The Impact of Globalization, Deregulation and Neoliberalism on Media Diversity and Public Service Broadcasting - Essay Example

?Introduction Capitalists played a crucial or critical role as key players of globalisation. For instance, the international media companies engaged into this international integration of sophisticated businesses primarily due to the emancipation of advanced technologies employed in the media. This we casually know as one important idea of what globalisation is. However, for the welfare of investors and capitalists alike, the revolutionary shift occurred leading to the implementation of international policies that brought remarkable advantage towards business domination. We call this as neoliberalism, which includes national and international policies encouraging business domination in social affairs due to slight countervailing force (Luxton and Braedley, 2010). If we dig deeper on this, media deregulation holds the greatest influence of the emancipation of media neoliberalism, as a product of the revolutionary existence of globalisation. Now we have the idea that globalisation revolutionises everything leading us head straight to how the government emancipates media deregulation to promote neoliberalism for the ultimate vision of giving substantial opportunities for the receiver of public service and including the service providers themselves. For this matter, the work at hand explores the impact of globalization, deregulation and neoliberalism on media diversity and public service broadcasting. The power to impart information and influence people When we say media, they could be the most powerful entities in our society that are capable to give us information and influence people. Concerning this, one important implication of globalization, deregulation and neoliberalism on media diversity and public service broadcasting is the level of power they have particularly on how they impart information and influence people at some point. Many people rely on their decisions based on the information they usually acquire from the media. This is relevant especially in international setting where a businessperson for instance would be interested to find out the socio-economic and socio-political conditions of the nation prior to their main point of establishing a significant investment. In reality, economic and social concerns are integrated into the prevailing political conditions of the country. We often see the political situation of the nation today based on the media coverage around the world, making us connected together. This also keeps almost every one of us informed and updated, allowing us further to grasp a certain thought on how we decide on things that could be most favourable in our part. For instance, an international business tycoon would not be willing to invest in a country where the peace and order situation is strongly in upheaval. In particular, it would not be enticing to invest in a country where government officials have become insurgents and deliberately disagree with the prevailing policies and employed statutes. Such of this situation would be a tragic experience for any businessperson who is always on the go to optimise resources. The media are such a powerful aid for individuals who are concerned on this relevant information. Now that the media have become international or global in their coverage, there is a strong assurance of fast-pace distribution of information across the globe. This allows people to be informed on time to act the right way to their advantage. The ability of the media to be part of globalisation, deregulation and neoliberalism allows the public to have wide access of information, and even varied point of views to strengthen their thoughts on what is happening around the world, everyday. Strengthened freedom of the media to serve Media deregulation remarkably limits the ability of government to control proliferation of media companies in the first place (Deuze, 2010). One important implication of this is strengthening the freedom of expression of the media, allowing them to present various views that at some point may lead to diverse perspectives of information, subject to audience acceptance and evaluation. Concerning this, viewers or consumers of media programming will have the opportunity to choose the appropriate programme that would suit their needs. For this matter, the media will have optimum potential to acquire the opportunity to serve the public and ensure meeting everyone’s needs, as far as diversity of services is concerned. The point with greatest weight prior to media deregulation in the US is the thought that consumers will have the right to choose varying programmes from different makers or media companies that are offering various alternatives to the consuming public (Barbrook, 2007). This opens up the possibility of increasing competition, which the bottom line is to ensure high goal to satisfy the consuming public with programmes that matter to them or could address their personal satisfaction to the highest level. On the other hand, aside from the significant competition involved because of media deregulation, personal satisfaction of the consuming public may be highly associated with ensuring high quality media programmes so that the target audience will have the opportunity to experience the best programming systems or activities that they will be looking forward to use from time to time. The prevailing competition will allow various media companies to target the right demand of the public so that they will turn it into opportunity to their advantage. It makes sense that when there is competition, the ultimate point would be to ensure providing the best product or service offerings that will ensure high customer value (Boone and Kurtz, 2006; Kotler et al., 1999). This is a marketing concept, which is directly applied by the media companies to help them ensure of their competitive advantage and potential market share, today. However, if we try to look closely on this, the bottom line would be for the media companies to improve their service so that in the eyes of their target audience, they would look superb and worthy of trust at a certain level. As a result, they would gain the opportunity to become the audience’s best choice. Path towards intense commercialisation On the other hand, the limited control of government over the media companies may also pose some other important implications. In particular, this may undermine over expression or misrepresentation to the point that optimisation of profit may be ensured. In other words, there is a significant link of economic considerations and activities to public service broadcasting. In Great Britain, one of the major considerations of media deregulation is to encourage international media companies to invest in the country (Greenslade, 2009). At some point, this may lead to over commercialization of imparted information, particularly seeking the appropriate stories or programmes that would encourage more viewers. We have seen many broadcasted TV programmes that are highly commercialised in essence. The point in all of these is that to ensure optimisation of profit, allowing growth enhancement and optimum productivity on the part of media companies that are expanding their territories worldwide. In reality, we know how the media operate especially that the government through media deregulation may limit its power or control over their proliferation activity. In other words, there might be linked economic implications to media deregulation that for quite a long time have become some of the major considerations in ideological debate and policy-making activities. Globalization, deregulation and neoliberalism on the part of the media are of their great advantage knowing that this could eventually help them increase the achievement of profit. These three formed an impressive competitive edge in favour of the media companies because of their ability to explore further possibilities to make sure optimum business productivity, especially now that globalisation has been revolutionised to a more profitable form like neoliberalism. In other words, capitalists will have the most control particularly in the business aspect of this issue. We heard from the past about businesses trying to form oligopoly in order to ensure that they will remain as the key important players in their industry. This remarkably happens to the media industry today. In fact, the deregulation activities only imply that media companies could build more than one companies, allowing them to explore and create those that are highly profitable and advantageous on their part. At this point, they have the chance to ensure creation of various programs that would make them a one-stop shop for their target audience. They would want to ensure a great coverage through the emancipation of globalisation and even neoliberalism that the bottom line could be the formulation of their advantage as far as protection and productivity to ensure continuance of their business are concerned. Specifically, due to media deregulation, neoliberalism and globalisation, media companies have the opportunity to guarantee their competitive advantage. This is made possible by their ability to employ competitive strategies. Some companies employ these strategies by trying to buyout existing firms in order to eliminate them as important key players (Mancuso and Laurence, 2013). With the presence of deregulation and neoliberalism, strong and big media companies have all the potential to eliminate small key players in their industry that in the end would just allow them to preserve or increase the level of their market share. The idea of Porter on competitive rivalry has never been outmoded concerning this point, as it particularly concerns how the business environment for every business activities functions in general particularly when they have to compete for obtaining competitive advantage (Porter, 1980). We seriously see this how companies promote competitive strategies for them to achieve their goals which in particular leading them to become the market leader in their respective industries. For this reason, just as how some companies try to hinder new market entrants or potential key players, the media companies are not that by far to implement the same move. In fact, as a remarkable proof that big media companies are trying to sustain their power by warding off new entrants, we can observe international big companies dominate in the industry public service broadcasting. For many years and even decades before until now, the same media companies proliferate in the industry, and because of media deregulation, they even have the ultimate chance to target new market segmentation and positioning for their new innovative services. As a result, it would be harder for new entrants to fight back of the prevailing economies of scale or even highly differentiated offerings and programming offered by big media companies in the public broadcasting industry. Some political implications We learned that the great impact of media globalisation, deregulation and neoliberalism is economic in its sense, and we know it is great as that. Now let us look at how it affects the political aspect. The commercialisation of the media might have shortly lost its opportunity to do things for genuine public service due to high involvement of economic activities or considerations. For this reason, political concerns could also be at potential risk. We know that at the onset of