How European public broadcasters favour programme homogeneity : the (in)effectiveness of public broadcasting service regulation

Abstract

The end of the monopoly and the liberalization of the sector have seriously challenged the content and the quality of the programmes displayed on public service television. Public television’s programme schedule is now at the heart of a permanent dialectic between compliance with legislative obligations and appeal to the largest number of viewers. This article makes a case for the ineffectiveness of the broadcaster’s public service mission provided by law, through a comparison of France, the UK and Italy. It shows that during the day, the public broadcasters tend to provide homogeneous programmes, with regard to genre, format or topic. This is contrary to the obligation of pluralism that is part of their legislative and constitutional mission. When it comes to the informative magazine programme, the article shows that France 2 is characterized by an inability to structure and hierarchize the different topics. Both France 2 and BBC 2’s morning magazine programme are characterized by a succession of inserts that reduce the viewer’s ability to process the information and, therefore, the quality of the programmes, which is an important part of their legislative mission.