Univestity Petru Maior of Târgu Mureș

Linguistics and media

Buruș Maria Alexandra

Chiorean Maria Raluca

Codoi Alina Ionela

Farcaș Ioana Madălina

The world we are living in today is confronting many fast changes: political, economical and especially cultural, all these at a global level. This paper aims to present the main features of linguistic globalisation and media. One of the most important characteristics of linguistic globalisation is the use of English all around the world, as a lingua franca. The national languages, due to this fact, are given less attention as English words are imported in a large amount, and also because under the pressure of velocity, many words are cut or we can even encounter new words formed with composition by abbreviation.

Research on media effects has documented the media's influence on beliefs and behaviour while cross-cultural psychology has documented the effects of the language used in communication on identification with the in group and the out group. Media usage in the out group language should, therefore, affect identification patterns. This research investigates media effects in the acculturation process through a longitudinal design involving minority and majority group members evolving in the same bilingual environment. Subjects were Francophone students (N= 235) from minority and majority settings attending a bilingual (French–English) university. Results revealed that majority students increased significantly written and public media consumption in English whereas minority students increased French written media consumption. Furthermore, increased usage of English written and audio-visual media was related to identity changes in favour of the Anglophone group. Finally, path analysis emphasized the mediating role played by English language confidence and the determining role of ethno-linguistic vitality.

Media of the United Kingdom consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. The country also has a strong music industry. The United Kingdom has a diverse range of providers, the most prominent being the state-owned public service broadcaster, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). The BBC's largest competitors are ITV plc, which operates 11 of the 15 regional television broadcasters that make up the ITV Network, and News Corporation, who hold a large stake in satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting and also operate a number of leading national newspapers. Regional media is covered by local radio, television and print newspapers. Trinity Mirror operate 240 local and regional newspapers in the United Kingdom, as well as national newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror.

London dominates the media sector in the United Kingdom: national newspapers and television and radio are largely based there, notable centres include Fleet Street and BBC Television Centre. The United Kingdom print publishing sector, including books, directories and databases, journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies, has a combined turnover of around £20 billion and employs around 167,000 people.

Mediacity in Greater Manchester, privately funded and publicly backed by the BBC is the largest media-production facility in the United Kingdom.

In 2009 it was estimated that individuals viewed a mean of 3.75 hours of television per day and 2.81 hours of radio. The main BBC public service broadcasting channels accounted for and estimated 28.4% of all television viewing; the three main independent channels accounted for 29.5% and the increasingly important other satellite and digital channels for the remaining 42.1%.[1] Sales of newspapers have fallen since the 1970s and in 2009 42% of people reported reading a daily national

newspaper.[2] In 2010, 82.5% of the United Kingdom population were Internet users, the highest proportion amongst the 20 countries with the largest total number of users in that year.

In Britain, for example, broadcasters were required to be fluent in 1960s British standard known as received pronunciation. Despite increasing tolerance for dialectalisms in many Western countries, news and other information programming on national public and private networks continues to act as custodians of the standard language.

Thus, like language and television academy, dictionaries actively intervenes in the language, and creates its own discourses, styles and varieties. TV market deregulated in the United States, genre known as "tabloid" or "trash" TV usually does not hesitate to engage in potentially offensive. And language, citing an economic imperative to compete with less restrictive programming on cable television, dramas such as Steven Bochco's NYPD Blue, used once forbidden language television network.

Television and radio have also actively participated in the exercise of power between women and men through language. In the U.S., female voice, especially its higher pitch, was side-lined for "lacking authority to a newsletter convincing", while the lower male voices were treated as "too polished, ultra sophisticated. ' Thus, in 1950, approximately 90% of trade copies in the United States was "specifically written for male voice and personality." According to British announcer manual, women were not usually "considered suitable for workloads Sterner comments news-casting, or, say, political interview" because of their "voice, appearance and temperament." However, television has responded to social movements in the past decade and gradually adopted a more egalitarian. Women appeared on the news, although the male anchors dominated the North American screens in the mid-1990s. 1979 edition of the textbook American herald added a chapter on "new language" that recommended the use of a comprehensive language that respects differences in race, ethnicity and gender.

Media of the United States consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web sites. The U.S. also has a strong music industry. Many of the media are controlled by large for-profit corporations who reap revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and sale of copyrighted material. American media conglomerates tend to be leading global players, generating large revenues as well as large opposition in many parts of the world. Further deregulation and convergence are under way, leading to mega-mergers, further concentration of media ownership, and the emergence of multinational media conglomerates. Critics allege that localism, local news and other content at the community level, media spending and coverage of news, and diversity of ownership and views have suffered as a result of these processes of media concentration.

Despite this type of professional awareness, the role of television in much larger configuration of language use worldwide remains much work constricting. The languages from the world, estimated to be between 5-6000 in number, have evolved as an "order global language ", a system characterized by increased contact and a hierarchy of power relations.

Both countries are dominated by internet and television, radio and newspapers remaining behind.

Television in United KingdomBritish television was often reffered to in the past as “the best in the world”, but now the very idea of thinking of television as intimately bound to a sense of national pride seems almost quaint in a period where, especially for many young people, television is losing its special role as a focal point for a shared national culture.

Television providersFree and subscription providers are available, with differences in the number of channels, capabilities such as the programme guide (EPG), video on demand (VOD), high-definition (HD), interactive television via the red button, and coverage across the UK. Set-top boxes are generally used to receive these services; however Integrated Digital Televisions (IDTVs) can also be used to receive Freeview or Freesat. Top Up TV and BT Vision utilise hybrid boxes which receive Freeview as well as additional subscription services. Households viewing TV from the internet (YouTube, Joost, downloads etc.) are not tracked by Ofcom. The UK's five most watched channels, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, are available from all providers.

Analogue terrestrial television

Crystal Palace transmitter. Constructed in 1956, it is the main transmitter for London

Digital terrestrial television

Television aerials used for receiving analogue or digital terrestrial television. The term aerial is in common use rather than antenna.Digital terrestrial television launched in 1998 as a subscription service named ONdigital. Since October 2002, the primary broadcaster is Freeview, with Top Up TV and ESPN (a role previously occupied by Setanta Sports before it went into administration in June 2009) providing additional subscription services.

Cable television

A pavement dug up revealing the cables underneath. The green box is a common sight in areas with cable coverage, as are manhole covers enscribed with CATV.Main article: Cable television

There are three providers of cable television, targeting different geographic areas within the UK. In all cases cable TV is a subscription service normally bundled with a phone line and broadband.

Smallworld Cable is available in south-west Scotland and north-west England. Pricing ranges from £10.50 (cost of phone line with 'free' TV) to £80 per month.

WightFibre is available in the Isle of Wight.

Virgin Media is available to 55% of UK households.[23] Pricing ranges from £11 a month (phone line with 'free' TV) to £30.50 a month,[24] with additional fees for premium services such as Sky Sports. Virgin also market V+, a digital video recorder and high-definition receiver.

Satellite television

Satellite dishes on a wall in Hackney, London. The small oval dishes are for viewing Sky, and are known as Minidishes. The larger dishes are for viewing satellite services from outside the UK.See also: Satellite television

There are three distinctly marketed direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) services (also known as direct-to-home (DTH), to be distinguished from satellite signals intended for non-consumer reception).

Sky TV is a subscription service owned by British Sky Broadcasting. It is the dominant satellite provider with the largest number of channels compared to other providers.

Freesat from Sky, is a free satellite service owned by British Sky Broadcasting.

Freesat is a free satellite service created jointly by the BBC and ITV.

IP television (IPTV)

IPTV services from BT Vision and TalkTalk TV are distributed as data via copper telephone linesSee also: IPTV

In contrast to Internet TV, IPTV refers to services operated and controlled by a single company, who may also control the 'Final Mile' to the consumers' premises. BT Vision, Freewire and TalkTalk TV are the UK's three providers of IPTV services.

Mobile television

Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone provide mobile television services for reception on third generation mobile phones. They consist of a mixture of regular channels (marketed as 'live TV') as well as made for mobile channels with looped content.

