European Public Service Broadcasting Research Articles

Gobernanza de las radiotelevisiones públicas europeas: poder estructural centralizado y politizado

The different governance models of the European public service broadcasters reflect the centralized structural political power of the country centralized in each of their States or regions, lacking normative changes to ensure and reinforce their independence, trust and legitimacy. The recent controversies around RTVE and RAI are two examples of how the governance of these organizations reflect the power structures of the society. None of the three models that characterize the European configuration presents young and communication-related profiles. Most of their board members are still men aged over 50, and even over 65, professionally linked to legal or economic backgrounds. The study is completed with an analysis of the professionalism of governance bodies, an essential requirement to eliminate systems based on partisan quotas.

Selling News to Audiences – A Qualitative Inquiry into the Emerging Logics of Algorithmic News Personalization in European Quality News Media

How do news organizations design and implement algorithmically personalized news services? We conducted 16 in-depth interviews with professionals working in European public service broadcasting and commercial quality news media to answer this question. The news business is undergoing rapid transformations regarding how news production is financed, how news is produced and delivered to audiences and how citizens consume news. In all of these changes algorithmic recommender systems play a role. We focus on news organizations’ own personalized news services, and analyze how they define the role of personalization in contributing to the financial success of the organization, in reaching and retaining audiences, and in fulfilling their editorial mission. We interviewed editors, journalists, technologists and business intelligence and publishing professionals to gain a structural understanding of the often conflicting goals of personalization. We found that rather than focusing on increasing short-term user engagement, European quality news media try to use news personalization to increase long-term audience loyalty. In distinction to the “platform logic of personalization”, which uses personalization to produce engagement and sell audiences to advertisers, they have developed a “news logic of personalization”, which uses personalization to sell news to audiences.

Dealing with viewers’ complaints: Role, visibility and transparency of PSB Ombudsmen in ten European countries

The article shows the results of a comparative analysis of the complaints management mechanisms offered by ten European Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) systems on their corporate websites. Using a qualitative methodology, it maps the procedures and evaluates the visibility, transparency and dissemination of results. The findings show, firstly, great diversity in terms of responsible election and management, despite the converging media governance. Also noteworthy is the margin of substantial improvement in the transparency and dissemination possibilities, specially relating to the interaction offered by the digital environment. Among the ten public corporations analysed, the BBC is the best ranked, while RAI presents the worst performance. Finally, the comparative analysis shows some correlation within the Hallin and Mancini Mediterranean model, but less are evident among the countries included in the Liberal and Democratic Corporate model.

Hva kjennetegner den flermediale nyhetsjournalistikken i NRK, sammenlignet med andre europeiske allmennkringkastere?

A comparison of crossmedia news journalism at the NRK with similar European public service broadcasters. Digitisation of news production has laid the ground for increased cooperation and integration across media platforms in broadcasting organisations, but it has proved difficult to establish satisfying work routines for cross-media journalism. Over the past few years, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) has taken specific action to implement new technology and to make both organisational changes and changes in the physical surroundings as part of an over-arching strategy of making its news journalism more platformindependent. Comparing developments within the NRK to convergence processes in a selection of five similar European public service broadcasters (as analysed in Larrond et al., 2015), the article is a status report of convergence developments in news journalism at the NRK, with specific attention given to the establishing of a centralised news desk for coordinating and publishing news across media platforms.

Pride and Prejudice

The Olympic Games are one of the most popular global mega-media events. However, the ways in which the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games in London were reported varied significantly from one country to another. In order to compare how different countries represented this event, we conducted a qualitative discourse analysis of three days of television news coverage from 10 channels in five countries: the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We explored whether different locations, political systems, and television systems affect how the same event is reported. We found that while European public service broadcasters (BBC and ARD) were more serious, critical, and political than their commercial counterparts (ITV and RTL), the Japanese commercial broadcaster’s coverage of the event was more critical than that of the public service broadcaster, which was popularized and nationalistic throughout. In China, the more market-oriented Dragon TV was more evaluative in its reporting than the state-run CCTV. NBC, which monopolized the broadcast rights in the United States, emphasized the universal values of the Olympics and avoided nationalism. In light of our results, future attention should be directed toward the role of commercial broadcasting in a contemporary globalized world in which ideological constellations are changing.

