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1 Introduction
The Relevance of Public Service Media in Europe
Karen Arriaza Ibarra, Eva Nowak and Raymond Kuhn
Why Public Service Media?
Karen Arriaza Ibarra
For decades Public Service Media (PSM) have been the basis of European broadcasting, a pillar of all democratic broadcast models in the Western world and an essential actor to promoting national audiovisual diversity, pluralism and multi-platform leadership. Many authors have theorized about these and other factors concerning PSM in Europe, spanning Tracey (1998), Syvertsen (1992, 2003), Syvertsen and Hallvard (2008), Jakubowicz (2008), Humphreys (1996, 2008 and 2009), and more recently Lowe (2010), Lowe and Edelvold Berg (2013), Lowe and Martin (2014) and Picard and Siciliani (2013). Having been called ‘the pillar of Europeism that unifies all states and nations’ (Lohmus 2013/14), it is an undeniable fact that PSM are an issue that has caught the attention of authors and academics. The support which for years they have enjoyed from governments, citizens and EU authorities was reinforced by the Communication from the Commission on the Application of State Aid Rules to Public Service Broadcasting (2001), where the following is stated:
Public service broadcasting, although having a clear economic relevance, is not comparable to a public service in any other economic sector. There is no other service that at the same time has access to such a wide sector of the population, provides it with so much information and content, and by doing so conveys and influences both individual and public opinion.
(Article 10)
Finally, most European governments have expressed their firm beliefs in the contribution and the value of PSM to democratic societies (Council of Europe 2009).
Nevertheless, despite the variety of authors and definitions, and the fact that the rules of the game were to be determined by each one of the Member States in a way that would idealistically promote a considerable degree of autonomy and self-determination in each one of the European public service media institutions, the primarily cultural and identity-building role that PSM played for many years had become insufficient at the beginning of the twenty-first century to guarantee its continuity without debate. There are several reasons for this. The State aid that had become the main funding source for PSM – mostly through a licence-fee, eventually through advertising, and rarely from direct State budget – also provided a point of departure for the complaints and sometimes even legal actions taken by commercial competitors against PSM in their attempt to accuse PSM of causing market distortion and unfair competition in a digitized and increasingly market-oriented European audiovisual scenario. The content that PSM offered citizens was clearly not satisfying all audiences, as it had originally, and the lack of transparency in some public service media institutions cast a long shadow over the capacity of their structure and management to achieve public service mission objectives. Additionally, digitization came hand-in-hand with new challenges for some public service media institutions that had to face the implementation of ‘new media services’ while in the analogue world there were still some tasks to be accomplished.
Despite all these factors, PSM in Europe continues to be, nowadays, a still very relevant, if not particularly novel, issue. The role that PSM has played in Europe over the years cannot be taken for granted, as cannot, likewise, be the fact that the economic crisis impacted upon its continuity to an extent that led Greek authorities in 2013 to the abrupt closing down of Ellinikí Radiofonía Tileórasi (ERT), the Greek public broadcaster and a founding member of the European Broadcasting Union, after multiple accusations of payment of disproportionate salaries to some employees as well as allegations that the licence fee “was costing households a fortune” (Nevradakis 2013), despite being one of the lowest in Europe. In any case, although the closure of ERT constitutes the most radical example of an unhappy end to the public service media story in Europe, all European PSM now have to struggle in an audiovisual scenario characterized by economic necessities and challenges, changes in audience patterns and preferences due to the effect of technology, the increasing pace of news and tendencies due to the ubiquitous rise of social networks, and a shift towards the constant monitorization, on the part of citizens and governments, of public institutions in general, almost as a consequence of the crisis. All of these aspects occur within a European context that has changed increasingly rapidly over the last thirty years. The precepts that hold PSM to be driven by quality, accountability and diversity, ensuring independence and transparent ownership whilst serving as a point of reference in a converging environment (EBU 2013), are no longer taken for granted by European Member States, who are aware of the need of ‘justifying’ the existence of PSM through different ways.
We have decided, then, to re-scope the issue of PSM in Europe by editing this book, Public Service Media in Europe: A Comparative Approach, with the objective of updating certain noteworthy aspects of public service media in Europe and reassessing the ideas that originally accompanied PSM in Europe in their initial years.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part makes reference to some theoretical foundational aspects of PSM and the global influences that shaped the concept in Europe. It also addresses the historical importance of PSM as a nation-building institution, and from there it develops different perspectives on PSM, namely their relationship with the political system, their articulation with mainstream media, in the market, and more specifically with market-integration policies, their association with digitization processes and how these have impacted on audiences.