Internet television

Television received via the Internet may be free, subscription or pay-per-view, and use a variety of distribution methods (e.g. multicast/unicast/peer-to-peer, streamed/downloaded). Playback is normally via a computer and broadband Internet connection, although digital media receivers,

media centre computers or video game consoles can be used for playback on televisions, such as the Netgear Digital Entertainer, a computer equipped with Windows Media Center, or a PlayStation 3.

Channels and channel owners

Viewing statistics

Most viewed channels

The Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) measures television ratings in the UK. The following table shows viewing shares from 1992 to 2009 of channels which have once had, or still have, a viewing share of ≥ 1.0%. The figures for 2010 only account for the weeks up until 14 November.

As of 2009, 15 channels have a viewing share of ≥ 1.0% together accounting for 67.4% of total viewing share. (4 additional channels had a viewing share ≥ 1.0% in 1992 but have since fallen below this). Of the 15 channels, 7 of these collectively had a viewing share of 79.3% in 1992, the largest of which was ITV with a share of 30.5%. As the number of channels rose and with the launch of digital television, the collective share of these channels had declined to 67.8% in 2002, and has remained at about that level ever since. ITV viewing share fell below BBC One in 2002; whist ITV viewing share declined, BBC One has remained stable at about 20% since 2001. Of these 15 channels, 4 are funded by the license fee; 2 are subscription; 7 of these channels launched after 1999. Comparing 1992 to 2009, only Channel 4/S4C has seen an overall increase in viewing share.

Charts showing viewing share of channels with a viewing share of ≥ 1.0% from 1992 to 2009

Area chart showing aggregated viewing shareLine chart showing individual channel viewing share

Since 1992, there are 11 channels which previously had a viewing share of ≥ 1.0%, but which have now fallen below. (These are depicted with grey titles in the table above). In 1992, these channels collectively had a viewing share of 12.8% via analogue satellite and cable television. This peaked in 1998 at 16.5%, coinciding with the launch of digital television. In 2009, the collective viewing share of these 11 channels is 3.5%. The largest individual loss is for a channel now known as Sky Movies Action & Thriller, from 6% in 1992 to 0.1% in 2009. With the exception of Sky News, these are all subscription channels.

Line chart showing viewing share of channels from 1992 which previously had a viewing share of ≥ 1.0% but which have now fallen below

Combined viewing shares for all channels from different television companies in 2008[43] Figures for timeshift and "extra" channels, if available, are included in the figure for the main channel. For example, the figure for ITV2 includes both ITV2 and ITV2+1 and the figure for Nick Jr. includes both Nick Jr and Nick Jr 2.

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Main article: BBC

The BBC is the world's oldest and largest broadcaster, and is the country's principal public service broadcaster. The BBC is funded primarily by a television licence and from sales of its programming to overseas markets. It does not carry advertising. The licence fee is levied on all households with a television receiver and the fee is determined by periodic negotiation between the government and the BBC.

Its analogue channels were BBC One and BBC Two (styled BBC 1 and BBC 2 until 1997). The BBC first began a television service, initially serving London only, in 1936. BBC Television was closed during World War II but reopened in 1946. The second station was launched in 1964. In addition to the now-digital BBC One and Two, the British Broadcasting Corporation also offers BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, BBC Parliament, CBBC Channel, CBeebies, BBC HD, BBC Alba and BBC Red Button.

Recent technical developments

Digital television

Digital television has been available in the UK since 1998 via satellite, cable or terrestrial, and since 1999 via IPTV. It introduced interactive television, 16:9 widescreen, electronic programme guides and audio description.

UK households receiving digital vs analogue TV on their main TVs[1]Type Percentage Households Providers

Analogue 10.2% 2,637,720 Analogue terrestrial

Digital 89.8% 23,222,280Freesat, Freesat from Sky, Freeview, Sky TV, Smallworld Cable, TalkTalk TV, Top Up TV, Virgin Media, WightFibre

UK households receiving multichannel vs analogue terrestrial TV on all TVs[1]Type Percentage TV sets Providers

Analogue terrestrial

19.5% 11,700,000 Analogue terrestrial

Multichannel 80.5% 48,300,000Freesat, Freesat from Sky, Freeview, Sky TV, Smallworld Cable, TalkTalk TV, Top Up TV, Virgin Media, WightFibre

Ofcom is tracking digital television penetration as part of the digital switchover, and releases quarterly reports. The report for Q2 2009 states:[1]

• 89.8% (23.2 million of 25.6 million televisions) of main TV sets now receive digital television

• 70% (24.3 million of 35 million televisions) of secondary TV sets now receive multichannel television (multichannel refers to any digital television, and analogue cable)

• 80.5% (48.3 million of 60 million televisions) of all TV sets now receive multichannel TV;

Television in the United State

Television is one of the major mass media of the United States. Ninety-nine percent of American households have at least one television and the majority of households have more than one. As a whole, the television networks of the United States are the largest and most syndicated in the world.[1]

Television channels and networksIn the United States television is available via broadcast ("over-the-air"), unencrypted satellite ("free-to-air"), direct broadcast satellite, cable television, and IPTV (internet protocol television).

Over-the-air and free-to-air TV is free with no monthly payments while cable, direct broadcast satellite, and IPTV require a monthly payment that varies depending on how many channels a subscriber chooses to pay for. Channels are usually sold in groups, rather than singly.

Broadcast television

The United States has a decentralized, market-oriented television system. The United States has a national public broadcast service known as the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Local media markets have their own television stations, which may be affiliated with or owned and operated by a TV network. Stations may sign affiliation agreements with one of the national networks. Except in very small markets with few stations, affiliation agreements are usually exclusive: If a station is an NBC affiliate, the station would not air programs from ABC, CBS or other networks.

However, to ensure local presences in television broadcasting, federal law restricts the amount of network programming local stations can run. Until the 1970s and '80s, local stations supplemented network programming with a good deal of their own produced shows. Today, however, many stations produce only local news shows. They fill the rest of their schedule with syndicated shows, or material produced independently and sold to individual stations in each local market..

Major broadcast networks

The five major U.S. networks are NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and The CW. The first three began as radio networks: NBC and CBS in the 1920s, and ABC was spun off from NBC in 1943. Fox is a relative newcomer that began in 1986, although it is built upon the remnants of the former DuMont Television Network, which was an earlier "fourth network" that operated from 1948 to 1956. The CW was created in 2006 when UPN merged with The WB.

Weekday schedules on ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates tend to be similar, with programming choices sorted by dayparts (Fox does not air network programming outside of prime time other than weekend sports programming). Typically, they begin with an early-morning local news show, followed by a network morning show, such as NBC's Today, which mixes news, weather, interviews and music. Network daytime schedules consist of talk shows and soap operas, with one network (CBS) still carrying game shows and a handful of other games airing in syndication; local news may air at midday. Syndicated talk shows appear in the late afternoon, followed by local news again in the early evening. ABC, CBS and NBC offer network news, generally at 6:30 or 7:00 in the Eastern Time zone and 5:30 or 6:00 in other areas. Local newscasts or syndicated programs fill the "prime access" hour or half-hour, and lead into the networks' prime time schedules, which are the day's most-watched three hours of television.

Typically, family-oriented comedy programs led in the early part of prime time, although in recent years, reality television like Dancing with the Stars has largely replaced them. Later in the evening,

dramas like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, House M.D., and Grey's Anatomy air.

At the end of prime time, another local news program comes on, usually followed by late-night interview shows, such as Late Show with David Letterman or The Tonight Show. Rather than sign off for the early hours of the morning (as was standard practice until the early 1970s in larger markets and until the mid 1980s in smaller ones), TV stations now fill the time with syndicated programming, reruns of prime time television shows or the local late news o'clock news, or 30-minute advertisements, known as infomercials, and in the case of CBS and ABC, overnight network news programs.

Saturday mornings usually feature network programming aimed at children (including animated cartoons), while Sunday mornings include public-affairs programs. Both of these help fulfill stations' legal obligations, to provide educational children's programs and public-service programming respectively. Sports and infomercials can be found on weekend afternoons, followed again by the same type of prime-time shows aired during the week.

