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This study investigates how exposure to different news sources, propensity to vote (PTV) for a party and demographics are related to belief in conspiracy theories drawing on three repeated cross-sectional surveys in Germany 2017–2019. Results show that frequent exposure to alternative news sites and video-sharing platforms increased conspiratorial beliefs. Frequency of exposure to the quality press, public service TV news, and news aggregators diminished beliefs in conspiracy theories. Exposure to TV news, legacy media online, tabloids, social media, and user comments was unrelated to such beliefs. PTV for far left and right parties increased conspiratorial beliefs, moderate party preference reduced them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the news detailed in the BBC Annual Plan 2021/22 that BBC Four will cease to broadcast original content and will revert to an archive-only channel as a cost-cutting measure, this article endeavours to understand the legacy of the channel as it was, as it is and what it could become. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 2021, Rhodri Talfan Davies was appointed Director of Nations, a role which would see him lead all the BBC's work across Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, alongside his responsibilities as Director of BBC Wales. Shortly after this appointment, and the announcement of further commitments by the BBC to nations and regions, the authors interviewed Talfan Davies to understand the decisions that flow from translating the often abstract concept of national regions and English regionalism into a coherent set of organisational strategies, commissioning priorities and local production. A second purpose was to explore the value of local programming in an era of global television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1990, Spain has taken in over 200,000 Chinese immigrants. With these citizens often the targets of racist attacks and stereotypes, several filmic and televisual texts offer stereotypical representations of Chinese immigrants either as violent or as a model minority. Nevertheless, texts are emerging that offer more nuanced representations of this migrant body and construct complex characters whose identity struggles form part of Spain's socio-cultural fabric. Cuéntame cómo pasó (La1, 2001 – present) is one of the first Spanish television programmes to represent a Spanish-Chinese immigrant child this way. This article analyses the Spanish-Chinese immigrant child's construction within public service broadcasting, arguing that her character's representation is informed by the channel's public service responsibility. The analysis considers the notion that her character is the generator of 'hybrid acts' and is an agent of cross-cultural contact in her friendship group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the production, distribution and global expansion of the online teen drama, SKAM/SHAME (2015–2017), produced by the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK. The article combines perspectives on transmedia storytelling with production studies and studies of public service broadcasting to investigate the distinct production, publishing and promotion models underpinning SKAM, as well as its public service mission. Furthermore, it addresses SKAM 's transition from a 'secret' online teen drama targeting young Norwegians in season one to a global cult phenomenon with viewers and fans in all age groups and on all continents in seasons three and four, and relates this expansion to recent shifts within the television industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research examines viewers' actual responses to four televised fund-raising drives by a public television station over a 2-year period. The 584 pledge breaks we studied contain 4,868 individual appeals that were decomposed into two underlying dimensions based on the empathy-helping hypothesis: the appeal beneficiary (self versus other) and emotional valence (positive versus negative). We find that the most effective fund-raising appeals communicate the benefits to others rather than to the self and evoke negative rather than positive emotions. Appeals that emphasize benefits to the self significantly reduce the number of calls to the station, particularly when they have a positive emotional valence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of public service media is used to describe public broadcasters' provision of services that contribute to the democratic, cultural and social objectives of society, and this on multiple devices and across various technologies. While most research focuses on the theoretical case for public service media, this contribution analyses how public broadcasters strategically position themselves as providers of public service media. What are their distribution strategies in a market that is no longer dominated by the media themselves, but is characterised by a growing concentration of power in the hands of the so-called platforms and a continuous influx of new entrants? The article is based on a qualitative document analysis of public broadcasters' strategies in Flanders, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Complementary expert interviews were also carried out. Our main finding is that public broadcasters are distributing more and more varied types of content online, but that digital-only content remains limited and is considered as a subsidiary activity. Ample reference is made to the surrounding environment as a means to legitimise the existence of public broadcasters. However, this is not yet translated into concrete and focused distribution strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To challenge the Americentrism of contemporary Western queer television studies, this paper offers a peripheral perspective on the introduction of non-heterosexual and non-cisgendered subjectivities to Western European television cultures, and their subsequent mainstreaming through public service broadcasting fiction. Having established this distinct trajectory, the essay points to the challenges of bringing domestic television fiction to academic interest, discussing particular