Public Television Programs Research Articles

Spotlight: Kam Copeland

Spotlight:Kam Copeland TreaAndrea M. Russworm Kam Copeland is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California and Dissertation Fellow in African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College. Currently, he is writing his dissertation, "Muhammad Gazes: Islam, Blackness, and Resistance Cinema in the US," a representational history of Black American Muslims in cinema. This project also explores how Black Muslims have developed alternative gazes and liberatory cinematic practices to resist dominant framings of Muslimness in US media. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Kam Copeland. Photograph courtesy of Kam Copeland. TreaAndrea M. Russworm: What are some of the consistent stories and insights among texts that are central to your research on media representations of US Black American Muslims? Kam Copeland: The first chapter of my dissertation focuses on The Hate That Hate Produced (WNTA-TV, 1959), a television documentary by Louis Lomax and Mike Wallace about the growth of Black Nationalism that aired in New York. With a primary emphasis on the Nation of Islam (NOI)—which the broadcast refers to as "the Black Muslims"—The Hate That Hate Produced [End Page 8] represents Black Muslimness as theologically inferior and politically menacing to white Western society. I argue that this broadcast produced the trope of the Black Muslim fanatic—a combination of the cinematic caricatures of the Black brute and the Muslim terrorist—via the white hegemonic gaze. Nevertheless, that trope was rejected by a Black radical gaze that reimagined revolutionaries who critiqued white supremacy and US empire (such as Malcolm X) as Third World heroes. After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, new Black public affairs television programs—such as Black Journal (NET/PBS, 1968–1977), Soul! (WNDT, 1968–1973), and Say Brother (WGBH, 1968–1997)—adopted the latter approach to reject the hegemonic gaze's representation of Black Muslimness. The image of the fanatic and the Third World hero is a dichotomy that I trace from the airing of The Hate That Hate Produced to contemporary representations. Russworm: I know your work also argues for considering media through the rubric of the cinematic. What's so generative for you about this approach? Copeland: In centering Black gazes, I focus on collective viewing practices. For example, St. Clair Bourne's documentary The Nation of Common Sense (1970), which aired on the television program Black Journal and profiled the day-to-day lives of Muslims in the NOI, was shown to audiences at banquets and other events hosted by mosques throughout the country. This allowed Muslim audiences to engage in a unified viewing experience, as though watching films at a cinema, while expressing melodic sounds of approval in line with the call-and-response traditions that exist in spiritual expressions throughout the African diaspora. I am also interested in how scholars such as Kara Keeling conceptualize various forms of the moving image, using the rubric of the cinematic to challenge dominant understandings of race, class, and gender.1 While my research and teaching interests focus on Black religion and media, this approach provides me with a framework that emphasizes collective struggle and helps me explore how theologies of Black liberation are mapped onto cinematic experiences and practices. Russworm: Tell us about a film that invites connections about race and religion and also prioritizes a Black cinematic gaze. Copeland: A chapter of my dissertation centers home videos produced in the late 1970s by the El Rukns (formerly known as the Blackstone Rangers), a Chicago-based street organization. While serving a prison sentence, Blackstone Ranger co-founder Jeff Fort embraced Islam and became known as Abdul Malik Ka'bah; he would also change the name of his organization to El Rukn. Although they would eventually embrace Sunni Islam, the El Rukns were initially affiliated with the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), a Muslim movement that arose during the Great Migration in the early twentieth century. In the late 1970s, the El Rukns would host parties at their mosque, or headquarters. Affectionately referred to as "The Fort," it was located at 3947 South Drexel Blvd. in an edifice formerly known as the Oakland Square Theatre. Two home videos...

Media and public sphere in Ethiopia: Mediated deliberations in public and commercial television programs

This paper explores if televised deliberations constitute the public sphere in Ethiopia, analysing the public service and commercial TV stations focussing on the EBC’s ETV Medrek, FBC’s Zuria Meles and LTV’s Sefiw Mihdar programs. It has drawn on content analysis of the mediated deliberations of the three TV programs and an in-depth interview with hosts of the programs. The study found that these television stations have created permanent elitist platforms where experts, the academia and other prominent figures discussed and debated that did not exist previously. In contrast, these programs did not create forums for ordinary citizens and other marginalised groups, including women. Indeed, these programs created limited space as platforms for different views, opinions, perceptions and diversity of participants in their discussions. These programs anticipated to covering event-oriented issues that kept changing each week. The program hosts faced internal and external influence mainly from political leaders in the daily routines of producing the programs in their respective media houses. Overall, the role of these TV stations in creating a platform for public sphere, setting the public agenda consistently and promoting public opinion formation endured minimal.