Broadcast television in non-English languages

Univision, a network of Spanish language stations, is the fifth-largest TV network behind NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. Its major competition is Telemundo, a sister network of NBC. Univision-owned TeleFutura, aimed at a younger Hispanic demographic, Azteca América, the American version of Mexico's TV Azteca, and Estrella TV are other popular Spanish-language over-the-air networks.

French programming is generally limited in scope, with some locally produced French and creole programming available in the Miami area (serving refugees from Haiti) and Louisiana, along with some places along the heavily populated Eastern Seaboard. French-speaking areas near the eastern portion of the Canada-United States border generally receive their television broadcasts from French Canadian channels, which are widely available over the air and on cable in those areas.

Especially after the transition to digital television, many large cities have Asian-language broadcast stations, such as KYAZ in Houston.

There have also been a few, local stations in American Sign Language accompanied by closed captioned English. Prior to the development of closed captioning, it was not uncommon to see some public television broadcasts translated into ASL by an on-screen interpreter.

Non-commercial television

Public television has a far smaller role than in most other countries. There is no federal state-owned broadcasting authority directed at U.S. audiences because of prohibitions set forth in the Smith–Mundt Act. However, a number of states, including Wisconsin, Maryland, Minnesota, and South Carolina, among others, do have state-owned public broadcasting authorities which operate and fund all public television stations in their respective states. The federal government does subsidize non-commercial educational television stations through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The income received from the government is insufficient to cover expenses and stations rely on corporate sponsorships and viewer contributions.

American public television stations air programming that commercial stations do not offer, such as educational, including cultural and arts, and public affairs programming. Most (but by no means all) public TV stations are affiliates of the Public Broadcasting Service, sharing programs like Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theatre. Unlike the commercial networks, PBS does not officially produce any of its own programming; instead, individual PBS stations, station groups and affiliated producers create programming and provide these through PBS to other affiliates; there are also a number of syndicators dealing exclusively or primarily with public broadcast stations, both PBS and independent stations; additionally, there are a number of smaller networks feeding programming to public stations, including World, Create, and MHz Worldview; the German public broadcaster

Deutsche Welle has also provided blocks of programming to a variety of affiliates in the US, and increasingly feeds from other national broadcasters have been playing through digital channels belonging to public stations in the US. New York City's municipally-owned broadcast service, NYCTV, creates original programming that airs in several markets. Few cities have major municipally-owned stations.

Many religious broadcasting networks and stations exist, also surviving on viewer contributions and time leased to the programming producers, including Trinity Broadcasting Network, Three Angels Broadcasting Network, Hope Channel, Amazing Facts Television, Daystar Television Network, The Word Network, The Worship Network, Total Christian Television, and INSP.

Cable and satellite television

While pay television systems existed as early as the late 1940s, until the early 1970s cable television only brought distant over-the-air TV to rural areas without local stations. This role was reflected in the original meaning of the CATV acronym: community antenna TV. In that decade, national networks dedicated exclusively to cable broadcasting appeared along with cable-TV systems in major cities with over-the-air TV. By the mid 1970s some form of cable-TV was available in almost every market that already had over-the-air TV. Today, most American households receive cable TV, and cable networks collectively have greater viewership than broadcast networks.

Unlike broadcast networks, most cable networks air the same programming nationwide. Top cable networks include USA Network (general entertainment), ESPN and Fox Sports (sports), MTV (music), CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC (news), Syfy (science fiction), Disney Channel (family), Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network (Children's), Discovery Channel and Animal Planet (documentaries), TBS (comedy), TNT (drama) and Lifetime (women's).

The national cable TV network became possible in the mid 1970s with the launch of domestic communication satellites that could economically broadcast TV programs to cable operators anywhere in the continental US. (Some domestic satellites also covered Alaska and Hawaii with dedicated spot beams.) Until then, cable networks like HBO had been limited to regional coverage by expensive terrestrial microwave links leased from the telephone companies (primarily AT&T). Satellites were generally used only for international (i.e., transoceanic) communications; their antennas covered an entire hemisphere, producing weak signals that required large, expensive receiving antennas. The first domestic communications satellite, Westar 1, was launched in 1974. By concentrating its signal on the continental United States with a directional antenna, Westar 1 could transmit to TVRO ("TV, receive only") dishes only a few meters in diameter, well within the means of local cable TV operators.

Satellite TV receiver dishes

Cable system operators now receive programming by satellite, terrestrial optical fiber, off the air, and from in-house sources and relay it to subscribers' homes. Usually, local governments award a monopoly to provide cable-TV service in a given area. By law, cable systems must include local over-the-air stations in their offerings to customers.

Enterprising individuals soon found they could install their own satellite dishes and eavesdrop on the feeds to the cable operators. The signals were transmitted as unscrambled analog FM that did not require advanced or expensive technology. Since these same satellites were also used internally by the TV networks they could also watch programs not intended for public broadcast such as affiliate feeds without commercials and/or intended for another time zone; raw footage from remote news teams; advance transmissions of upcoming programs; and live news and talk shows during breaks when those on camera might not realize that anyone outside the network could hear them.

Encrypting was introduced to prevent people from receiving pay content for free, and nearly every pay channel was encrypted by the mid to late 1980s. (This did not happen without protest; see Captain Midnight (HBO)). Satellite TV also began a digital transition, well before over the air broadcasting did the same, to increase satellite capacity and/or reduce the size of the receiving antennas, and this also made it more difficult for individuals to intercept these signals.

Eventually the industry began to cater to individuals who wanted to continue to receive satellite TV (and were willing to pay for it) in two ways: by authorizing the descrambling of the original satellite feeds to the cable TV operators and with new direct broadcast satellite television services using their own satellites.

These latter services, which began in the mid 1990s, offer programming similar to cable TV. Dish Network and DirecTV are the major DBS providers in the country.

Although most networks make viewers pay, some networks are broadcasting unencrypted feeds. After broadcast TV switched to all digital, new channels became available on unencrypted satellites to bring more free TV to Americans some of these are available as a digital subchannel to local broadcasters, this reason may be for the expensive costs of the DVB-S equipment. NASA TV, Pentagon Channel, ABC News Now, ThisTV, TheCoolTV, and Retro Television Network (through its affiliates) are examples, international news channels like Al Jazeera English are commonly watched this way as a result to the lack of availability on Cable, DBS and IPTV.

The business of televisionOver-the-air commercial stations and networks generate the vast majority of their revenue from advertisements. According to a 2001 survey, broadcast stations allocated 16 to 21 minutes per hour to commercials. Most cable networks also generate income from advertisements, although most basic cable networks also receive subscription fees. However, premium cable networks, such as the movie network HBO, do not air commercials. Instead, cable-TV subscribers must pay extra to receive the premium networks.

In the days of broadcast television, networks allocated a portion of commercial time for their shows to the local affiliates, which allowed the local stations to generate revenue. In the same manner, cable-TV system operators generate some of their revenue by selling local commercial time for each cable network being broadcast. The other main source of revenue for the cable-TV operators is subscription fees.

ProgrammingAmerican television has had very successful programming that has inspired television networks across the world to make shows of similar types or broadcast these shows in their own country. Some of these shows are still on the air and some are still alive and well in syndication. The opposite is also true; a number of popular American programs were based on shows from other countries, especially the United Kingdom and Canada.

Primetime comedy has included situation comedies such as I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, Friends, Boy Meets World, The King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond, as well as sketch comedy/variety series such as Saturday Night Live and Milton Berle's early shows, The Carol Burnett Show and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

Dramatic series have taken many forms over the years. Westerns such as Gunsmoke had their greatest popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. Medical dramas have endured (Marcus Welby, M.D., St. Elsewhere, ER), as have family dramas (Eight Is Enough, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie) and crime dramas (Dragnet, Hawaii Five-O, Hill Street Blues, Law & Order and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - the last two of which have spawned multiple spin-offs).

The major networks all offer a morning news program (NBC's The Today Show and ABC's Good Morning America are the standard bearers), as well as an early-evening newscast anchored by the de facto face of the network's news operations (Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather for CBS; NBC's Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Tom Brokaw; ABC's Peter Jennings). Successful news magazines have included 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline in primetime and Meet the Press (the US's oldest series, having debuted in 1947), Face the Nation and This Week on Sunday mornings.

