Background

Television remains the most powerful and ubiquitous medium for social communication. The advent of digital television (DTV) and the prospective convergence between television, computer and telecommunications technologies augur radical changes in the media ecology. In the context of the ensuing technological, economic, cultural and regulatory uncertainties, some analysts argue that public service broadcasting faces new threats (Sondergaard 1998; Chalaby and Segell 1999), others that it bears new responsibilities (Graham 2000; Inglewood 2000, Born and Prosser 2001).1 The goal of this study is to examine and compare the digital television strategies of Britain’s two main public service broadcasters (PSBs), the BBC and Channel Four (C4), in this period of multiple uncertainties.2 The research also tries to understand how the PSBs develop strategy in the face such of uncertainties, with wider implications for sociological theory, as outlined later. The two PSBs are good for comparison. They have different funding bases (licence fee revenue for the BBC versus advertising for C4), regulatory structures (self-regulation via the BBC Board of Governors as opposed to external regulation by the Independent Television Commission for C4) 3 and audience profiles (the BBC being committed to universality while C4 seeks demographic groups attractive to its advertisers, ie higher socio-economic groups and younger audiences). They also have different remits. The BBC mus