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The 21st century and the rise of new media have accentuated socio-political as well as organizational/practical challenges to public service broadcasters. New political vision is needed to address fragmenting and pluralizing societies; however, the challenge in turn lies in program production. This article examines and relates developments in both areas via a seldom-applied approach to transformations in traditional media organizations, namely close-range production study of large, prestige programs. An underlying assumption is that prestige projects can highlight key institutional ambitions, dilemmas and obstacles of change, and it is brought to bear on a national participatory event in the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK. The article studies how institutional practices can be twisted into a new course due to internal and external pressures condensed in large projects, and thus assesses the pace at which public service broadcasters are exploring their remit, a pace to which academics and policy makers alike need to be closely attuned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an empirically based examination of how the Norwegian television industry incorporates audience activity and audience-generated material, and of how audiences respond to the opportunities presented. It explores three main research questions: First, how extensive is audience activity on television? Second, to what degree do different television activities correspond to familiar patterns of social stratification? And third, is there any evidence for the view that digital feedback channels, such as SMS and the Web, provide access to television for new groups of people? To investigate these questions, a case study of the Norwegian media market has been carried out, based on two data sets. The extent of audience activity is examined through a representative audience survey conducted during a period of two weeks in 2004. The second data set is a one-week survey of Norwegian television output on the six Norwegian-language channels in 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]