Reality television has long existed in the United States, both played for laughs (Candid Camera, Real People) and as drama (COPS, The Real World). A new variant - competition series placing ordinary people in unusual circumstances or in talent contests, generally eliminating one participant per week, exploded in popularity in 2000 with the launch of Survivor. Big Brother, America's Next Top Model and So You Think You Can Dance followed; American Idol, based on the UK's Pop Idol, debuted in 2002 and has dominated the ratings consistently as of 2009, while The Amazing Race has won the Emmy Award for its program category every year since its 2001 debut.

American soap operas have been running for over six decades. Currently, there are four daytime soap operas in production: General Hospital, Days of our Lives, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. Long-running soaps no longer in production include Search for Tomorrow, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, Another World, One Life to Live, and All My Children. Primetime soap operas of note have included Peyton Place, Dallas, Dynasty, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Revenge.

On Wheel of Fortune, three people compete against each other to win cash and physical prizes such as overseas trips.

Daytime has also been home of many popular game shows over the years (particularly during the 1970s), such as The Price is Right, Family Feud, Match Game, The Newlywed Game and Concentration. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! have found their greatest success in the early-evening slot before primetime, while game shows actually aired within primetime had great popularity in the 1950s and 1960s (What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth) and again, intermittently, in the 2000s (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Weakest Link, Deal or No Deal). The Price Is Right, which has appeared on CBS since 1972, was the only daytime game show remaining on the broadcast networks for fifteen years (prior to CBS's announcement it would be joined by a remake of Let's Make a Deal in October 2009).

The most successful talk show has been the late-night (after 11:30 PM Eastern/Pacific) The Tonight Show (particularly during the 29-year run of third host Johnny Carson). Tonight ushered in a multi-decade period of dominance by one network in American late-night programming and paved the way for many similar combinations of comedy and celebrity interviews, such as those hosted by Merv Griffin and David Letterman.

Daytime talk show hits have included The Oprah Winfrey Show, Phil Donahue, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly, and run the gamut from serious to lighthearted; a subset of so-called trash TV talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show also veered into exploitation and titillation.

Children's television programs are also quite popular, though with FCC rules on E/I content and regulations on commercial time during children's shows, over-the-air broadcast stations have found it much harder to profit from these programs compared to in the past. Children's programming has mostly migrated to cable television with such successful shows of recent such as Fanboy & Chum Chum, SpongeBob SquarePants, iCarly, The Suite Life on Deck, Big Time Rush, Victorious, Phineas & Ferb, The Fairly OddParents among others becoming popular on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon cable channels. Other channels offering kids and family programming include PBS Kids Sprout, Disney XD, Cartoon Network, Boomerang and others. FCC rules on E/I content may prevent series airing on these channels from being syndicated on over-the-air television stations.

While the majority of programs broadcast on United States television are produced domestically, some programs carried in syndication, on public television or on cable television are imported from outside the U.S.; most commonly, these imported programs come from the primarily English-speaking countries of Canada and the United Kingdom. PBS in particular, is commonly known for its broadcasts of British comedies such as Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances and As Time Goes By, which typically air on most PBS member stations on weekend evenings. As for Canadian programs, most of the programming imported from Canada includes children's programs from family-oriented specialty channels YTV and Family such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Naturally, Sadie and Life with Derek. Among some of the more well-known Canadian television series among American viewers include the Degrassi High franchise (which aired in Canada on CBC Television, with the later incarnation Degrassi: The Next Generation airing on CTV and presently MuchMusic), SCTV Network and The Red Green Show. American Spanish-language networks also import much of their programming; for example, Univision imports much of its

programming, especially telenovelas that are broadcast on the network, from Mexican broadcaster Televisa and Venezuelan broadcaster Venevision.

The Life Cycle of U.S. Television Shows

Television production companies either commission teleplays for TV pilots or buy spec scripts. Some of these scripts are turned into pilots. Those which the production company thinks might be commercially viable are then marketed to television networks—or television distributors for first-run syndication. (KingWorld distributes The Oprah Winfrey Show in first-run syndication, for example, because that show is syndicated—is not affiliated with a particular network.) A few things in consideration for a TV network to pick up a show is if the show itself is compatible with the network's target audience, the cost of production, and if the show is well liked among network executives.

Networks sometimes preemptively purchase pilots to prevent other nets from controlling them, and the purchase of a pilot is no guarantee that a show will get an order for more episodes. Those that do get "picked up" get either a full or partial-season order, and the show goes into production, usually establishing itself with permanent sets, a full crew and production offices. Writers are hired, directors are selected and work begins, usually during the late spring and summer before the fall season-series premieres. (Shows can also be midseason replacement, meaning they are ordered specifically to fill holes in a network schedule created by the failure and cancellation of shows which premiered in the fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Office are examples of successful midseason replacements.)

The standard broadcast television season in the United States is 22 episodes per season; sitcoms may have 24 or more; animated programs may have more (or fewer) episodes; cable networks with original programming seem to have settled on about 10 or 12 episodes per season, much in line with British television programming.

American soap operas air in the afternoon, five days a week, without any significant break in taping and airing schedules throughout the year. This means that these serials air approximately 260 episodes a year, making their casts and crews the busiest in show business. These shows are rarely, if ever, repeated, making it difficult for viewers to "catch up" when they miss programming. However, cable channel SOAPnet provides weekly repeats for some broadcasts.

Networks use profits from commercials run during the show to pay the production company, which in turn pays the cast and crew, and keeps a share of the profits for itself. (Networks sometimes act as both production companies and distributors.) As advertising rates are based on the size of the audience, measuring the number of people watching a network is very important. This measurement is known as a show or network's ratings. Sweeps months (November, February, May, and to a lesser extent July) are important landmarks in the television year — ratings earned during these periods determining advertising rates until the next sweeps period, therefore shows often have their most exciting plot developments happen during sweeps.

Shows that are successful with audiences and advertisers receive authorization from the network to continue production, until the plotline ends (only for scripted shows) or if the contract expires. Those that are not successful are often quickly told to discontinue production by the network, known as cancellation. There are instances of initially low-rated shows surviving cancellation and later becoming highly-popular, but these are rare. For the most part, shows that are not immediately or even moderately successful will be cancelled by the end of November sweeps. Usually if a show is canceled, there is little chance of it ever coming back again especially on the same network it was canceled from; the only show in the US to ever come back from cancellation on the same network is Family Guy. However, canceled shows like Scrubs, Southland, Medium, and Wonder Woman have been picked up by other networks, which is becoming an increasingly common practice.

Once a television series reaches a threshold of approximately 88 to 100 episodes, it becomes a

candidate to enter reruns in off-network syndication. Reruns are a lucrative business for television producers, who can sell the rights to a "used" series without the expenses of producing it (although royalties may need to be paid to the affected parties, depending on union contracts). Sitcoms are traditionally the most widely syndicated reruns and are usually aired in a five-day-a-week strip. Marginally performing shows tend to last less than five years in broadcast syndication, sometimes moving to cable channels after the end of their syndication runs, while more widely successful series can have a life in syndication that can run for decades (I Love Lucy, the first series designed to be rerun, remains popular in syndication sixty years after its debut). Cable networks and digital broadcast channels have provided outlets for programming that either has outlived its syndication viability, lacks the number of episodes necessary for syndication, or for various reasons was not a candidate for syndication in the first place. Popular dramas, for instance, have permanent homes on several basic cable channels, often running in marathons (multiple episodes airing back-to-back for several hours), and there are also cable channels devoted to game shows (Game Show Network), soap operas (the soon-to-be-defunct SoapNet), Saturday morning cartoons (e.g. Boomerang) and even sports broadcasts (ESPN Classic). Most reality shows perform poorly in reruns and are rarely seen as a result, other than reruns of series still in production, on the same network on which they air (almost always cable outlets), where they air as filler programming.