The second part shows the results of a comparative analysis of six European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden. This choice of countries allows the book to cover not only different European regions, but also different historical and cultural backgrounds. In the second part of the book, chapters focus on main aspects of PSM, such as financing mechanisms, autonomy and regulatory frameworks, management and organization of PSM institutions, content and accountability mechanisms. Both sections of the book are complementary to each other and should be read in articulation so as to form a coherent whole.
Public Service Media in Europe: Diversity as a Challenge
Eva Nowak and Raymond Kuhn
How is the term ‘public service media’ to be defined? What are the distinctive features that differentiate PSM from other types of media currently operating within and across the different countries of Europe? Can PSM be defined as media outlets that offer content on different platforms with a certain amount of public value, irrespective of whether they are public, commercial or community organizations in terms of ownership? Or are PSM simply broadcasters that are defined as public service by law and/or regulation? There are no straightforward answers to these questions. Arguably some privately owned, commercial media may well perform a public service function at least some of the time, while in contrast public media often provide entertainment content that is indistinguishable from that supplied by commercial competitors.
Within any national context definitions of PSM are often vague, while they may also vary across the media systems of different countries for historical, institutional and cultural reasons (Donders 2012; Gibbons and Humphreys 2012; Iosifidis 2010). In Germany, for example, the Interstate Treaty on Broadcasting and Telemedia defines public service media by naming the stations and assigns a number of public remit tasks to them. In other countries like France, Italy, Spain and Poland, public service media are understood as those broadcasters that are in public – in effect State – ownership. Public remit obligations for these organizations vary from representation of political parties on the governing board and in editor-in-chief positions to serving cultural identity and offering pluralistic news content. In the UK public service media include privately owned and commercially run media organizations like Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV; these broadcasters have certain public remit obligations, though considerably fewer than the PSM flagship, the BBC.
In defining our field of inquiry we have chosen to focus on those public service media that are based on the traditional public broadcasters. These organizations were established long before the advent of the digital era, but in recent years have extended their activities to new media platforms such as online and mobile. By focusing on this coherent group of public service media we are able to analyze the challenges these media currently face and their responses to these challenges. For a long time public service media were seen by political elites and the public in different European countries as self-evidently important elements of national media systems. In turn PSM were supported by an interventionist approach in national media policy. PSM undoubtedly remain important media actors, but a shift to a liberal market approach in media policy has placed them in a competitive situation with both private media and other publicly funded demands (Nowak 2014).
The environment in which public service media in Europe currently operate is a turbulent one. One aspect of this changing context is technological change. The arrival and routinization of new media platforms have radically altered both the conditions of supply of information and entertainment content to audiences and the way in which this content is accessed by the latter. New digital and online media outlets have almost infinitely expanded the supply of content, severely undermining one of the traditional defences of PSM based on their capacity to complement those areas of content provision in which the market is deficient. While in retrospect European public service broadcasters managed with reasonable success to adapt to the competition provided by commercial analogue providers following the abolition of State monopoly provision in the second half of the twentieth century, the competitive conditions of the digital/online era pose a more stringent challenge: What is the specific contribution of PSM in a market characterized by extensive content supply?
A second aspect of the contemporary environment comes from the political realm. A public service component in broadcast provision was traditionally supported by mainstream political elites of both centre-right and centre-left. As these elites have lost their hegemonic tenure in their national political systems, political elite support for public service media has tended to wane. This has been a result of the emergence of new political forces towards the extremes of the party spectrum, the growth in some countries of secessionist parties and the impact of ideological shift within traditional mainstream parties, notably those of the right. The main ideological change across European politics has been towards greater acceptance of market criteria in the management and allocation of public resources (albeit with differential impact across national political systems), with privatization of public utilities, greater competition within the public sector and the loosening of regulatory constraints a feature of politics across all EU Member States, encouraged in recent years by the pro-competition decisions of the European Commission at the supranational level.