A skirmish on the Czech political scene: The glocalization of Greta Thunberg’s UN Climate Action Summit speech in the Czech media

This article is devoted to the local reconfiguration of global discourse. Utilizing the concepts of media dialogical network , membership category and glocalization, it analyses the development of the global media dialogical network initiated by Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019 in reports by the Czech News Agency, on the web page of the most widely read Czech tabloid newspaper, and in public television programs. The analysis focuses on the ways in which the social network siteś posts were integrated into the given media dialogical network, the categorization of Thunberg and the forms of glocalization of her speech. Through the social network siteś posts by Czech politicians, either those quoted or presented merely in the form of unattributed summaries, dominant categorizations of Thunberg were introduced into the given media dialogical network, especially those which disqualified her as a person and thus her speech as well. The way in which the social network siteś posts were used also significantly influenced the degree and manner of glocalization of this speech.

Preparing for a good death? Palliative care representations in the italian public television programming

The difficulty in accepting death is a constant that transcends differences of time and place. The literature shows that the dying is often subjected to invasive procedures with significant consequences on individual wellbeing and public health. If death is hard to accept even for the practitioners, what happens in the broader population? What narratives surround the end of life? The study focuses on the Italian context and its transformations, the public’s understanding of palliative care, and the television programs dealing with hospice and palliative care aired by the Italian public broadcasting company from the 1950s to the present day.

Medijski tekst kao tumač i kritičar realnosti - medijska reprezentacija pandemije korona virusa 2020. godine

In March 2020, a state of emergency was declared worldwide as a result of the rapid spread of COVID-19. In Serbia, this led to strict preventive measures (curfew). In Sweden, such measures were not taken, but the system relied on personal responsibility of each individual, instead. In emergency situations, the media gain great importance as a source of information, and as such have the ability to alleviate or worsen the insecurity that the public feels, which can further contribute to the moral panic. In order to determine the potential of electronic media for informing citizens and encouraging critical thinking (during an emergency situation), we have explored rhetorical strategies and their potential for affirming the pluralism of views. The subject of research were broadcasting practices of three TV stations: two public media services (Radio Television of Serbia and Swedish Television) and one cable TV from Serbia (N1). By method of content analysis, we have come to a conclusion that all three media provided viewers with comprehensive, coherent and verified information. During the analysed period, the media in Serbia almost doubled the duration of their news programs, which gives an impression of non-selectivity and a desire to prove maximum coverage on all topics. On the other hand, SVT was consistent in the duration and scope of news programs. The way in which events were presented was mainly characterized by objectivity, although the Serbian public service also displayed a tendency towards intimidation. The biggest differences were noticed in terms of pluralism of views, since it was much more present in the programs of the Swedish public service and cable television (N1) than in the Serbian public service television programs. One of the rhetoric specifics in the way how N1 was presenting the news is discrediting the current political leadership and the decisions they have made.

Eurowybory 2019 w polskiej agendzie medialnej. Strategie komunikacyjne redakcji wybranych telewizyjnych programów informacyjnych na Twitterze

European election of 2019 on the Polish media agenda. Editorial communication strategies of selected TV news programs on Twitter The article presents the results of empirical research regarding the use of the main nationwide television news programs by the potential of the Twitter micro-blog in terms of publicizing the election campaign to the European Parliament in 2019. The main research questions concerned the degree of interest of the editors of public television programs (“Wiadomości” TVP1) and commercial television (“Fakty” TVN) in European elections and the manner in which the campaigns of individual political entities were publicized. The results of the research allowed not only to identify and analyze the communication strategies used by the both editorial boards, but also to deduce about their degree of political bias during the campaign.

