ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the long-running free market-public service debates that have been at the heart of media policy-making and regulation. In so doing it restates the case for greater financial support for, and regulation of, public service media and communication systems. However, it does so on grounds rather different from the norm. Instead of focusing on the social and political consequences of marketisation, the usual starting point for critiques of neo-liberal economic policy, the emphasis here is on economic consequences. Rather than looking backwards, at a ‘golden age’ of public service media, this piece looks forwards at a communication system that has been subjected to a period of intense market liberalisation. In place of social crises and democratic deficits it is economic crises which are observed. Instead of nation states and citizens it is markets and market participants which provide the case study material.
