Practice question from the internet.

What difference has the internet made to media production and consumption?
What difference has the internet made to media production and consumption?
The internet is a world wide storage of information and entertainment which everyone has access to. With millions of websites, the internet allows people to look, interact and watch different things. The media depend on the internet for various things such as getting information out to the audience if it is a newspaper or a TV company. Being as the internet is extremely popular in these modern times, it is depended on for just about everything.
For the TV industry, the internet plays a big part. The majority of the thousands of TV channels there are available now; there is generally a website to support the channel. For example, the BBC is a multi – media conglomerate and produce various TV channels, radio stations and projects for the British public. They have a website to help support everything they produce. The BBC website includes many links and information for everything they do such as up to date new stories, weather updates, interactive games for the younger audience, sports news and updates and many links to other parts of the BBC website which will allow people to access. The BBC also offer a video on demand service called iPlayer which allows people to catch up or watch again any BBC programme for up to 30 days after being posted online. Without its own website, I believe that the BBC would not be as big as it is today.
Since the invention of the World Wide Web, there have been many changes to the TV industry. People are now able to access video on demand services in order to catch up on any programmes they have missed. The services available include BBC iPlayer, ITV player, Sky player, 4oD and TV Catch-up. All these services are free to use and available to everyone. An example of a service that didn’t successfully launch was a service called Project Kangaroo. The competition commission claimed that by bringing all the channels together (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 etc) then there would be no competition between any channels. This caused Project Kangaroo’s plans to be cancelled and to never be launched on the internet. As I have previously mentioned about the conglomerate BBC, without its own website it wouldn’t have the wide audience it has today and wouldn’t be as successful. This applies to all TV channels and companies as their websites help support the channels, they provide extra information for the audience to look up and certain channels also offer their own video on demand service. Without the internet, the TV industry wouldn’t be as successful as it is these days. However, the internet is being relied on more and more which is stopping people from actually watching TV. I have found that some of the younger generation are not watching TV as much as they used to as it doesn’t really appeal to them anymore. If they want to catch up with any programmes, they use a video on demand service via the internet.
TV companies are now expected to supply a website as an extra source of information for audiences to read up on. In this day and age, people have extremely easy access to the internet where they are able to “Google” anything they want and within seconds, they are free to wander the World Wide Web about whatever they want. Being as this is so easy to do, people now have easy access to any website they want to view and TV companies and channels are required to join in this revolution. Due to growing competition between companies, channels are constantly looking for new ways of gathering a bigger audience. Most channels (on their websites) have a VOD service, information about the channel, TV listings and much more. The only way of keeping these websites free to use for the public is through advertising as the BBC Virtual Revolution programme found. It said the even though websites such as Google, Flickr, VOD services and blogs are free to use, they still make their money by having links to advertisements at the side of the screen. The programme also said that when we click on one of the adverts, the advertising companies take a ‘cookie’ from the person’s browser which then allows the company to find adverts which apply to the individual’s needs and likes to catch their eye in future.
The invention of the BBC iPlayer found a whole new revolution to the way people use the internet. Iplayer was one of the first VOD services to be freely accessed by the public. Advertised through BBC adverts on TV and through the BBC website, the service is now very successful and used by many people across Britain. From this being released in 2007, the other channels ceased the opportunity to increase the competition and offer their own video on demand service also. The ITV player was launched shortly after BBC iPlayer in 2008 with Sky Player released the same year, 4oD was released on the internet in 2009 and TV Catch-up was launched in Beta on the internet in 2008. Even though there are more choices to how you can watch TV, BBC iPlayer still seems to be the most popular service to use. Services such as TV Catch-up allow people to watch many channels which are available on freeview. This is similar to the proposed Project Kangaroo but also different. TV Catch-up is publicly funded like BBC iPlayer whereas Project Kangaroo would have allowed it’s users to pay for the videos they wanted to watch. Video on demand services seem to more publicly funded and use advertising to help fund the service through the websites. This is to allow the public to enjoy free services at any time online but it is also a continuous argument. The argument being about whether so much content should be free to use via the internet. Even though advertising helps funds costs, companies are now discussing whether people should have to pay to use services such as video on demand and social networking sites.
The funding issue also affects the BBC as the licence fee is being brought into the argument. Only 75% of the people in the UK have the internet and ¼ of the population in the UK don’t have any internet access. The argument about the licence fee says that it pays for all BBC services including TV channels, radio and internet. But if a ¼ of people don’t have the internet, then how can they get the best use out of the fee they have to pay. This is a fair argument as I believe it isn’t completely fair they have to pay the same fee as everyone else but don’t get to use all the services. However, I believe that being as a large majority of the population do have internet access, then the fee shouldn’t change just for people without internet due to the iPlayer being a free service for all. The digital divide is also involved within this argument. The term ‘digital divide’ means that there is a split between people who have access to the internet and people who have limited or no access. The argument surrounding the digital divide discusses how unfair it is that people don’t have the equal access to internet sites and services even though they all have to pay the same amount of money. This digital divide is a worldwide issue and officials are discussing ways to overcome the issue. I believe that in this day and age, all people should have access to the internet and a computer and should be able to enjoy the free services which are available.
Now that video on demand service are available for free use, there has been an increase in internet use for services such as BBC iPlayer and TV Catch-up. The TV industry still survives as people do watch it still even though the internet seems more appealing to audiences these days. People are also able to download some programmes to watch rather than watch them on TV or use Video on Demand services, Due to technological advancements; people are now able to view video on demand services via different ways. These include iPhones, Xbox’s, PS3’s and mobile phones that are compatible. The BBC iPlayer and TV Catch up services now offer a free download to these products and people can now watch programmes a lot easier and on the move. Even though these services are trying to make viewing habits a lot easier to be accessed, there is still a huge amount of competition going on between channels and companies.

