Public Service Broadcasting in Europe and the USA

The chapter provides succinct overviews and a comparison of the historical genesis, development and current state of public service broadcasting in the USA and the European Union, with an emphasis on internal commercialization and the influence of the commercial environment. Thus, the chapter adopts a comparative perspective in exploring the influence of economic imperatives on public service broadcasting in the USA and the EU, while also laying out the consequences for its contents to gauge to what extent it is serving its social functions. Emphasizing the importance of a media economics perspective, the chapter argues that tracking the money that flows into the systems, both public and private, and the money spent by their commercial counterparts, is the best way to understand the systems, their histories, and current states. In addition, the chapter argues that any analysis of public service broadcasting systems, including the relevant policies, needs to be connected to the editorial output in order to make a comprehensive assessment of their contributions to society. The chapter concludes by making the case that while European public service broadcasting is in better shape than its marginal American counterpart, more public money should be spent on both sides of the Atlantic in order to approach fulfilling the non-economic, societal goals of public service broadcasting, which can be summarized as correcting for market failure.