Abstract
The discourse on public service broadcasting reform
The debates on the fate of public service broadcasting (PSB) are by no means new (Cowling and Tambini, 2002; Gardam and Levy, 2008; Richards et al., 2006) and can be traced back to 1947 when in a series of articles Ronald H. Coase (1947, 1950) harshly criticized the monopoly in the British broadcasting system. The contemporary discourse on the present and the future of PSB is slightly more complicated, as the perceptions of the PSB institution, its viability and above all its justification vis-à-vis new technologies have changed. The key areas of debate and contestation in this sense have been the remit of PSB, its funding, its positioning in the new media multi-platform environment, its relationship with commercial media and with the market in general. The discussions evolve then very differently depending on the sometimes pre-constructed judgement on PSB’s continuing role as (1) a pure public service addressing the remaining market failures in a digital space, (2) adopting a host of new tasks corresponding to the new age, and (3) an all-embracing public service that calls for the reinvention of PSB and introduces the broader notion of public service media (PSM).
These three visions are, however, not uniform in themselves and often cluster together a number of subscenarios. One can sketch their corresponding core ideas in the following way. First, the pure PSB scenario is the most extreme one and tailors PSB to address only existing market failures, as narrowly construed. The public service remit is decidedly cut down, and areas where commercial players deliver various and abundant services, such as sports and entertainment, are excluded from PSB’s mission. Most crucially, public service broadcasters (PSBs) are not supposed to engage with new media and overall the future of public broadcasting appears rather grim. The second scenario is, similarly to the first, still supported by those, who are of the view that PSB has existed (or should exist) only to correct market failures, but in a somewhat more flexible and nuanced manner. It is deemed in this context that PSB should adjust and give up some of its functions, as some market failures do not occur any longer due to the advances in digital technologies. The future PSB could, however, address new market failures, which may be caused precisely by the novel conditions of the digital media environment. In this sense and in contrast to the first option, engagement with new media is permitted and may indeed be necessary. There are, however, serious repercussions for the organization of PSB. In its extreme version, it basically foresees that PSBs as organizations will eventually be abolished and a new system created under which public services that are underprovided by the market will be commissioned through a bidding procedure (Ofcom, 2007). If the abolition of PSB proves politically impossible, a ‘light’ PSB is envisaged, which functions under a strict evidence-based assessment of public service needs and closely supervises performance and the fulfilment of public purposes on the basis of verifiable qualitative criteria; the third scenario seeks a profound ‘reinvention’ of PSB to address the narrow but also the broad market failures, to bring about a socially desirable form of public service in ‘old’ broadcasting and beyond it. It naturally endorses an active and multi-faceted engagement of public broadcasters with digital media, albeit the concrete implementation strategies differ. This scenario corresponds most closely to a discussion of what PSB ought to be and is fuelled with a great deal of idealism of how PSB as an institution is best suited to sustain the public sphere and cater for other critical societal values. In this context, PSBs themselves are viewed as an essential asset to society, and the project of public media is deemed far too valuable to be left to market forces. Under this scenario, the future of public service broadcasting is painted as bright and optimism prevails over the many hurdles of economic, organizational, and technological nature.