iTunes radio.

Internet radio
iTunes 1.0 came with support for the Kerbango Internet radio tuner service, giving iTunes users a selection of some of the more popular online radio streams available. When Kerbango went out of business in 2001, Apple created its own Internet radio service for use with iTunes 2.0 and later. As of February 2008, the iTunes radio service features 1795 "radio stations," mostly in MP3 streaming format. Programming covers many genres of music and talk, including streams from both internet-only sources and traditional radio stations. iTunes also supports the .pls and .m3u stream file formats used by Winamp and other media players.
Since the release of iTunes 7, Apple no longer promotes the Internet radio feature, though it remains in the application. Some third-parties offer iTunes plugins that add additional radio stations.

These are two essays i found which a student has written about this topic.

Explain the concept of ‘wikinomics’ applying its main ideas to media in on online age

It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration to be successful. Methods such as peering, free sharing of material on the internet, has both advantages, its good news for businesses because it cuts distribution costs yet is difficult for users to protect their creative materials and ideas as intellectual property. The internet allows the virtual space users to create a blog every second. Resulting in global thinking which is made through the availability of web 2.0, this results in national and cultural boundaries being reduced. One downside to wikinomics is the lack of control that is regulated for free creativity, yet a happy medium is achieved by a service such as creative commons, which provides licenses which protect IP while at the same time allowing others to remix a users material, within limits. An advantage to wikinomics is that the media is democratised by peering, free creativity and the 'we media' journalism provided by ordinary people. Yet some users in put should be monitored in order to protect other users as their in put may cause offence. Within wikinomics, the combination of three things - technology, demographics and economics resulting in a 'perfect storm' which creates an unstoppable force, so any media company trying to operate without web 2.0 will be over run and will fall further and further behind. Yet, the sceptics believe that things are not changing as quickly and profoundly as Tapscott and Williams would have us believe. They believe that the idea of digital natives assumes too much, and that in fact many youths struggle, and indeed feel left behind and feel alienated by web 2.0 - but feel to embarrassed to admit it. The sceptics think that the wikinomics argument ignores inequality and that fact the vast majority of the worlds population does not even have access to broadband, so thinking globally is a luxury of the rich nations, not a worldwide ecological reality.



