The Public in Public Service Media
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The Public in Service Media The importance of reconceptualising what public service broadcasting [PSB] should be and do in the 21st century is a profile issue in media policy and strategic develop- ment planning. There is growing recognition that public participation is a necessary if problematic aspect of the transition to public service media [PSM]. This recognition correlates with a deepening understanding that the viability of the enterprise depends on the people paying for it and using its services. This fourth RIPE Reader demonstrates how the historic insularity of PSB companies is changing in efforts to restructure and revitalise the enterprise. The substance features The Public in further development of research presented in the RIPE@2008 conference in Germany, titled Public Service Media in the 21st Century: Participation, Partnership and Media Development. The authors included in this volume query what is required to achieve participation- Public Service Media readiness in many interdependent facets: strategy revision, organisational restructur- ing, retooling production processes, and redefining professional identities. Approached in two sections, the first focuses on theories and trends and the second on practices and performance. The contents document the significance of engaging the public in, with and through media services, arguing the crucial importance of the Public in Public Service Media. Gregory Ferrell Lowe (ed.) Gregory Ferrell Lowe (ed.) NORDICOM Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research RIPE 2009 University of Gothenburg Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden Telephone +46 31 786 00 00 (op.) Fax +46 31 786 46 55 E-mail: [email protected] www.nordicom.gu.se ISBN 978-91-89471-94-8 8 NORDICOM 4 9 1 7 4 9 8 1 9 NORDICOM 8 7 9 ISBN 978-91-89471-94-8 The Public in Public Service Media The Public in Public Service Media Gregory Ferrell Lowe (ed.) NORDICOM The Public in Public Service Media RIPE@2009 Gregory Ferrell Lowe (ed.) © Editorial matters and selections, the editor; articles, individual con- tributors; Nordicom 2010 ISBN 978-91-89471-94-8 Published by: Nordicom University of Gothenburg Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Sweden Cover by: Roger Palmqvist Cover photo by: Arja Lento Printed by: Litorapid Media AB, Göteborg, Sweden, 2010 Environmental certification according to ISO 14001 Contents Preface 7 Gregory Ferrell Lowe Beyond Altruism. Why Public Participation in Public Service Media Matters 9 TRENDS AND THeorisation 37 Josef Trappel The Public’s Choice. How Deregulation, Commercialisation and Media Concentration Could Strengthen Public Service Media 39 Richard Collins From Public Service Broadcasting to Public Service Communication 53 Eeva Mäntymäki Journalistic Authority Meets Public Participation. Re-Reading Reith in the Age of Networks 71 Minna Aslama Re-thinking PSM Audiences. Diversity of Participation for Strategic Considerations 87 Benjamin Julien Hartmann The Media Experience Environment for PSM. Recognising Opportunities of a Societing Function 101 Charles Brown & Peter Goodwin Constructing Public Service Media at the BBC 119 AUDIENCES AND AccountabilitY 133 Uwe Hasebrink Quality Assessments and Patterns of Use. Conceptual and Empirical Approaches to the Audiences of Public Service Media 135 Andra Leurdijk & Matthijs Leendertse Follow the Audience? An Analysis of PSM New Media Strategies in Light of Conceptions and Assumptions about Audiences 151 Lizzie Jackson Facilitating Participatory Audiences. Sociable Media and PSM 175 Irene Costera Meijer Quality Taste or Tasting Quality? Excellence in Public Service Media from an Audience Perspective 189 Hans J. Kleinsteuber Public Service Broadcasting Councils in Germany. Making them Fit for the Future 213 Alessandro D’Arma, Gunn Sara Enli & Jeanette Steemers Serving Children in Public Service Media 227 Maria Norbäck Collaborative Financing and Production. Making Public Service Content at SVT Sweden 243 Alan G. Stavitsky & Michael W. Huntsberger “With the Support of Listeners Like You”. Lessons from U.S. Public Radio 257 The Authors 273 Preface This fourth RIPE Reader marks the culmination of thirteen months of continuous collaborative work to produce a volume that represents a maturing of topics addressed in the RIPE@2008 conference, which was about Public Service Media in the 21st Century: Participation, Partnership and Media Development. This Reader focuses, distils, and extends pertinent scholarship. The title, The Public in Public Service Media, crystallises the core concern that permeated confer- ence proceedings. As with the three earlier publications in this series to date, the fourth Reader is published by NORDICOM, the Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. I