The British Media Industries

Book excerpt: The British Media Industries offers an accessible introduction to how the media in Britain operates and the impact that recent political, economic, and technological developments have had on the nature of media industries today. Split into two parts, this book starts by exploring approaches to understanding contemporary media industries through political, economic, and technological terms. The second part delves further into issues and practices relating to individual media industries including newspapers, magazines, film, television, music, video games, and social media. The book adopts a political economy approach and is designed to engage students in an accessible way with key issues around the ownership and control of different sectors of the British media; UK and EU government regulation of the media, including content regulation and market/economic regulation; and the corporate strategies employed by leading media players, such as the BBC, Netflix, Google, and Apple. This is an essential textbook for undergraduate students approaching British media industries for the first time and will also be relevant to students undertaking introductory courses in Media Management and Media Economics.