1st Edition

Inside the BBC and CNN Managing Media Organisations

By Lucy Küng-Shankleman Copyright 2000
    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    Inside the BBC and CNN provides a unique insight into two of the world's best-known media organisations, during a period of great change and new challenges. The BBC and CNN have very different histories, remits and identities, but both must now compete to provide news in a media environment being reshaped by increasing competition, globalisation, digitisation and convergence. In addition they face increasing pressures of criticism focussed on the struggle for ratings and the perceived "dumbing down" of programming.
    Drawing on intensive research carried out among senior managers in both organisations, Lucy Küng-Shankleman's study explores the beliefs and attitudes that shape management priorities and broadcasting policy. More controversially, it examines how each organisation's distinct cultural beliefs - about broadcasting's fundamental purpose, about the nature of competition, and about the relationship between competition and quality - have laid the foundations for their current and past success, but could now threaten to limit their ability to respond to the unprecedented changes underway in the world's media landscape.

    Introduction; Chapter 1 What is organisation culture?; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 The mass paradigm fragments; Chapter 4 ‘Serving the nation’; Chapter 5 The ‘Mouth of the South’ and his ‘Chicken Noodle Network’; Chapter 6 Continuous revolution; Chapter 7 Reinventing the news; Chapter 8 ‘Part of the British way of life’; Chapter 9 ‘Underdogs and outsiders’; Chapter 10 Reithianism versus Birtism; Chapter 11 Adrenaline; Chapter 12 A special case?;

    Biography

    Lucy Küng is Project Manager at the Institute for Communications and Media at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland.

    'This is an exceptionally clear and compact book about the world of media management ... an insightful read, strongly recommended to media managers and policymakers, and anyone working in an organization outside or only loosely connected with the media's unique "cultural loop."'  - Telecommunications Policy