Ownership and funding in TV and Film Industry

Public Service Funding

Funding for PBS:

Funding refers to the revenue PSB receives.

Funding may be:

-License fees

-State Funding

-Voluntary Donations

-Partly Commercial

 License Fees

·    License fees are obligatory fees which must be paid by anyone having access to public broadcasting. A fine example would be BBC.

·    This is also called a television license.

·    Most of Europe endorses the license fee, but USA and Canada never had a license fee.

·    Australia and New Zealand abolished the license fee.

State Funding

-  This happens when the government allocates a part of the budget to PSB every year.

-  PSB’s that are funded totally from the state can be said to be state-owned, but not State Controlled.

-   Australia and New Zealand now depend on state funding.

-   Spain and China always utilized state funding

-   State funding creates certain dependence from the government in power.

Voluntary Donations

-    As the name itself implies, this happens when individuals give charity to the PSB’s.

-   A good example here is PBS in America. In 1994 it was ranked as the 11^th most popular charity,

-    Net and One TV, although private entities, also collect money from the public in the form of donations for the political parties for every year.

Partly Commercial

-   These are also common in PSB, but they are considered a supplement and not a main source of funding.

-   Advertising/ Sponsorship is done so as to sustain the programs, and not to make profits.

-    Advertising may be limited to a fixed amount of time per hour in PSB, whether this will not be the case with private stations.

-    Less advertising on PSB, will mean that the costs will have to be covered be license fees/state funding.

Television

-   Commercial Broadcasting is the broadcasting of TV/Radio by private entities, and thus have no link with PSB.

-    Private entities, which are common also in Film, are made up of an individual or a group of people.

Their roles are to:

1. To maximize profits like any other company. This affects the types of programs private companies create when compared to public services broadcast.

2. Maximize ratings.