Rachael Yeardley

What difference has the internet made to media production and

consumption?

The Internet was never meant to be used for the purpose it has now assumed; a
global network of interconnected computers allowing users to connect to other
computers and share information in many ways. It was originally intended to allow
the sharing of military and scientific research and development; a far cry from it's
current use. In 1989 the first specification 3 for HTML (Hyper Text Markup
Language) and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) was created by Tim Burners Lee,
alongside this he also made first browser, allowing users to render the HTML as a
web page. As the WWW (World Wide Web) began to grow these specifications
began to be discussed and refined by other groups. After the original specifications
were made, they quickly picked up a lot of pace. In October 1990, work began on
the first GUI Web Browser and Editor by Tim Burners Lee. This provided a WYSIWYG
(What You See Is What You Get) development environment for creating pages. In
1992 the first server outside of Europe was set up and the amount of servers
started to rise. In 1993 several browsers, namely Midas, Erwise, Samba, Voila and
Mosaic were created and quickly became popular. Then, in 1994, the first dial up
internet service providers (ISPs), such as Prodigy and AOL began providing
commercial internet access.

When the Internet began on it's route to the way we know it today, websites were
extremely simple, using basic HTML to display text and images. Even though
images could be used, many websites chose to maintain simple text/link based
websites. An example of this can be seen by viewing the first website produced for
the BBC, which was simply a collection of links to internal text pages or a selection
of other information websites around the internet, using only header, link and
simple positioning tags to style the website. In 1996 the BBC Website was a very
simple site using HTML to style the website and using techniques such as line break
tags to create spacing between elements. In late 1996 the first standard of CSS was
published, allowing website developers to separate content from structure, and in
1998 the second CSS standard was published. However many sites did not choose
to implement CSS due to poor browser implementation. It was only in late 2000 that
the BBC website began to use simple CSS, by embedding CSS rules in the page to
style the website to set backgrounds and font colours of content that appeared
more than once on the website. This provided a much more structured and
manageable website. In 2009 the BBC website became fully XHTML 1.0 compliant.
The website in it's current version allows for full user interaction.

Because of the significant development of the WWW, websites can offer more
interactive elements than were previously possible. Consumers are now watching
approximately 18 hours of television on their home TV in a typical seven day week.
Looking at the expansion of interest in TV, web convergence is becoming more
popular because people want to be able to have easy 24 hour access to several
forms of media in once place. Things such as been able to easily connect a home TV
to the Internet in order to view videos or downloaded content. Web convergence is
a significant trend that has gained strength over the last three years.

Video on Demand (VOD) or Audio Video on Demand (AVOD) allow users to select,
watch and listen to video or audio content on demand. UK TV broadcasters have
Rachael Yeardley

created their own versions of the same services, such as the BBC's iPlayer, which
launched on 25 December 2007, and Channel 4's 4oD (4 On Demand) which
launched in 2006. In 2006 it was estimated that 520.2 million pieces of content
were streamed from iPlayer, of which the vast majority were free-to-view. It is
forecast that this will leap to 2.3 billion by 2011. The BBC currently dominates the
free-to-view content market with 80% of clips originating from the corporation,
according to Screen Digest. This will fall to about 62% by 2011, as video content is
becoming more widely available from alternative sources such as Sky.

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 planned to launch a joint service called Kangaroo in
2008. However this was abandoned in 2009. Streaming VOD systems are available
from cable providers who use large bandwidths present on cable systems to deliver
movies and television shows to users.

As well as the TV programs that the BBC produce there are also the websites and
radio stations that are also available. For example, recently the BBC produced a
program called ‘The Virtual Revolution’. This was initially shown on TV but is now
also available on iPlayer. There are also podcasts on the BBC World Service about
the Virtual Revolution and a website about the program. The Virtual Revolution also
has a blog that is regularly updated and interactive areas such as online debates for
viewers to become involved in. This is an excellent example of how the media has
changed in the past decade. Now, if a TV program is made it usually has several
other services that come with it, most like the ones for the Virtual Revolution.

Media has been able to develop so rapidly because of the amount of people gaining
access to the internet in the past decade. More and more people now use the
internet and as a result more services have to be provided. 18.3 million households
in the UK had Internet access in 2009. This is an increase of just under 2 million
households over the last year and 4 million households since 2006. The amount of
people using the internet means that services like iPlayer are free to view; unlike TV
which requires a TV licence. Recently there has been a debate about licence fee’s
and whether TV is a dying form because of online services. The BBC state that the
licence fee we pay contributes to ‘enriching people's lives with programmes and
services that inform, educate and entertain.’ However, there is the argument that
this is not always the case.