This ideological shift has also had an impact on audiences, who now increasingly regard themselves as individualistic consumers in a huge entertainment market. PSM need to attract audiences for reasons of funding and political legitimacy. Yet the dilemma they face in this respect is stark: if PSM simply emulate commercial providers, then they risk losing their special status, their unique selling point; if, however, they differentiate themselves to the extent that their audience share declines, then they risk losing public and political support. This is a difficult tightrope for PSM to walk. The impact of changing audience behaviour has a particular impact on the funding models of PSM. If audiences are not accessing PSM content, then not unreasonably they ask why they should be required to subsidize the consumption habits of others via a universal licence fee.
This leads on to a further aspect of this turbulent environment – the changing nature of European societies. PSM now need to cater to societies that are more diverse in their composition and tastes than ever before. A particular aspect of the social challenge is the extent to which PSM can cater to the tastes and aspirations of particular social groups, such as the young and ethnic minority populations (both of which are frequently the lowest users of PSM content). Whereas in the past, public service broadcasters may have sought to supply content to a (mythical) national audience defined as ‘the public’, now PSM need to provide content and services to diverse audiences, differentiated by age, gender, regional affiliation and ethnic status. The days of a single broadcast bringing the nation together are, with few exceptions, a historical memory. The reconciliation of public service objectives with the growth of niche markets in information and entertainment consumption patterns is, therefore, a major challenge for PSM.
The contextual conditions in which PSM operate – economy, technology, politics, markets and society – and how these challenge and influence the role of public service media in the digital era are collectively dealt with in the chapters that form the first part of this book. Sergio A. Berumen and Karen Arriaza Ibarra start with an introductory chapter about the economic paradigms that marked the pace in Europe in the early post-war era, and how they slowly passed the torch to increasing market-oriented approaches that aim for more liberalized media environments as a continuous challenge for PSM. Christina Holtz-Bacha discusses the role of PSM for nation-building in a historical, political and cultural context. She argues that public service media are a merit good like education and argues for financing by the State. In his chapter Damian Tambini discusses the process of reform of public service media organizations during the transition to digitization, based on fifty-six country reports on media policy by the Open Society Foundation Mapping Digital Media Project. He argues that policymaking in the public interest has been undermined by the capture of private interests and hidden reciprocities in the relationships between media and politics, and outlines key questions for public service media during the digital transition. Karen Donders and Tim Raats analyze the effect that European Market integration has had for public service media. They outline the principles according to which the European Commission deals with subsidies and special conditions for PSM. Donders and Raats argue that political pressure from the Commission has forced public service media to define their public remit more precisely and thus strengthened their position to some extent in their competition with commercial media. Like Holtz-Bacha, Hilde van den Bulck stresses the role of the accountability of PSM to society. She shows how the notion of accountability has changed through an emphasis on three historical phases: until the 1980s PSM legitimation was taken for granted and they were above all accountable to political elites; in the 1990s European legislation and politics became more important, as did approaches based on the ideas of New Public Management; finally, today PSM are also increasingly accountable to the market. In the final contribution to this section, Christian Nissen analyzes how digital technology affects traditional concepts of radio and television and the ways in which digitization influences the relationship between PSM and commercial media. He argues for a strict involvement of audiences, who are now much more individualized than before digitization.
The chapters in the second part of the book remind us of two important points. First, the impact of what appears from a transnational perspective to be a broadly similar set of contextual and environmental factors varies across national political/media systems in Europe. Differences in national (and sub-national) institutional frameworks (political and media), in political and media cultures, audience habits and historical traditions influence the way in which political, economic and media actors respond to the changing environment. Second, the external contextual conditions may shape but they do not determine political, policy or media management responses at the national level; the same pressures do not simply produce the same outcomes across EU Member States. Traditions based on historical path dependency, the partisan complexion of governments, the role attributed to judicial bodies in the political process, the capacity of PSM to mobilize elite and public support – these and other national variables ensure that the pattern of response to a changing environment varies from country to country.
The second part of the book consists of an empirical study of PSM in six countries – France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden – using a cross-national comparative framework that goes beyond a traditional approach based on national case study chapters. The chapters in this second section highlight the remarkable differences in the functions attributed to and the roles played by public service media across the different countries. The various chapters in this section tease out selected aspects of this important cross-national differentiation. Beata Klimkiewicz outlines different systems of financing (including licence funding, advertising, general taxation and subscription) and analyzes what these mean for PSM autonomy in terms of dependence on politics and market forces. Although there is a trend towards banning advertising from PSM due to lobbying from private media (as in France and Spain in recent years), there is no correlation between public remit obligations and outcome on the one hand and the mode of fundin...