differences with European queer cinema and American television fiction. Reflecting on how these challenges can be overcome, the paper cautions against the localization of established methodological discourses, and argues for the use of descriptive methods as a way to negotiate the invisibility of domestic representations of sexual and gender diversity on television. Relating descriptive methods to public service broadcasting policies, moreover, it contends that such modes of doing research have queer political potential, and may allow for a direct engagement between queer media scholarship and public service broadcaster programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from a low-choice to a high-choice media environment has led to concerns about audience fragmentation, ideological enclaves, and selective exposure to partisan news media consistent with people's political preferences. However, previous research has mainly focused on two-party systems (e.g., the United States) and partisan news (e.g., Fox News or MSNBC), studied at single points in time. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide the most comprehensive study of which political preferences (ideological leaning, party support, and political interest) have driven selective exposure to public service news over thirty years, covering the transition from a low-choice to a high-choice media environment. Using an annual representative survey conducted from 1986 to 2015 in Sweden (n = 103,589), results suggest that (1) the ideological left and right have used public service news to the same extent over time and that (2) support for parties outside (rather than inside) parliament accounts for a large decline in public service news use over time. But most importantly, (3) those who lack political interest show the largest decline in public service news use, while public service news use has remained more stable among politically interested citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of history and heritage in institutional maintenance work. Based on a study of collaborative production of public service TV programs in Sweden, I analyze the program makers' rhetorical work to construct and justify meanings and interpretations. By drawing on the old but often overlooked understanding that institutions are "permanent" solutions to "permanent" problems, I discuss what problems the program makers argue that public service TV solves in contemporary Sweden, and the work of rhetorically constructing and justifying these problems in relation to everyday practices of making programs. This study adds to our understanding of how actors that inhabit and enact an institution can use its history and legacy as an interpretative resource in their work to maintain the institution, and how this process may affect the meanings ascribed to the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents results from a production study on how the on-air schedule is changing in the digital era at the Danish public service broadcaster, TV 2. TV 2’s multichannel and increasingly non-linear television portfolio has a profound impact on the production practices involved in order to meet the public service obligations. The analysis shows that the producers develop new ways to secure an audience of scale under these conditions. So far three lessons are learned: First, the workflow of promoting content and the demands on the qualities of the promotional material have changed. Second, an understanding of the interplay between flow and subscribtion-video-on-demand (SVOD) scheduling is emerging. And third, a renewed focus is put on branding the viewer–provider relationship. The article concludes that the production of on-air scheduling makes the contours of what can be termed ‘a third television paradigm’ visible in which a distinction between linear and non-linear television does not apply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As television production becomes increasingly global, television studies must advance its understanding of how the global and the local intersect and impact upon the cultures of production. Drawing on original comparative research of three small European nations – Denmark, Ireland and Wales – this article offers empirical insights into the distinct challenges and opportunities for non-Anglophone producers and public service broadcasters (PSBs). The concept of small nations is employed critically to reveal how distinctions of scale and power make a tangible difference to how television is produced and distributed, and to how smaller, national PSBs are trying to secure a sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a profession of key importance for understanding today’s screen industries in Central-Eastern Europe: the independent producer. Using the approach of critical production studies, the article focuses on producers’ ‘reflexivity’ to reveal how their professional identity is being constructed and how they are positioning themselves within the broader ecology of the media industry. By analysing a set of semi-structured interviews with Czech producers of all kinds, this article identifies five recurrent tropes related to their ‘self-conceptions’. The tropes demonstrate how the producers perform their identities differently from their UK or US counterparts: as largely disempowered, dependent on public support and on the powerful public service broadcaster, desperately looking for more stability, autonomy and recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented that discusses the issue theme of television scholarship in European national contexts, noting articles on topics such as the schedule of a Danish television broadcaster, public service broadcasting, and independent television producers in the Czech Republic.