Televisual Emotional Pedagogy: AIDS, Affect, and Activism on Vito Russo’sOur Time

Starting in New York City in the 1970s, gay men and lesbians created public access television programs to shine a spotlight on their experiences, communities, concerns, and businesses. This article asks, “How did public access programming provide an emerging televisual forum for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people to circulate community affects, experiences, and activism?” Looking to the “AIDS” episode of the 1983 cable access series Our Time, this article traces emerging affective responses to the AIDS epidemic, fear and anger in particular, present in the episode. This article argues that the content and aesthetics of the episode produce a televisual emotional pedagogy about AIDS, making sense of the rising panic to channel these feelings toward collective action. While little research has explored gay and lesbian public access programming, this article reveals that it provides a significant contribution to television history and to mediated archives of feelings in response to AIDS.

It's Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power Television

It's Been Beautiful: and Power Television by Gayle Wald (with photographs by Chester Higgins). Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 288 pp, ISBN-10: 0822358379, reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs.This book examines the right story to tell-one of, in author Gayle Wald's words, fragile alliance of liberal and radical interests, both public and private-and, thankfully, arrives at the right place (p. 39). Soul! (1968-1973), a nationally distributed public television program that could loosely be described as the radical sister of the more commercial Soul Train, fired the imagination and reflected the multi-faceted sensibilities of its community of viewers. Using largely untapped wells of research about the early days of American public television vis-a-vis America, Wald relates a nuanced story of how the condescension of white American public television officials seeking to provide an outlet for the angry community in the late 1960s, led to a (largely) Black-controlled showcase of the Arts Movement on (largely) aesthetic terms. It is the restrained approach, however, of choosing as this book's scholarship basis intellectual sources outside the soul of Black/African folks that makes this book strangely appealing and more than a little irritating.Soul! (episodes of which can be found online) was first a product of insurrection. Reacting to that outpouring of anger and violence, white funders, somewhat accidentally, allowed a producer, Ellis Haizlip, to have his way. WNET-Channel 13 (now known as Thirteen), then and now the New York-based flagship station of the PBS collective, wanted a companion show to Black Journal, its newsmagazine. initial and white idea of a Black Tonight Show developed under Haizlip into a Arts salon that was cooler than the The Flip Wilson Show and Don Cornelius' large Afro. Wald wisely includes as much of Haizlip's life story into this book as she can fit. (Mr. Soul, a documentary film on Haizlip's life and work done by his niece Melissa Haizlip, is struggling to get funding.) letters of support Soul! received are well used in Wald's book. They show the involvement of the community instead of just describing the appreciation of an audience.It's Been Beautiful builds somewhat on Devorah Heitner's Black Power TV, a pioneering 2013 intellectual narrative on the early days of East Coast public affairs television, and does so with great intellectual gusto. Wald, a professor of English and American Studies at George Washington University, rightly uses the New York-based Soul!-a program that would feature, for example, Nikki Giovanni interviewing James Baldwin or a studio performance of Last Poets, or Earth, Wind and Fire-to find key TV text of the era or as a cultural project joined by common cause to 1960s and 1970s political struggles (p. 4).The show's arc matches its era: Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed two weeks before the grant to create the show was submitted and it was cancelled because PBS's funders, facing the onslaught of the Nixon era and the fading of the Power movement, wanted to create programming that would have Blacks and whites interacting (p. 63).Hence, the author discusses Soul! as a program, along with its performers and producers-are worth the price of the book alone. Wald does not shy away from explaining American culture in all its glory and anger. But she does not seem to want to dig into the African, non-Western roots of what she is seeing and describing. …

Shaming the Nation on Public Affairs Television

The commercial discourses of the skin-lightening cosmetics industry in globalizing India have propped up the ideological legitimacy of colorism or skin color discrimination whereby dark-skinned Indians are viewed as inferior to and less valued than light-skinned Indians. Two episodes of NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt’s national public affairs television program We the People (2008 and 2013) tackle the growing problem of commodity colorism in India. My textual analysis of these two episodes of We the People examines the ways in which Barkha Dutt takes up and creates a forum for debate on the incendiary issues of racism and colorism on her show. I consider the agents, institutions, and social structures she holds accountable in these programs, and I explore the perspectives on anti-colorism and anti-racism that gain visibility or get marginalized in We the People’s televised terrain of democracy and civil society.