History of American televisionMain articles: History of television and List of United States network television schedules

Television first became commercialized in the U.S. in the early 1950s, initially by RCA (through NBC, which it owned) and CBS. A number of different broadcast systems had been developed through the end of the 1930s. The National Television System Committee (NTSC) standardized on a 525-line broadcast in 1941 that would provide the basis for TV across the country through the end of the century. Television development halted with the onset of World War II, but pioneers returned to the airwaves when that conflict ended.

After a flood of television license applications, the FCC froze the application process for new here were only a few dozen stations operating at the end of the decade, concentrated on the East and West coasts. The FCC began handing out broadcasting licenses to communities of all sizes in the early 1950s, spurring an explosion of growth in the medium. A brief debacle over the system to use for color broadcasts occurred at this time, but was soon settled. Half of all U.S. households had TV sets by 1955, though color was a premium feature for many years (most households able to purchase TV sets could only afford black-and-white models, and few programs were broadcast in color until the mid-1960s).

Many of the earliest TV programs were modified versions of well-established radio shows. Barn dances and opries were regular staples of early television, as were the first variety shows. Reruns of film shorts, such as Looney Tunes and The Three Stooges, were also staples of early television and to a certain extent remain popular today. The '50s saw the first flowering of the genres that would distinguish TV from movies and radio: talk shows like The Jack Paar Show and sitcoms like I Love Lucy. Other popular genera in early television were TV Westerns and soap operas, both of which were adapted from the radio medium. Game shows were also a major part of the early part of television, aided by massive prizes unheard of in the radio era; however, the pressure to keep the programs entertaining led to the quiz show scandals in which it was revealed many of the popular high-stakes games were rigged or outright scripted. The Saturday morning cartoons, animated productions made specifically for television (and, accordingly, with much tighter budgets and more limited animation), also debuted in the late 1950s.

Television in the United States was primarily on VHF in its earliest years; it was not until the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1964 that UHF television broadcasting became a feasible medium.

Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, concurrent with the development of color television, the

evolution of television led to an event colloquially known as the rural purge; genera such as the Western, variety show, barn dance, and rural-oriented sitcom all met their demise in favor of newer, more modern series targeted at wealthier suburban and urban viewers. Around the same time, videotape became a more affordable alternative to film for recording programs, which practically ended the practice of destroying and recycling old television episodes and led to more extensive archiving of television programming.

Stations across the country also produced their own local programs. Usually carried live, they ranged from simple advertisements to game shows and children's shows that often featured clowns and other offbeat characters. Local shows could often be popular and profitable, but concerns about product promotion led them to almost completely disappear by the mid-1970s. The last remaining locally originated shows on American television as of 2012 are local newscasts and some brokered programming paid for by advertisers.

Subscription television (such as cable and satellite) became popular in the early 1980s, and has been growing in significance since then–spurring the emergence of multinational conglomerates such as Fox. As the number of outlets for potential new television channels increased, this also introduced the threat of audience fracturing, in that it would become much more difficult to attain a critical mass of viewers in this highly competitive market. As ratings declined, the number of game shows and soap operas followed, with the former genre almost completely disappearing from American daytime television, to be replaced by much cheaper and more lowbrow tabloid talk shows.

Infomercials were legalized in 1984, approximately the same time that cable television became widespread. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, stations began airing infomercials throughout the night instead of signing off; infomercials also began to overtake other less-watched dayparts (such as weekends and during the daytime), which forced series that would otherwise be syndicated onto cable networks or off the air entirely. Cable networks have also begun selling infomercial space, usually in multiple-hour blocks in the early morning hours. Infomercials have earned a reputation as a medium for advertising scams and products of dubious quality.

The U.S. has now moved to digital television. U.S. networks began transitioning to recording their programs in high-definition television in the late 1990s, a process that is now mostly complete. A law passed in 2006 required over-the-air stations to cease analog broadcasting in 2009, with the end of analog television arriving on June 12 of that year.

The late 1990s also saw the invention of digital video recorders. While the ability to record a television program for home viewing was possible with the earlier VCRs, that medium was a bulky mechanical tape medium that was far less convenient than the all-digital technology DVRs used. DVR technology allowed wide-scale time shifting of programming, which had a negative impact on programming in time slots outside of prime time by allowing viewers to watch their favorite programs on demand. It also put pressure on advertisers, since DVRs make it relatively easy to skip over commercials.

During the 2000s, the major development in U.S. television was the growth of reality television, which proved to be an inexpensive and entertaining alternative to scripted prime time programming. The process of nonlinear video editing and digital recording allowed for much easier and less expensive editing of mass amounts of video, making reality television more viable than it had been in previous decades. All four major broadcast networks carry at least one long-running reality franchise in their lineup at any given time of the year.

In 2008, there were an estimated 327 million television sets in the US.

Radio in the United Kingdom

BBC RadioThe most prominent stations are the national networks operated by the BBC.

• BBC Radio 1 broadcasts mostly current pop music output on FM and digital radio, with live music throughout the year

• BBC Radio 2 is the United Kingdom's most listened-to radio station, featuring presenters such as Chris Evans and Terry Wogan, and playing popular music from the last 5 decades as well as special interest programmes in the evening

• BBC Radio 3 is a classical music station, broadcasting high-quality concerts and performances. At night, it transmits a wide range of jazz and world music

• BBC Radio 4 is a current affairs and speech station, with news, debate and radio drama. It broadcasts the daily radio soap The Archers, as well as flagship news programme Today

• BBC Radio 5 Live broadcasts live news and sports commentary with phone-in debates and studio guests

The introduction of digital radio technology led to the launch of several new BBC stations:

• BBC 1Xtra broadcasts rap, RnB and drum'n'bass• BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcasts comedy, drama and shows which extend or supplement

popular programmes on its sister station, Radio 4, including The Archers spin off Ambridg Extra and archived episodes of Desert Island Discs

• BBC 6 Music transmits predominantly alternative rock, with many live sessions• BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra - a companion to Five Live for additional events coverage• BBC Asian Network - aimed at the large South Asian community in the United Kingdom

(also available on AM in some areas)

The BBC also provide 40 local radio services, mainly broadcasting a mix of local news and music aimed at an older audience.

Commercial radioAlso available nationally are three national commercial channels, namely Absolute Radio,

Classic FM and talk SPORT. As with the BBC, digital radio has brought about many changes, including the roll-out of local stations such as Xfm, Kiss 100 and Kerrang Radio to other areas of the United Kingdom.

Commercial radio licences are awarded by Ofcom, a government body which advertises a licence for an area and holds a so-called beauty contest to determine which station will be granted permission to broadcast in that area. Stations submit detailed application documents containing their proposed format and the outcome of research to determine the demand for their particular style of broadcast. Original 106 (Aberdeen) was the last radio station to be granted a licence by Ofcom.

Most local commercial stations in the United Kingdom broadcast to a city or group of towns within a radius of 20-50 miles, with a second tier of regional stations covering larger areas such as North West England. The predominant format is pop music, but many other tastes are also catered for, particularly in London and the larger cities, and on digital radio.

Rather than operating as independent entities, many local radio stations are owned by large radio groups which broadcast a similar format to many areas. The largest operator of radio is Global Radio which bought the former media group, Gcap Media. It owns Classic FM and London's most popular commercial station, 95.8 Capital FM. Other owners are Bauer Radio and UTV Radio, which mainly own stations that broadcast in highly populated city areas.

Many of these stations, including all the BBC stations, are also available via digital

television services.

Community radioCommunity radio stations broadcast to a small area, normally within a 3 mile (5 km) radius,

and are mostly not-for-profit organisations, owned by local people, on which the broadcasters are volunteers. They are recognised under the Communications Act 2003 as a distinct third tier of radio in the United Kingdom. The community radio movement in the United Kingdom was founded in the mid-1970s, broadcasting through Restricted Service Licences, the internet and cable.

An Access Radio pilot scheme gave fifteen stations, including Resonance FM and ALL FM, full time licences, and this has blossomed into a lively sector, directed by the Community Media Association.

The broadcasters are predominantly based around an easily defined racial community such as Asian Star FM in Slough, or a geographically defined community such as Speysound Radio & The Bay Radio. They can also be based around religious groups, such as Christian radio station Branch FM in Yorkshire. As well as this, they can also be linked with Universities and Student unions who run the stations under a community license, for example Demon FM in Leicester and Scratch Radio in Birmingham.

