Text 4
The BBC, Britain’s mammoth public-service broadcaster, has long been a cause for complaint among its competitors in television, radio and educational and magazine publishers. Newspapers, meanwhile, have been protected from it because they published in a different medium. That’s no longer the case. The internet has brought the BBC and newspapers in direct competition—and the BBC looks like coming off best.
The improbable success online of Britain’s lumbering giant of a public service broadcaster is largely down to John Birt, a former director general who “got” the internet before any of the other big men of British media. He launched the corporation’s online operations in 1998, saying that the BBC would be a trusted guide for people bewildered by the variety of online services. The BBC now has 525 sites. It spends ￡15m ($27m) a year on its news website and another
￡51m on others ranging from society and culture to science, nature and entertainment. But behind the websites are the vast newsgathering and programme making resources, including over 5,000 journalists, funded by its annual ￡2.8 billion public subsidy.
For this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, for instance, the BBC’s gardening micro site made it possible to zoom around each competing garden, watch an interview with the designer and click on “l(fā)eaf hotspots” about individual plants. For this year’s election, the news website offered a wealth of easy-to-use statistical detail on constituencies, voting patterns and polls. This week the BBC announced free downloads of several Beethoven symphonies performed by one of its five in-house orchestras. That particularly annoys newspapers, whose online sites sometimes offer free music downloads—but they have to pay the music industry for them.
It is the success of the BBC’s news website that most troubles newspapers. Its audience has increased from 1.6m unique weekly users in 2000 to 7.8m in 2005; and its content has a breadth and depth that newspapers struggle to match. Newspapers need to build up their online businesses because their offline businesses are flagging. Total newspaper readership has fallen by about 30% since 1990 and readers are getting older as young people increasingly get their news from other sources—principally the internet. In 1990, 38% of newspaper readers were under 35. By 2002, the figure had dropped to 31%. Just this week, Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, was sacked for failing to stem its decline. Some papers are having some success in building audiences online—the Guardian, which has by far the most successful newspaper site, gets nearly half as many weekly users as the BBC—but the problem is turning them into money.
36. What does “John Birt … ‘got’ the internet before any of the other big men of British media” mean?
[A] John Birt was connected to the internet before his competitors.
[B] John Birt launched the BBC website before his competitors launched theirs.
[C] John Birt understood how the internet could be used by news media before his competitors did.
[D] John Birt understood how the internet worked before his competitors did.
37. Why does the text state that the BBC’s success in the field of internet news was “improbable”?
[A] Because the BBC is a large organisation.
[B] Because the BBC is not a private company.
[C] Because the BBC is not a successful media organisation.
[D] Because the BBC doesn’t make a profit.
38. The author cites the examples in paragraph 3 in order to demonstrate that
[A] the BBC’s websites are innovative and comprehensive.
[B] the BBC’s websites are free and wide-ranging.
[C] the BBC spends its money well.
[D] the BBC uses modern technology.
39. The BBC needn’t to pay the music industry to provide classical music downloads for users of its websites because
[A] the BBC is Britain’s state-owned media organisation.
[B] the BBC has a special copyright agreement with the big music industry companies.
[C] the BBC produces classical music itself.
[D] the BBC lets the music industry use its orchestras for free.
40. According to the final paragraph, the main advantage that the BBC has over newspapers is that
[A] more people use the BBC website.
[B] the BBC doesn’t need to make a profit.
[C] the BBC has more competent managers.
[D] young people are turning to the internet for news coverage.