In Memoriam: John P. Quinn, MD

In Memoriam: John P. Quinn, MD

Cognitive and Social Themes in Chidren's Public Television Programming in the United States

This study employed inductive analysis to analyze forty-two PBS children's educational television series in the United States for cognitive and social themes. Series were grouped by age bands of 6 years and under, mixed age, and 6 years and over. Memoing resulted in ten social and cognitive categories, which were ranked and weighted for comparison. The weighted data were sorted in multiple ways for analysis revealing Social and Emotional Behavior as the most predominant category in PBS children's programming, and Mathematics was one of the least predominant categories utilized as a main focus across all age groups. These results raise a concern for a socio-economic divide between those who utilize public broadcasting as a free resource for school readiness and those who invest in programming and other media with more mathematical content.

Supplementing literacy instruction with a media-rich intervention: Results of a randomized controlled trial

► We test the efficacy of a media-rich curriculum supplement that incorporates content from three PBS programs. ► We examined impacts of the supplement on early literacy outcomes. ► We found significant impacts on children's letter-recognition, letter sounds, and concepts of story and print. ► Results indicate promise of incorporating PBS content into preschools. This study investigates whether a curriculum supplement organized as a sequence of teacher-led literacy activities using digital content from public educational television programs can improve early literacy outcomes of low-income preschoolers. The study sample was 436 children in 80 preschool classrooms in California and New York. Preschool teachers were randomly assigned to implement either a 10-week media-rich early literacy intervention that employed clips from Sesame Street , Between the Lions , and SuperWhy! or to a comparison condition. The media-rich literacy supplement had positive impacts (+0.20 ≤ d ≤ +0.55) on children's ability to recognize letters, sounds of letters and initial sounds of words, and children's concepts of story and print. The study findings show the potential for incorporating literacy content from public media programming into curriculum supplements supported by professional development to impact early literacy outcomes of low-income children.

Toward a Non-Stoical Cosmopolitanism

Toward a Non-Stoical Cosmopolitanism

Performing Black Power in the “Cradle of Liberty”

This article examines the early history of Boston's black public affairs television program Say Brother from 1968—1970. This history shows that as a local broadcast, WGBH's Say Brother could take a more outspoken position than a national program, such as Black Journal, could have taken. The article explores the radical pedagogy offered by Say Brother, which attempted to impart “new principles of Blackness” to its viewers using multiple genres. Through an analysis of the archived program and interviews with former staff members, the article demonstrates how Say Brother's youthful creators took advantage of establishment fears about black uprisings to create an openly critical television show that examined black discontent, showcased black viewpoints and black artists and overcame a cancellation attempt by rallying community response.

Symbolic Capital in a Virtual Heterosexual Market

This study analyzes gender variation in nonstandard typography—specifically, abbreviations and insertions—in mobile phone text messages (SMS) posted to a public Italian interactive television (iTV) program. All broadcast SMS were collected for a period of 2 days from the Web archive for the iTV program, and the frequency and distribution of abbreviations and insertions, as well as overall message lengths, were analyzed according to sender gender. The results reveal that females posted more and longer SMS and followed more, and more varied, nonstandard typographic practices, contrary to previous gender-related findings in the sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication literatures. A theoretically grounded explanation for these findings is developed in terms of the localized norms of a heterosexual market—and an implicit dating market—in Italian iTV SMS.

Closer to truth: science, meaning, and the future

Explore the latest scientific research, philosophical thinking, and expressions of human creativity. Some of the world's most esteemed experts-Nobel laureates, best-selling authors, and renowned scholars-engage in spontaneous and intimate conversations that combine hard facts with an inspiring, and breathtaking, look into our future. Based on the public television program of the same name, Closer To Truth features distinguished specialists who forcefully debate provocative subjects that have broad ramifications for the population at large: Who gets to validate alternative medicine? How does basic science support national security? Can we believe in both religion and science? At the heart is the question: how will scientific advances and the philosophical issues they create affect the individual as well as humanity as a whole? Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future explores the latest scientific research, philosophical thinking, and expressions of human creativity. Some of the world's most esteemed experts-Nobel laureates, best-selling authors, and renowned scholars-engage in spontaneous and intimate conversations that combine hard facts with an inspiring-and breathtaking-look into our future. Based on the public television program of the same name, Closer To Truth features distinguished specialists who forcefully debate provocative subjects that have broad ramifications for the population at large: Who gets to validate alternative medicine? How does basic science support national security? Can we believe in both religion and science? At the heart is the question: how will scientific advances and the philosophical issues they create affect the individual as well as humanity as a whole? Whether the subject is the meaning of human consciousness, the ethics of testing experimental drugs on sick people, scientific thinking versus religious beliefs, or how music may help mental development, Closer To Truth uncovers exciting new lines of inquiry and offers fresh perspectives. Participants include Nobel laureates Murray Gell-Mann and David Baltimore; authors Michael Crichton, Octavia Butler, and David Brin; astrophysicists Alan Guth and Neil deGrasse Tyson; planetary scientist Bruce Murray; physicist Steven Koonin; quantum theorist Seth Lloyd; molecular biologist Lucy Shapiro; neuroscientists Nancy Andreasen, Terry Sejnowski, and Christof Koch; psychiatrist Leslie Brothers; Psychology Today's Robert Epstein; musicologists Jeanne Bamberger and Robert Freeman; ethicist Alexander Capron; skeptic Michael Shermer; theologian Nancey Murphy; and Islamic scientist Muzaffar Iqbal.