Opportunities and Limitations of Newsroom Convergence

Like many news media organisations, European public service broadcasters are adapting their corporate strategies to the specific demands of the evolving communicative environment. Digitisation and convergence have usually been presented as an opportunity to reinvent public service broadcasting into public service media, by producing and delivering (news) content across traditional radio, television and new online platforms. While investment in digital facilities has set the basis for a more integrated operation amongst the different news media outlets, finding a workable template to implement professional cross-media practices has been more complex than expected. With the aim of exploring key challenges of convergence affecting public service broadcasting newsrooms, this article presents a multiple-case study that investigates the current convergence processes of five European mid-sized public broadcasting corporations—the United Kingdom’s BBC Scotland, Spain’s CCMA and EITB, Norway’s NRK and Flemish-Belgian VRT. Combining an array of qualitative methods, the study focuses on specific convergence parameters, including newsrooms’ physical structure and management, cross-media production routines and workflows, degree of multi-skilling in journalists, professional identities, and attitudes towards convergence. Findings show that public broadcasters tend to follow a similar pattern in basic aspects, like grouping radio, television and online newsrooms together in the same physical space, even if this model has different outcomes in terms of cooperation across media and journalists’ involvement.

Making Public Television Social? Public Service Broadcasting and the Challenges of Social Media

This article investigates how the rise of social media affects European public service broadcasting (PSB), particularly in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. We explore the encounter of “social” and “public” on three levels: the level of institution, professional practice, and content. After investigating these three levels, we address the more general question of how public broadcasters are coping with the challenges of social media. How can public television profit from the abilities of social media to engage new young audiences (and makers) without compromising public values? And will PSB be able to extend the creation of public value outside its designated space to social media at large? While the boundaries between public and corporate online space are becoming progressively porous, the meaning of “publicness” is contested and reshaped on the various levels of European public broadcasting.

PSB goes personal: The failure of personalised PSB web pages

Between 2006 and 2011, a number of European public service broadcasting (PSB) organisations offered their website users the opportunity to create their own PSB homepage. The web customisation was conceived by the editors as a response to developments in commercial web services, particularly social networking and content aggregation services, but the customisation projects revealed tensions between the ideals of customer sovereignty and the editorial agenda-setting. This paper presents an overview of the PSB activities as well as reflections on the failure of the customisable PSB homepages. The analysis is based on interviews with the PSB editors involved in the projects and on studies of the interfaces and user comments. Commercial media customisation is discussed along with the PSB projects to identify similarities and differences.

Marriage of convenience? Public service broadcasters’ cross-national partnerships in factual television

This article explores how public service broadcasters (PSBs) in Europe form cross-national partnerships to secure factual television programming and develop new television channels in response to globalization and transformations within the media sector. The article’s main case study is the BBC/Discovery partnership — the most extensive formal agreement in international television history for factual television. This partnership serves as a case to explore the feasibility of such collaborations for other PSBs in Europe. In doing so, two different regional partnership models emerge: the Nordic public—public model and the model adopted by PSBs in German-speaking Europe that mixes the Nordic and the BBC’s Anglo-American approach. While the BBC/Discovery partnership is unique in scale and global impact due to Discovery’s financial weight, and the BBC’s production experience and position in the programming market, as well as the partners’ linguistic advantage, the two other models exemplify the possibilities for less wealthy European PSBs in smaller linguistic markets.

Under siege by commercial interests? BBC and DR Online between the national and European policy frameworks

The increasing competition in media markets, the economic downturn and the cyclical decline in advertising revenues have put the private media sector under increasing strain around the world. As a result, commercial operators have boosted their lobbying activities to increase their influence on media policy-making. They are demanding that national authorities reduce regulatory control on private enterprises while raising oversight on public initiatives and cutting new public sector initiatives. This article examines how two European public service broadcasters (PSBs) have expanded in the online world: the BBC in the United Kingdom and Danmarks Radio (DR) in Denmark. It analyses the main policies adopted by the governments of the two nations to regulate the evolution of PSBs on the Internet as well as the policies and practices adopted by the BBC and DR. Furthermore, it reveals how the commercial pressure that has clearly influenced the more recent national policies on public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom and that has spread its influence in Brussels is impacting on the expansion online of PSBs. The article eventually questions the possibility of developing a public service broadcasting philosophy across the Internet (PSB 2.0).

