Essay :
Visits and researches
During the three visits to the most popular media organisations and producers in Hull, by exploring and discussing how each visit was different from the other and how each organisation was participating and contributing in the process of building a better public knowledge. Each media organisation I visited was divided into many sections and some sections were divided, in these visits we met people who are in charge and responsibility, they have told us how their organisation changed through the years, in terms of technology and the Digital revolution.
Watching or listening to media organisation since you were a baby and in till nowadays is different than going inside, seeing the work being done in front of you and especially talking to sector manager or even going to an on air at the radio news broadcasting room, and this is what we did in the previous weeks, visiting the BBC headquarter at Hull. The BBC is a state owned organisation funded by the annual television licence fee (from the public) which was first introduced on summer. In 1968, a ‘colour supplement’ of five pounds was added to the existing five pounds monochrome licence fee; the combined colour licence fee was therefore ten pounds, the equivalent of a hundred and twenty in 2006. The current (2009) cost is hundred and Forty two for colour TV and forty eight pounds for monochrome TV.
The BBC is a local, national and international extensive organisation divided into teams as it shown bellow:
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT <![endif]–>
|
Trust unit Director- General’s Office |
|
Content group |
|
Professional services |
|
Commercial Groups |
|
Journalism (Incorporates news, global news and sports) |
|
Vision Incorporates TV prod. And commissioning |
|
Audio& Music Radio& Music production |
|
Future media & technology Web development
|
|
Operations Policy, strategy, legal, property& distribution |
|
Marketing, communications and Audiences |
|
BBC worldwide |
|
BBC studios & post production |
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> <![endif]–>
The BBC is divided into five sections locally, according to the regions of the United Kingdom. In our visit to our local BBC headquarter of Hull and east Yorkshire section we met with Jeremy Buxton the manager of the former Hull Big screen, which was first launched in Britain in 2003 in Manchester followed by the idea that was first set in Berlin. It was very successful especially in the coverage of the big events such as the World Cup. The Big Screen idea is to locate it in a place where to capture as many viewers as possible and that is exactly what happened in Manchester. The BBC placed their Big Screen on a famous shopping mall near the train station in the centre of the city where it has up to sixty thousand viewers per day during their twenty four hours public broadcasting and for seven days a week. According to Mr. Buxton the BBC is planning and with councils to plant Big Screens in each big city of the United Kingdom (to cover London’s Olympic Games).
How the BBC changed through the decades?
Since 1936 to 2009 there were great changes occurred to the BBC…. From black and white TV channels to digital channel that launched in 1999 in a primary steps for six educational broadcasting hours per day. In November 2001 the BBC starts broadcasting a channel called Knowledge that works for twenty four hours a day for seven days a week and that new channel works with Digital Terrestrial Television instead of SDN Muxing system. Dates from the BBC website.
Another interesting visit, this time to a wide local newspaper for the Kingston upon
Hull area which has had a variety of guises since 1885, it is Hull Daily Mail. This organisation has won award of the Daily Newspapers of the Year 2007, 2006, 2004 and 2003 in the region of Yorkshire as well as wining a great compliment for its work in video journalism on the internet. The newspaper has s readership of around seventeen thousand or in other word buyers through six days a week apart from Sundays. The Hull Daily Mail is owned by Northcliffe Media group a large regional newspaper publisher in the UK and Central and Eastern Europe, In November 2005, they announced that they wanted to sell Northcliffe Newspapers, at the time worth over £1.5bn. Northcliffe website.
As we visited the Hull daily mail and spoken with its editor John Meehan. John is responsible for papers across the North East (Hull, Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Boston and Lincoln) he had shown us the different sections or the specialization inside the same organisation as each editor was specialised in certain area in the news paper such as local news , business, and advertisement s , sports and etc. And naturally each person inside a massive organisation such as Hull Daily Mail is having a different role.
The above newspaper has and during the week day’s especial topic supplement and set up with each day of the week these are the examples of how each day supplement:
- Monday – Extra Time (sport), The Match (Hull City Association foot ball club reports)
- Tuesday – Female
- Wednesday – The Business
- Thursday - Find a Property
- Friday - motors.co.uk
- Saturday – The Guide (entertainment magazine, includes TV listings) see bibliography 3
As we spoken with Deputy Editor David Bourn the responsible for day to day he said ‘the Hull Daily Mail previously as evening paper which has now become a morning paper’ In terms of changes through the digital revolution, ‘the association has integrated newsroom –multimedia journalists, working on newspaper/internet /email bulletins’ Meehan. As well as the Hull Daily Mail started recently adding more valuable materials on their official website, such as news, sports, business, advertisements and many more plus their previous days publishes.
A Swedish company started metro in Newcastle drawing in new audience (Metro man) the idea of free papers on the streets is step to educate the public, and make it true that anyone can value the good and bad quality of journal, editor or news story. In London it started with the Metro then the Londoner and then the Lite.
The Omerta computer game idea was first started in 2003 by Moritz Daan in Netherlands, it was set as a computer game that could be played by certain age of people, and it found lots of fans not only on the nation wide but it was also on the global wide where ever where the net was available, according to initial development Steve Beddick from Hull purchased all Omerta`s shares and moved their headquarter from Netherlands to the Hull in 2004.
Since 2004 and by the nature of the game that meant to be played on the computers only, it made the producers more updating or on the track to follow the changing of the context in wider sector according to the technology development. Here are some examples of the development that occur to the group since 2004:
In July 2004, version 2.0 reached its end of life as the game was slow and unstable. The source code was reviewed and partially rewritten to accommodate more players and a click limit was introduced. New servers were rent to run the new game and it was relaunched during the same month as version 2.1.
In July 2005, Omerta 2.2 was launched. After this, the game was upgraded and reset roughly every six months, usually increasing the minor version. Major new features were introduced in version 2.4, like Mega Organized Crimes and a new kill algorithm. In Juli 2009 the last version was released under the version 3.0
In January 2008 Omerta moved to a new service provider and currently has about 20 servers running theFreeBSD operating system.
In July 2009 version 3.0 of Omerta was released, and is currently the active version on Omerta, in the first month after the release more then 100 000 players registered for this version. Thirteen1.magazine
The structure of the company is a small business, where is every body is sharing the work with others and they are all at the end doing one single job, there aim to produce one piece of work that suit all the ages of the public use, and more sales for the games that they all produced together.
Conclusion;
I understood in this essay that how each sector’s divisions means how wide the media sector and how vital for the public sphere, and how important to change the context of the wider sector. I believe now that the future of print news papers and other print materials wouldn’t last long according to the digital revolution and the availability of the internet nowadays in a comparison to very short period of time ago.
Bibliography:
1. www.wickepedia./bbc digital
3. holdthefrontpage.co.uk
4. www. Thirteen1.com