Collective Effort: Archiving LGBT Moving Images

Collective Effort:Archiving LGBT Moving Images Lynne Kirste (bio) Queer moving image materials, to paraphrase the old gay rights slogan, are everywhere. Three kinds of archives collect them: LGBT1 archives, non-LGBT mixed media archives, and moving image archives. These repositories collectively hold thousands of films and tapes with queer content, made by queer filmmakers, and/or perceived as queer by audiences. In addition, studio libraries hold many of the original elements of LGBT theatrical releases and television programs. A new model for queer audiovisual archiving is the Outfest Legacy Collection at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, founded in 2005, which brings together the complementary resources of a major LGBT film organization and a premiere moving image repository. Being "everywhere" creates both opportunities and challenges for preservation and access. In one respect, queer films and tapes are too scattered for their own good: LGBT independent and amateur productions are typically stored in media-unfriendly conditions in filmmakers' homes rather than in archives. For decades LGBT people have shot and appeared in home movies and home videos, documented the activities of queer organizations, and filmed queer events; the surge of independent queer filmmaking that began in the 1980s has increased in subsequent years. Since mainstream cinema and television have consistently marginalized LGBT people, a large percentage of all queer moving images are found in independent and amateur works. These films and tapes contain the great majority of moving images that have a queer point of view, portray LGBT people as complex individuals rather than stereotypes, offer a diversity of race, age, ethnic background, politics, gender identification, and other qualities, and show LGBT people in the context of our relationships, families, and communities. Because amateur and independent productions are rarely widely distributed, typically only a few elements exist of each title. If these elements remain in filmmakers' closets and basements, they will eventually deteriorate, suffer damage, or be discarded or lost. In the meantime, usually only the filmmaker has access to the materials. To make these images viewable now and in the future, archival outreach is essential. Archives house LGBT moving images dating from the very early days of cinema to the most recent releases. Queer archival holdings include features and short subjects; fiction, documentary, experimental, animated, and educational films; newsreels, screen tests, outtakes, trailers, behind-the-scenes footage, home movies, and interviews; and broadcast, cable, and public access television programs. Elements range from original negatives and video masters to DVDs. [End Page 134] Most archival repositories share the same mission: to gather materials that fall within their collecting mandate; protect their holdings from harm and damage; identify, organize, and catalogue materials; preserve deteriorated items; and make their collections publicly accessible. Achieving these goals with queer moving image materials requires sufficient staff, climate-controlled storage, specialized equipment, expertise in film and tape handling and care, knowledge and appreciation of moving image history and LGBT culture, and money. LGBT archives came into being through the remarkable efforts of queer people who took action to safeguard queer cultural heritage from being ignored, misrepresented, censored, lost, and destroyed. During the twentieth century, LGBT individuals and groups around the globe collected books, periodicals, newsletters, organizational records, correspondence, diaries, photographs, films, videotapes, audiotapes, and artifacts relating to the queer experience. These passionate, mostly amateur, archivists gathered and shared an impressive amount of LGBT material. Some of the private collections eventually became the basis for public LGBT archives; others later formed distinct LGBT collections within archives with more general collecting policies; and many of the collections created after the rise of the gay rights movement were founded as public collections.2 While most LGBT archives focus on paper materials, the majority also hold some moving image materials, usually home movies, amateur documentation of queer organizations and events, cable access television shows, homemade compilations of clips from TV programs with queer content, and/or VHS tapes and DVDs of television shows and theatrical films. LGBT archives can deal fairly easily with most access media, which enrich their collections and do not require the special care that one-of-a-kind materials need. However, unique films and tapes are often at risk of deterioration or damage. Most LGBT...

