Reinventing Public Service Communication European Broadcasters and Beyond

European Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) are struggling to come to terms with a number of issues: the Europeanisation and globalisation of media ownership, production, programming and distribution; the 'marketisation' of media output; technological convergence; and audience fragmentation. While the prevailing nation-state frameworks for cultural and political identity are gradually fading, some PSBs are finding it hard to serve and promote national culture and identity, and to meet the challenge of growing uncertainties within a cosmopolitan Europe. At the same time, PSBs are considered to be an important way of helping European citizens make sense of such developments by bearing traces of collective identities and therefore creating an expanded, pan-European cultural space. Can PSBs be 'multi-cultural' and mobilise a new sense of Europeanness, while at the same time making the transformation into Public Service Media (PSM) and delivering public service content that will meet audience needs in a digital age? The scholars in this volume - covering mainly European countries but also looking comparatively at the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - discuss the contemporary relevance of PSM as a cultural and political enterprise and as a forum in which a variety of cultural demands can best be met.

PETROS IOSIFIDIS is Senior Lecturer and Suite Director of the MA in Communications Policy Studies at City University, London, UK. He is co-author of European Television Industries (BFI 2005) and author of Public Television in the Digital Era (Palgrave, July 2007). His book Media and Communications Policy: An International Perspective is forthcoming from Palgrave in September 2010.