications, John K. Martin, Chief Financial Officer, Carol A. Melton, Global Public Policy and Olaf Olafsson. Senior executives among their subsidiaries include: Bill Nelson, Chairman and CEO of Home Box Office, Ann S. Moore, Chairman and CEO of Time Inc, John Huey, Editor-In-Chief of Time Inc, Philip I. Kent, Chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting System, Barry Meyer, Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Alan F. Horn, President and Chief Operating Officer of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Time Warner is a public company so it offers its stocks/shares etc for sale to the general public. The advantages of Time Warner being a public company include: being able to raise funds and capital goods through selling its securities. Disadvantages include having to submit an annual Form 10-K giving information about the company’s performance; privately owned company’s do not have to do this and do not feel under as much pressure as public companies may feel.

In the year 2000, Time Warner was purchased by AOL for 164 billion US dollars and the two merged to become AOL Time Warner, due to market capitalization of AOL, they owned 55% of the new company (AOL Time Warner) whereas Time Warner’s shareholders owned only 45%. Before AOL merged with Time Warner, Time Warner could acquire internet-based subsidiaries on top of the TV and cinema-based subsidiaries they already had, the government didn’t think it was fair for Time Warner to be internet-based as well and forced AOL and Time Warner to split. Time Warner split from AOL on December 9, 2009.

 

Time Warner is a multi-media company because they have assets in TV, film, video games, online, radio and print as opposed to specialising in just one section of the media. The advantages of this is that they can appeal to different kinds of people and a larger audience, some people may not have the TV packages with Time Warner’s channels but may enjoy reading magazines and using the internet so they can still purchase Time Warner products and see what they have to offer. Time Warner are also a multi-national media company and delivers content such as their programmes, their magazines and their films to countries all over the world rather than just the one country of which they were founded. The advantages are similar to the advantages of being a multi-media company, delivering their content to lots of different countries will help them reach out to a wider, larger audience and in some countries, there may not be much entertainment on TV so it could persuade them to pay for TV channels owned by Time Warner because it’s the best entertainment the country can get, this would massively increase business for Time Warner.

Time Warner is among the 4 largest media conglomerates in the world and as a result has massive power and influence in the media. For example, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is another of the world’s largest media companies and they own America’s Fox channels including Fox news which is one of the most popular news broadcasting channels in the US. It has been said that News Corporation give Fox news presenters a specific way in which to present the news and tell them what to say to voice the biased opinions of News Corporation and anyone who presents the news differently would most likely be fired. Videos to back up media bias on Fox news have been released but it has been denied. News Corporation is such a powerful company that they can influence the public believe what they want them to believe. Time Warner are the owners of CNN channels in the US including CNN news which is another massive news broadcasting channel in America and though it hasn’t been proven that CNN news is a biased news channel, there have been many accusations of media bias surrounding CNN. One example of this is when CNN were accused of “casting a negative light” on Republican candidates, four in ten stories (41%) were clearly negative, just 14% were positive and 46% were neutral. Although these allegations haven’t been proven, it shows you that because Time Warner are such a huge company, that they can tell CNN news reporters what to say to make the audience believe what Time Warner want them to believe. Also because they own some massive companies like HBO, New Line Cinema and Cartoon Network, people are more likely to believe what Time Warner want them to believe. It’s not been proven that this is the case with Time Warner, but it’s difficult to know what to believe when the news can be influenced by these successful media companies, news companies should not be allowed to be biased and influence the millions of people who watch these news channels. Also Time Warner own a large amount of children’s channels including Boomerang, Cartoon Network and Pogo, once again it hasn’t been proven but they could use this to influence the children who watch these channels to believing what they want them to believe.

Overall I think that large media conglomerates like Time Warner do have a huge influence on the public because they own so many assets that are recognized worldwide and I think Time Warner’s CNN News probably does have media bias to influence the public to believing what they want them to believe. I think it’s not very fair that these companies have so much power because they buy so many assets and it doesn’t give other media companies a chance to become successful.