Inge Ejbye Sørensen

Crowdsourcing and outsourcing: the impact of online funding and distribution on the documentary film industry in the UK

This article compares traditional and new ways of funding documentary film in the UK and asks what crowd financing, pay-if-you-want schemes and online distribution sites mean for documentary films and its industry today. How do online financing models impact on producers, traditional funding models and funders? And following the money, who really benefits? The first section of this article charts trends in British documentary budgets in the last decade and explores how changes in financing impact on the production of documentary films. The second focuses on new ways of funding and distributing documentary films online. Drawing on case studies of crowd investment schemes, crowdfunding and P2P distribution; interviews with documentary and multiplatform producers and commissioners, as well as on statistics and annual reports from broadcasters, lobbyists and regulators, I will argue that in real terms there has been a decline in and a polarization of documentary budgets in the UK. As a result, producers are increasingly looking to the internet to fund their documentaries. However, an online financing market suspended between ad hoc funding and long-term recuperation has consequences for the documentary industry, the kinds of documentaries made, the topics they explore and the ways in which they are produced.

Channels as content curators: Multiplatform strategies for documentary film and factual content in British public service broadcasting

Today, VOD (video on demand) sites and portals specializing in long-form, high-quality documentary and factual content proliferate online. This article explores the multiplatform strategies of public service broadcasters in the UK in this context. It examines how the BBC and Channel 4 address the masses of user generated content that flood the documentary market and partake in the battle for audiences for documentary films and factual content in a multiplatform context. Both channels seek to reinvent themselves as public service media providers and curators of documentary content online, in order to fulfil public service remits and secure their positions as leading providers of documentary and factual content across platforms in a global multiplatform mediascape. However, by contrasting Channel 4’s online ‘verticals’ with the BBC’s themed and branded documentary portals, the article argues that although Channel 4 and BBC pursue similar strategies online they do so for different reasons and to different effect.

The revival of live TV: liveness in a multiplatform context

The proliferation of two screen or connected viewing on multiple devices (smartphones/iPhones, laptops, tablets/iPads) simultaneously is reshaping the ways that TV broadcasters produce, schedule and deliver programmes and content. This article examines how the notions of liveness and live TV are being reshaped within this context. Focusing on the BBC and Channel 4, the article explores how and why these two British Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) are reinventing and promoting liveness and in particular live media events across platforms and devices. With the BBC’s ‘BBC Live’ content delivery system as case-study, the article argues that rather than seeing liveness as a thing of the past, BBC regards live TV as core to its multiplatform strategy. Today, the BBC uses two of television’s traditional traits – liveness and reach – to crowd out and gain a competitive edge on streamed content and VOD providers like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime across platforms and devices.

Content in context: The impact of mobile media on the British TV industry

This article explores the ways in which smartphones, mobile technology and media and, with this, the growing practice of viewing and interacting with content on multiple screens and devices, are informing changes to the TV industry and the content it produces in the United Kingdom. The article reflects on how British TV companies, producers and executives understand their role and the types of content that is currently being commissioned and funded within this changing mediascape. Based on industry data from Ofcom and PACT, interviews with producers, commissioning editors and executives as well as participant observation at industry events, the article argues that mobile media is having a profound impact on the British production sector and ecology. In order to understand and describe the players and practices that make up the ‘TV industry’ today, it is now necessary to rethink how content is defined and where it appears. There is also a need to reconsider who the content producers, broadcasters and distributors are within this industry, and include a wider spectrum of producers as well as the telecoms, aggregators and social media networks as funders and distributors of audiovisual content within this ecology. These reconfigurations impact not only on constitution of the TV industry itself, its modus operandi and the content it produces but also on how arts bodies, policymakers and academics need to approach this ecology.