Kingdom Broadcasting Corporation
 <br.>KBC International Logo
| |
| Type | Broadcast radio network and television network |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Availability | National; also available in Hamptonshire, Pacitalia, Southeast Asia |
| Headquartered | Imperium, United Kingdom |
| Launched | Radio: 1923 Television: 1955 |
| Website | http://www.kbc.co.az |
The Kingdom Broadcasting Corporation, or the KBC, is the publicly-funded radio, television, and internet broadcasting corporation of the United Kingdom. Through its production of programmes for entertainment, news, and education the KBC has become the largest broadcasting corporation in the United Kingdom.
For many years, the KBC had been known as the Azazian Broadcasting Corporation, or ABC, until the Royal Charter of 2005 recognized that the old Commonwealth and the new United Kingdom represented and included not just the Azazian Archipelago but the unique cultures and peoples of Juristan, Kingsland. By 2005, however, the restructuring of its royal charter also came to symbolise the new challenges the corporation faced in the modern era of privatisation and globalisation.
Contents
History
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KBC Services
KBC’s largest broadcast services are its domestic radio and television services although since the early 1990s the corporation has made headway in the internet sphere and its internet service, for both the dissemination of news, entertainment, and music has become increasingly popular.
In order to reach not just its domestic base, the whole of the UK, but also its fledgling international market, the KBC has long-invested in commercial communications satellites that provide it reach to not just the Home Islands but the more remote geographic locations such as the Indian Islands, Port Elizabeth, and Avinapolis.
KBC Television
From its main broadcast centre in Imperium, KBC Television operates numerous channels available on both analogue and digital stations. KBC Two is the corporation’s primary draw with its high-quality, non-commercial programmes. Given the non-commercial nature of the KBC, its producers are not hindered by the necessity to make programming that accommodates to the masses and instead they can focus on high-quality programmes that would not necessary make the programmes lists for other broadcasting corporations.
Of course, KBC has also devoted considerable resources to its other main stations: KBC Three through Nine. Two and Three provide top-tier programming while Four, Fix, and Six are tailored specifically to the audiences of Juristan, Kingsland, and the Indian Islands respectively. KBC Seven is dedicated to the arts and provides programming related to the fine arts as well as music and literature while KBC Eight provides more domestically-minded programmes such as cooking, home-decorating, and home-design. KBC Nine is the corporation’s dedicated sports channel.
For those interested in financial and scientific programmes KBC News runs KBC Finance and KBC TechTV, see below for more on KBC News. As of 2006, KBC has announced plans to develop KBC Ten that will be dedicated to history programming and KBC Eleven, which will host films and free up time on KBC Three for more serialized programmes, its current largest drawing feature.
For the Royal Armed Services, KBC Television operates KBC Armed Forces One and KBC Armed Forces Two, the first dedicated to important news related to the UK and the Royal Armed Services and the Second dedicated to the most popular KBC Television programmes.
KBC Radio
KBC Radio operates eight radio stations available throughout the UK, each dedicated to a specific genre of music with KBC Radio 1 dedicated to contemporary music. Additionally, KBC Radio operates numerous local stations, e.g. KBC Radio Port Elizabeth (a station that broadcasts out of Port Elizabeth and is largely available only within the Royal Crown Colony.)
Since the digital revolution, KBC Radio has created several digital radio stations dedicated to music, news, sports, and politics. Globally, KBC broadcasts KBC Radio World, available for international consumption in the local language and bringing its listeners the latest news from the UK and the world.
KBC Online
The newest division of the KBC, KBC Online seeks to take advantage of the digital revolution and integrate the publishing and producing aspects of the KBC and merge them with digital dissemination. The website, www.kbc.co.az, offers its visitors an archive of previous KBC material, supplemental materials, and especially popular is the pay-per-song service of new UK artists that the KBC sponsors. The site also offers video material, shorts and specials, and it is planned within the year that the KBC will begin to offer new television episodes of its most popular programmes and within five years a large archive of older material available for cheap download on a pay-per-episode format with the price scaled to recentness and length of the episode in question.
One of the more popular features of the website, heavily criticized by private internet firms, is the subsidies provided by the government that make KBC Online advertisement and subscription free.
KBC News
KBC News has long been the sole provider of news to the whole United Kingdom, and despite the encroachment of ABN onto KBC’s market-share, it still can legitimately claim to be the highest watched, listened, and read news service in the UK. Domestic viewers can tune into KBC One for 24-hour news coverage as well as KBC World for more internationally-minded news, KBC Georgetown for coverage of debates in Parliament as well as other politically-orientated news programmes, KBC Finance for business news, and KBC TechTV for science and technology news.
Increasingly, KBC News has been branching out to the internet and one can now receive up-to-the-minute reports and wire services from the KBC News online site directly, or through e-mail services to one’s home PC, laptop, or personal data assistant device.
Given the United Kingdom’s only recent foray into the international community, KBC has only minimal operations outside the UK. With its headquarters in the KBC Centre in Imperium, KBC News operates four home country offices in addition to numerous regional offices that cover stories throughout the UK.
Despite its secure position owing to its public corporation nature, KBC News has come to find its once dominant position under challenge as smaller companies begin to threaten KBC. None more so than ABN, which has - through its conglomeration of a dozen smaller broadcasting corporations - now has the second largest news service in the UK. Although, at the current moment KBC does have one advantage over ABN in its wide-base, whereas ABN remains largely concentrated in the Home Islands.
KBC World
KBC World is a fledging division that seeks to take advantage of the UK’s growing prominence in the world by expanding UK broadcasts to the rest of the world. Offering the top KBC programmes and news services, KBC World will eventually specialise its programming for its unique markets, tailoring its selections to those that the local populations demand - and perhaps offering some programming in the market’s native language.
