International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2012

This special issue brings together expert articles on the ways in which different European countries are tackling the difficulty of defining the role of public service broadcasting (PSB) and PSB institutions in the new media ecology. It contains a selection of articles that have a look at the regulatory and policy answers to PSB’s changing role in society. The introduction to the special issue frames the articles within the broader choices and ideological frames on the future of PSB, elaborating on the possible strategies for PSB developed within social-democratic and market failure perspectives.

This article provides a critical assessment of the practical implementation of the Public Value Test (PVT) in Britain, the first European country to introduce it in 2007. Britain therefore has substantial experience with this regulatory tool from which other countries could benefit. The intention of the PVT has been to allow the BBC to assume new media activities only if their public value outweighs their potential adverse market impact. The article argues that the BBC’s experience with the PVT points to practical problems not originally foreseen. These problems coupled with new challenges for the BBC call for a refinement of the process. Still, the evidence suggests that overall the PVT has worked well. It has allowed the expansion, though conditional, of the BBC into new media whilst the greater degree of economic and evidence-based regulation that the BBC is now subject to has made it a credible scrutiny process in the eyes of industry stakeholders. The article maintains that the PVT has served primarily to articulate industry concerns rather than the public interest. Indeed, the emphasis on outcomes and impact together with the piecemeal approach of the PVT present a threat to the PSB ethos. It is finally argued that the main advantage of the PVT has been enhanced regulatory certainty and the establishment of delineated spheres of activity for public and commercial media organizations.

Taking the implementation and impact of emerging assessment methods for new public service media activities – the so-called ex ante tests – as a case in point, this article analyses evolving means of governance and accountability, and evaluates the thesis that claims the locus of governance power shifts from government to commercial competitors. The article does so by way of a comparative analysis of Flanders and Norway, illustrating the path dependency in this process. Based on the overall context of the EU approach to public service broadcasting, and public service broadcasting’s history and position in the two countries, the article compares the legal aspects of the ex ante evaluations, their main procedural aspects, the services subject to evaluation, the implementation of the mechanisms and the challenges that arise from these new instruments of governance. It compares for a number of parameters including the actors involved (as initiators, executers and evaluators) and their leverage power, the procedures developed, the services targeted and the level of time, money and effort invested. The analysis serves as an illustration of a more general trend towards an audit culture and towards a shifting locus of power from government to include other stakeholders, especially commercial competitors that have a growing power to determine policies regarding public-funded media institutions. At the same time, the analysis confirms the path dependency thesis, showing how the organization of these processes still depends on historical, political, economic and cultural specifics. Such insight is important to assess the impact of the recent crisis of public service media. In closing, the article points to implications both for media research and for practitioners.

Online services of public service broadcasters (PSBs) in Europe are disputed because they directly compete with online activities of the private media. In recent regulatory responses, European countries have taken a path of proactive control comprising specific regulations as well as formal and systematic procedures. Regulatory challenges do not end with the enactment of such rules, however. After rule-making, questions of how to ensure and control compliance with regulations move centre stage. While many EU countries have introduced ex ante tests to assess PSBs’ online offers, Switzerland controls compliance with regulations ex post. This article presents the results of an ex post analysis of the online offer of the Swiss public broadcaster, discusses regulatory implications of its findings and contributes to understanding the challenges facing rule enforcement on the Internet.

This article examines the evaluation and regulation of public service broadcasting’s (PSB’s) contribution to home-grown children’s content, a key marker of difference with commercial rivals. UK experience forms the core of the analysis, but throughout we connect findings to experiences in other European countries. We concentrate on PSB’s interventions in TV, but consider this within the wider scope of multiplatform and online activities that occupy increasing proportions of children’s time. We start by outlining the rationale for children’s PSB, before briefly unpacking the pressures it faces. Using schedule analysis of children’s channels in five European countries, PSB’s distinctiveness from US transnationals is demonstrated by higher levels of domestic content. This opens up discussion about the value of domestic content, as well as market failure in children’s broadcasting. We consider different policy tools for ensuring domestic content and public service goals, before considering the effectiveness and evaluation of PSB approaches, which now extend beyond television.

This article studies the press coverage of the 12th amendment of the Interstate Treaty on Broadcasting and Telemedia, which defines to what extent public service broadcasting is allowed to operate on the Internet in Germany. This article seeks to find out whether the German press provided visibility and diversity or whether it restricted the process of opinion forming on this issue. From a pluralistic democratic perspective, balanced and diverse media coverage is an important precondition for decision-making processes in media and communication policy. By means of qualitative content analysis the frames used by five national print media were identified and examined for diversity. The findings show that the press has indeed restricted the process of opinion forming. Frames with a negative evaluation of public service online activities prevailed regardless of editorial positions. Alternative frames only occurred fragmentarily. This study demonstrates the importance of diverse media coverage as the basis for coordination and problem solving in the increasingly complex field of media and communication policy.

In recent years, in repositioning themselves as public service media, public broadcasters have increasingly built on cooperation and partnership activities in various domains (culture, education, innovation, etc.). While the focus on partnerships has been induced by policy-makers, public broadcasters have realized the legitimizing nature of their collaboration activities. This article seeks to analyse the partnership agenda from a regulatory and public broadcasting strategy angle. It questions whether the new practice to enforce partnerships between public broadcasters and other actors through management contracts is transposed into public broadcasters’ day-to-day reality and which problems might arise in that respect. Evidence derives from a comparative analysis of public broadcasting rhetoric, strategy and practice in Flanders (VRT), the Netherlands (NPO) and United Kingdom (BBC) and builds on a series of expert interviews with broadcasting representatives conducted between August 2010 and September 2011. Setting out from (among others) Graham Murdock’s Digital Commons model, this article aims to recommend improvements for the partnership agenda and nuances highly idealistic theoretical approaches. The main argument is that there is a misfit between theory, policy rhetoric and public broadcasters’ actual strategies. This does not mean that there is no legitimacy in the idea of a networked public broadcaster. In fact, the partnership agenda is crucial for the sustainability of public service media. However, it cannot and will not be successful if enforced in a top-down way exclusively.

REINVENTING PUBLIC SERVICE COMMUNICATION: EUROPEAN BROADCASTERS AND BEYOND, PETROS IOSIFIDIS (ED.) (2010) Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 326 pp., ISBN: 978 0 230 22967 9 (hbk), £60

THE DISCOURSE OF POLITICS IN ACTION: POLITICS AS USUAL, RUTH WODAK (2009) Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 280 pp., ISBN: 978 0 230 30075 0 (pbk), £19.99

AFTER THE MEDIA. CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY, PETER BENNETT, ALEX KENDALL AND JULIAN MCDOUGALL, (2011) London and New York: Routledge, 262 pp., ISBN: 978 0 415 58683 2 (pbk), £27.99