Public Broadcasting in Europe: Rationale, Licence Fee and Other Issues

This paper deals with some key issues arising in the current debate in Europeover public sector broadcasting (PSB). It asks what is understood by PSB andexamines critically the arguments for PSB. The latter is done under fiveheadings, namely diversity, democracy/equality, network externalities,innovation and investment and public braodcasting as ``insurance''. The paperthen provides some statistical analysis of the extent, funding and programmemix of Eurepean PSB. Finally it examines in some detail the issues surroundingthe licence fee as an instrument for funding PSB. These include thedetermination of the level of the fee, collection costs and evasion and thefairness of the instrument. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003licence fee, programme diversity, public sector broadcasting,