The Public in Public Service Media

The importance of reconceptualising what public service broadcasting [PSB] should be and do in the 21st century is a profile issue in media policy and strategic development planning. There is growing recognition that public participation is a necessary if problematic aspect of the transition to public service media [PSM]. This recognition correlates with a deepening understanding that the viability of the enterprise depends on the people paying for it and using its services.

This fourth RIPE Reader demonstrates how the historic insularity of PSB companies is changing in efforts to restructure and revitalise the enterprise. The substance features further development of research presented in the RIPE@2008 conference in Germany, titled Public Service Media in the 21st Century: Participation, Partnership and Media Development.

The authors included in this volume query what is required to achieve participation-readiness in many interdependent facets: strategy revision, organisational restructuring, retooling production processes, and redefining professional identities. Approached in two sections, the first focuses on theories and trends and the second on practices and performance. The contents document the significance of engaging the public in, with and through media services, arguing the crucial importance of the Public in Public Service Media.

Content

Preface

Beyond Altruism. Why Public Participation in Public Service Media Matters
Gregory Ferrell Lowe

Trends and Theorisation

The Public’s Choice. How Deregulation, Commercialisation and Media Concentration Could Strengthen Public Service Media
Josef Trappel

From Public Service Broadcasting to Public Service Communication
Richard Collins

Journalistic Authority Meets Public Participation. Re-Reading Reith in the Age of Networks
Eeva Mäntymäki

Re-thinking PSM Audiences. Diversity of Participation for Strategic Considerations
Minna Aslama

The Media Experience Environment for PSM. Recognising Opportunities of a Societing Function
Benjamin Julien Hartmann

Constructing Public Service Media at the BBC
Charles Brown, Peter Goodwin

Audiences and Accountability

Quality Assessments and Patterns of Use. Conceptual and Empirical Approaches to the Audiences of Public Service Media
Uwe Hasebrink

Follow the Audience? An Analysis of PSM New Media Strategies in Light of Conceptions and Assumptions about Audiences
Andra Leurdijk, Matthijs Leendertse

Facilitating Participatory Audiences. Sociable Media and PSM
Lizzie Jackson

Quality Taste or Tasting Quality? Excellence in Public Service Media from an Audience Perspective
Irene Costera Meijer

Public Service Broadcasting Councils in Germany. Making them Fit for the Future
Hans J. Kleinsteuber

Serving Children in Public Service Media
Alessandro D’Arma, Gunn Sara Enli, Jeanette Steemers

Collaborative Financing and Production. Making Public Service Content at SVT Sweden
Maria Norbäck

“With the Support of Listeners Like You”. Lessons from U.S. Public Radio
Alan G. Stavitsky, Michael W. Huntsberger

The Authors