Explain the different functions of Twitter and how it can be used to change public opinion. Is it a tool which increases democracy or serves as a ''liberal rent-a-mob''

Twitter, the microblogging website that’s currently the world’s fastest growing communications medium: it expects to have 25 million active users by the end of this year. Twitter has immense power, and can benefit many users. One person in particular who took advantage of Twitter was Scott Pack, he tried to publicise his new book. Pack’s thought was this: since almost everyone who’s written for this book is also on Twitter, many with a large amount of followers, what if I asked all of them to Tweet about it just before it launches. And as a result, The Atheist’s guide ‘’went from about 20,000th on Amazon’s live bestseller list to 14th. In a single day, many people ordered it before it was even published. On the 16th, of October, Scott Pack read an article by Ian Moir in the Daily mail about the death of Boyzone of Stephen Gately. And he admits that even though he has no particular interest in Boyzone; he found it ‘’horrifically homophobic’. So Pack Tweeted: ‘Vile piece of ‘journalism’ about Stephen Gately by some evil cow called Jan Moir’. So Soon Pack’s followers and follower’s friends of followers began Tweeting about it, and soon a Twitterstorm was born. So Pack Tweeted: ‘Vile piece of ‘journalism’ about Stephen Gately by some evil cow called Jan Moir’. By the end of the day, the Mail website had amended its headline, companies including Marks and Spencer had pulled their adverts from the offensive page; and the Press Complaints Commission had received a record breaking 1,00 complaints (it would later receive 22,000). Critic AA Gill, who devoted much of his review in last weekend’s paper to a detailed description of how while on safari in Tanzania, he shot a dead baboon ‘’to get a sense of what it would feel like to kill someone’’, and Jimmy Carr, who had told his 2,500 – strong audience at the Manchester Apollo, ‘Say what you like about the serviceman amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a great Paralympics team in 2012.’’ After complaints from Tory MPs and the defence secretary, Carr apologised. Many Twitter posts were supportive. On 12 October, five days before Moir’s Gately article was published, the Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, posted a tweet referring to a super-injunction obtained by lawyers for the oil-trader Trafigura, which prevented the paper not only from publishing anything about a leaked report detailing the potentiality lethal nature of waste the firm dumped in Ivory Coast, but also mentioning the injunctions existence. Now, Rusbridger was saying, the lawyers had warned the Guardian not even to report that MP Paul Farrell had tabled a Commons question about the injunction, “The Twittersphere,” Rusbridger later wrote “went into meltdown”. And once again, it produced results; within hours. Farrelly’s question had been tracked down and the relevant links Tweeted. By midday the following day, helped along by Stephen Fry, ‘Trafigura’ was a trending topic across Europe. By launch time it had withdrawn the injunction.For the uninitiated, #before a word, known as a hashtag, is Twitter user’ way of uniting their tweets around a particular topic; ‘trending’ means it is on Twitter’s list of the 10 most tweeted-about topics on the site. Twitter suggests the site is aiming for 1 billion users by 2013.Twitter is a powerful tool than can benefit anybody, but just because of the power Twitter possesses it can result in users causing great offence. Stephen Fry thinks that; ‘Twitter may seem to some to be dominated by beinpensant, liberal spirit’. Yet like everything, Twitter, will grow, and can spiral off; ‘Will I be so optimistic about it when those spirits are matched by forces of religiosity and nationalism?’. Should Twitter regulate users opinions? Is it impossible to control a persons freedom of speech. Yet, do the majority of people use the power at their finger tips for good? Locker says; ‘It’s good for democracy, but its not democratic’. Is there such a thing as an equal opportunity on Twitter to express your opinion, or target and alter an error? ‘Don’t kid yourself that people will find your cause more interesting than what Stephen Fry had for lunch’ - Locker, how can Twitter address such problems as a lack of interest shown in important issues? Yet, although many believe that Twitter’s power wasted, why should other users listen to someone ranting? Brendan O’Neill believes that; “those computer bound Twitterers who enjoy nothing more than being outraged, scandalised and allegedly harmed, and who refuse to tolerate anything so intolerant as a Daily Mail rant. Scott Pack concludes that; ‘It wouldn’t be so good, obviously, if it reached a point where people were stopped from expressing their opinion.’ But he believes that; ‘I’ve got a way of saying something now. And if enough people agree with me, we can really make a difference. Twitter can’t dictate a person’s point of interest. Twitter has been described as; ‘rocketed into the mainstream without really knowing what its service was. Its users defined it’. And surely if its ‘users define it’ why should such users be restricted?

