The new legitimacy of the public service

Abstract

The technological, economic, social and political context of television has changed a lot since the age where a public service operator held a monopoly on television activity or even since the period in which it faced competition from a limited number of operators using the radio electric spectrum. The digital age presents new challenges to the public service, namely to justify its existence as part of a diversified offer and simultaneously to reject a marginal and supplementary role, to represent a paradigm of production and distribution of quality content and openness to innovation and experimentation, to assume the strategic role of a mandatory national capital operator and offer new channels and services, including interactive non-linear ones.