Radio in the United States

Radio in the United States is a major mass medium. Unlike radio in most other countries, American radio has historically relied on commercial sponsorship rather than public funding.

HistoryIn 1912, most amateur-radio transmissions were restricted to wavelengths below 200 meters (1500 kHz) to prevent interference to future commercial broadcasters. The beginning of regular, commercially-licensed radio broadcasting in the United States in 1920, along with the concurrent development of sound and color film in that decade, ended the print monopoly of mass media and opened the doors to the immediate (and pervasive) electronic media. By 1928, the United States had three national radio networks: two owned by NBC (the National Broadcasting Company), and one by CBS (the Columbia Broadcasting System). Until 1943, there were four major national radio networks: two owned by NBC, one owned by CBS and one owned by Mutual Broadcasting System. NBC's second network became ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.

Though mostly listened to for entertainment, radio's instant, on-the-spot reports of dramatic events drew large audiences throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the potential of radio to reach the American public, and during his four terms (1933–45) his radio "fireside chats" informed the nation on the progress of policies to counter the Depression and on developments during World War II.

After World War II, television's visual images replaced the audio-only limitation of radio as the predominant entertainment and news vehicle. Radio adapted by replacing entertainment programs with schedules of music interspersed with news and features, a free-form format adopted by NBC when it launched its popular weekend-long Monitor in 1955. During the 1950s automobile manufacturers began offering car radios as standard accessories, and radio received a boost as Americans listened to their car radios as they drove to and from work.

In the 1950s, as a result of television's increased popularity coupled with dramatically loosened

restrictions on playing recorded music on air, the network model of radio dramatically declined. In its place was the first music radio format: top 40, the forerunner to modern contemporary hit radio. Top 40 stations could be operated locally and gave rise to the disc jockeys, who became prominent local celebrities in their own right. Top 40 became the outlet for the relatively new style of music known as rock and roll.

FM radio, which was the successor to the failed Apex band (also known as ultra-shortwave) experiments of the 1930s, arrived in the United States after World War II, but it was not until the 1960s that it became widely popular. The first FM stations were primarily instrumental, featuring formats that would come to be known as easy listening and beautiful music, and were targeted at shopping centers. Other, later FM sign-ons became known for experimentation; the early freeform stations eventually evolved into progressive rock, the first radio format designed specifically to showcase rock music. From progressive rock came album-oriented rock, which in turn spawned the modern formats of classic rock, active rock and adult album alternative.

Top 40 radio would begin arriving on the FM band in the 1970s as FM reached critical mass. As the amount of archival music from the rock and roll era began to expand, oldies radio stations began to appear, later evolving into the modern classic hits and later adult hits formats. FM radio made a major expansion in the late 1980s with the FCC's Docket 80-90, which expanded the number of available FM licenses in the suburban areas of the United States. Country music in particular, previously only heard on rural AM stations particularly in the Southern and Western United States, benefited from this docket, moving en masse to FM; the beautiful music and easy listening formats mostly died out, with adult contemporary music taking its place.

Meanwhile, the AM band began declining. All-news radio became popular in the major cities in the late 1960s. As each successive radio format moved to FM, AM radio stations were left with fewer and fewer options. One of the last "AM only" formats was MOR, or "middle-of-the-road," the direct forerunner of adult contemporary music and adult standards. Talk radio, although it had a small following in the cities, did not achieve mainstream popularity until the 1980s, when a combination of factors led to the rise of conservative talk radio. The politically charged format swept the country, bringing stardom to one of its pioneers, Rush Limbaugh. Also rising to popularity in the late 1980s was sports radio, which was dedicated to talk about sports as well as the broadcasting of sports events.

While shock jocks had been in existence since at least the 1970s (see, for example, Don Imus) and the morning zoo radio format was popular among local stations beginning in the 1980s, the first shock jock to make a major national impact was Howard Stern, whose New York-based show was syndicated nationwide beginning in the early 1990s. Stern built a multimedia empire that incorporated television, books and feature films, which led to him bestowing upon himself the title of "King of All Media." Stern left terrestrial radio in 2005.

Satellite networks began replacing landline-based models in the 1980s, making possible wider and quicker national distribution of both talk and music radio. At the same time, the traditional networks started collapsing: NBC Radio and Mutual both were acquired by syndication company Westwood One, while ABC (both radio and television) was acquired by Capital Cities Communications. CBS would later acquire Westwood One, only to spin it off in 2007. ABC would end up in the hands of The Walt Disney Company, who broke it up in 2007; Disney owns portions of the old network, while the rest of it is in the hands of Cumulus Media. NBC (along with Westwood One) is currently in the hands of Townsquare Media. Mutual was dissolved in 1999, replaced by CNN Radio, which itself was dissolved in 2012. CBS, which still owns much of its network, splits its programming between Cumulus and Townsquare.

Only one other major network has appeared since the 1990s: Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel Communications. Premiere owns the radio distribution rights to the current "fourth major network," Fox (which owns no radio stations), and distributes that company's news and sports radio broadcasts. Clear Channel benefited from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which

allowed for greater media consolidation, and built a large empire of both large and small market radio stations; Clear Channel, having overextended itself, jettisoned most of its small-market stations (as well as its now-dissolved television division) in the late 2000s.

Direct-to-consumer subscription satellite radio began appearing in the United States in the early 2000s, but despite heavy investment in programming has continually lost money and has less than a tenth of the reach of terrestrial radio. The two competing satellite radio services, Sirius and XM, merged to form Sirius XM Radio in 2009 and now has a government-regulated monopoly on the format.

Modern eraThe expansion and dominance of FM radio, which has better audio quality but a more-limited broadcast range than AM, represented the major technical change in radio during the 1970s and 1980s. FM radio (aided by the development of smaller portable radios and "Walkman" headsets) dominates music programming, while AM has largely shifted to talk and news formats. Talk radio became more popular during the 1980s as a result of improved satellite communications, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and (by the mid-1990s) extensive concentration of media ownership stemming from the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While before the 1980s talk radio was primarily a local phenomenon, the development of national spoken-word programming contributed to the renewed popularity of AM radio. However, this popularity is fading as previously AM-only stations begin moving their operations to FM simulcasts or translators.

Both FM and AM radio have become increasingly specialized. Music formats (for instance) comprise a variety of specializations, the top five in 1991 being "country and western," "adult contemporary," "Top 40," "religion" and "oldies". Radio has been shaped by demographics, although to a lesser degree than television; modern radio formats target groups of people by age, gender, urban (or rural) setting and race. As such, freeform stations with broad-spanning playlists have become uncommon on commercial radio.

In an era in which TV is the predominant medium, the reach of radio is still extensive. Ninety-nine percent of American households in 1999 had at least one radio; the average is five per household. Every day, radio reaches 80 percent of the U.S. population. Revenue more than doubled in a decade, from $8.4 billion in 1990 to more than $17 billion in 2000. Radio continues to prevail in automobiles and offices, where attention can be kept on the road (or the task at hand) while radio is an audio background. The popularity of car radios has led to drive time being the most listened-to dayparts on most radio stations (followed by midday).

The majority of programming in the United States is in English, with Spanish the second-most popular broadcast language; these are the only two languages with domestically-produced, national radio networks. In the largest urban areas of the United States, "world ethnic" stations may be found with a wide variety of languages (including Russian, Chinese, Korean and the languages of India). French programming is rarer; despite being the fourth-most-popular language in number of speakers, its radio reach consists of one station each in Miami and southern New Jersey (both serving the Haitian diaspora) and several stations in Cajun Louisiana; areas of northern Maine (where French is also widely spoken) rely on stations in Canada (Quebec and New Brunswick) for francophone broadcasts. The lack of availability of French-language media in the United States has contributed to the near-extinction of former French-language enclaves in Frenchville, Pennsylvania and Old Mines, Missouri.

