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Reinventing Public Service Media

by Joe Karaganis — last modified 2008-11-17 18:37

Public service media is under tremendous pressure in the US and elsewhere. Traditional public service models, emphasizing broadcasting, public subsidies, and strong commitments to diversity and localism, are caught between the continued push for media market liberalization in many countries and the generalized crisis of the broadcast model. Increasingly, these pressures are connected, as public service media providers are forced to defend their relevance in a vastly larger, and more fluid, media landscape than the ones they were created to serve.

Opinions about this crisis vary. The most optimistic commentators see continuity of financial models, the organization of production, and the central role of public broadcasters as keepers of basic public-service values—even within a globalized digital media landscape. Less optimistic commentators see more fundamental change in the media environment, in which the traditional broadcast model and supported products become increasingly marginal and unsustainable. Talk about the need for change comes from all sides, but the fundamental question remains unanswered: How can the values of public service media be sustained and strengthened in the digital era? 

In the US, conversations about the future of public media have tended to focus on sustaining core public broadcasting institutions, often at the expense of deeper inquiry into how the goals of public broadcasting are transformed (and sustainable within) the emerging digital public sphere. American conversations have also tended to limit themselves to the institutional and regulatory context of the US, rather than seeing the US context as an instance of a larger transformation of public media systems. These self-imposted limitations, we would argue, diminish the likelihood that the key values of public broadcasting will find a secure place in the post-broadcasting future. Getting around them means building better connections with at least two key stakeholder groups: 1) innovators in local media--arguably the most threatened feature of the American media environment; and 2) participants the transformation of public media systems outside the US, who can bring a wide array of experience and experimentation to bear on the US context.