In Between the Accented and the Mainstream: Cutting across Boundaries in Kniven i Hjärtat

The article discusses the Swedish fictional television drama Kniven i Hjärtat (KIH) as an accented drama depicting diasporic experience in contemporary Sweden. It is inspired by an ethnographic audience research conducted by the author among migrant teenagers. KIH, produced by Swedish public broadcasting company SVT (2004) is a mixture of realist drama and youth musical depicting life in Swedish multicultural suburb. It is argued that while KIH shares elements of Hamid Naficy?s (2001) concept of ? the accented? thematically and linguistically, the production of the series parts from Naficy?s understanding of the accented as alternative. Produced by the public service broadcasting company (SVT) KIH is situated in the mainstream media influenced by international television broadcasting, most evidently by the BBC. Moreover KIH seems to be berthed in the European public service broadcasting culture as it embraces the shifts in EBU?s multicultural policies.

Antiracist and Multicultural Discourses in European Public Service Broadcasting: Celebrating Consumable Differences in the Prix Europa Iris Media Prize

Since the dawn of the millennium, public debate on multiculturalism has intensified in Europe. Many countries known for their multicultural and tolerant attitudes, began to tighten their immigration and integration policies. The purpose of this article is to analyze European multicultural discourses by focusing on critical evaluation of the Prix Europa Iris, the yearly awards competition that celebrates multicultural television programming in Europe. Although submissions are also received from independent filmmakers and commercial television, public broadcasting corporations play key roles in the Prix Europa organization and its definition of the event. I examine how jury reports, speeches, and other material in the Prix Europa Iris website define and signify multiculturalism and antiracism. These texts influence multicultural media policy throughout Europe. The study demonstrates that the role of the media in creating mutual understanding among cultures and in unifying European identity has been emphasized by this event. The position taken in the Prix Europa Iris overlooks structural aspects of racism and power relations in society. There has been a discursive shift in the 21st century from recognition of racism and marginalized position of ethnic minorities and immigrants to a focus on individual integration.

THE LAST YET ALSO THE FIRST CREATIVE ACT IN TELEVISION?

A television channel's identity is shaped by its output: not just the relative share of different programme genres but equally so the relative position programmes take up in the schedule. This paper refutes the notion that the development of scheduling strategies and tactics – to make the programme schedules as interesting as possible for viewers – are a product of a commercial and competitive television environment. It will be demonstrated that, from its inception, public service television paid considerable attention to the way in which the actual programme schedules could help establish its cultural–educational broadcasting goals. Taking Flemish public service television between 1953 and 1974 as a case in point, the paper analyses how, first, European public service broadcasting (PSB) created its own annual, seasonal, weekly and daily rhythm and, second, how contemporary scheduling strategies and tactics (compatibility, hammocking, etc.) can be identified in the monopolistic past, albeit interpreted along historically dominant PSB policy objectives.

DAB Eureka-147: a European vision for digital radio

Like its analogue counterpart, digital radio is one of the 'older' forms of new media. The technology of digital radio broadcasting has been under active development for at least 25 years and has produced a number of different technical solutions, the longest established of which is Eureka-147 or Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). This article explores DAB's distinctly European vision for the future of broadcasting. DAB is traced to its origins in 1980s European research and development policy and its affinity with traditions of European public service broadcasting. Ironically, it was DAB's failure to capitalize on its 'Europeanness' that contributed to the fragmentary political support that it later received, compromising its subsequent implementation. From a contemporary perspective DAB's original mission, while visionary, to provide enhanced, interactive information and entertainment services through audio, text and visual content, appears to have misread trends towards convergence and appears out of st...

