Takes a scholarly perspective aimed at creating debate about the role and function of public service broadcasting at a time that it is facing a variety of threats, from governments, and from commercialization of broadcasting. This book gives a global perspective on the state of public service broadcasting in the age of globalization.

Public service media are going through dramatic transformations as a result of technological developments, policy changes, market pressures and changes in media consumption. A significant part of this transformation is connected to the enhanced and novel roles of audience initiative to use and generate content. The scale and significance of the changes are still contested and the future of the provisions remains unclear. This book synthesises current debates on public service media and provides analysis of the key issues from an international perspective. It brings together leading researchers in the field and offers case studies from different countries. The book explores two main areas: legacy public service broadcasters in the digital age and new forms of public service media. Chapters in this collection address such fundamental questions about the future of public service media as: are the public ready to take on genuinely participatory roles? Do public service media organisations and professionals seriously consider shifting to a radically more demand-oriented production? How would changes in public service media impact political discourses and landscapes?

Radio in the Global Age offers a fresh, up-to-date, and wide-ranging introduction to the role of radio in contemporary society. It places radio, for the first time, in a global context, and pays special attention to the impact of the Internet, digitalization and globalization on the political-economy of radio. It also provides a new emphasis on the links between music and radio, the impact of formatting, and the broader cultural roles the medium plays in constructing identities and nurturing musical tastes. Individual chapters explore the changing structures of the radio industry, the way programmes are produced, the act of listening and the construction of audiences, the different meanings attached to programmes, and the cultural impact of radio across the globe. David Hendy portrays a medium of extraordinary contradictions: a cheap and accessible means of communication, but also one increasingly dominated by rigid formats and multinational companies; a highly 'intimate' medium, but one capable of building large communities of listeners scattered across huge spaces; a force for nourishing regional identity, but also a pervasive broadcaster of globalized music products; a 'stimulus to the imagination', but a purveyor of the banal and of the routine. Drawing on recent research from as far afield as Africa, Australasia and Latin America, as well as from the UK and US, the book aims to explore and to explain these paradoxes - and, in the process, to offer an imaginative reworking of Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum that radio is one of the world's 'hot' media. Radio in the Global Age is an invaluable text for undergraduates and researchers in media studies, communication studies, journalism, cultural studies, and musicology. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy-makers in the radio industry.

Few will deny that public service broadcasting?broadcasting that is controlled neither by the state nor by private media corporations?is an essential ingredient in modern democracy. But, as a number of initiatives in transition economies have shown, the inception and development of a strong public broadcasting system is a Herculean task that is easily sidetracked by politics or ideology, or stalled by lack of funding. Especially when state budgets are stretched, the expense is hard to justify. This collection of documents, comments, and cases brings all the major issues in public service broadcasting policy into focus and sets the problems to be addressed in sharp relief. It draws on white papers from NGOs and broadcasters, legislation from a wide range of countries (and a model law), accounts of public broadcasting efforts in transition states, analyses of evolving policy in established systems, government regulatory guidelines, and a great deal more. Among the matters touched upon are the following: the principles of public service broadcasting and their cultural and economic justification; limiting state interference; the place of public broadcasting in a multi-channel, ?market-driven? world; the appropriate mix of public and private revenues; objectivity and impartiality in broadcasting; how institutional structures can shape programming strategies; the use of competition law to adjust relations between public and private broadcasting; EU accession standards for public service broadcasting; and the impact of digital broadcasting. Broadcast professionals, students and teachers in communications and related fields, government officials interested in strengthening public service broadcasting and keeping pace with rapid developments?all will benefit enormously from this thoughtful and informative book. It will allow them to think well beyond the standard formulae about the function of public service broadcasting and its role in society.

As federal funding for public broadcasting wanes and support from corporations and an elite group of viewers and listeners rises, public broadcasting's role as vox populi has come under threat. With contributions from key scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, this volume examines the crisis facing public broadcasting today by analyzing the institution's development, its presentday operations, and its prospects for the future. Covering everything from globalization and the rise of the Internet, to key issues such as race and class, to specific subjects such as advertising, public access, and grassroots radio, Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest provides a fresh and original look at a vital component of our mass media.

This book investigates public service broadcasting (PSB) models in post-authoritarian regimes, and offers a critical inspection of the development of a Western European-originated PSB system in Asian transitional societies, in particular in Indonesia since the 1990's. Placing the case of Indonesia's PSB within the context of global media liberalization, this book traces the development of public service broadcasting in post-authoritarian societies, including the arrival of neoliberal policy and the growth of media oligarchs that favour free market media systems over public interest media systems. The book argues that Western European PSB models or 'BBC-like' models have travelled to new democracies, and that autocratic legacies embedded in former state-owned radio and television broadcasters have resisted pro-democratic media pressures. As such, similar to new PSBs in other post-colonial, transitional and global south regimes, such as in Arab states or Bangladesh, this book demonstrates that the adoption of PSB in Indonesia has not reflected the ideal PSB project initially envisaged by media advocates but was flawed in both media policy and governance. It explores the history of broadcast governance in authoritarian Indonesia, and considers how Western European PSB or 'British Broadcasting Corporation/BBC-like' models have travelled – somewhat uneasily – to new democracies, but also how autocratic legacies embedded in former state-owned radio and television channels have resisted external parties of pro-democratic media systems.