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BBC Four
Report on Media Industry
Dr. Theresa Cronin
Module: Media and Creative Industries MED 4100
Omer Faruk Yeni (M00512048)
Date: 28 November 2014

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Contents
1.0 Introduction 3
2.0 Background Information of BBC Four 3
2.1 BBC Four’s Main Objectives 3
2.2 BBC’s Public Purposes and Contribution to Public Value 4
3.0 Analysis of BBC Four 5
3.1 SWOT Analysis 5
3.2 Strengths of the BBC Four 5
3.3
3.4
3.5
Weaknesses of the BBC Four
Opportunities of the BBC Four
Threats of the BBC Four
6
7
7
4.0 Conclusions 8
5.0 Bibliography 9

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REPORT ON THE BBC FOUR
1.0 Introduction
The BBC Four is a British television channel operated by the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) conducting its operations precisely for public purposes and
prepared to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satelitte, and cable. BBC
Four launched on 2 March 2002 (BBC, 2010) with a schedule running from 19:00 to
4:00. The channel shows ‘’a wide variety of programmes with the inclusion of music
and performance, drama, documentaries, international film, original programmes,
comedy and current affairs unlike any other mainstream TV channels in British
broadcasting (BBC, 2007). Its aim is basically to inform, educate and entertain. The
channel is also curator and leader of the BBC Archive project whose aim is that the
BBC’s television archive is re-broadcast as much as appropriate so that the Archive
can be enjoyed again and not isolated. (BBC blog,2012)
The BBC Four is widely acknowledged as a cultural tool, which preserves and
develops the British cultural and national identity as well as being carriers of world
culture. Main purpose of this report is to identify and analyse the impact of the BBC
Four’s most powerful aspects with regard to its producing content with its weaknesses
and evaluate the range of factors that influence the channel’s operations. This report
looks across the BBC Four, aims to uncover valuable guidance in making decisions
related to the future planning of BBC’s process.
2.0 Background Information of the BBC Four
2.1 Main Objectives
The BBC is an oldest and most trusted UK based international public service
broadcaster in the world (Media Newsline, 2010). As a one of the powerful media
brand, BBC operates under its agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture

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Media and Sport. Its operates are funded mainly by an annual television license fee
(BBC,2010) which is charged to all British households, companies and organisations
using various type of equipment to receive live television broadcasts (BBC,2010). In
this point, this should be understood that as a one of the BBC’s unique cultural TV
department, how the BBC Four makes a significant contribution to the BBC’s
strategic knowledge-building mission in general and which basic features differentiate
the BBC Four from the other branches such as the BBC One, BBC Two or BBC
Three.
The BBC Four’s main objective of set up under the wings of the BBC’s long and
strong institutional experience is creating an original space of programming which
provides ambitious innovation, high quality as well as intellectuality and wealth of
culture specifically focusing on arts and culture on TV broadcasting. The channel
delivers its remit through a broad range of innovative programming containing
philosophy and ideas, world politics, current socio-cultural issues, art, music, film and
global news (BBC, 2014). Distinctive position of the BBC Four is to encourage,
revive and reflect the wide variety of cultural activities in the UK.
If looking at the BBC Four’s quantitative data, following information is the most
prominent features of the channel. The BBC Four reaches 14% of British adults each
week - despite remarkable cuts in its budget. The Bridge as a most favourite
programme of the channel has highest audience of the year at 1.6 million UK
population (BBC,2014). Audiences spent 1.43 hour average each week throughout
2013 with watching the channel’s programmes.
The BBC Four spends £48.9 million for its intellectually and culturally enriching
services in 2013 season. This year appreciation index by service peaked by 85.1
number out of 100 and this rate illustrates the BBC’s most pleased channel is the BBC
Four. Cost of delivering each services to individual viewers occurs 6.7p .
Clearly be seen that the BBC Four’s target audience segment is niche market. Yet its
broadcasted international films and original programmes are increased its popularity
amongst the people. Many of the viewers recognise this channel via universal
renowned artistic films and documentaries such as Mad Men - series 1-4 only
premiered on the BBC Four - The Bridge and The Killing.
2.2 BBC Four’s Public Purposes and Contribution to Public Value
1- Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
Increasing globalisation is the most prominent feature of creativity in last recent
years. Its objective is to bring on new presenter talent and to experiment with new
comedy and drama that aims to be literate and intelligent. The BBC Four pays
attention to discover unique forms of storytelling and the television determines a
principle itself to encompass artistic and cultural disciplines including painting,
architecture, photography, literature and ideas.
2- Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
The BBC Four considers to reserve a special space for the well known international

