"Rupert Murdoch has dramatically changed the television industry" Critically assess this statement with particular reference to commercial television channels.

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“Rupert Murdoch has dramatically changed the television industry”

Critically assess this statement with particular reference to commercial television channels.

Rupert Murdoch owns one of the largest media organisations in the world, called News International. This is an organisation which owns products in all mediums.  Press baron, Murdoch started his ownership of print in Australia when he inherited his first newspaper from his father, the Adelaide News, he made what was a fairly unsuccessful newspaper into a thriving business. After taking over the Mirror in Sydney, in the 1970’s Murdoch came to the UK and purchased two tabloids, The Sun and the News of the World. Following this was 20th Century Fox, and Fox TV in the 1980’s this was his first ownership in a medium other than print. This was of course a sign of things to come as shortly afterward he launched satellite TV. Now one of the most successful people in media ownership Murdoch describes himself as a libertarian

“As much individual responsibility as possible, as little government as possible, as few rules as possible.”

I am going to be looking at the ways in which Rupert Murdoch has changed the television industry in the UK.

        

After mainly specialising in the medium of print Murdoch decided that TV was more of a growing medium here in the UK so in 1989 his media organisation, New International launched  a four channel service SKY the UK’s first 24 hour news channel using The Astra satellite. Fourteen months later another satellite new provider, British Satellite Broadcasting was launched.  Murdoch then had direct competition for a short period of time. For six months the two battled for subscribers, but after losing a great deal of money, BSB and Murdoch’s SKY merged to become BSYKB. Murdoch’s News International owns 50% of BSKYB.

BSKYB/ Sky news was the first of its kind and revolutionised the television industry, never before had you been able to access current news stories from your television set 24 hours a day. However the British population seemed uninterested in the early 1990’s and it wasn’t until the mid to late 1990’s that BSKYB started to make a profit. But in 1998 approximately 6.2million homes had access to Sky News either through satellite or cable.

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Up until the launch of BSKYB the television industry had been mainly dominated by the BBC. Rupert Murdoch changed that and the television industry became and still is dominated by commercial television in particular satellite and cable. We then had access to a huge number of channels for both news and entertainment. This meant that people felt they had a greater choice in what they watched For example sport, people who particularly enjoyed baseball were now able to access a baseball match, and the viewer would feel as though they were taking part in a shared experience. This is ...

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