1 Namnlöst-2 1 2007-09-24, 09:15 Nordicom Provides Information about Media and Communication Research Nordicom’s overriding goal and purpose is to make the media and communication research undertaken in the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – known, both throughout and far beyond our part of the world. Toward this end we use a variety of channels to reach researchers, students, decision-makers, media practitioners, journalists, information officers, teachers, and interested members of the general public. Nordicom works to establish and strengthen links between the Nordic research community and colleagues in all parts of the world, both through information and by linking individual researchers, research groups and institutions. Nordicom documents media trends in the Nordic countries. Our joint Nordic information service addresses users throughout our region, in Europe and further afield. The production of comparative media statistics forms the core of this service. Nordicom has been commissioned by UNESCO and the Swedish Government to operate The Unesco International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media, whose aim it is to keep users around the world abreast of current research findings and insights in this area. An institution of the Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordicom operates at both national and regional levels. National Nordicom documentation centres are attached to the universities in Aarhus, Denmark; Tampere, Finland; Reykjavik, Iceland; Bergen, Norway; and Göteborg, Sweden. NORDICOM Göteborg University, Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg Phone: 031/773 10 00 (vx) Fax: 031/773 46 55 E-mail: [email protected] Broadcasting & Convergence: New Articulations of the Public Service Remit Broadcasting & Convergence: New Articulations of the Public Service Remit Gregory Ferrel Lowe & Taisto Hujanen (eds.) NORDICOM Published by NORDICOM Göteborg University Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Sweden Editors Gregory Ferrell Lowe & Taisto Hujanen ©selection and editorial matters, the editors; individual chapters, the contributors; Nordicom Cover by Roger Palmqvist Cover photo by Arja Lento Printed by Grafikerna Livréna i Kungälv AB, Sweden, 2003 ISBN 91-89471-18-0 Contents Preface 7 Taisto Hujanen & Gregory Ferrell Lowe Broadcasting and Convergence. Rearticulating the Future Past 9 PUBLIC SERVICE CONCEPTS IN CONTEXT MEDIA POLICY DYNAMICS Barbara Thomass Knowledge Society and Public Sphere. Two Concepts for the Remit 29 Marc Raboy Rethinking Broadcasting Policy in a Global Media Environment 41 Pertti Näränen European Regulation of Digital Television. The Opportunity Lost and Found? 57 John D. Jackson & Mary Vipond The Public/Private Tension in Broadcasting. The Canadian Experience with Convergence 69 Tony Sampson & Jairo Lugo The Discourse of Convergence. A Neo-liberal Trojan Horse 83 Elena Vartanova & Yassen N. Zassoursky Television in Russia. Is the Concept of PSB Relevant? 93 Christina Holtz-Bacha Of Markets and Supply. Public Broadcasting in Germany 109 PUBLIC SERVICE PRINCIPLES AND PRIORITIES STRATEGY AND ACCOUNTABILITY Jeanette Steemers Public Service Broadcasting Is Not Dead Yet. Strategies in the 21st Century 123 Alan G. Stavitsky & Robert K. Avery U.S. Public Broadcasting and the Business of Public Service 137 Karol Jakubowicz Bringing Public Service Broadcasting to Account 147 Jo Bardoel & Kees Brants From Ritual to Reality. Public Broadcasters and Social Responsibility in the Netherlands 167 Per Jauert Policy Development in Danish Radio Broadcasting 1980-2002. Layers, Scenarios and the Public Service Remit 187 Georgina Born Public Service Broadcasting and Digital Television in the UK. The Politics of Positioning 205 Ari Alm & Gregory Ferrell Lowe Outsourcing Core Competencies? 223 PUBLIC ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION CHALLENGES IN CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION Nico Carpentier, Rico Lie & Jan Servaes Is There a Role and Place for Community Media in the Remit? 239 Hal Himmelstein & Minna Aslama From Service to Access. Re-conceiving Public Television’s Role in the New Media Era 255 Brian McNair & Matthew Hibberd Mediated Access. Political Broadcasting, the Internet and Democratic Participation 269 Vivi Theodoropoulou Consumer Convergence. Digital Television and the Early Interactive Audience in the UK 285 Marko Turpeinen Co-Evolution of Broadcast, Customized and Community-Created Media 301 Pirkko Raudaskoski & Tove Arendt Rasmussen Cross Media and (Inter)Active Media Use. A Situated Perspective 313 About the Authors 327 Preface This book grew out of the RIPE@2002 conference about broadcasting and convergence organised jointly by the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Tampere, and Yleisradio [YLE], the Finnish Public