In the globalized economy, old metadiscursive regimes have been challenged by new conditions which are often considered to be more favourable to heteroglossic practices. In Flemish Belgium, the liberalization of the TV market is said to have transformed the broadcaster VRT from a public service aiming at educating viewers into a competitive corporation eager to commodify nonstandard language use to attract viewers. The broadcast media, traditionally a stronghold of the standard language, thus appear to have become a key site for the valorization of traditional vernaculars and hybrid linguistic practices drawing on both standard and vernacular speech forms. This paper confronts these impressions with empirical data and investigates the sociolinguistic impact of the deregulation of the Flemish TV market in detail. It does so by analyzing the discourses produced by the VRT’s policy makers and the actual linguistic practices on the VRT during the monopolist and the commercial era. It points out how during the monopolist era the genre of comedy already provided a discursive space where the VRT’s standard language policy could be subverted, and shows how a market discourse may have colonized the VRT’s current language policy, but has left its original standardization ambitions by and large intact. The VRT is shown to nowadays commodify both standard and nonstandard speech forms, but in ways that do not fundamentally challenge the traditional order of high (standard) and low (nonstandard) speech styles. New corporate logics can thus be seen to reproduce rather than drastically alter linguistic hierarchies traditionally attributed to state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Channel 4’s critically acclaimed series, Grayson Perry: Who Are You? (2014). Using interviews with those involved in making the series and textual analysis, we argue that the elements that contributed to the success of the series are inherently difficult to replicate due to the political economy of contemporary television production, thereby threatening the sustainability of the genre. However, while arts television rarely constitutes a commercial success in a traditional ratings sense, we outline the strategic value of the genre in contributing to Channel 4’s identity as Britain’s alternative public service broadcaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from a production analysis of the Danish public-service television channel DR3's fiction production Anton 90, which was made in cooperation with a small independent production company called New Creations. In the context of intensified competition on the Danish market for fiction series, the ambivalent cooperation behind this production exemplifies the low-budget efforts of a traditional public service institution to produce the fiction series that their younger target audience desires. The article uses a narrative-discursive approach to creativity and develops the term creative assumptions in order to analyse how media professionals' implicit assumptions about conditions for creativity can influence the production process, and can generate disagreements. The analysis shows that the value of Anton 90 as a product is negotiated socially by the involved parties who have quite different assumptions about how production conditions can promote creativity, and suggests that a low-budget production can still be labelled as "successful". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK government-led consultations over the renewal of the BBC’s Charter, and the new 2017 Charter itself, have foregrounded the ‘distinctiveness’ of the BBC’s output, especially in popular entertainment television. Focusing on these debates and proposals, this article considers the value of distinctiveness when applied to BBC television, identifying definitions of the term and its history (or lack of it) in previous debates about the British broadcasting system. It discusses the implications of proposed systems for measuring distinctiveness quantitatively. It examines why the publicly funded, not-for-profit model of broadcasting might be expected to yield more distinctive outputs, yet also detects the spectre of concerns about the BBC’s market impact to be present in the background of these debates, in relation both to the production of entertainment content and to its scheduling. The article argues that the domestic and global economic and cultural benefits arising from the BBC’s potential for creating ‘distinctive’ programming should outweigh concerns about market impact. It also concludes that ‘distinctiveness’ adds little to the BBC’s existing service requirements, but risks being used prescriptively and as a weapon with which the BBC’s output can constantly be questioned by its critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 2000s, a new form of multicultural television drama began to emerge in the UK, exploring contemporary gang life within Britain's black communities. A notable example of this 'black urban crime' genre is Top Boy, screened by the UK's leading multicultural public service broadcaster, Channel 4, in 2011 and 2013. This article produces an analysis, drawing on sociological and media studies perspectives, and through historicisation and contextualisation, that seeks to understand the fascination of the black urban crime genre for programme-makers, broadcasters and audiences in the contemporary British mediascape. It locates Top Boy at the intersection of complex media relations and modes of production that are themselves intertwined with political, legislative and cultural agendas tied to post-multiculturalist and neoliberal tendencies within public service broadcasting frameworks. The article suggests that black urban crime narratives do not advance understandings of the organisational structure of urban gangs or drug-related crime that are so central to these texts, nor do they offer a progressive contribution to contemporary debates or the representation of black criminality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using a longitudinal design and measuring television content and the occurrence of ordinary television and 'ordinary' participants at four different points in time from 1982 to 2011, this study investigates the alleged shift towards ordinariness in the 1990s. Using Sweden as a test case, three research questions are posed: To what extent did ordinary television programming increase during the 1990s? To what extent did the participation of ordinary people increase as a consequence of this shift? To what extent has public service television adapted to commercial competition through broadcasting more ordinary television? The analysis confirms the alleged shift towards