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The mismatch between political devolution in the United Kingdom and the apparent retention at the centre of responsibility for broadcasting policy, particularly in relation to the BBC, is examined, and the anomalies therein explored. The article argues that, despite the constitutional position, in practice devolution of broadcasting policy has proceeded, albeit unevenly, and more systematic devolution may follow. That process might have to be accompanied by a restructuring of the United Kingdom politically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are made of stories and we want to tell them. In this paper, we recover experiences of narrative identities from Argentina, in television fictions made through a public policy to promote the production of audiovisual content. It had as its objective the democratization, diversification and federalization of the audiovisual territory during the years 2010-2015. The unprecedented incorporation of independent filmmakers, actors and landscapes from the different regions of the country, who began to tell their stories from their own territories, not only became an expression of popular cultures and regional identities, but also became particular devices of the politics of narratives identities. For analytical purposes, we recover fictions that address mythologies and other popular beliefs in their narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to delineate the diverse impacts brought by state media policy on the development of the broadcasting and TV industry in China through two keynote talks at the 6th Chinese TV and Audio-Visual Research Conference (CTARC). The author thereby argues that the TV programmes with consistent "ideological guidance" demonstrate the "legitimacy" and "authenticity" of mainstream Chinese TV, which has regulated the diversity of Chinese TV to a large extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the relationship between reality television and the politics of subject-making in contemporary Chinese media culture. Offering a critical discourse analysis of the recent hit reality TV/game show Chinese Dating with the Parents (2017–2018), the case-study explicates how the show's inclusion of a normalized transgender celebrity host and its Confucianized approaches to dating, marriage, and family relations are connected to the re-packaging and re-articulation of Confucianism at the state and personal levels in China. By shedding light on the interconnectedness of state ideology, celebrity culture, and subject-making in reality television, the discussion points out television functions in creating and circulating new state-sanctioned subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the ability of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to give broadcasters the flexibility they need in complying with the Children's Television Act of 1990 or the KidVid Rules amid the changing media landscape without eliminating the substantive portions of the rule. Topics discussed include the evolution of regulating children's television programming, the repeal of net neutrality, and the Media Bureau's interest in updating its KidVid Rules.

Politicians, broadcasters and advertising practitioners have shown concern over problems associated with political advertising. These problems include allocated time to political advertising in the broadcast media, content of political advertising and cost of political advertising through the broadcast media. Previous discussion of these problems has focused on one or two problem areas with limited discussion of proposed solutions. This article integrates positions on these problem areas and provides an overview of proposed solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a way to save U.S. television from the present quasi-monopoly position that stems from the scarcity of VHF channels? This brief article calls attention to some serious inequities that have developed from the manner in which this vital public property has been exploited, and suggests methods for reducing such inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the regulatory framework within which the television documentary production industry operates in France, and how public policies have created and then adapted a support system in response to the active agency of professionals. I give particular attention to the reform of the support system implemented between 2014 and 2017, which has privileged certain categories of non-fiction programmes and affected the patterns of production. I will look at the definition of quality criteria in documentary funding, focusing on the pivotal, though controversial, notion of ‘creative documentary’, and on the diverse approaches that inform French audiovisual policy. By focusing on policy interventions, the article will address the economic and political history of television documentary in France between 1986 and 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the recent commercialisation of the programme-making activities at the BBC in the United Kingdom as a major instance of a wider tendency that sees a market logic becoming increasingly embedded in public service media (PSM) organisations. Drawing on ideational approaches to policy analysis, this article seeks to explain how and why the BBC came to conceive of BBC Studios, a new commercial subsidiary bringing together the majority of BBC’s in-house production units and free to compete in the wider market for programme commissions, as serving its long-term interests. It considers how BBC strategists engaged with dominant ideas in UK broadcasting policy on the economic value of the creative industries and the benefits of competition for creativity in television programme-making. It shows how changes to the institutional context over the past three decades, predicated on these very ideas, have constrained BBC’s room for manoeuvre. The main arguments put forward – the BBC’s growing reliance on economic arguments to justify its value and the path-dependent effects at work pushing the BBC towards advocating an institutional solution entailing the further hollowing out of its publicly funded structures – are relevant to wider debates on the future role and organisational forms of PSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestically produced children’s television is frequently highlighted as both an area of market failure, and also as an area where children’s changing consumption habits necessitate new and different ways of thinking about funding children’s content across a range of platforms. In the light of a recent U.K. proposal to set up a Public Service Content Fund to support “genres” under threat, including children’s programming, this article considers how you fund diverse high-quality children’s content in a more challenging media environment where children’s content is arguably still a market failure “genre.” The first part of the article provides context by outlining the market failure characteristics of children’s content as a framework for analyzing the validity of market failure arguments across a range of platforms. It then investigates the causes of perceived market failure in the U.K. children’s television production market. The final part examines the implications of recent U.K. policy responses to provision for children that seek to address market failure through (1) the possible introduction of a contestable fund for public service content; (2) more stringent obligations on the British Broadcasting Corporation; and (3) the re-imposition of quotas on commercially funded public service broadcastings (ITV, Channel 4, Five). Drawing on regulatory and stakeholder responses, it concludes that attempts to overcome market failure in U.K. children’s television appear unsuited for funding the longer-term curation, distribution, and discovery of new types of content on platforms other than broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the last few years, reclaiming TV spectrum for mobile broadband use has been a hotly debated topic in the telecommunications policy agenda. This paper evaluates two ways to improve spectrum efficiency to today's noise-limited single-transmitter broadcast television approach. One way is to increase the transmit power of each broadcaster's only transmitter. The other way is to replace that single transmitter with a multi-transmitter low-power low-tower (LPLT) single frequency network (SFN). In order to quantify their potential benefits, two different scenarios are considered. First, this paper presents the results obtained for a large region in which broadcasters are uniformly distributed, so that the number of TV broadcasts that can be received is roughly the same at any location. In this case, results suggest that increasing power of traditional single-transmitter broadcasters could reduce the amount of spectrum needed for TV by up to 30%, and would be cost-effective for population densities above 30 per square km. A switch to SFNs could reduce the amount of spectrum needed for TV by roughly 60%, but at a higher cost. Results suggest that the LPLT SFN approach could be cost-effective for regions with uniformly distributed broadcasters and population densities above 120 per square km. The study then quantifies spectrum efficiency gains in regions where broadcasters are not uniformly distributed. In particular, it considers the case where U.S. broadcasters in the UHF band continue to serve their coverage areas as of 2015. In this case, the amount of spectrum that can be freed from TV throughout the entire nation using these two approach is considerably smaller, but some additional bands can be freed from TV throughout much of the nation. Moreover, most of these spectrum gains can be obtained when only a minority of broadcasters change their technical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current legislative framework and the tools the Romanian Television Company (SRTv.) has at its disposal, outdated by the realities of the competitive market whereon it operates, brought the Romanian public television before a permanent financial risk. The absence of a coherentlong-term operating strategy led to the lack of financial performance andserious situation SRTv. faces for several years. By means of this paper, the authors aim to guide the managers of SRTv. towards the implementation of the management accounting tools, providing several possible solutions by which the financial performance of SRTv. can be improved: budgeting the costs and changing the method of cost calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]