Blog On Media In The Online Age Exam

http://trcmediastudiesmediaintheonlineage.posterous.com/

Radio Case Study.

BBC Radio:

• 12 Radio channels (an example of the long tail)


• BBC radio podcasts


• BBC radio blogs

"some 57 million weekly listeners of Internet radio programs. More people listen to online radio than to satellite radio, high-definition radio, podcasts, or cell-phone-based radio combined."

nma.com

The share of radio listening via digital platforms has increased by a fifth in the past year to 24%, according to the latest Rajar results.
The results found DAB was still the most popular digital listening platform, while the internet saw the biggest yearly increase.
DAB now accounts for 15.1% of all radio listening (up 20%), followed by digital TV with 4% (up 19%) and the internet with 2.9% (up 29%).

The BBC iPlayer set a new record of 33.8m radio requests in March, according to the broadcaster’s latest figures.

Cool Stuff.

A coooool blog i found on this stuff.

http://petesmediablog.blogspot.com/

The Long Tail - Chris Anderson.

The Long Tail is a theory by Chris Anderson of a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling large number of unique items in relatively small quantities - usually selling fewer popular items in larger quantities.

We listened to an audiobook on 'The Long Tail' and here are the notes i took:

-Media's obsessed with what's hot and what's not.

-"iTunes killed the radio star"

-Hollywood down 6% last year.

-We have unlimited access to culture.

BEN:

-Downloads movies.

-Music - Copies CD's.

-Instant Messages.

-Online video games.

Ben has a choice.

-internet/broadband

-cable TV

Access!

Broadcasting: 1 show to millions

Millions of shows to 1

-Consumers like access.

Digital distribution.

'One size fits all' - Not anymore.

Access to unseen movies and music - Amazon.com/play.com/iTunes

The Long Tail.

If you produce something and make it available someone somewhere will buy it.

Downloads - No packing cost/distribution cost

No shop could carry thousands of music

Long Tale Distributions:

1) Tail of available variety

2)

3)

Google is an example of a long tail.

It turns unprofitable customers, products and companies into profitable ones.

Everything is available to everyone.

Variety.

Media in the online age.

Stuff from the internet on the long tail:

The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution. This has gained popularity in recent times as a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities. The concept was popularised by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying this strategy. Anderson elaborated the Long Tail concept in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

The distribution and inventory costs of businesses successfully applying this strategy allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of this large number of "non-hit items" is called the Long Tail.

Given a large enough availability of choice, a large population of customers, and negligible stocking and distribution costs, the selection and buying pattern of the population results in a power law distribution curve, or Pareto distribution. This suggests that a market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain degree of inequality by favoring the upper 20% of the items ("hits" or "head") against the other 80% ("non-hits" or "long tail"). This is known as the Pareto principle or 80–20 rule.

The Long Tail concept has found some ground for application, research, and experimentation. It is a term used in online business, mass media, micro-finance (Grameen Bank, for example), user-driven innovation (Eric von Hippel), and social network mechanisms (e.g., crowdsourcing, crowdcasting, peer-to-peer), economic models, and marketing (viral marketing).

A frequency distribution with a long tail has been studied by statisticians since at least 1946. The term has also been used in the insurance business for many years.