ordinariness. Ordinary television and ordinary participants did increase during the studied era, but a key argument put forward is that this shift occurred gradually and that one should avoid using overdramatic epithets to characterise it. The results also suggest that the public service broadcaster (SVT) also moved towards ordinariness but that this change was modest and occurred later than expected in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between television and higher education in the 1970s, focusing on the co-production by the BBC and the Open University (OU) of sixteen theatre plays for transmission mainly on BBC2 as part of the OU's A307 Drama course for adult distance-learners which ran annually from 1977. It considers how, on the one hand, A307 gave its students access to performances of the plays being studied, a distinctive and significant activity in terms of the evolution of a pedagogy for drama which managed in an innovatory fashion the rather paradoxical use of the television medium to develop a critical understanding of live theatre. And, on the other, it considers how these productions were designed to reach a wider public audience, thus satisfying the OU's mission to serve the general public as well as its registered students. On occasion, however, course content proved too challenging for the BBC, leading to arguments and, on one rare occasion, censorship. Drawing on extant archival materials, interviews with academics and producers, and critical responses in the press, this article examines the opportunities and tensions which arose from delivering academic course content through a public service broadcasting medium. It therefore contributes to understanding of contemporary perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of television - and BBC2 in particular - with regard to higher education and broader public engagement in the 1970s, the first decade of the OU's existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles published within the issue is presented that include topics on the future of public service television, influence of the New Left on commercial broadcasting particularly on the BBC2 television channel, and the principle of complementarity as a way of achieving an escape from tyranny.

The European Union revised its Television Without Frontiers directive in 1997. One significant catalyst for this change was that the liberalization of the television market led to a situation in which big, national sporting events more and more often were transmitted on television channels with limited coverage. The Listed Events initiative is an attempt to address this situation. This article studies the history of the Listed Events initiatives in Norway from 2000, and seeks, through an investigation of the presentations and discussions of the list proposals, to understand how the lists are connected to Norwegian culture and history. Ultimately, it is a question of national sporting events’ place in public service television in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the UK, and particularly the British Broadcasting Corporation, as a case study, this article highlights the difficulties faced by public service broadcasters, who continue to see sports coverage as an important part of their public service remit. Following a brief account of the historical development of sports broadcasting in the UK, the article is divided into two main parts. The first part examines the main challenges faced by the British Broadcasting Corporation, namely a combination of the escalating costs of sports rights and a squeeze on its own finances. The second part of the article then moves on to focus on the continued importance of listed events legislation, which effectively guarantees that certain key national sporting events remain available on free-to-air television via public service broadcasters. The article concludes that ultimately to be able to continue to enhance cultural citizenship through the provision of a range of live sports programming public service broadcasters require more political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gumushane Universty Electronic Journal of the Faculty of Communication / Gümüshane Üniversitesi Iletisim Fakültesi Elektronik Dergisi is the property of Gumushane Universitesi Iletisim Fakultesi Elektronik Dergisi (e-GIFDER) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The thoroughgoing digital disruption of the entertainment-based screen industries has now been well documented. But the factors that drive such disruption are in no way unique to mainstream media industries. The distribution and use of screen content in education in many ways parallel the experience of the broader screen industries. Just as traditional entertainment and information are being challenged by new online services, so too traditional modes of distributing and accessing screen content in education are being disrupted by online services. This article analyses these dynamics in Australia, placing them in historical perspective and using three contrasting case studies to exemplify key aspects of the digital disruption of education: ABC Splash exemplifies the public service broadcasting (PSB) ‘tutelage’ model; YouTube exemplifies digital disruption—immensely popular despite numerous education authorities’ attempts to restrict access to it; and ClickView exemplifies the ‘born digital’ company employing advanced technology, business strategy, and professional pedagogics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a changing media environment, television is being transformed by the adoption of practices such as audience participation and interactivity. This article analyses the ways in which managers and producers in Finnish and Israeli public service and hybrid television companies perceive participation and interactivity. We suggest that while these concepts can be described by hybrid broadcasters using the technologically- and commercially-oriented concept of 'social TV', the term does not adequately address the perceptions of socially-oriented public service broadcasters (PSBs). Hence, we propose the society- and value-oriented concept of 'soci(et)al TV' in an effort to conceptualise the PSBs' perceptions concerning