From Public Service Broadcasting to Public Service Media

The core challenge facing public service broadcasting today is the transition to public service media. This understanding characterised discourse among participants in the RIPE@2006 conference in the Netherlands, the theme of which was Public Service Broadcasting in the Multimedia Environment: Programmes and Platforms. The contributors in this volume focus attention on issues of strategic concern and tactical importance in addressing the core challenge. A defining theme is the need for moving beyond the transmission model of broadcasting to mature both professional and theoretical thinking necessary in public service communication. Audiences must be understood as partners rather than targets and content that is cross-media and cross-genre must be popular but remain distinctive. For policy makers the core challenge necessitates fairly balancing the often contrary interests of commerce and culture which is a fundamental tension in media policy today. The stakes are high because policy and operational decisions will establish the character of the European dual media system for decades to come. What is the mission of public service media in a multimedia environment characterised by globalization, convergence, digitization, and fragmentation? What is important for strategy development that renews the public service enterprise while keeping faith with the ethos that legitimates the endeavour? How might policy makers variously understand the fuller possibilities entailed in the development of a uniquely European dual media system?

The authors address these questions to offer critical insights that deepen thinking about theoretical, strategic and operational aspects incumbent in the transition to PSM. The book has two sections. The first is focussed on dynamics, complications and challenges incumbent in policy development and strategy elaboration. The second focuses on content-related aspects with emphasis on strategic and tactical implications.

Content

Preface

From Public Service Broadcasting to Public Service Media. The Core Challenge
Jo Bardoel, Gregory Ferrell Lowe

PSM platforms: policy & strategy

Public Service Broadcasting in the 21st Century. What Chance for a New Beginning?
Karol Jakubowicz

Commercial Services, Enclosure and Legitimacy. Comparing Contexts and Strategies for PSM Funding and Development
Hallvard Moe

Public Service Media Dilemmas and Regulation in a Converging Media Landscape
Andra Leurdijk

Can the Public Service Broadcaster Survive? Renewal and Compromise in the New BBC Charter
Steven Barnett

Focus on Audiences. Public Service Media in the Market Place
Richard van der Wurff

The Public Service Entertainment Mission. From Historic Periphery to Contemporary Core
Teemu Palokangas

PSM programmes: strategy & tactics

Ideals and Complications in Audience Participation for PSM. Open Up or Hold Back?
Yngvar Kjus

Current Affairs in British Public Service Broadcasting. Challenges and Opportunities
Brian McNair

‘Checking, Snacking and Bodysnatching’. How Young People Use the News and Implications for Public Service Media Journalism
Irene Costera Meijer

Satire as Cross-Media Entertainment for Public Service Media
Hanne Bruun

Education in the Transition to Public Service Media
Mirko Lukács

The Audience Massage. Audience Research and Canadian Public Service Broadcasting
Philip Savage

The roots of PSM

Does History Matter? Grasping the Idea of Public Service Media at Its Roots
Slavko Splichal

Author Biographies