Television and Radio Broadcasting - Assignment Example

State:

July 5, 2016

The TV and radio broadcasting industry has experienced significant structural and technological evolutionary changes worldwide. Such evolutions have provided viewers and listeners with opportunities to access a variety and diversified media communications than before. For instance, broadcasting content is today available online in the internet and other portable wireless devices unlike in the past where the content could only be accessed at specific times at a particular access point. Besides the technological and structural transformations that have increased the competitive edge in the media markets thus consumers having more direct benefits, some structural developments however bring about competition challenges particularly in the content delivery section. This paper is therefore purposed to analyze both television and radio broadcasting in comparison and contrast to book publishing and the various changes and developments pertinent to each, and how these developments give each a competitive edge (Crisell, 1986).

Guaranteeing extensive access to television and radio broadcasting services and published books is vital for both economic and social reasons. From an economic perspective, broadcasting forms a fundamental economic pillar by itself. Book publishing is on the other hand not left behind as they compose readily available and easily retrievable source of history and reference. Furthermore, while information from published books are mostly used by the elite section of the economy, radio and television broadcasting conveys information to both literate and illiterate sector of the economy since there are various vernacular stations and channels appropriate for the illiterate section of the society and the economy. This makes radio and television broadcasting more appropriate and convenient (Hadden and Swann, 1981).

In the last decade, the broadcasting industry has indisputably been quite competitive though the competition and regulatory authorities across the world have also been more active in ensuring implementation of regulatory policies. These policies have normally been put in place basically for economic interest of the public as opposed to the competing industrial interests; to safeguard and protect the public from exploitation and unscrupulous activities from the competing media. The cultural and social objectives aimed at by the regulatory policies in the book publishing sector and broadcasting sector may be beyond the precincts of this paper. It is however worth noting that non-economic and economic goals often go hand in hand, thus a single intervention from the authorities may end up pursuing both objectives.

From an intuition into the media industry, it is evident that both radio and television broadcasting industries belong to the original broadcasting sector which uses set frequency range bandwidth of the electromagnetic waves in transmitting, encoding and decoding images, pictures and sounds into comprehensible form for the viewers and the listeners. Lower frequencies are used for telephone transmissions while the highest frequencies are basically for heavy use like in X-ray diagnosis. According to the DCMS data for the radio and TV industries provided in 2011, this industry contributed 5.3 billion pounds to the UK GDP in 2009; an equivalence of 0.42% of the country’s GDP. Moreover, the industry also contributed 2.2 billion pounds in export, an equivalence of 25% of the entire country’s income from creative exports with only the export income from publishing industry coming before it. Moreover, the television and radio broadcasting industry has helped in reducing the unemployment crisis in the UK by absorbing 0.39% of the unemployed population in 2010, an equivalence of 113,966 persons. In 2011, creative businesses numbering 7960 were launched in this industry. This shows how radio and television industry is productive to the UK economy.

Television and radio broadcasting has two major characteristics; non-rivalry where provided a program content has been broadcast, surplus viewers and listeners get the services at lower marginal cost due to the economies of scale which increase the returns to scale (Sorensen, 2007). Secondly, the broadcasting industry’s second characteristic is non-excludability where once every person can access the broadcasting services, then it becomes difficult to charge users effectively (Sorensen, 2007). Digital radio services was developed in UK in early 2000s where it technologically such that by 2012, the entire United Kingdom had 342 digital and analogue local radio stations with twenty seven national stations both commercial and BBC. Initially between 1930s and 1940s, there were analogue radio transmitters basically for listening at work and home. Come 1967, all illegal radio stations termed by the government as pirate stations were banned, leading to establishment of one BBC station by the government which basically played pop music. This radio station was known as Radio 1. Later on in 1972, the government lifted the ban on commercial radio stations and allowed them to broadcast through their revenues from advertisements thus by 1988, the number of independent broadcasting radio stations had reached 57 besides the 4 national BBC stations and 30 local BBC stations (Pringle and Starr, 2013).

The chart below is an illustration of United Kingdom listening shares of the stations as at 2012;

UK Radio Listening shares

(Source: Pringle and Starr, 2013)

Several technological changes have taken place in the television broadcasting sector. Other no-terrestrial TV broadcasting systems have been introduced for the purposes of doing away with the limitations of frequency bandwidth, increasing complementary and substitute TV programs and increasing the broadcasters’ ability of applying direct charges so as to avoid the characteristic of non-excludability. Besides, the television broadcasting sector today uses cable platform for its transmission thus making the transmission faster than before. Satellite platforms are also in use earth-TV signal retransmission. Digital platform via PC broadband telephone lines, smart phones and tablets is another major technological advancement in the TV industry.

As such, below is a graphical representation of the number of viewers of popular television programs;

Viewers of Popular TV programs from 1981-2011

Viewers (000,000)

(Source: BARB, 2012)

The book publishing industry in the United Kingdom has a more or less identical market structure to that of the music and film industry except that the latter is tight producer oligopolies while the former is a loose oligopoly. There are several micro groupings of leading multinational United Kingdom book publishers with each group having multidivisional imprints such as: Random House which possessed 19% of the US market share in 2011, HarperCollins which possessed 12%, Penguin Publishers which ran approximately 9% of the market share, Hatchette Publishers which took 11% and Simon and Schuster Publishers which also took 9% like Penguin Publishers. There have been several mergers of book publishing companies since 1960 which went up to around 1995. However, this never deterred the concentration in the US market (Greco, 1999). Between 1989 and 1994, the publishers with the highest market share never went beyond 10%, this was an indication that the publishing industry was averagely concentrated such that achieving more than 10% market share was such a big challenge. CR4 has though been on the rise since mid ‘90s with a trend of 32% increase in 1989, 37% in 1995, 49% in 2009 and 51% in 2011. In spite of the moderate market concentration, book publishers have not restrained the free trade by imposing barriers to entry, reducing the output of new books or even overpricing so as to get control of a significant market share.