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and foreign language feature films, programming and documentaries is quite
expressive way to make the world together .The BBC Four’s nightly news and current
affairs services also shows a distinctively global approach. Within its own
commissions, The BBC Four represents the UK’s perspectives on universal cultural
life and heritage.(BBC,2014)
3 - Promoting education and learning
The majority of programmes on the BBC Four are created as a factual and these
programmes were arranged in order to develop audiences’ knowledge by offering
greater context and depth than any other BBC channel and by working with masters
in their profession to describe and comprehend their areas of expertise. The BBC Four
characterises a passionate range of subject matter, from science to business from
social issues to politics.
4- Reflecting the UK’s nations, regions and communities
The BBC Four aims to be a broad platform to reflect local understandings of the UK
nations and regions, life styles and practices. Moreover the channel gives people an
opportunity to express their cultures and to introduce their own beliefs as a creative
way. The BBC Four assumes a vital role to provide a cultural sustainability for local
communities in the country.
5 - Sustaining citizenship and civil society
The BBC Four aims to be on the air with an in-depth news and current affairs
programme in peak time on weeknights that significantly broadens the BBC’s
television news provision by focusing on an international news agenda. (BBC, 2014)
6 - Emerging communications
The BBC’s the most basic purposes for public interest are stated as "in promoting its
other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging
communications innovative technologies and services and, taking a leading role in the
switchover to digital television”. (BBC, 2014)
To achieve these main objectives in the process, the BBC Four faces various kind of
threats elements in the environment that could cause difficulties for the business
activities. On the other hand it comes across an opportunity elements that the channel
could exploit to its advantages. In addition to this, strengths and weaknesses of the
BBC Four will be discussed by SWOT analysis in this report. This type of analysis
enables to establish measurements for, and forecast challenges to BBC Four’s
operations and success.
3.0 Analysis of BBC Four

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3.1 SWOT Analysis
The SWOT analysis tools help to understand external forces of change and internal
changes, so that management can improve their position in the future (Chun Wei
Choo, 2005). SWOT is a structured planning method is used to evaluate the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to an organization or a business
initiative.
3.2 Strengths
The BBC is a well-known brand particularly with its high quality and innovative
approaches in broadcasting with strong brand name. Diversity of programmes from
documentaries to art, social issues, international films and music is the most
influential side for the BBC Four ; because diversification of schedule causes people
whose interests are different to watch this channel. As a British state channel, the
BBC Four has a strong financial condition with average 50 million pound every year
and it is also one of the most striking structural features of the organisation. On the
other hand high level of brand loyalty is assessable as a strength aspect of BBC Four.
A significant amount of adult audience indicates this importance with 16%. The
BBC’s wide experience reflects successfully to the BBC Four’s broadcasting in
general. The BBC Four works with experienced management team, as well as
ambitious partnerships all around the UK and the world as well. The channel prepares
its programmes with museums, institutions, academics, and also independent
producers contribute severely to make the BBC Four’s business professional and it
brings cultural excellence indeed. The best international and foreign language feature
films differentiate the channel from any others and the channel becomes a global
platform to allow people to be heard in their own culture and life (BBC, 2014). The
BBC is not permitted to carry advertising or sponsorship on its broadcasting and
public services. This advantage ensures the independence of commercial interests. In
this way the brand exists only for general public interest. The BBC Four’s social
programmes including science, business, politics and global affairs contribute the
channel to be an educative and instructive for connected audiences. The channels one
of the main purposes is to reflect the UK’s national and regional views and life styles
to the screens. To reach this aim, the channel organises local celebrations and it
introduces the world culture to the local legacy.
The BBC Four conducts the leading and curating of the BBC Archive project, which
is the only centre to re-broadcast the history and experience of the BBC. The
responsibility of re-broadcasting increases the impact, ambition and originality of the
channel’s output. Media industry had become infatuated with the potential of the
worldwide web for reaching new audience and satisfying them online. In this case, the
BBC I-Player is a pioneer application of mobile users that allows people online
connectivity and downloading programmes via mobile devices. I-Player can accepted
as a strength arm of the brand thus more viewers can reach the productions seven days
and twenty four hours quite easily just with a little tick on their smartphones.
3.3 Weaknesses
In contrast to strengths media industry experiences some weaknesses. Although the
BBC Four has a wide range of programmes including British culture and values, there

