Five theses on public media and digitization:from a 56-country study

This article examines developments at public-service and state-administered media organizations based on a global sample of country case studies and selected secondary data. Most public-service and state media organizations have experienced a decline in revenue and audience and a tendency to weaken the program remit, but the overall direction of change is not one of uniform, marked, or irreversible decline. Although successful models of public service for the digital age have emerged, recent evidence suggests that neither the weakening of state broadcasters nor their reform into independent public-service media are inevitable results of digitization.