No. 2 (2016): The Challenges of Public Service Media

Public Service Media tend to live in a state of cyclical crisis. Regardless of their different incidences and declinations, these crises develop against the background of a permanent questioning of their legitimacy. The reasons for this questioning lie in the changes in the media system that increasingly took place in the second half of the 20th century. Since that time, the assumptions of the State's role in the media sector have changed profoundly. These presuppositions begin to be of a technological, economic and political nature: 1) the scarcity of the radio spectrum; 2) the investments involved both in the creation of a radio and television system and in its regular activity; 3) and the responsibilities of the State to ensure a universal and regular service of communication and information, training and entertainment, as structural elements of the functioning of a participatory democracy and of national values and identity.