Until the 1980s, most commercial radio stations were affiliated with large networks such as Capital Cities/ABC, CBS, Mutual Network, NBC, and others (e.g., RKO in the 1980s). The traditional major networks that had dominated the history of American radio up to that point began to be dissolved in the 1980s; RKO was forced to break up in a billing scandal, while NBC Radio and Mutual sold their assets to up-and-coming syndicator Westwood One, which itself would be bought

by rival CBS in the 1990s. ABC maintained most of its radio network until 2007, when it sold off most of its stations to Citadel Broadcasting (it maintains two specialty networks, sports-oriented ESPN Radio and youth top 40 Radio Disney). CBS sold off Westwood One to private equity interests in the late 2000s as well, but unlike its rivals maintained ownership of its flagship stations. As of 2012, most commercial radio stations are controlled by media conglomerates and private equity firms such as Bain Capital (Clear Channel Communications), Oaktree Capital Management (Townsquare Media) and Cumulus Media.

Public radioThe United States government directly produces two radio services for direct public consumption: WWV (a time signal service on shortwave) and NOAA Weather Radio (a weather radio and emergency information network). Both services are almost entirely automated and use synthesized voice recordings. Unlike most other English-language countries, the United States does not have a federal government-owned national broadcaster, and the country's international government-operated broadcasters overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (the most widely known being Voice of America) are expressly forbidden from being marketed to American citizens. In lieu of a national broadcaster, the United States government instead subsidizes nonprofit radio stations through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In 1998, the number of U.S. commercial radio stations had grown to 4,793 AM stations and 5,662 FM stations. In addition, there are 1,460 public radio stations. Most of these stations are run by universities and public authorities for educational purposes and are financed by public and/or private funds, subscriptions and corporate underwriting. Much public-radio broadcasting is supplied by NPR (formerly National Public Radio). NPR was incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967; its television counterpart, PBS, was also created by the same legislation. (NPR and PBS are operated separately from each other.) The BBC World Service is distributed is the United States by PRI; it is also possible to listen to the World Service on shortwave.

The United States government has the direct authority to assume control over all radio stations in the United States at any time by way of the Emergency Alert System. All radio stations are required to have EAS equipment installed and operational in the event such a takeover is implemented.

Recent developmentsA new form of radio which is gaining popularity is satellite radio. Sirius XM Radio has a monopoly on the technology after the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. Unlike terrestrial-radio broadcasting, most channels feature few (or no) commercials. Satellite-radio content is not regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Cable radio, a slightly older technology, has also become widespread; Music Choice is the market leader in this field. CRN Digital Talk Radio Networks specialize in talk radio. Cable radio has the disadvantage that it requires a cable hookup, limiting its use outside the home.

Unlike the mandated digital television transition, the U.S. government has not mandated a transition to digital radio, although it allows digital radio to be broadcast. The national standard is HD Radio, a proprietary in-band on-channel format that allows digital and analog signals to be broadcast simultaneously. Radio companies aggressively marketed HD Radio throughout the 2000s, touting its clearer signal and capacity for digital subchannels, but the technology never caught on with the general public, primarily due to cost, signal reception problems, a general lack of quality programming on the subchannels, and (especially on AM HD stations) adjacent-channel interference. HD Radio's primary use has been to exploit an FCC loophole to allow low-power broadcast translators to carry HD subchannels in analog, thus giving radio station groups the ability to program more program services in a market than the federally mandated maximum number of

stations allowed.

Internet radio, digital music players and streaming-capable smartphones are a challenge to terrestrial radio. Unlike satellite radio, most Internet stations do not require a subscription; several of the more popular ones use algorithms which allow listeners to customize the music they want to hear and select new music which may interest them. The proliferation of internet-based stations (which are more numerous and easier to set up than their television counterparts) creates a threat of audience fracturing beyond that experienced by television due to cable and satellite providers.

Although not nearly to the extent that AM radio has declined in neighboring Canada, AM radio has also begun to decline in the United States. To partially combat this, radio ownership groups have increasingly moved their signals to FM, either through low-power broadcast translators (primarily on small, independent and/or rural stations) or through simulcast on full-market FM stations. The AM-to-FM phenomenon began primarily in mid-sized markets, where there is more bandwidth and less competition, but has since progressed even to New York City, where as of 2012 sports-talk AM stations WEPN and WFAN have both acquired FM stations with the intent to either move or simulcast their AM programming. What is left of original programming on the AM band is mostly devoted to ethnic, religious, and brokered programming.

Written media in United Kingdom

Newspapers

Traditionally British newspapers have been divided into "quality", serious-minded newspapers and the more populist, "tabloid" varieties. For convenience of reading many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids. In 2008 The Sun had the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom at 3.1 million, approximately a quarter of the market. It’s sister paper, the News of the World, had the highest circulation in the Sunday newspaper market, and traditionally focused on celebrity-led stories until its closure in 2011. The Daily Telegraph, a centre-right broadsheet paper, is the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers. The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet and the Financial Times is the main business newspaper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper. Trinity Mirror operate 240 local and regional newspapers in the United Kingdom, as well as national newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror.

Magazines

A large range of magazines are sold in the United Kingdom covering most interests and potential topics. British magazines and journals that have achieved worldwide circulation include The Economist, Nature, and New Scientist, Private Eye, Hello!, The Spectator, the Radio Times and NME.

United Kingdom may 2008

No Name Circulation Owner Founded Sunday Edition

1 The Sun 3.149.267 News Corporation 1964 News of the World

2 Daily Mail 2.292.173Daily Mail and General Trust

1896 The Mail on Sunday

3 Daily Mirror 1.483.830 Trinity Mirror 1903 Sunday Mirror

4Daily Telegraph

862.966Sir David și Sir Frederick Barclay

1855 Sunday Telegraph

5 Daily Express 740.219 Northern & Shell 1900 Sunday Express

6 Daily Star 726.097 Northern & Shell 1978 Daily Star Sunday

7 The Times 626.401 News Corporation 1785 The Sunday Times

8Financial Times

450.558 Pearson 1888 -

9 Daily Record 400.133 Trinity Mirror 1895 Sunday Mail

10 The Guardian 353.822 Guardian Media Group 1821 The Observer

11Evening Standard

300.330Daily Mail and General Trust

1827 -

12The Independent

240.503 Independent News & Media 1986The Independent on Sunday

Sunday newspaper

No Name Circulation Owner Founded

1 News of the World 3.138.815 News Corporation 1843

2 The Mail on Sunday 2.237.509 Daily Mail and General Trust 1982

3 Sunday Mirror 1.341.179 Trinity Mirror 1915

4 The Sunday Times 1.186.821 News Corporation 1821

5 Sunday Express 657.950 Northern & Shell 1918

6 The People 646.577 Trinity Mirror 1881

7 Sunday Telegraph 635.616Sir David și Sir Frederick Barclay

1961

8 Sunday Mail 487.579 Trinity Mirror -

9 The Observer 453.757 Guardian Media Group 1791

10 Sunday Post 401,908 D C Thomson 1914

11 Daily Star Sunday 366.503 Northern & Shell 2002

12The Independent on Sunday

200.920 Independent News & Media 1990

Most Popular UK NewspapersList of the Top Daily & Sunday British Newspapers by Circulation

Top 10 UK Daily Newspapers1 The Sun (2,751,219)2 Daily Mail (2,011,283)3 Daily Mirror (1,122,563)4 Daily Star (624,029)5 Daily Telegraph (596,180)6 Daily Express (586,707)7 The Times (405,113)8 Financial Times (319,757)9 Daily Record (276,003)10 I Newspaper (243,321)

Top 5 UK Sunday Newspapers

1 Daily Mail (1,921,010)2 Sunday Mirror (1,753,202)3 Sunday Times (967,975)4 Sunday People (770,772)5 Daily Star (644,804)

Written media in United States

Newspapers

Newspapers have declined in their influence and penetration into American households over the years. The U.S. does not have a national paper. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are sold in most U.S. cities.

