Perspectives on Public Service Media

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is not to provide for an exhaustive overview of existing literature on public service broadcasting (PSB) in the digital age. Rather, it aims to sketch the different perspectives on public service media as a viable policy project. A distinction is made between two groups of perspectives that set out from different assumptions and pursue seemingly opposite objectives. The first group of market failure perspectives assumes that government intervention is acceptable in so far it is justified by the existence of a real market failure. In a digital age, it is assumed that market failures and, hence, the need for public broadcasters decline. Social democratic perspectives fundamentally disagree with this view, arguing that PSB and, by extension, public service media are an ideological and political choice in favour of democracy. Government intervention should in that sense not depend on market observations, but on values such as social cohesion, inclusion, diversity and pluralism. Both perspectives propose different future scenarios for PSB. The first rejects public service media, the second strongly propagates them. This chapter further explores the different future scenarios for public broadcasting as they underlie, to a large extent, European policy debates on public service media.KeywordsMarket FailureDigital Right ManagementMedia MarketPublic BroadcasterPublic Service DeliveryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.