The Structure and Functions of the Broadcasting Industry as a Public Forum

This 28-page document is about the European Union dual broadcasting system of public service broadcasting (governed by State-imposed structures) and commercial broadcasting (in private hands) and the criticism of failing to provide a balanced public forum for all political perspectives and viewpoints. The document is part of the publication of papers for a conference on “The Role of the News Media in the Governance Reform Agenda", which was co-sponsored by the World Bank Communication for Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP) and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Boston, United States (US).


From the Synopsis:
"This paper looks into how broadcasting policies shape the independence of broadcasters. It is focused on television in Central and Eastern Europe and draws on the findings of an extensive series of research in broadcasting carried out over the past several years. Editorial policies and news coverage are much influenced by the general regulatory frameworks, policies and legislation. Therefore, before analyzing the news coverage on public service and commercial television in the region, the paper describes the general broadcasting environment and the influence that western models have had on the broadcasting in Central and Eastern Europe. It then reviews the main trends in viewership and programming and briefly describes the general broadcasting regulatory patterns. The study reviews separately the system of management and financing of public service and commercial broadcasting, respectively, to identify the main factors shaping their editorial and programming policies. These sections are followed by an analysis of the general programming on public service and commercial television, with a focus on how much of a balanced public forum the two sectors provide and on how they fulfil the watchdog role that the media should play in a democracy. The final section maps the main challenges that digitalization and technological convergence bring about."


Statistics and trends demonstrate that European public broadcasters consider themselves part of the democratic process served by media, providing their audiences with diverse content. To the extent that public broadcasting fulfils this role, it can be assumed that any reduction in public service broadcasting would decrease the media role as a watchdog.


Studies show that where there is no positive regulatory obligation, there is a distinct lack of programming of high social value. The document finds that, though concentrated private ownership of media may or may not limit content diversity, their economic interests in attracting large audiences to cheap productions inhibits both solid news coverage and investigative reporting. Particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, "[t]rying to survive in emerging economies where the market drives the content, television stations are fighting for audiences. A legacy of their past, public service broadcasters still show reverence for high politics and the government while private stations are more interested in pleasing the interests of their owners and their advertisers."

As stated here, international corporations without territorial or cultural links are now the main actors in the media market, including those utilising new technologies. Public service broadcasters are slower to move onto the internet, while commercial companies are expanding in as many sectors as possible, including running newspapers, periodicals, and radio and TV stations, and producing film and music, as well as creating "a more differentiated value chain," including products like cable and satellite distribution networks. "Closed systems are seen by experts as a threat to both commercial and public service television stations because they endanger the free exchange of information in society and encroaches upon free competition. The recommendations in this respect have to do, on the one hand, with the establishment of freer spectrum by digitising the terrestrial networks and, on the other hand, with imposing mandatory common and open technical standards in delivery systems." However, wider freedom of choice for viewers, does not necessarily reflect more diversity of voice in the content, because "[t]he main trend is the exit of an increasing number of platforms from the regulatory ambit. Expansion of satellite distribution covering crossnational territories, the increase in the number of large transnational media corporations and the boom in the distribution of content via the Internet created an international market of content, which is already outside the regulation."


In the new media environment, public service broadcasting is no longer justified, as it was previously, by a scarcity of bandwidth for broadcasting. Arguments in its favour are its potential for the creation of more value-based content, rooted in cultural policies. The document states that it must reinvent itself with a wide range of content, leading from popular programmes into news and current and cultural affairs. Also, it states that governance must be revamped to de-link it from government, harsh regulation, and increased politicisation. This section on public broadcasting concludes that "with the segmentation and individualization, public service media have to adapt to a completely new model, moving away from collective broadcasting to a model based on providing tailor-made content and services."


Finally, the author explores the affect of technology on the fast expanding journalistic news sources, recognising that "the growth of news distributors is accompanied by an unprecedented loss of the value of reference that the media had in the analogue world." One argument criticises citizen journalism for its unbalanced sources: "the sources of news are 'personalized networks of friends' that are increasingly pushing traditional media out of the game." The other argument is that Web 2.0 is expanding the transparency of journalism as bloggers keep a conscious eye on journalism and possible bias. Further, it is argued that "the digital era is in fact a redefinition of the economy of the media... In this environment, the key is finding viable economic models as those employed in the traditional media market are unworkable. In other words, media have to adapt to the new environment shaped by the Internet. Those media companies that anticipated the upcoming shifts in the media ecology have already established a strong foot on the new platforms."