Do More — With Less: Some Challenges for the Public Service Broadcaster

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The 1980s seems to be the decade in which public service broadcasting will have to answer for its existence as never before. Certainly in most countries, where public service broadcasting is part of the media scene, there has been the bubbling of controversy in the past: heated debates about funding; disagreements about program policies; revelations of management inefficiency and incompetence. These things are perhaps all part of the complex, somewhat neurotic love/hate relationship that audiences have with their national broadcaster. In recent years, however, the ‘debate’ about public service broadcasting has taken on a new tone. It is almost a frantic debate, conducted with a great deal of energy by government, broadcasters and audiences, and often with considerable bitterness. There is now a constant testing of the legitimacy of the public service broadcaster. Those of us who work within these organisations find that we are required regularly to make the argument for national broadcasting and to restate the philosophical assumptions that underpin its existence. Why is this so?