Inside the BBC and CNN

Managing Media Organisations

Lucy Küng-Shankleman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780415213219
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135122362
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Business

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.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. What is organisation culture?
• 2. ‘The status quo is not an option’: Broadcasting’s changing environmental context
• 3. The mass paradigm fragments: The changing nature of the broadcasting activity
• 4. ‘Serving the nation’: The BBC and its unique place in the UK’s broadcasting ecology
• 5. The ‘Mouth of the South’ and his ‘Chicken Noodle Network’: Ted Turner and the beginnings of CNN
• 6. Continuous revolution: The BBC as a business
• 7. Reinventing the news: CNN’s business model
• 8. ‘Part of the British way of life’: The BBC’s culture in its own words
• 9. ‘Underdogs and outsiders’: CNN’s culture in its own words
• 10. Reithianism versus Birtism: New strategic directions versus old cultural values at the BBC
• 11. Adrenaline: Culture’s impact on performance, process and strategic options at CNN
• 12. A special case? Why media organisations need managing differently
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index