the adoption of interactivity and participation practices while they seek to fulfil their social commitments and objectives. Our argument is based on a comparative study of two different broadcasting models (public service vs. hybrid) in two national media systems and cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at providing new insights about audiences’ opinions concerning the role of advertising and its relation with the perceived quality of TV channels. It analyses Spanish audience's perception of quality of public service broadcasters TVE1 and La 2 before and after the advertising withdrawal in 2010. The goal is identifying if the advertising removal is perceived as an improvement of the quality of TVE. The first conclusion is that a vast majority of the viewers find the channels more attractive now without any advertising than before having it. In addition, gender and age are not significant variables in order to affect this opinion. But the audience educational level does impact their perception: those less educated have a significantly better opinion about the advertising withdrawal than others who are more educated. Both national public service channels (TVE1 and La 2) have improved significantly their quality perception when comparing 2008 and 2012 surveys. They are the only two channels within the Spanish market to obtain a better quality assessment. In fact, all channels tend to maintain or reduce their quality perception in the 2008–2012 time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents and discusses the communicative behaviour in the continuity texts produced by public service television providers in Denmark in the digital era. Based on a case study of the two main channels, DR and TV 2, the article argues that, after previous trends towards convergence in the way the two providers communicate, the present developments exhibit a divergence. Three major differences are found in the efforts to (1) hold on to and 'herd' the viewers within the scope of products and platforms, (2) strengthen the provider-viewer relationship, and (3) stand out with a distinctive set of institutional values. The findings are interpreted as a consequence of the challenges and opportunities facing the providers in terms of funding and in terms of meeting public service obligations, in a situation of tension between a traditional linear model of broadcasting and an emerging non-linear model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many news media organisations, European public service broadcasters are adapting their corporate strategies to the specific demands of the evolving communicative environment. Digitisation and convergence have usually been presented as an opportunity to reinvent public service broadcasting into public service media, by producing and delivering (news) content across traditional radio, television and new online platforms. While investment in digital facilities has set the basis for a more integrated operation amongst the different news media outlets, finding a workable template to implement professional cross-media practices has been more complex than expected. With the aim of exploring key challenges of convergence affecting public service broadcasting newsrooms, this article presents a multiple-case study that investigates the current convergence processes of five European mid-sized public broadcasting corporations—the United Kingdom’s BBC Scotland, Spain’s CCMA and EITB, Norway’s NRK and Flemish-Belgian VRT. Combining an array of qualitative methods, the study focuses on specific convergence parameters, including newsrooms’ physical structure and management, cross-media production routines and workflows, degree of multi-skilling in journalists, professional identities, and attitudes towards convergence. Findings show that public broadcasters tend to follow a similar pattern in basic aspects, like grouping radio, television and online newsrooms together in the same physical space, even if this model has different outcomes in terms of cooperation across media and journalists’ involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article seeks to examine the notion of a 'history boom' on UK television (TV) during the second half of the 1990s and 2000s. It does this by sampling the UK TV schedule between 1982 and 2012, presenting material from interviews with leading producers and commissioners, and conducting an analysis of key programmes. What emerges is the contrary notion of a 'history dip' between the late 1980s and early1990s, which in turn reveals an earlier high level of history programme output on UK TV. By adding to the previous accounts of history TV production, this article comments on a tendency in media history towards a 'history of the victor', with the attendant danger of overlooking important periods of televisual output and industrial transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a detailed analysis of how the Danish public service broadcaster DR employs external funding for its drama productions. This investigation is carried out in order to discuss the schisms involved when a public service broadcaster - whose traditional obligations arguably pertain to the national sphere - becomes a player in the international market for television content and, as a consequence, becomes partly reliant on international funding. Our article examines five different forms of external funding (i.e. funding from sources other than DR's licence fee income): (1) co-funding with external partners (most often foreign broadcasters and/or foreign distributors); (2) canned programming sales; (3) pre-sales of canned programming; (4) format/remake sales and (5) international funds, both regional and international as well as pannational funds. All five forms of funding are critically assessed on the basis of existing theory and interviews conducted with significant industry professionals at DR's Drama Division, DR Sales, German public broadcaster ZDF's commercial sales arm ZDF Enterprises, and independent Danish production companies Nimbus Film and Miso Film. Specific cases (such as Forbrydelsen/The Killing [2007-2012], Bron/Broen/The Bridge [2011-], Arvingerne/The Legacy [2014-], 1864 [2014] and The Team [2015-]) are employed to illustrate