Newer insights into the future of PSB
The two books reviewed are clearly situated in this third discourse and contribute, each in a unique way, to the search for substantive and procedural dimensions of PSB’s reinvention and positioning in the digital networked environment. They are also not plainly informed by purely theoretical or policy discussions, which, as sketched above, may often be divisive, but are truly enriched by the practical reality of the reforming PSB institution in all European countries and its engagement with digital technology over the past decade. The first book A Future of Public Service Television, edited by Des Freedman and Vana Goblot (2018), is rather special in its occasion and format. It is in a way accompanying the results of an inquiry chaired by the Labour peer and film producer David Puttnam (2016), which was launched in turbulent times in 2015 during the review of the Charter of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The editors have commissioned leading scholars and practitioners to reflect on some of the issues that the Puttnam Report raised but also to discuss from their own standpoints on the value and the fate of PSB. The book puts some 45, relatively short, pieces together that shed light on the transformation of public media but also look at distinct problems and issues, such as the shortage of original high-quality content (Thoday, 2018), TV advertising (Alps, 2018), diversity (Malik, 2018) and distinctiveness (Goddard, 2018), the affordances of public service algorithms (Bennett, 2018), children television (Livingston and Local, 2018), sport rights (Smith and Evens, 2018) and civic engagement (Jackson, 2018). The style, level of analytical depth, the use of data and empirical evidence and the extent of embeddedness in scholarly and policy discussions vary across chapters. One common thread is the focus on the media environment in the United Kingdom and the role of the BBC (Hendy, 2018; Schlosberg, 2018). While this bias remains and is quite understandable in the context of the entire book’s project, the editors have diversified the picture by including some valuable comparative and US inputs (Holt, 2018; Powers, 2018). The diversity of voices coming not only from academic and policy circles is something to be treasured, as the book offers a platform for sharing the views of the audience, trade unions, industry organizations and artists. The complexity of the media landscape and the vast variety of concerns, which PSM must address, become particularly evident by the regional perspectives from Wales and Scotland (Beveridge, 2018; Noonan and Powell, 2018). The book is rounded up with some distilled recommendations as to what is seen as the appropriate future of the British PSB system (Tryhorn, 2018) as well as the recommendations extracted from the Puttnam Report with regard to the major PSB channels in the UK, funding public service content, regions and nations, genres and content diversity, talent development and training. The afterword by one of the editors, Vana Goblot, and Natasha Cox contextualizes both the book project and the Puttnam Report and points to some open questions, such as the relationship between social media, generational shifts and new sources of public service content that is not necessarily produced by PSBs. Overall, the volume offers a rich but also accessible discussion of the future of public service television that involves contributors who know how things work on the ground, trust in the resilience of PSB and are ready to actively engage in its reform. At times, some chapters are perhaps too hastily subscribing to statements, such as ‘PSB is a social good’, and may be repeating older discussions on the challenges and opportunities for PSM. Due to the rapid changes in the media environment, it could also be that some more recent challenges, such as platformization or fake news, were not entirely taken into account.
The second book, Public Service Media in the Networked Society, although devoted to the same topic of PSM, feeds into a different and decidedly more academic discourse. The volume edited by Gregory Ferrell Lowe et al. (2018) is part of the RIPE Reader published by Nordicom since 2003 that has been at the forefront of discussing the present and the future of PSM for more than 15 years now. The entry point to the debates of this particular RIPE edition is the ‘Networked Society’ as a concept developed in sociology, media and communication and legal studies to signify a phenomenon (but also an ideal) of ‘multidimensional interconnectedness: of technologies, economies, media industries and companies, and above all, communities’ (Van den Bulck et al., 2018: 12). The editors, as well as the contributing authors, are however not plainly ‘impressed’ by the buzz of this concept but wish to critically approach it and explore how the networked society functions as a catch-phrase in PSM research. The book dissects the concept and looks at society’s shared interest in networks; considers media networks’ responsibilities to societies as owners, operators and governors; and examines the role of PSM in this profoundly complex, ‘often contradictory and paradoxical context’ (Van den Bulck et al., 2018: 23). The book chapters all contribute in a fairly coherent manner to this underlying objective and link to a body of existing research in media and communication studies, and in the discrete domain of studying the disruption and adaptation of PSM. There are, of course, some recurrent topics, such as digital commons and digital innovation, that have been explored before, but overall, the book offers a series of novel case studies, data, perspectives and insights that make a significant contribution to the discussion of the future of PSB and reveal some grim and some bright turns that it may take. The newer topics addressed are to some extent triggered by newer technological developments or, to be more precise, newer assessments of technological affordances, like social media. The chapters on social network media (Hjarvard, 2018), digital media culture and platforms (Rotermund, 2018) and algorithms (Sørensen and Hutchinson, 2018) are truly interesting and bring invaluable insights into the repositioning of PSM. At least equally worthy are the chapters that point to empirical results and evidence gathered on the ground, be it in a comparative manner, by exploring how PSM operators function in a country, or by focusing on a particular field, such as children’s television or audience activism (Horz, 2018; Michalis, 2018; Schweizer and Puppis, 2018). The entire Section II on ‘Policy, Structures and Governance’ provides a nuanced and well-informed analysis of the workings of PSM in different settings and reveals the importance of context and the impossibility of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach towards PSM reform. Overall, the RIPE@2017 Reader is yet another one in this series that enriches our views on the present and the future of PSM and permits us to observe and critically assess recent developments both in technology and in policy that impact on the functioning of PSM as an important contributor to informed citizenship, democratic and culturally diverse societies.
Recommendation to readers
Reading these two books in tandem can only be recommended as they complement each other. The combination of the more UK-focused, more diverse in the voices and more policy-oriented, mixes well with the more scholarly debate on the future of PSB, which appears not that grim after all.