2019 | 16 | Public Service Broadcasting in the Digital Age

This special issue proposes a reexamination of public service broadcasting (PSB) in the light of the most recent technological, political and economic developments. Traditional public service broadcasters, ideally designed to serve citizens rather than consumers to inform the national conversations in well-informed democracies, face the double challenge of commercialization (since the 1980s) and digitization (since the 1990s). The question of their survival in this context has been posed again and again. The need for a redefinition seems inevitable.
Co-edited by Jérôme Bourdon, Mette Charis Buchman and Peter B. Kaufman

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
  • Article
    Audience Participation in PSM from a Media-centric to a Society-centric Approach: The Monitor as a Best Practice of the Dutch Public Broadcaster NPO
    Vanhaeght, Anne-Sofie (2019-12-19)
    Audience participation in production of public service media programs appears to achieve objectives that are more often media-centric than society-centric. The Monitor, a journalism program of Dutch public broadcaster NPO chooses not to focus on participation in production but on participation in the information-gathering phase. We investigate whether and how participation in this stage involves society-centric participation. We carry out expert interviews with the journalists, questioning their intentions and how they evaluate audience input in terms of societal objectives. In the conclusion, we discuss how participation in pre-production can help journalists to step out of their bubble.
  • Article
    Digital First! Reinventing Israeli PSB and Manufacturing Legitimacy Online
    Klein-Shagrir, Oranit (2019-12-19)
    KAN, the new Israeli public service broadcasting corporation, was established in 2015 to replace the declining, 40-year-old, PSB. This unique situation constitutes an intriguing case study for exploring several interrelated academic and professional contemporary interrelated discussions: transforming PSB organisations into public service media and adapting their public mission to the digital age; political pressure on PSM organisations and their struggle for independence; and PSM's legitimacy in a challenging media environment. This paper identifies the strategies employed by KAN to manufacture legitimacy and consolidate the organisation's existence solely via online outlets, and the relation of these strategies to core PSM values.
  • Article
    Editorial: Public Service Broadcasting in the Digital Age
    Bourdon, Jérôme; Buchman, Mette Charis; Kaufman, Peter B. (2019-12-19)
    This special issue proposes a reexamination of public service broadcasting (PSB) in the light of the most recent technological, political and economic developments. Traditional public service broadcasters, ideally designed to serve citizens rather than consumers to inform the national conversations in well-informed democracies, face the double challenge of commercialization (since the 1980s) and digitization (since the 1990s). The question of their survival in this context has been posed again and again. The need for a redefinition seems inevitable.
  • Article
    German Public Television, Social Media and Audience Engagement
    Stollfuß, Sven (2019-12-19)
    This article discusses how social media affect German public service broadcasting (PSB) in terms of PSB’s efforts to reach younger audiences in the digital age. Since social media play a significant role for younger media users, German PSB is attempting to integrate social media into television (commonly referred to as social TV). Social TV has the ability to develop into fairly integrated multiplatform application systems that are driven by the logic of social media. One example is the content network funk, launched by ARD and ZDF in 2016. The content network’s shows demonstrate a changed television-audience relationship within the social media environment. I will analyze this changed television-audience relationship in terms of the way it addresses audience engagement due to its policy of participation.
  • Article
    Informed & Educated: When Public Service Radio Learns from the Commercial Radio Sector
    McMahon, Daithí (2019-12-19)
    Using the Irish Radio Industry as a case study, this chapter illustrates how the Public Service Broadcaster (PSB), Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), was slow to react to change and the effect this had on the organisation’s competitiveness. This chapter analyses how RTÉ’s youth radio station, RTÉ 2fm, lost its place as the market leader to the competition including commercial station Beat and other stations as it resisted the required technological, social and economic change which ultimately affected its listenership. The author argues that the independent sector led the way in innovation and affected change which greatly benefited the industry as a whole and brought it into the digital age. This research was based on a methodology involving in-depth interviews, online surveys, textual analysis, direct observation and a longitudinal content analysis.
  • Article
    Producing Online Youth Fiction in a Nordic Public Service Context
    Andersen, Mads Møller; Sundet, Vilde Schanke (2019-12-19)
    This article investigates the conditions for making online youth fiction in a public service context at a time when young people increasingly are abandoning both legacy mass media and linear flow television to consume and share content online. The article’s starting point is the production of online youth fiction in two Nordic public service institutions, the Norwegian NRK and the Danish DR, and it discusses how digitisation and new competitors present both challenges and opportunities for institutions such as these. Furthermore, the article discusses the organisation of online youth fiction in both institutions and investigates how organisational strategies and production cultures come into play in each of these broadcasters’ early signature youth series: the widely popular online teen drama SKAM (NRK, 2015-2017) and the far less known youth series Anton 90 (DR, 2015). Our findings show that it was the pressure imposed by digitisation and new competitors that led these institutions to take new risks with their youth fiction production, changing their production patterns to make short-form drama series tailored to online streaming, and ultimately treating online youth fiction as a distinctly different task than “regular” fiction.
  • Article
    Public Broadcasting Footage in the Commons: A Practitioners’ Statement
    de Vos, Jesse; Brinkerink, Maarten; Kuiper, GertJan (2019-12-19)
    Around the release of the documentary series The Mind of the Universe (2017), public broadcaster VPRO and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision collaborated to distribute the raw materials shot for the series to be released under open licenses. This article reflects on those experiences and gives recommendations for the various stages of production for open licensing. It aims to lower the threshold for other public broadcasters that wish to publish materials in the commons.
  • Article
    The Hidden Jewel in Public Service Broadcasting
    Broch, Louise (2019-12-19)
    This article tells the story of the value of a part of the DR archives which has not been recognized before. The value of local stories and how a tent filled with local archive materials in interactive installations became a success. The article uses theories about people’s interaction with social media to figure out why visitors in the tent were amazed by the local events, and to understand why all age groups were attracted to the interactive tools. The article also discusses problems of gathering statistics and gives examples of similar projects, which focus on local audiovisual materials.
  • Article
    Translating PSM Policy into Production Practices: Studying Newsroom Management Strategies towards Audience Engagement
    te Walvaart, Marleen (2019-12-19)
    PSM policy documents aim at interactive audience engagement, but production practices show many limitations to achieve this. This article studies how PSM policy is translated into practice, by analysing the newsroom management strategies about audience engagement. In-depth interviews were conducted with managers at different levels of the Flemish public service company VRT. Results show that managers primarily aim at immersive engagement through newsroom convergence and VRT brands. They value interactive engagement as well, but those experiments remain vulnerable. Newsroom management strategies are closely based on practices and audience behaviour, while there is a much larger distance with broader VRT policy.
  • Article
    Who’s Afraid of the Past: The Role of Archives in Shaping the Future of PSBs
    Kolokytha, Olga; Korbiel, Izabela; Rozgonyi, Krisztina; Sarikakis, Katharine (2019-12-19)
    The focus of this paper is on the role of audiovisual archives for PSBs with regards to their function as democratic and inclusive institutions. We discuss the importance of audiovisual archives as integrated parts of PSBs, argue that accessibility of archives is a universal service and as such, a fundamental factor for PSBs to fulfil their democratic functions in the 21st century. We investigate structural, legal and institutional factors that impact on the state of archives using empirical evidence from four archives of PSBs and focus on four key elements of accessibility, namely equality, cross-border access, media literacy and contextualisation, and archives awareness. Our research highlights some of the struggles and contradictions that PSBs find themselves into as a result of pressures and tensions between institutions, the market and the citizens.