Data shows that book publishing is the largest and the best United Kingdom creative industry with revenue contribution of 0.92% to United Kingdom GDP, contributing 3.1% of the total exports from United Kingdom and employing a total of 243,809 individuals in 2010, an equivalence of 0.84% of the entire country’s labour force. However, there has been a declining market for the physical sales of published books in the United Kingdom (The Publishers Association, 2012).

Physical sales of Published Books

Year

Home

Volume

(m)

Export

Volume

(m)

Total

Volume

(m)

Home

Sales

(£bn)

Export

Sales

(£bn)

Total Sales(£bn)

2009

463

300

763

1.85

1.20

3.05

2010

446

293

739

1.86

1.25

3.11

2011

423

278

701

1.74

1.22

2.96

(Source: The Publishers Association, 2012).

Book publishing serves a variety of markets like the Academic books, Consumer books and the School books of various sub-genres, genres and disciplines. The consumer market segmentation entails both no-fiction and fiction publishing. For instance, the sub-genres found in fiction may include romance, science fiction, comedy and thriller among others. However, publishers have developed the technique of avoiding publication of several titles within a single sub-genre so as to avoid cannibalization of sales as a result of substitution from the titles of a single publisher. Entry into the publishing industry by new firms has helped the United Kingdom in controlling high concentration levels. For instance, between 2001 and 2011, there was a 52% growth in the number of new publishers with new ISBN prefixes. The VAT reported 2,200 registered publishers in the United Kingdom in 2011 different from the 10,000 book publishers reported by the Competition Commission in 2004. The 2001 UK CR4 was at 37.6% which increased by 10% to 47.6% within three years to 2004. In 2008, it was 47.4 while in 2009 it was at 47.7%, an indication that the CR4 is noticeably higher within the various segments of the market.

Below is a representation of the United Kingdom market segmentation of the book publishers;

2006 UK Retail Market Segments Sales

(Source: The Publishers Association, 2012)

In comparison, both radio and television broadcasting industry and book publishing industry have undergone significant technological transformations as illustrated in the above tables and charts. While local bookstore were initially the only source of both used and new books, today the expanded chains of bookstore and the introduction of online access to various books through sites like Google Scholar, have caused dramatic decline to both independent and local booksellers. Similarly, the online technology has made people not so much reliant on television and radio broadcastings since people are able to access the trending issues at the time of their occurrence online, rather than waiting to get informed about them at the specified news times of various radio and television stations. The widespread use of online media is also a major blow to the television and radio industry just like it is to the book publishers. This is because various firms and businesses have realized that most people spend their time online thus they’ve opted to maximize online advertisements and minimize television and radio advertisements. The online advertisements are basically through Google sites and media such as Facebook and Twitter. This has led to reduced revenue to the broadcasting industry (Wasko, 2012).

Just like television and radio contents of films and music, book publishers are also reliant on the intellectual property rights (IPR) so as to protect their revenue flow form piracy and unauthorized reproduction. With protected IPRs, no imitations of either radio and television contents or published books can be made before expiry of the copyright; the producers and publishers have a short-term monopoly on the products. In the case of published books, the authors of the books are entitled to life plus additional 70 years of exploiting their IPR through payment of royalties by publishers, majorly accrued from the sales of the books; generally, the royalty rate is normally 7% of the cost of the book. Additionally, Author’s licensing and Collecting Society gathers and issues income from no-book sales through licensing rights like broadcasting and photocopying.

However, the television and radio broadcasting industry and the book publishing industry contrast in terms of ancillary markets. The TV and radio industry have had video sales exploited since 1970s through the boxed sets TV series. As at 2010, DVDs containing TV content were estimated at 0.7 billion pounds. Reports also show that Downtown Abbey Series 1 earned 47% of its revenue from sales of DVD. On the other hand, ancillary markets for published books exist for only successful authors and their books thus necessitating the assembly of book publishers and other creative industry firms through synergies. The revenues received from these markets as well open opportunities for book publishers to make further investments beyond the scope of the home markets through international language translations and sales. For instance, three of the best-selling four film franchises are from books. These include Harry Porter, James Bond and Lord of the Rings. There are also exclusive chapters of newspaper serializations of audio versions primarily known as “talking books” which contributed 71.4 million pounds in 2006 through radio and TV adaptations like BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime, Sherlock Holmes and Hay Festival (Wasko, 2012).

In conclusion, TV and radio broadcasting and book publishing are generally related in the sense that they are both source of communication. The difference sets in where one source, i.e. TV and radio broadcasting can be used to address both the literate and illiterate through viewing and listening to local channels while published books basically are used by the literate whether translated to local languages or not since they require reading and comprehension which is an attribute of only the elite. It is evident that the two industries are major sources of revenue to the United Kingdom’s GDP through export as one follows the other in creative industry revenue. It is also evident that the two industries are affected by technological advancements which define people’s daily life.