Public service media in Europe at times of crisis: some reflections

It might be an untimely statement to make in light of the latest developments (more about which below), but it is all too easily forgotten in debates on the prospect of Public Service Broadcasters (PSB) in the digital age how remarkably resilient an institution PSB in Europe has so far proved to be. The only major privatisation of a PSB organisation in Western Europe was that of France’s TF1 in 1987. Rather than becoming a relic of the past, as many observers had predicted in the 1980s in the context of the deregulation and commercialisation of national television systems, PSB continued to play a prominent role across the continent throughout the 1990s and the following decade, notwithstanding the proliferation of channels brought about by the transition to digital television during those years. In fact, the »population« of European Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) expanded significantly in the 1990s, following the transformation in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe of state broadcasters into PSBs enjoying legal guarantees of political independence