10 A Case for Safeguarding Public Service Broadcasting in The World Politicians of all stripes the world over have always tried to meddle with their public broadcasters, but lately, they’re increasingly imposing (or threatening to impose) budget cuts, instigating license fee freezes, and publicly discussing privatization. These are populist measures aimed at ensuring that the public service media remain government friendly. U.S. President Donald Trump’s cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding is just the latest example. Ironically, nationalistic politicians do not (or do not want to) understand the importance of public service media for the national identity of a country, which provides national, regional and local news, acts as a guardian of the national language, and provides arts and educational, as well as children’s programming. In a recent address, Catalan politician Diana Riba Giner, Vice Chairwoman of the Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament, remarked: “Today, in Europe, we find ourselves defending basic principles and fundamental rights, once again. And there is a real risk: that culture will be relegated to entertainment, anecdote, or folklore. Sometimes, there is this mistaken idea that culture is a luxury, a kind of complement. In Europe, we risk forgetting that culture is a democratic structure, one of the pillars that underpin our societal model.” The threat is there. It concerns all of public service media, but as television has the largest public impact let us concentrate on the provider of images and have a quick look at its history. Television was invented in various countries at around the same time. The first TV station in the U.S., W3XK, received a commercial license for inventor Charles Francis Jenkins and began broadcasting on July 2, 1928. The U.S., and later Latin America, operated commercially from the beginning, which implied monetizing content and therefore also quickly establishing a ratings system. The BBC officially launched on November 2, 1936. Europe opted for a public service and a license fee, as did Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The definition of this new service came from the BBC’s founding Director General, Lord Reith, whose mantra was “information, education, and entertainment.” For decades the BBC was looked upon as the unquestioned leader in the field. Under industry pressure commercial channels began to emerge and the creation of ITV in the U.K. began to put the BBC under pressure to maintain its viewership. Its conservative General Director James Trethowan (19771982) posited the fatally ill-founded idea that government might not renew the charter or from time to time increase the license fee if the BBC could not hold on to 50 percent of the total national viewership. A cutthroat competition between the two systems began, and the rest of Europe followed suit. Conversely, in the U.S., university-owned public services sprang up, which ultimately merged into public television, living mainly on donations, sponsorships, and some government funding. The world accommodated public service media with a different remit side by side with the commercial operators, who were only in the game to make money (in other words, making fashionable programming that provided the highest possible ratings and, also quite often targeted the lowest common denominator). Public service media, first reluctantly and later wholeheartedly, joined the ratings game. A game that caused CBS in the U.S. to ax the once popular Late Show with Stephen Colbert when it stopped attracting enough advertising. But the game changed dramatically with the arrival of the streamers, of which Netflix and Amazon Prime are the most successful. This created a completely new situation, with quality, subscription-based content, but limited to subject matter that is globally and instantly understandable — Squid Game being a format that springs to mind. But Netflix and its peers will not provide national, regional, or local news, will not cater to minority interests. In short, it will not nourish people but merely entertain them. Recently, an interesting survey in the U.S. showed that voters place most trust in public media and found that viewers value emergency alerts (82 percent), children’s educational programming (66 percent), local programming (66 percent), and national news reporting (60 percent). Add culture and you have most of the original public service remit. Public service media, however, does need to rethink its remit along the lines of the Reithian ethos (as envisioned by John Reith, the BBC’s first director general), maintain and expand on its news operations, build on its investigative journalism, broadcast more original fiction in its national language, put children’s educational programming on top of its list, cater to minorities, and take culture out of the present ghetto. At the same time, politicians should understand that public media serves democracy best when it remains apolitically critical. By Reiner E. Moritz* Public service media, first reluctantly and later wholeheartedly, joined the ratings game. *Reiner Moritz, operating from Germany, the U.K., and France, has been producing and distributing music and arts programming for 60 years. He is a keen observer of the evolution of public service broadcasting, and was instrumental in the creation of such iconic programs as David Attenborough’s Life on Earth, Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New, Peter Brooks’ The Mahabharata, Peter Stein’s Faust, and Philip Short’s Mao: A Chinese Tale. VIDEOAGE October 2025 PBS Under Fire
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