PSB (Public Service Broadcasting), Netflix, Amazon and illegal streaming are all broadcasting channels/website that you can watch some form of TV show or film on. But only over time have we been able to have access to all these extravagant contents.
The first one that came out was obviously the PSB which is classed as the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) which first aired in 1922. The BBC get their funds from the TV licence fee which the public have to pay if they have a working television in their home, it costs about £146 a year and you will be able to get all BBC channels all included in the price. But with other channels they are funded by advertisements. However, Ofcom brought in ATVOD (Authority of Television on Demand) in 2010. This then set forth the idea of TV catch up and having films on-demand on your TV. In 2012 TV got switched from being analouge to digital in the big digital switchover which changed how we watch TV forever. Digital is a non-profit company which allows you to watch more than the traditional 5 channels and they haved added up to 40 channels. However, if you are on monthly subscripsion services like Virgin Media or Sky TV, you can potentially get up to 340 channels.
One of the main reasons on-demand came out was in affect to protect anyone under the age of 18 from content that could cause affects with their mental, moral or physical development. Anyhow, by using ATVOD has helped them secure and prevented anyone under the legal required age from seeing these materials. Thankfully any programmes that have any of these materials will be declined by the BBFC (British Broad of Film Classification). With PSB you can buy a sky box vairying from £16-£40 a month (depending on what bundle you buy) instead of just having digital TV. By having this box it has the element of VOD (Video on Demand) services. In spite of buying this, it has absolutely everything on your TV from films to sports or music to TV shows. Therefore, have they only done this because of the competition it’s been given by Netflix and illegal streaming? Have they got to up their game with how many films and TV shows you can watch on demand?
Netflix launched its business in 1997 and it was once just a company that provided you with video and DVD rentals through the mail. 10 years later Netflix decide to go online. In 2017 According to Rani Molla she has suggest that Netflix now have over ‘”94.363 million users internationally” in 2017. Amazon partnered with Love film in 2011 hitting 2 million subscribers with their rental business. Therefore, amazon took over Love film’s disc services and shut it down in October 2017 for “decreasing disc demand” and is now an instant video service which now has over 90million (in USA) users. However, by them doing this anyone can pretty much nearly watch any TV show or film whenever and wherever they would like to on multiple devices just by having the app on the device and by having connection to the internet. They have both introduced download which is where you download the content when you have the internet connection and then you can watch it without having internet. By them doing this means if for example you are going away on holiday or have a long car journey you don’t have to waste your data streaming it or if the connection is poor it wont buffer halfway through the good bits! You use both online content with paying a monthly or yearly subscription fee. By doing this you can watch a predicted 4,563 shows and 2,445 films (7,008 titles) on Netflix. Netflix have original series that you cannot watch on any other legal online streaming service. On the other hand, with Amazon it has an estimated of 41,000 titles on its website. Also with amazon prime yearly subscription you can have all the advantages that they offer for example, 800,000 books on the kindle, free 2-day or even 1-day delivery in some parts of the UK, Prime music, kindle learn etc. Also, Amazon gives students some offers that will attract the younger audience. By them doing promotions and offers it will draw the younger viewers in seeing as they don’t have a lot of money and are trying to find the best thing to spend their money on. So they have the decision of should they buy a TV and pay the licence fee for everything or get a Netflix/Amazon account to get only TV shows and Films. One of the fantastic things about both of these distributions is that there are no annoying adverts, so you can get on with watching your television programme or film without the hassle of ad’s. Because of having these streaming and on demand service it makes the public have a wider assortment of what they can watch when noting is on the TV. But one of the problems is that these online distributions do not have live sports, music or news which is a very popular genre that people tend to watch. These distributions have only taken the actual TV shows and films side of it. So if they only have one of these online streaming services they wouldn’t be able to access it through any of the above. Nevertheless, these companies are not only in competition with the PSB, but they are at war with each other.
Illegal streaming has been around for many years and it roughly properly started in the early 70’s and it has come a long way from floppy disks and pirate copies. Illegal streaming now is where you can watch films and TV shows and stream the content online or you can download it to your PC all for FREE. You find these on pirate sites like, Solar Movie, 123 movies, Put Locker and so on. Illegal streaming has screwed over the PSB and legal streaming sites just for the pure fact that they don’t make any money out of it when people are streaming off the illegal websites. Despite being able to watch all this for free there is some issues that occur by doing this. When you stream online on your PC/Laptop if the website is dodgy you can generate viruses, a lot of them which potentially can shut down your devices for the rest of eternity. By streaming you are in effect not breaking the law but you could get yourself a fine. If you download the content instead which would have been uploaded by another user, it uses a little bit of data which everyone picks at which you could possibly get done for copy write even though you didn’t upload it to the site, it does not matter because you have that little bit of data on your computer. By doing copy write you can get sentenced up to a year in prison. Using illegal steaming means you can watch anything from what you get included on your sky box, what you get on Amazon and Netflix and you can also watch some movies that have just come out in cinema and are not even on a disc yet! So, you can stream live football or even boxing matches without even paying a penny. But is it really worth the risks just to watch these shows/films for free?
With all these new and advanced broadcasting channels/websites it has allowed you to being able to watch anything you like on multiple devices. But the game has 100% changed since when TV started in the late 19th early 20th centry. But what does the future hold for broadcasting.