Friday 14th March 2025

Question 2)

Conflict can be seen through the regulation and control of the media industries, due to the fact certain regulation companies will put the needs of media companies before the needs of the public interest. This leads to a large decrease in viewers for those conglomerates. Despite this, The Killing challenges this idea.

The Killing is a Danish crime show, created and produced by the company DR. DR came up with the idea to target a larger audience to allow for more success when releasing the television series. They did this by adding subtitles to each episode of the series, for those consumers who are not from Denmark, and can still watch the series and understand it. DR chose to release the first 10 episodes of the series from March – May to intrigue audiences by releasing enough for them to understand the base storyline. They then decided to release the next 10 episodes in September – November time, which created suspense and allowed the audience to grow wider due to interest in what would happen next. Due to the growth of the audience, BBC began streaming the series on BBC Channel 4. BBC is a public service broadcasting platform with a remit to inform, educate and entertain global audiences. BBC is regulated by Ofcom, which is the regulator for all UK television. Ofcom have a clear agenda of protecting children, which shows they are keeping the needs of the public interest. Due to the fact the genres of The Killing are crime, police procedural and mystery, soon after the release on BBC they were receiving many complaints surrounding the appropriacy of the series as it originally had no age restrictions to watch it. Therefore, in many countries, the series was re-regulated to ensure it was targeted at the correct audiences. This is an example of the control of industries putting the needs of the pubic interest over the needs of the media companies. However, to allow for the series to continue to succeed, regulation companies in these countries only began streaming the series after 9pm, which is when most children who the series is not appropriate for would be unable to watch as they would be in bed. They also added an ‘over 15’ age restriction to prevent children too young to not have access to the series. By doing this, regulation companies are showing their interest in protecting the needs of the media companies by still streaming the series, but by removing some of the inappropriate language and making it difficult for children to stream. This meant that by regulating the programme in the interests of the public, the audience would stay engaged and continued to grow, maintaining its popularity.

The television series No Offence is a British crime series, created and produced by Paul Abbot, the owner of the company Abbot Vision. No Offence is also a police procedural drama series, targeted at an audience of adults. The series is steamed through the BBC, similar to The Killing, which helped attract audiences as the BBC is a large popular platform for television. After releasing the first episode of No Offence, it had reached 2.5 million viewers, showing its popularity. Throughout the episodes of the series, it is clear that the patriarchy of a male-dominated society has been challenged as the main character