Article first rough draft

Shown below are some general ideas I have had for Mine and Matt L's article to help with the exam. We are thinking about possible questions to ask ourselves and statistics to use in the exam, as well as what could happen in the future of media and web 2.0.

• Focus on the media in the online age section of the exam

• and maybe relate it to one of the questions from january exam or specimen questions, with a comment box below the article that says for example 'This article is particularly helpful for ‘media in the online age’ section of the January past paper, ‘Discuss the extent of which the distribution and consumption of media have been transformed by the internet.’ and ‘The impact of the internet is revolutionary. Discuss.’ on page 9 of the newspaper'

Students - think about these as key questions:

• How has the internet and evolutions in web 2.0 changed the way people interact and show their work, has it made a difference to small scale media pioneers, or people trying to gain a career in media? (They can now upload videos to YouTube, and these can be seen worldwide, this is different to 10 years ago when the only way to get noticed would be to hold live events or social gatherings.) Think of some more examples for help in the ‘media in the online age’ exam question.

• Definite competition from online TV distributors (TV catch up, BBC iplayer) as opposed to watching television at home, will this technical revolution eliminate TV as a necessity in the home? In the future, TV could be watched purely online.

• The uncertain future of print journalism if everything is printed online. Are any other media distributors facing the same fate? Could everything eventually be digitalised?

From the use of the internet, media has evolved more than we ever thought it could, one example being able to now watch television at no set date. Online TV program streamers, such as BBC iplayer (here you can watch programs from any channels on the BBC up to a week previously) 40D (same concept, any program from channel 4) and ITVplayer (same concept once again, any program from ITV channels) all allow substantial freedom when it comes to watching television. Youtube is also a big competitor for video streaming, for example the length in time it would take to view all content on YouTube would be 412.3 years (March 2008) Also, Youtube could now even more be taking away viewers from the television, ‘YouTube now allows users to upload HD videos and recently launched a service to provide TV shows and movies under license from their copyright holders.’

These TV streaming websites above are providing a challenge to television especially, despite the fact they are not taking the television audience for programs away, they are diverting the audience to an online method of watching the programs; this could create a problem for television in general, perhaps even to the point where a television is no longer necessary because everything can be watched online. A good example of this is as follows. "On the 10th of October 2009 internet history was made, as for the first time an English national World Cup Qualifying game was shown exclusively online. It is interesting for two reasons: firstly that it came about as a result of the collapse of a satellite sports channel (Setanta), and secondly; it shows the shift towards endusers willing to pay premium to watch sports content on their computers".

A strong leader for the online streaming craze is the ever growing popular website called TVcatchup, This was thought up by a group of friends who thought watching TV on the internet would be an interesting compromise. This was three years ago (2007) and since then the site has grown and grown; the latest figures were 758,000 members. In January, 1 million viewers a week streamed a total of 2 petabytes of live TV over TVCatchup. That’s the equivalent of 40 millions four-draw filing cabinets filled with text. That’s a lot of TV, ‘the equivalent of 26.6 years of HD-TV Video watching.’Which is showing that how the viewer watches TV is changing forever.

Shown above is Mine and Matt L's very first rough draft article, which we will work more on in tomorrow's lesson and add more to. I think it needs to have:

• more relation to the exam,
• some more statistics for students to use in their exam
• also comments from media practitioners etc if any, (maybe show a difference in opinion so we can assess both sides of the argument in the exam, this will bring about more of a debate and show students have looked at both sides.)