the different funding models and tendencies identified within Danish television drama production. Apart from presenting the proliferation of different cross-national funding models that have been used within the last fifteen years, our empirical data also show significant new patterns in production culture and international market orientation within DR. Interestingly, however, our study demonstrates the distinctive contribution that DR's public service remit has made to the quality of its drama programming, on one hand, and to the reach of its funding models, on the other - and, hence, to DR's overall international success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication / Revista Română de Jurnalism şi Comunicare- RRJC is the property of Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The increasing use of the internet has brought new challenges for the public service television system all around the world. Despite the free access to information and the use of digital technology, the Eastern European public service television is still in a shading cone mostly because of the small scale of their broadcasting markets. This article tells the story of the Romanian public service television's (TVR) path towards an uncertain future in the digital age. The article offers an overview of the major changes and challenges of TVR (in terms of remit, purpose, values, and objectives) since the fall of the Communist regime in 1989 and aims to address the following questions: Is public service television still relevant in the digital era? What are the present challenges and what is the future of the Romanian public service television in the digital era?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses four waves of panel data to analyze inadvertent learning—that is, learning in the absence of interest or motivation—from watching public service television channels. Previous research suggests that motivation-based gaps in political knowledge are at least partly a function of the political information opportunities provided by the major television channels in a country, which influence the likelihood of being inadvertently exposed to news and current affairs programs. The present study puts the inadvertent learning hypothesis to a thorough empirical test by analyzing individual-level growth in knowledge over time, based on panel data collected during five months leading up to the Swedish 2010 national election. Using multilevel growth curve modeling and an extensive battery of surveillance knowledge questions, the results show not only (a) that public service channel viewing was related to learning, but also (b) that knowledge growth occurred among public service viewers independently of their political motivation and news attention, and (c) that such learning was even more pronounced among viewers lacking an interest in politics. The findings are discussed in light of ongoing media environmental transformations as well as cross-national comparative media systems research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current high public deficit situation of the Spanish economy lead us to analyse the management of public service companies, their allocation of resources and how well they are used. Within this article, we shall compare the efficiency of regional public service broadcasters (PSBs) in Spain using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and benchmarking. That will be done with two goals in mind. One, to evaluate and compare the performance of regional public television networks. And two, to propose policy measures to improve management efficiency. The results from the study indicate that more than a half of public television services in Spain are inefficient. It is recommended that the television services change some of their inputs/outputs to enhance efficiency and ensure future sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the strategy of private nationally broadcasted television companies that use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) compliance reports to gain reputation exhibiting them as socially responsible. The reports released regarding to sustainability initiatives delivered by television companies are confusing as the concept of CSR is not adapted to the specific social purpose of broadcast programming. Under the recent General Law on Audiovisual Communication (LGCA by its initials in Spanish) the authors propose to distinguish between common CSR obligations, such as environmental responsibilities and specific responsibilities of CSR, concerned for their own company. To measure them it is essential to analyze the risk contents of TV programs. The research project developed a protocol of risk content categories. The main TV content rules, legal texts, style guides, self-regulatory codes, broadcasting authorities studies and association viewers studies have been inquired and reviewed to develop this protocol. The ten RC categories obtained by this procedure used in a more comprehensive survey conducted three years ago are now applied in a new project on a 2014 selection of programs to analyze if the TV content continues having a disregard of the television networks and determine whether there have been any significant changes in programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the rise of social media affects European public service broadcasting (PSB), particularly in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. We explore the encounter of “social” and “public” on three levels: the level of institution, professional practice, and content. After investigating these three levels, we address the more general question of how public broadcasters are coping with the challenges of social media. How can public television profit from the abilities of social media to engage new young audiences (and makers) without compromising public values? And will PSB be able to extend the creation of public value outside its designated space to social media at large? While the boundaries between public and corporate online space are becoming progressively porous, the meaning of “publicness” is contested and reshaped on the various levels of European public broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]