The Production of a Beloved Community: Sesame Street's Answer to America's Inequalities

The children's public television program Sesame Street strived exemplify and create an egalitarian and more tolerant community both on screen and in actuality. Sesame Street's aim educate disadvantaged urban preschool children and put them on an equal intellectual level as their middle-class peers when they entered grade school was central the development and direction of the show. To appeal their audience, the producers designed reproduction of working-class, urban city block for television studio set and directed multiethnic and multilingual cast of human and puppet characters that taught fundamental skills for reading, writing, and mathematics as well as social practices of open-mindedness, tolerance, and goodwill. The diverse cast commingled and solved problems together in their neighborhood setting. With the debut on November 10, 1969, and at least three years prior of preparation and research, Sesame Street grew out of the era's milieu of the civil rights struggle and the effort of social reform. The vision and principles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s beloved community signified the central commitment of the show. The idea for beloved community developed long before King espoused his message the civil rights movement, but the concept became popular as result of his leadership and appeal. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thinkers Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebhur, and Josiah Royce combined Christian doctrine and the practice of moral compassion define their ideal vision of beloved community (Zepp). By the mid-1950s, recognized as the beginning of the civil rights movement, King pronounced in speeches and published writings his primary goal as the fulfillment of such society. The roots of King's philosophy and the beliefs he carried throughout the movement remain in contention as scholars debate King's major influences and primary goals. Zepp situates King's influences in the history of American liberal theology, while James Cone and Richard Lischer find the source of King's position in the Southern Baptist Church and African American religious tradition. Throughout the movement, King's thinking proved anything but static, but his goals expressed in his publications and major speeches, designed for mostly white audience, emphasized nonviolence and the realization of beloved community. In beloved community, the diverse peoples of the United States and ultimately the world reconciled their differences, integrated, cooperated, and coexisted with one another. I have dream, King called out at the March 1963 on Washington that ... the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able sit down together at the table of brotherhood (qtd. in Carson and Shepard 85). He asked for peoples of all nationalities and religions join hands and respect one another (Carson and Shepard 87). Childhood is not simply time of innocence - free from the social and cultural pressures of the adult world -but defined by historical trends and political agendas. Joel Spring argues that, throughout its history, the behaviors and goals of the public school system have sustained the goal of cultural domination. Public schools particularly have become one form of what Spring calls ideological management (4), or the act of creating and dispersing knowledge throughout society. From its incipience, the public education system sought to manage the distribution of ideas m society (3) in order preserve and uphold democracy. Sesame Street became an example of such school; originally financed by the federal government and nonprofit organizations, the program educated children through the medium of television before they entered the school system. Spring argues that the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the production company behind Sesame Street, attempted shape public morality and present a standard as what the world should be like (384). …

Digitalizing Diversity: Public Service Strategies and Television Program Supply in Finland in 2002

Digitalizing Diversity: Public Service Strategies and Television Program Supply in Finland in 2002

Digitalizing Diversity: Public Service Strategies and Television Program Supply in Finland in 2002

In this article, we examine content supply as a public service strategy in Finland, one of the forerunner countries of digital terrestrial television in Europe. Regarding digitalization, European broadcasters face several options from full service to a specialized mission. The case at hand is the first full digital year of 2002 in Finland. The focus is on one of the traditional principles of public service broadcasting, the diversity of programming, as it is realized in the new, digital, multichannel environment. We examine content diversity by comparing channel profiles as well by analyzing indexes of the horizontal and vertical breadth and dissimilarity of programming. In a market of two public service and two commercial analogue generalist TV channels, the five new thematic digital channels have radically altered the amount of system-wide supply, but the diversity of programming has not suffered. This is due to the specializing strategy of the public service broadcaster. Its approach to focus on factual programming is clear in its digital output but can be detected in moderation also in its analogue supply. However, with the expected increase on commercial digital supply also in terrestrial networks, there is the possibility of the generalist public service broadcaster to turn into a fragmented one.