globalisation, socio-economic and political issues also co-existed (Tonkiss, 2006; Schaeffer, 2009). Considering the point that the media must have no other intention, but to keep the public informed with the right information without any hint of bias or impartiality, it is hard to guarantee a flawless public service when in reality there is actual involvement of profit making. The highly commercialised approach may only mean choosing the best story or point of view that could ensure profit generation. It could also mean prioritising Due to media deregulation, the government at some point may strongly remind the media of the threat associated with its freedom to proliferate with respect to government’s weak countervailing force. Thus, to present only what is not detrimental or threat to the political power of the nation is a significant concern of a country with media companies having a substantial amount of freedom for multiplication. This is sensitive information particularly in the case of the US, a country trying to play a great role of policing the entire world. It matters to this nation to protect its reputation and ensure that the entire world would view it as a perfect model in almost all aspects of great political concern. Thus, being able to become extra careful of the kind of information to publish in the media, the US remarkably knows the associated political threats of less control over media companies in terms of their propagation in number. It is therefore important to understand the reason behind why this country in the first place granted the idea of limiting its power to control the proliferation of the media. Analysis The media could stand as our eyes and ears because of their massive coverage all over the world. It therefore makes sense seeing them on a vast stretch of diversity. Their fast-pace proliferation was remarkably due to the dynamic effort of capitalists to engage in globalisation and even to further protect their welfare. Thus, this brings the birth of media deregulation and neoliberalism as a product of globalisation to guarantee further various economic advantages of media coverage and public service broadcasting on the part of both the service providers and the actual service users. The paper establishes the point that media companies have substantial socio-political and economic impact on the nation, as they emerge themselves into capitalistic trends in contemporary time. In particular, the proponent develops the idea that globalization, deregulation and neoliberalism have substantial impact on media diversity and public service broadcasting. It is clear that media diversity and public service broadcasting lead to creation of profit and other socio-political issues. However, even if the main intention is to place high value for the consuming public, it cannot be denied that the capitalistic intention of international media companies prevail, leading further to the commercialisation of media diversity and public service broadcasting. The foundation of this claim is highly theoretical in a sense, but we absolutely observe how everything of this functions just as how business world operates particularly in sustaining market share and competitive advantage. In fact, there is a clear justification of this claim when we based the entire argument on the existence of monopolistic economic activities and even the enthusiasm of the business industry to go look for their competitive advantage. In totality, media diversity and public service broadcasting therefore have become commercialised with substantial socio-political impacts involved as far as the existence of globalisation, deregulation and neoliberalism are concerned. Conclusion The work at hand shows how the proponent explores the impact of globalization, deregulation and neoliberalism on media diversity and public service broadcasting. The proponent found that there is a significant contribution of these trends to the actual socio-economic and political concerns of the nation and the consuming public and media service providers in general. For this reason, there is a great point of view to consider globalisation, media deregulation and neoliberalism as fundamental protection at the advantage of the international media companies, as far as their ability to proliferate and ensure profitable venture in the international market are concerned. In other words, the actual impact of globalisation, media deregulation and neoliberalism on media diversity and public service broadcasting contains a great part of the business aspect, particularly a portion of marketing concept, sociological concept, economic concept and political concept. Combining all of these would lead us to conclude further that international media companies have fundamental role to play on how globalisation, media deregulation and neoliberalism create impact on media diversity and public broadcasting. References Barbrook, R. (2007) American Theories of Media Deregulation. [online]. Available from: http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/01/19/american-theories-of-media-deregulation-by-richard-barbrook/. [Accessed: 4 July 2013]. Boone, L. E., and Kurtz, D. L. (2006) Contemporary Marketing. 12th ed. Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western. Deuze, M. (2010) Managing Media Work. London: SAGE. Greenslade, R. (2009) Tories plan ‘big bang’ media revolution. [online]. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/16/jeremy-hunt-mediabusiness. [Accessed: 4 July 2013]. Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Saunders, J., and Wong, V. (1999) Principles of Marketing. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River: NJ: Prentice Hall. Luxton, M., and Braedley, S. 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