Although the Times' primary audience has always been the people of New York City, the New York Times has gradually become the dominant national "newspaper of record." Apart from it’s daily nationwide distribution, the term means that back issues are archived on microfilm by every decent-sized public library in the nation, and the Times' articles are often cited by both historians and judges as evidence that a major historical event occurred on a certain date. The Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal are also newspapers of record to a lesser extent. Although USA Today has tried to establish itself as a national paper, it has been widely derided by the academic world as the "McPaper" and is not subscribed to by most libraries.

Apart from the newspapers just mentioned, all major metropolitan areas have their own local newspapers. Typically, a metropolitan area will support at most one or two major newspapers, with many smaller publications targeted towards particular audiences. Although the cost of publishing has increased over the years, the price of newspapers has generally remained low, forcing newspapers to rely more on advertising revenue and on articles provided by a major wire service, such as the Associated Press or Reuters, for their national and world coverage.

With very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families.

Most general-purpose newspapers are either being printed one time a week, usually on Thursday or Friday, or are printed daily. Weekly newspapers tend to have much smaller circulation and are more prevalent in rural communities or small towns. Major cities often have "alternative weeklies" to complement the mainstream daily paper(s), for example, New York City's Village Voice or Los Angeles' L.A. Weekly, to name two of the best-known. Major cities may also support a local business journal, trade papers relating to local industries, and papers for local ethnic and social groups.

Probably due to competition from other media, the number of daily newspapers in the U.S. has declined over the past half-century, according to Editor & Publisher, the trade journal of American newspapers. In particular, the number of evening newspapers has fallen by almost one-half since 1970, while the number of morning editions and Sunday editions has grown.

For comparison, in 1950, there were 1,772 daily papers (and 1,450 – or about 70 percent – of them were evening papers) while in 2000, there were 1,480 daily papers (and 766—or about half—of them were evening papers.)

Daily newspaper circulation is also slowly declining in America, partly due to the near-demise of two-newspaper towns, as the weaker newspapers in most cities have folded:

1960 58.8 million

1970 62.1 million

1980 62.2 million

1990 62.3 million

2000 55.8 million

The primary source of newspaper income is advertising – in the form of "classifieds" or inserted advertising circulars – rather than circulation income. However, since the late 1990s, this revenue source has been directly challenged by Web sites like eBay (for sales of secondhand items), Monster.com (jobs), and Craigslist (everything).

The largest newspapers (by circulation) in the United States are USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Magazines

Thanks to the huge size of the English-speaking North American media market, the United States has a large magazine industry with hundreds of magazines serving almost every interest, as can be determined by glancing at any newsstand in any large American city. Most magazines are owned by one of the large media conglomerates or by one of their smaller regional brethren.

The U.S. has three leading weekly newsmagazines: Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. Time and Newsweek are center-left while U.S. News and World Report tends to be center-right. Time is well known for naming a "Person of the Year" each year, while U.S. News publishes annual ratings of American colleges and universities.

The U.S. also has over a dozen major political magazines.

Finally, besides the hundreds of specialized magazines that serve the diverse interests and hobbies of the American people, there are also dozens of magazines published by professional organizations for their members, such as Communications of the ACM (for computer science specialists) and the ABA Journal (for lawyers).

List of newspapers in the United States by circulation

NewspaperPrimaryLocality State

DailyCirculation

SundayCirculation Owner

1The Wall Street Journal

Nationwide 2,118,315 2,078,564News Corporation

2 USA Today Nationwide 1,817,446Gannett Company

3 The New York Times New York New York 1,586,757 2,003,247The New York Times Company

4 Los Angeles Times Los Angeles California 605,243 948,889Tribune Company

5San Jose Mercury News

San Jose California 575,786 690,258MediaNews Group

6 The Washington Post WashingtonDistrict of Columbia

507,615 719,301The Washington Post Company

7 Daily News New York New York 530,924 584,658 Daily News, L.P.

8 New York Post New York New York 555,327 434,392News Corporation

9 Chicago Tribune Chicago Illinois 414,590 779,440Tribune Company

10 Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Illinois 422,335 434,861Sun-Times Media Group

11The Dallas Morning News

Dallas Texas 405,349 702,848A. H. Belo Corporation

12 Houston Chronicle Houston Texas 384,007 916,934Hearst Corporation

InternetUsers

Overall Internet usage has seen tremendous growth. From 2000 to 2009, the number of Internet users globally rose from 394 million to 1.858 billion. By 2010, 22 percent of the world's population had access to computers with 1 billion Google searches every day, 300 million Internet users reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube.

The prevalent language for communication on the Internet has been English. This may be a result of the origin of the Internet, as well as the language's role as a lingua franca. Early computer systems

were limited to the characters in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), a subset of the Latin alphabet.

After English (27%), the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese (23%), Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and German (4% each), Arabic, French and Russian (3% each), and Korean (2%).[50] By region, 42% of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 24% in Europe, 14% in North America, 10% in Latin America and the Caribbean taken together, 6% in Africa, 3% in the Middle East and 1% in Australia/Oceania. The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in the world's widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of some languages' characters) still remain.

Internet users by language

Website content languages

In an American study in 2005, the percentage of men using the Internet was very slightly ahead of the percentage of women, although this difference reversed in those under 30. Men logged on more often, spent more time online, and were more likely to be broadband users, whereas women tended to make more use of opportunities to communicate (such as email). Men were more likely to use the Internet to pay bills, participate in auctions, and for recreation such as downloading music and videos. Men and women were equally likely to use the Internet for shopping and banking. More recent studies indicate that in 2008, women significantly outnumbered men on most social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, although the ratios varied with age. In addition, women watched more streaming content, whereas men downloaded more.In terms of blogs, men were more likely to blog in the first place; among those who blog, men were more likely to have a professional blog, whereas women were more likely to have a personal blog.

Social impact

The Internet has enabled entirely new forms of social interaction, activities, and organizing, thanks to it’s basic features such as widespread usability and access. In the first decade of the 21st century, the first generation is raised with widespread availability of Internet connectivity, bringing consequences and concerns in areas such as personal privacy and identity, and distribution of copyrighted materials. These "digital natives" face a variety of challenges that were not present for prior generations.

Social networking and entertainment

Many people use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book vacations and to find out more about their interests. People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. The Internet has seen a growing number of Web desktops, where users can access their files and settings via the Internet.

Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have created new ways to socialize and interact. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of information to pages, to pursue common interests, and to connect with others. It is also possible to find existing acquaintances, to allow communication among existing groups of people. Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections. YouTube and Flickr specialize in users' videos and photographs.

The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas.

Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing video games to online gambling. While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such as GameSpy and MPlayer. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of game play or certain games. Many people use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. Free and fee-based services exist for all of these activities, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Some of these sources exercise more care with respect to the original artists' copyrights than others.

Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness. Lonely people tend to use the Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.

Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in collective study via email, on-line chat rooms and web-based message boards."

Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spent 57 minutes a day surfing the Web while at work, according to a 2003 study by Peninsula Business Services. Internet addiction disorder is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life. Psychologist Nicolas Carr believe that

Internet use has other effects on individuals, for instance improving skills of scan-reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads to true creativity.

In conclusion, globalization should be seen primarily linguistic perspective objective, unbiased biased. It requires a common language known to all, regardless nationality, geography or culture. As long as you keep the national language individuality and importance within a nation is a linguistic phenomenon of globalization natural and necessary. In our days a lot of people chose to watch on television or to navigate on internet, in special young children but also adults. They or all of us consider that using internet is much easy to find information, to search about news in special children use more internet for finding homework, some teachers chose to communicate with them using internet leaving old blackboard behind and using no more, using more digital information etc. It’s true that using internet and television information is much easy find out what happen in the world but is much easy to feel the paper, to read from the paper etc. as some time our grandparents used to do, but also listening radio is almost close to not be used so much like old times and as we can se just a few chose to listen radio and to read newspapers like old times everybody being influenced by evolution of technology. In both countries internet and television is used more than listening radio or reading newspapers. People chose to ruin them lives standing in front of the computer or tv., making no more sports, no walking for buying newspapers or magazines, all information are no more important on papers just on web pages.

Bibliography:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

2. Michael Higgins, Clarissa Smith, John Storey, Modern British Culture, Cambridge University Press, 2000

3. Terry Flew, Understanding Global Media , Palgrave Macillan, 2007