am especially grateful to Ulla Carlsson and her able team for sup- porting scholarly productivity in the RIPE initiative, especially in contributing so much in shared efforts to build collaborative relations between scholarly and practitioner communities concerned about the public interest in media today, with emphasis on its continuing development. I also wish to express appreciation to the sponsors and hosts for the RIPE@2008 conference. The fourth conference was organised by ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), Germany’s public service television broadcasting com- pany, together with two universities: The Medienintelligenz programme and IAK Medienwissenschaften at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, and the Institute of Media Design at the Mainz University of Applied Sciences. We are also grateful for the donation from Sparda-Bank Südwest. Everyone agreed the fourth conference was a marvellous experience both in terms of intellectual enrichment and gracious hospitality. On behalf of the speakers, planners and participants I am pleased to offer our sincere thanks. Special appreciation is richly deserved by the members of the Conference Planning Group [CPG] and RIPE Advisory Board [RAB] for all the good work that went into planning the conference, and especially their home institutions for providing the funding and other supports necessary to their involvement. The CPG members for the 2008 conference were: Gregor Daschmann and Susanne Marschall for the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, and Harald Pulch for the Mainz University of Applied Sciences; Simone Emelius and Markus Karalus 7 PREFACE for ZDF; Jo Bardoel for the Amsterdam School of Communications Research [ASCoR] at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands; Jeanette Steemers for the Communication Media and Research Institute [CAMRI] at the University of Westminster in Britain; Brian McNair for the University of Strathclyde in Scotland; and Philip Savage for McMaster University in Canada. The members of the CPG, myself included, want to thank the RAB members for their feedback, suggestions and critical support in producing an excellent conference: Taisto Hujanen for the University of Tampere in Finland; John Jack- son (professor emeritus) for Concordia University in Canada; Per Jauert for the University of Aarhus in Denmark; Slavko Splichal for the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia; and Al Stavitsky for the University of Oregon in the USA. I am sure that everyone involved with conference planning and organising will join me in especially thanking Vera Cuntz from the Johannes Gutenberg University and Estrela Pereira from ZDF. The success of the conference can be directly attributed to the professionalism, persistence and patience that characterised all your good work. We also thank Prof. Pulch’s students for their work in producing conference materials and for audiovisual production during the conference. This RIPE Reader is funded by The Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, and the Programme in Media Management at the University of Tampere. The RIPE@2010 conference will take place in London on 8-11 September. It is sponsored by the BBC and Ofcom, and hosted by CAMRI at the University of Westminster. Tampere in December 2009 Gregory Ferrell Lowe 8 Beyond Altruism Why Public Participation in Public Service Media Matters Gregory Ferrell Lowe Reconceptualising what the public service enterprise in media should be about in the 21st century has been thematic in its first decade, as evident in the series of RIPE conferences and books produced since 2000.1 In recent years discussion about renewal has focussed increasingly on public participation in public service broadcasting [PSB], although what that means for practice remains uncertain and why it matters is largely framed in ethical terms. As ‘altruistic imperative’, public participation is important among media theorists concerned about growing marketisation that may threaten the vitality of the public sphere for contemporary democracy (drawing on Habermas 1969/1989). Many are concerned that PSB policy and journalistic practice show weaken- ing commitment to its historic emphasis on serving civil society as a citizenry above all. As a principle, public participation resonates with the ethos that legitimates PSB, what Denis McQuail (2005) described as the “social respon- sibility” model. Practitioners are also interested in public participation for altruistic reasons (c.f. EBU 2002), but equally PSB firms hope that championing greater openness to public involvement will shore up support among audiences and policy mak- ers. This growing interest is co-related with 1) deepening understanding that the viability of the public service enterprise depends on the degree to which the