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are almost no programmes about documentaries, art, music or social issues intended
for numbers of minorities reaching millions who live and contribute to the cultural
diversity in the UK. In other words, when the channel only represents and opening lap
a high Britishness and Europeanness identity with TV series for example The Bridge
is a Scandinavian crime drama or Belgian thriller series, the BBC Four appears
indifferent to the UK’s high numbers of religious and ethnic minorities values and
their expectations. According to (Census, 2011) people from wide range of ethnicities
live in the United Kingdom. Asian British: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and
Chinese by 4.3 million total, Black British: 1.9 million total and these people
represent approximately 12% of the UK population. Another illustrative information
of socio-cultural survey by (Census, 2011) indicates the religious minorities apart
from the dominant Christian population by %59 that in the UK there are 4.4%
Muslim,1.3% Hindu and 0.7% Sikh can seen as a prominent rates. All these figures
point out that the UK as a multicultural country and society consists of different
ethnicities, cultures and religions. Precisely at this point, as previously stated, the The
BBC Four has not a programme content including international film, music, comedy
and drama that aims to reach ethnic and religious minorities of the country in general.
The programmes are almost completely based on British cultural heritage and various
western art forms. for example Dancing Cheek to Cheek, Concerto at the BBC Proms,
National Treasures of Wales. But the millions of Asia, Middle East and Africa origin
British citizens can not see and enjoy their cultural heritage and art forms in the BBC
Four.
Positioning the channel as premier for arts, music and international films inevitably
demonstrates the BBC Four quite niche. Like the other TV broadcastings, it is also
evaluated as a weakness of the BBC Four focuses on limited content. Although
generally it seems as an advantage in one respect, it is sometimes sum up as
disadvantages. Yet the BBC Four as a channel positioned an art and a cultural
department of the BBC with unique BBC Archive project, has not a consistent
programme content and occasionally not easy to differentiate its productions from the
BBC Two or BBC One.
3.4 Opportunities
Opportunities are internal and external factors that affect the business. Intercultural
communications and network facilities are increasing with each passing day all over
the globe. In this sense, expanding the schedule content of the channel and creating
larger space for further nations, religions and the societies in the channel, the brand
name is affected positively and it causes the target audience rates to rise nationally
and internationally as well.
The BBC Four aims to gather variety of cultures and the societies. Every year from all
over the world different countries come and establish variety of public funded cultural
institutions in the UK. Not only countries, even individuals move to the London or
any other British cities only to express their cultures and create artistic products.
These developments around the UK are meaningful opportunities for the BBC Four to
have more tangible and intangible capital from the whole society for main
broadcasting elements.
3.5 Threats

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Threats are another type of external factor that make the channel’s business
complicated. The BBC operates its broadcasting along with its all channels in British
media market in the UK. Closely looking at the British media, it is seen that there are
a few number of TV broadcasting channel share the overall market except the BBC,
ITV, British Sky and Channel 4.Political conditions and decisions are the most
important factors on the media business in particular for subsidized institutions. The
BBC as a state channel conducts its activities under control of the government’s
political thinking. The government’s importance here is to decide a certain budget
which is given annually to the BBC. Therefore every year the channel has to manage
the money rationally and efficiently for stability of the programmes. Although the
channel has a quite strong government support - about 50 million pounds per year-
,when there is a crisis that happened on public budget the BBC Four which is first
affected by this situation in a negative way. The main reason of the response is that
the BBC is seen as a niche market channel which works for particular curiosity on
such as art, international film and music. This negativity can causes limitations on
programme broadcastings. By way of example, the British government implemented a
significant proportion of cut on the BBC budget by 16% in spending in 2010 (The
Guardian, 2010).
4.0 Conclusion
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has gained a remarkable media
experience in many field from news to drama, music to sports since nearly a century.
With significant support from this institutional memory, the BBC Four has a
substantial role in art and cultural broadcasting to reflect the UK’s nations, regions
and their wide variety of values and beliefs through bringing the UK to the world and
the world to the UK. In the circumstances the BBC Four faces political, socio-cultural
and economic challenges, which dramatically affects the programme content of TV
and its future planning. As it is identified through SWOT analysis in this report that
the BBC encounters the threats in particular related to socio-cultural structure of the
British society. One of the major difficulties of the BBC Four is to represent all of the
population and reflect their anticipations via greater variety of TV programmes just
because of audience’s request for multi-cultural productions such as BBC production
and also imported Asian and African films, music and documentaries. Another
challenge for the BBC Four is surely their unbalanced annual public budget set by the
British government and also there is the concern on BBC’s source of revenue. In that
sense, to alleviate the impact of weaknesses the BBC Four can expand programme
content through to develop several collaborations with cultural institutions, foreign
producers and arts authorities based on the UK and all over the world. Partnerships
with media experts, artists and organisations contribute to create a powerful screen
and conduce to reach more and more people as a viewer of the BBC Four.

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5.0 Bibliography
"Culture, controversy and cutting edge documentary: BBC FOUR prepares to
launch", BBC Press Office, 14 February 2002. Retrieved 2 April 2010.
"BBC - BBC Four - FAQ". Retrieved 19 August 2007.
Klein, Richard, Ten Years of BBC Four About the BBC Blog, BBC, Last accessed 3
March 2012
"BBC: World's largest broadcaster & Most trusted media brand". Media Newsline.
Archived from the original on 5 October 2010. Retrieved 23 September 2010.
"BBC Annual Report & Accounts 2008/9: FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE".
Archived from the original on 10 February 2010. Retrieved 12 February 2010
"TV Licensing: Legislation and policy". Retrieved 12 February 2010.
BBC Four Service Licence, issued April 2014
BBC Trust review of Purpose Remits, March 2013
BBC Four Annual Report and Accounts 2013/14
Choo, C. W., the Art of Scanning the Environment (2005). Bulletin of the American
Society for Information Science and Technology, University of Toronto

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The Guardian, 2010-http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/oct/20/bbc-cuts-
spending-review
Census, 2011: KS201UK Ethnic group, local authorities in the United Kingdom,
Accessed 21 February 2014
Cassian Harrison,BBC Four Channel Editor,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/briefs/tv/browse-by-channel/bbc-four/
Jason Deans, 2013 - http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/07/bbc4-richard-
klein-itv