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The role of the state in public broadcasting remains strong but state– media relations are undergoing multi-pronged change which is yet to be sufficiently studied. While Flew and Waisbord (2015, p. 620) concur with the ‘continuing centrality of nation-states to media processes’ they also crucially observe that ‘We should move past the debate between “the global” and “the state” in media studies in order to better understand the interaction among competing forces’ (p. 13). In the African context, Zeleza (2009, p. 19) also reminds us that ‘media infrastructures, practices and policies are embedded in the prevailing material conditions of production, the ideologies of current political economies and the discourse of networks of particular periods’. These observations are crucial when investigating the role of the state in public broadcasting within the context of ‘local, national, and global forces’ that ‘shape media politics and policies’ (Flew and Waisbord, 2015, p. 633). This chapter makes three important arguments. The first concedes that states remain responsible for the overall policy and structure of their media markets, but argues that the public interest should guide how they control public broadcasting. Using the example of Zimbabwe and insights from elite continuity theory (Sparks, 2009), the role of the Zimbabwean state in public broadcasting is discussed in historical and contemporary terms.

Sakr challenges the notion that transnational media technologies have forced states in the Arab Middle East to cede ever more control to non-state players since the 1990s. Taking account of a long history of foreign political engineering in Arab countries, she probes the realities of Arab broadcasting privatization, intra-regional harmonization of government communication policies, and external financial support for media freedom and reform, to show how Arab governments were large successfully in harnessing forces implicated in media globalization in a way that entrenched authoritarian elements of the status quo. The findings validate an alternative to globalization theory that places a dual focus on the agency of national ruling elites and the international structures that underpin the power of those elites today, as in the past.