Netflix and other transnational online video streaming services are disrupting long-established arrangements in national television systems around the world. In this paper we analyse how public service media (PSM) organisations (key purveyors of societal goals in broadcasting) are responding to the fast-growing popularity of these new services. Drawing on Philip Napoli’s framework for analysing strategic responses by established media to threats of competitive displacement by new media, we find that the three PSM organisations in our study exhibit commonalities. Their responses have tended to follow a particular evolution starting with different levels of complacency and resistance before settling into more coherent strategies revolving around efforts to differentiate PSM offerings, while also diversifying into activities, primarily across new platforms, that mimic SVoD approaches and probe production collaborations. Beyond these similarities, however, we also find that a range of contextual factors (including path-dependency, the role and status of PSM in each country, the degree of additional government support, cultural factors and market size) help explain nuances in strategic responses between our three cases.

This article examines the evaluation and regulation of public service broadcasting’s (PSB’s) contribution to home-grown children’s content, a key marker of difference with commercial rivals. UK experience forms the core of the analysis, but throughout we connect findings to experiences in other European countries. We concentrate on PSB’s interventions in TV, but consider this within the wider scope of multiplatform and online activities that occupy increasing proportions of children’s time. We start by outlining the rationale for children’s PSB, before briefly unpacking the pressures it faces. Using schedule analysis of children’s channels in five European countries, PSB’s distinctiveness from US transnationals is demonstrated by higher levels of domestic content. This opens up discussion about the value of domestic content, as well as market failure in children’s broadcasting. We consider different policy tools for ensuring domestic content and public service goals, before considering the effectiveness and evaluation of PSB approaches, which now extend beyond television.

For a long time essentially a national issue, in the last twenty years broadcasting policy in Europe has become exposed to the influence of European Union (EU) policy-making (Harcourt, 2005;Michalis, 2007). Since the mid-1980s, in parallel with processes of deeper European integration, the EU has successfully managed to carve out for itself a greater role in the area of broadcasting policy, in particular through the dissemination of new policy agendas (most notably the regulatory convergence agenda in the mid-1990s) and, more directly, through competition decisions in matters such as alliances and mergers in digital television markets, and funding arrangements and scope of activities of public service broadcasters (Levy, 1999).EU attempts to expand its reach in the broadcasting sector through more conventional regulatory initiatives (i.e. directives), however, have been only partially successful. Importantly, as argued by Maria Michalis (2007: 172), the EU regulatory framework does not deal with 'the heart and soul' of television regulation, namely public service broadcasting (or 'positive' programming obligations) and media ownership regulation. The central component of EU broadcasting regulation to date is represented by the Television Without Frontiers Directive (adopted in 1989, revised for a first time in 1997 and again, recently, in 2007; now called the Audiovisual Media Service Directive). The main objective of the directive is the creation of a single market in broadcasting services. The directive introduces very few regulatory requirements, mainly in the area of negative content regulation (in matters such as right of reply, advertising standards and protection of minors). Unsurprisingly, therefore, 'its impact on national broadcasting system has been relatively negligible' (Michalis, 2007: 172). Throughout the 1990s, attempts by the Commission to

This paper examines the recent commercialisation of the programme-making activities at the BBC in the UK as a major instance of a wider tendency that sees a market logic becoming increasingly embedded in public service media (PSM) organisations. Drawing on ideational approaches to policy analysis, this paper seeks to explain how and why the BBC came to conceive of BBC Studios, a new commercial subsidiary bringing together the majority of BBC's in-house production units and free to compete in the wider market for programme commissions, as serving its long-term interests. It considers how BBC strategists engaged with dominant ideas in UK broadcasting policy on the economic value of the creative industries and the benefits of competition for creativity in television programme-making. It shows how changes to the institutional context over the past three decades, predicated on these very ideas, have constrained BBC's room for manoeuvre.The main arguments put forward -the BBC's growing reliance on economic arguments to justify its value and the path-dependent effects at work pushing the BBC towards advocating an institutional solution entailing the further hollowing out of its publiclyfunded structures -are relevant to wider debates on the future role and organisational forms of PSM.2

As publicly funded organizations operating in a sector characterized by evergreater private-sector provision, public service broadcasters need to build a robust case for their continuing legitimacy. This article examines the discursive strategies of the BBC in the United Kingdom in the context of the last three Royal Charter reviews. It shows that since the early 2000s, and particularly during the most recent Charter review, the BBC has deployed influential policy ideas on the creative economy to build a case that in keeping with the times emphasizes its economic contribution as well as its more traditional role in fostering political and cultural citizenship.