DAB Eureka-147: a European vision for digital radio

Like its analogue counterpart, digital radio is one of the 'older' forms of new media. The technology of digital radio broadcasting has been under active development for at least 25 years and has produced a number of different technical solutions, the longest established of which is Eureka-147 or Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). This article explores DAB's distinctly European vision for the future of broadcasting. DAB is traced to its origins in 1980s European research and development policy and its affinity with traditions of European public service broadcasting. Ironically, it was DAB's failure to capitalize on its 'Europeanness' that contributed to the fragmentary political support that it later received, compromising its subsequent implementation. From a contemporary perspective DAB's original mission, while visionary, to provide enhanced, interactive information and entertainment services through audio, text and visual content, appears to have misread trends towards convergence and appears out of step with contemporary media consumption patterns.

Public Service Broadcasters Will Survive Without Expensive Sports Programs: A Response to Tjernström and Tjernström

My article, “Sports Broadcasting: Is it a Job for Public Service Broadcasters?—A Welfare Economic Perspective” (Solberg, 2007), which recommends that European public service broadcasters (PSBs) giv...

Rational Foolishness Would Destroy a Public Service Broadcasting System1

Solberg (2007) applied welfare economics principles to suggest that the currentpolicy of European public service broadcasters of acquiring expensive sportsrights should be stopped. Handing over expensive sports programs to commercialrivals would release resources that could be used to purchase programs that haveexternalities or qualify as merit goods. A welfare economic gain would be made.This sounds fair enough at first sight: a straightforward application of welfareeconomics that provides clear guidance for media policymakers.

Public Service Broadcasting as an Infrastructure of Translation in the Age of Cultural Diversity

This article investigates a redefined socio-cultural role of European public service broadcasting as an infrastructure of translation in times of globalization, migration and the proliferation of new media providers. Drawing upon research into multilingual broadcasting in Europe and Australia, and in particular a case study of Special Broadcasting Service Australia (SBS), it argues for an ongoing relevance of European public service broadcasting (PSB), albeit within wider conceptions of translingual, transnational or European citizenship. It is proposed that of the two versions of translation, institutional in the EU and mediated in Australia respectively, the mediated version has achieved higher success in communicating diversity across hybrid communities. The main point raised here is the importance of `connections' and, within the framework of `cultural diversity' and `multilingualism' in Europe, arguably at the expense of `Europeanness'. The concept of translation allows thought beyond a single language but also beyond diversity and towards interlingual communication and `mutual intelligibility'. As such it is useful to inform a community-building media policy for Europe as a necessary alternative to the historically dominant top-down EU language policy.

Reinventing public service broadcasting in Europe: prospects, promises and problems

New information technologies, liberalizing policies and rapidly changing societies – from mono- to multicultural – entail serious consequences for the prospects of European public service broadcasters in a network society. The European concept of PSB as a comprehensive and universal service is challenged by both EU and national authorities at three levels: 1) mission and program task (comprehensive or complementary programming?), 2) organization (central organization or ‘distributed public service’?) and 3) financing (license fee, advertising or ‘state aid’?). There are pressures towards a more ‘pure’ model of public service broadcasting and/or towards de-institutionalization of PSB and ‘distributed public service’. Recent pleadings for (e.g., in the Netherlands) and practices (e.g., in New Zealand) of new PSB policy directions will be evaluated. The paper deals with the question whether the European full-fledged PSB model is still realistic or a more small-scale public service a la the American PBS would be a more viable prospect.

Public Service Media Online? Regulating Public Broadcasters' Internet Services—A Comparative Analysis

Facing a digital media system, European public service broadcasters have encountered increasing scrutiny from both competitors and regulators. As these institutions have ventured onto media platforms very unlike traditional broadcast radio and television, discussions about the scope of their activities have flourished. The case of the internet clearly illustrates the emerging challenges. How have public service broadcasters approached the internet? How do regulatory frameworks relate to the wider remits? Is it public service media online? This article presents a comparative study of three Western European mainly publicly funded broadcasters' activities on the internet, their arguments in support of them, the role of competitors, and actual regulatory frameworks they relate to. It scrutinizes how different forms of regulations affect the developments. Based on the findings, the article outlines remaining problematic issues for national regulation of public broadcasters' online services and suggests how researches might get a better grasp of public service media online.