Broadcasting Company. The 2002 conference materials may be re- viewed at: www.yle.fi/keto/ripe. Re-Visionary Interpretations of the Public Enterprise [RIPE] is an initiative to strengthen collaborative relations between media scholars and practitioners. The focus of this initiative is the contemporary relevance of the remit for public service broadcasting, and public service media more generally. The participants in the 2002 conference express appreciation to the Acad- emy of Finland [in relation to the project Changing Media, Changing Europe, under the auspices of the European Science Foundation] to YLE’s Office for Corporate Development (YLE Kehitystoiminta) for the sponsorship and sup- port. The RIPE@2002 conference greatly benefited from the work of the Con- ference Planning Group and their sponsoring universities: Jo Bardoel (Uni- versity of Amsterdam, the Netherlands), John Jackson (Condordia University, Canada), Per Jauert (University of Aarhus, Denmark), Henrik Søndergaard (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and Alan G. Stavitsky (University of Oregon, USA). On behalf of the entire Conference Planning Group, we wish to thank so many colleagues and friends that contributed papers and presen- tations in the 2002 conference. The editors extend warm thanks and best regards to the authors for their contributions to this volume. This book is the fruit of their respective and collective good work, and we certainly appreciate your patience, encourage- ment and unwavering support. Finally, we are pleased to annouce the RIPE@2004 conference that will take place in Denmark and is being co-sponsored by the University of Aarhus and Danmark’s Radio [DR]: Mission, Market and Money: Public Service Media and the Cultural Commons. Helsinki and Tampere in May, 2003 Gregory Ferrell Lowe Taisto Hujanen 7 Broadcasting and Convergence Rearticulating the Future Past Taisto Hujanen & Gregory Ferrell Lowe Since the telegraph was invented in the 19th Century, each successive ad- vance in media technology has featured a “rhetoric of the electronic sub- lime” (Carey & Quirk, 1989). Thus it isn’t surprising that so much of what passes as public debate about convergence, especially in media policy dis- course, again promises the eventual achievement of a familiar prediction: the realization of some technological utopia. In this most recent rhetorical iteration, convergence is the premise, digitization is the platform, but as al- ways utopia remains the promise. In the broadest sense, convergence refers to processes of transformation that impact entire societies. As Briggs and Burke (2002) demonstrate, that understanding is much older than the present technology orientation. A broader understanding is represented, for example, in cultural studies theory addressing ‘hybridization, intertextuality, intermediality and multimodality.’ Each represents some thread of convergence process of importance for media culture. But as Briggs and Burke (ibid: 266) further observe, since the 1990s the notion has mainly been applied to describe digital integration. That is the governing construct for multimedia, but would also include what Alm and Lowe (2001) treat more expansively as ‘polymedia’. In this narrower sense, convergence celebrates the rapid pace of innovation and integration as com- puting, telecommunications, broadcast and print media are merged into in- creasingly common digitally-based and digitally-encoded techniques (Dutton, 1996). As always, what is most important for societies and cultures is not the technology per se but the consequences of application. Convergence is a complex construct affecting much more than the mutual identities of differ- ent media; it is crucially about legitimating their social and political roles in relation to everyday uses (the chapter by Raudaskoski & Rasmussen offers pertinent discussion). That is already evident when assessing organization and institutional forms of media operation, especially in corporate restruc- turing and the consolidation of media systems (Murdock, 2000). 9 TAISTO HUJANEN & GREGORY FERRELL LOWE Will broadcasting survive convergence, and should it survive? If yes, why and in what form? Those questions were fundamental to deliberations in the RIPE@2002 conference that laid the groundwork for this book, and remain animate concerns in much of the content that follows (1). The questions can only be answered in some context, and for our purposes the context has three dimensions. First, in various ways this book highlights the importance of broadcasting as a utilization of resource. Broadcasting uses electromagnetic spectrum and, despite claims to the contrary, that is a finite natural resource that must be somehow managed in the public interest. Second, this book variously high- lights the importance of broadcasting in social application.