In What Ways Have the Recent Technological And Institutional Essay

In What Ways Have the Recent Technological And Institutional Developments Shaped Public Service Broadcasting In the UK - Essay Example In such a market with a large number of private players (with large funds and new technologies to back them), the PSBs with their obligatory roles as public service broadcasters which disallows them to focus on earning revenues, are finding it increasingly difficult to survive in this fragile economic scenario (Shooshan and Cave, 2000, 71-83). In this context, Singer opined that, â€Å"increased number of TV services means that audiences are getting fragmented. Where once a show on the publicly owned BBC, or its commercial rival ITV, regularly commanded audiences of 20 million, now a good audience is under half this† (Singer, Getting over our public service broadcasting addiction, April 2010). Along with this, the Internet has now emerged as large threat, taking away a large portion of UK audience, whereâ€Å"70% (80% in urban areas) are on the internet; there are movies on your Xbox, and assorted forms of catch-up TV† (Singer, ibid). In the internet, the most popular a renas are the social networking sites (like, Facebook, Twitter., etc.,) that allow open interactions between various users, thus making it necessary that the UK PBS in order to modernise itself must look towards allowing a greater scope for interactions amongst its recipients. In this context, in the 2005 Ofcom review, Richards, Foster and Suter give us a fair idea of the extent of technological invasion, where they state, â€Å"Fifty per cent of households already have digital television, and take-up has been extremely rapid†¦Other digital technology is increasingly competing for viewers’ attention. Ownership of DVD players has exploded – reaching 45% of... This essay stresses that PSB has always been at the core of UK cultural development, and in the Ofcom’s research it has been seen that despite changing consumption patterns, public support for the main objectives of PSB remain unchanged. Thus, it is necessary that Ofcom, while making suitable change to shape the present PSB that would be more suitable to the present context, must keep the traditional institutional values intact within the UK PSBs. It should create a suitable status for the PSB operating in the digital environment, create specific superscriptions for PSB, and allow them to make use of the new technological innovations to fulfil the superscriptions and adjust to the modifications in the present media landscape and modifications in the listening and viewing patterns of the recipients. This paper makes a conclusion that the UK must make provisions in their legislations to formulate specific superscriptions for PSB, which would cover the new mode of communication and technology services, thus allowing PSB to make optimal use of their potential in advocating democracy, social values and wider cultural participation, using the new form interactive media. The government also must allow the PSB media to respond completely in its own way, to the hurdles arising from the networking society, taking part in market competition, while keeping in mind various legal issues that dominate the public/private structure of the electronic world.