The disadvantages is:
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Dumping down BBC's in an attempt to increase more audiences ,had dropped the high-quality programme as ITV ,with panel games and doctor programmes to just fill the gab of the schedule. BBC were being accused of dumping down and chasing ratings, because the public service broadcasting mean to produce public programme that others don’t, As a result in 2000 BBC governors criticism for the third year running that the company had stopped producing a good-quality programmes. Like it was in the old days when production suet the English audiences.
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Reducing profits: moving towards the ratings/public service was to forge ahead in the digital revolution, exploiting the opportunities created by new technology and launching new channels and websites. The huge amount of money necessary for investment in digital channels reduced the revenues available to move towards other expansion strategies such as retaining talent and sporting rights.
Being a global player
With the growth of mass communication, travel and relocation, we now live in what has been called a global village. This new globalization and the cultural diversity it has created within nation states can also be seen as a threat to order as well as the above mentioned traditional family values, codes of good taste and decency. These perceived threats in turn lead to calls by both ordinary citizens and their governments for re-regulation. There is a built in conflict between change and order and it has become increasingly difficult for governments to get the balance right on regulation in the case of broadcast television as well as the media at large. BBC has to choose whether to stay home or move out to the global arena and compete globally. And this is the last dilemma they actually face. Now, the advantages of BBC for being a global player is:
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More growth under BBC brand reputation sustains: The BBC has been a global broadcaster through the world service since the early days of it development. International radio broadcasts began in 1932; by the end of the 20th century, the world service was broadcasting in over 40 languages to estimated audience of 151 million people around the world. BBC brand is one of the world's most powerful brands, respected and trusted for its quality and integrity. The funding regulation role encourages the organization to compete for attracting more worldwide audiences. Which allow the BBC Worldwide to submit to utilize the brand in order to gain max. profits ,so the BBC success as a international broadcaster to exploit its programmes on the world market through developing and humanizing to gain the respect for both quality of its programmes and its independent, realistic reporting which become with the BBC responsibilities and that what make the BBC reputation grow worldwide.
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Attempt to enhance profits: the British governments have encouraged the development of the BBC's commercial activities to attempt to enhance the income. Under the direction of' John Birt's the expansion programme took off with new channels (e.g. BBC choice, BBC knowledge..) and alliances (e.g. the agreement with Discovery) that encouraged the corporation's expansion into new markets, while serious investment in new technologies – particularly digital and online- diminished the available funds for existing analogue service. Through the efforts of the commercial arm of the BBC- BBC Worldwide- they will have a remit to exploit the brand in order to gain maximum returns on the BBC's assets-its programmes- to generate revenues that are reinvested in public service programming.
The disadvantages is:
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Uncertainty of success: to be a global player, BBC should consider some aspect in the international arena that the BBC did not do it before get into that filed which make me a faired that BBC has abilities to move from the local site to the global landscape productively. The BBC it self may not be able to have all the raw materials to use them in order to success in a highly competitive environment. It seems that the organization moved globally without an obvious strategy. They depended on their national successful to jump globally. Nevertheless, if they cannot manage to reach their target they could even loosen the national reputation especially after the ignorance of most of the minority interests of the U.K citizens. Therefore, they have to do the best they can to success or they will face a real problem.
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Loosing its nationwide identity: IN the way to inter the global landscape surly BBC will lose the concentration on the local arena it will lose some part of its pre-loyal audiences because of the global plan, it will focus on the global broadcaster. In the digital world of multimedia choice, the pressure on the BBC is greater than before to produce diverse programmes that assurance something for everyone even with low quality because the quantity is more important than the quality in commercial point of view. Most of those programmes are being produced for the global audience and being far away from the British tastes. People start to look at the BBC as a commercial company not public service broadcaster.
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Q2: Based on the economic, organizational, socio-political and cultural features surrounding the BBC, which are outlined in the Case study, what is your advice to the top- level management of the BBC on the process of decision making which they should adopt in order to avoid making flawed decisions with respect to their response to the three strategic dilemmas?
