SVoDs, new norms and the challenge for public service media

Abstract

The growing popularity of subscription video-on-demand services (SVoDs) has transformed the European media landscape, re-shaped consumption habits, fragmented audiences and made it more difficult for public service media (PSM) organizations to engage especially younger audiences. This article analyses challenges, such as competing against the immense commissioning power of SVoDs, faced by PSM. Focusing particularly on the UK experience, it highlights how, despite the growing prevalence and popularity of SVoDs and their role in promoting wider circulation for material drawn from a variety of international sources, PSM organizations are still recognized by audiences and by television programme-makers as being pivotal to provision of certain sorts of quintessentially local content. As this article argues, the rise of global streamers has both accentuated and altered the ways in which PSM deliver public value, effectively re-positioning PSM as elements of what might be seen as critical media infrastructure.