ABSTRACT
The challenges currently facing public service media (PSM) in Europe relate to the evolution of media ecosystems through digitisation, fragmentation, and the individualisation of media consumption. PSM are also challenged by the freedom—and speed—media companies have to respond to market conditions. Thirdly, public service media are often restricted through insufficient or uncertain resources, by policy or legal constraints, and by political or other interference. Above all, sociopolitical changes and technological developments have had an impact on relations between public service media and their publics. Although most PSM in Europe have a public service mandate, their rigid structures and—perhaps—managerial reticence result in an ecology that is unable to sufficiently identify and serve the needs of their audiences. Due to the asymmetrical relations between media and the public, many PSM organisations are now ill equipped to react to creative suggestion, the rise of user-generated content, innovation, public participation, and to engage in meaningful dialogue with their publics. One might even go further to conclude that the overall concept of public service media is rooted in ideas inherited from the past, and characterised by the ‘top-down’ management structures created when the idea of public service was first introduced in the early 20th century. In the literature on management theory and practice, one can read that the root causes of failure range from incompetent boards to biased behaviours and a lack of systems which might support internal cooperation between different departments. This can result in organisational crises that manifest themselves in the long-term demotivation of managerial and skilled workers, and a lowering of critical reflexivity. To put this into a meta context, the 2008 global crisis in the banking and finance sectors might be partly seen as the result of management structures and practices that evolved out of the early industrial ‘Fordist’ model, based on product standardisation and different types of mass production. Can this failure to evolve to post-industrial paradigms be contributing to the difficul-ties faced by public service media?