No body denied that BBC has huge contribution on the British social life and culture both at national and international. Most of British citizens who want to see that contribution maintained into the multi-channel future. Which make the pressure on the BBC to change and adjust itself to the speedily changing demands of that future. The nation needs a BBC that delivers high standard, innovative broadcasting that nurtures British talent, which present the nation to itself, and that respects the contributions made by the other players in the media world. To fallow that changes needs right decision to avoid flawed decision to the organization has, decision-making is an important part of all managerial functions performed .BBC has to use the knowledge concentrated process that demands good management of information to produce a preferred process outcome. In taking decision-making I advice the top-manager in BBC to take in consideration the actual process of organizational decision making, which will not only avoid making flawed decisions with respect to their response to the three strategic dilemmas, also enhance the image of the BBC in the whole world the 'process of organizational decision making' has the following:
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Organizational goals: which mean that the top manager in organization should consider how goals occur in an organization and how goals will change over time, and how they should act and respond to these changes of goals? In BBC the union members include managers, employees, stockholders, suppliers, clients, , tax collectors has one vision, that top manager have to take in consideration that the goals must deal effectively with the probable for internal goal conflicts existed in a coalition of diverse individuals and groups. Since the existence of unresolved conflicts among organizational stakeholders, which will reflect on the feature of the organizations, it is difficult to construct a useful descriptively exact suggestions of the organizational decision making process if they insist on internal goal consistency. My advice to the BBC top-manager is to adopt The Rational Model which consider decision unit behavior is reputed to be rational. Moreover, it assumes goal congruence and clarity which implies that all members of the decision making unit share a common goal and will collaborate to achieve this goal and that the goal is clearly defined and well understood by all members of the decision-making unit. The decision making process consists of problem recognition, formulation of alternative courses of action and selection of an alternative that accomplishes the predefined goal.
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Organizational expectations : Expectation mean what will be seen as the result of giving and available information in the future, which means that the top manager in the organization should consider how and when they should dig for new information and how this information spouse to process through the organization management system. BBC top managers must depend on information estimates and expectations that usually are different significantly from reality. Expectations are by no means independent of hopes, wishes, and the internal bargaining needs of subunits in the organization. Top manager in BBC should conceder that Information about any specific courses of action is often hard to get and a doubtful dependability. Therefore, the BBC top manager should guard themselves from the worst effects of influence activities by focusing on confirmed information instead of doubtful estimates and expectations of fault information. My advice to the top manager is to take in consideration the Limits to Rationality, performance may be limited by manual dexterity or reaction time, and decision-making processes may be limited by the speed of mental processes. Individuals also are limited by their values and those conceptions of purpose that influence them in making their decisions, and these tend to be shaped by their organizational experience. If their loyalty to the organization is high, their decisions will high and perfect, if loyalty is lacking, personal motives may interfere with organizational efficiency and decision will be imperfect. This limitation applies both to basic knowledge required in decision-making; designers must know that the basics of technicalities and to the information that is required to make decisions appropriate to a given situation.
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Organizational choice : choosing form many alternatives available solutions around you is another management method that any organization can use to reach the right decision and that needs to differentiate the process by which the alternatives available to the organization are prepared and chosen. BBC top managers have the perceptions and influenced by some characteristics of the organization and its procedures. In addition, BBC has to consider only a limited number of decision alternatives. Lastly, BBC should change with respect to the amount of resources that such organizations dedicate to their goals, sub organizational and individual goals. The BBC should consider changing is normal system in which the corporation learns from it experience. My advice to BBC top management, to increase diversity in ethnic, this will only create ideas and innovation, and improve the decision-making process.
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How do the policies of governments (individually and or collectively) constraint the ability of the BBC to respond to these three strategic dilemmas?
Regulation and legislation played very important part in shaping the development and operation of the media. Governments, quick to recognize the importance of the media, have sought to control their content from their earliest use. The broadcasting industry in the UK has been shaped through a plethora of regulations. At the end of the 1990s around 150 separate regulations could be applied to the industry. In this part I will talk about the extent which policies of government constraint the ability of the BBC to response to their three strategic dilemmas
Dilemma 1: programme producer v programme commissioner
As a traditional public service organization with a bureaucratic, hierarchical structure and a strong, internalized set of value encompassing the public service philosophy. The BBC values and style of working practices were passes on to new employees through a long and complete training period and authorized with the promise of a lifelong career. However, the government in the 1980 changed this radically. What has been seen as strengths were now defined, politically and by sections of the press as systemic weakness?
The government forces the BBC to accept politics that would reflect the commercial organizations and make it more responsible to the market forces. These Organizational restructuring and the implementation of the internal market and producer choice marked the end of the period of protected creative freedom and radically changed the dynamics between the producers and management. Perhaps one of the most destructive things in the BBC was producer choice, because producer choice created and ideology of the producer as power king. And the producer owns her own budget and its’ entirely up to the producer how they manage that budget, and who they hire” ( quoted by Storey and Salaman, 1999).
With the new competitive and political climate of the 1980s and ‘90s the BBC was forced by government policies to make three type of change in BBC: The relations between department and functions and organizational units in the corporation were transformed into market relations .and large proportion of BBV programme production was to be done outside the corporation. Also the Government legislation required the BBC to outsource 25 percent of programme production .Finally producers become responsible for demonstrating the feasibility of their ideas and programmes. The organizational changes of the 1980s and ’90 involved the obligation of tighter and more persistent management controls over programme activity. The reliance on market force was defenses by the imposition of management controls
This legislation truly reduces the power and position of progamme makers and showing them to internal market or managerial pressures. The policy-involved producers is leaning new skills and taking on responsibilities that formerly were the field of managers. As one senior manager recalls, it was a difficult transition for many of them. “the staff found it very difficult to adjust… they’d come to be creative, to make brilliant programmes, not to be accountants and marketing people … this was a really huge society change for them and challenged some of the basic reasons why they thought they were working here.” ( quoted by storey and salaman, 1999)
Finally these government legislation actually make The BBC suffered from losing the talent in business during the 1990s. reorganization and the move to outsourcing, and prepare the organization to multi –channel and competitor period did not destroy the development creative culture that they had but also illogically replaced in with one that was excise in government bureaucracy.
Dilemma 2 :competitor for ratings with ITV channels V public service provider.
Like most of the public service broadcasters worldwide the BBC have suffered from losing their audiences over 1990s, because the increasing of competitive market in which viewer shifted to the digital television that they can choose from around 200 channels. With the industry consolidating and content becoming ever more fright, the BBC had to make a small change to keep up with rapidly increasing prices for talent and broadcasting rights.
Writers Marks and Gran says that, the BBC in an effort to gain audiences, has adopted the same mass-market popular programming as ITV, with soap operas, panel games and doctor and detective dramas forming the bulk of the schedule. Both news and current affairs programmes appear to be at risk in the face of increased competition. Panorama, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, was moved to a late-night Sunday slot in October 2000, losing around 14 per cent of its regular viewers and angering journalists. The BBC claims that the new timing wills extra 300,000 news viewers and increased audiences during the 9 to 19 pm slot. However, research conduct by national consumer Council showed that most respondents were unhappy wit the clash of bulletins.
The BBC has been dumping down the 6 pm news by featuring lightweight stories rather than covering serous issues”(Humpharys, 1999). The culture secretary allowed the BBC is rescheduling move a six-month trial period to prove whether it could sustain audiences. The corporation warned that if the move failed it would be under pressure to return the news to its original slot. During the 1990s sport become less a priority to the BBC. Money was unfocused into creating new channels, leaving little to put into bidding for sports rights, which were being successively lost thought the late 1990s.
The BBC’s flagship sports programme 'Match of the day ' was moved from its early evening slot to a somewhat fluid later time, losing audience in response. The ITV won the premiership highlights for $61M, a move that cost the BBC its' Match of the Day' programe and, according to Dyke, made no economic sense. In recent years the BBC has found it difficult to retain some of its famous names in the face of offers of huge payment from the independent companies. The late 1990s was several established faces defect from the BBC to ITV. At the end of the 1990s talent inflation was running at around 17 per sent a year, far in excess of the license fee increase.
Government Restructuring over the past decade has changed the focus away from a nurturing, programme-making organization towards one governed by cost reduction. Because of the industry-wide obligation to contract a minimum of 25 per cent of programming through independent companies, it has become commonplace over the past decade for some actors and presenters to own production companies and to maintain on working thought them. The BBC talent movement addresses the issue of fright talent in a public service spirit while at the same time the corporation is still attempting to retain recognized talent with well-paid deals. This anxious balance of ratings versus public services appears to leak into the BBC’s decisions, arising as it does from the up normal of the financial support system, which requires both minority programming and rating to excuse its maintenance.
Dilemma 3: Global organization V. UK Provider
The public service broadcasters worldwide are struggling with the dilemmas of finding a clear role in the new media landscape. The BBC is better placed than other has succeed with its massive guaranteed funding, which able the BBC to expand in the global market, but still operating within the framework of national programme considerations. The BBC should- some argue - moved into a niche area, providing only quality educational, information programmes not available on commercial channels. Like the PBS in USA, in that case the BBC can fulfill its public service obligations and become better to face the global giants.
The BBC and its supporters would argue that the expansion programme is necessary in order to guarantee the continuing exciting of the corporation, and UK public service broadcasting, in the changing and increasingly competitive media landscape. Nevertheless, the government regulations required a proportion of programmes to be made in the regions also holds back exports, as international viewers find them difficult to understand. The British media industry as a whole has failed to exploit new markets, allowing others to gain access. The arrival of satellite and cable chancels in the UK created a great hunger for content that was eventually filled by US broadcasters on account of the failure of UK broadcasters to supply’ new markets in deregulated Europe were filled by Australian companies. Within domestic TV market only 1/4 of the size of the UK 's.
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