A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD
Channel 4’s remit has always stressed
additional factors enhancing quality – thus
the channel must provide “a broad range
of high quality and diverse programming…
which, in particular, demonstrates innovation,
experiment and creativity in the form and
content of programmes; appeals to the tastes
and interests of a culturally diverse society”
and “exhibits a distinctive character” 65
What is interesting here is the prominence
in Channel 4’s remit of commitments to
deliver both universality of genre, and of
the diversity principle central to social and
cultural universality and cultural citizenship.
An additional principle: diversity
Public service media, therefore, have a remit
both to promote the national commons and
to serve minorities, especially disadvantaged
and underserved minorities. Given the current
insecurities concerning both national and
European identity, issues of cultural diversity
and pluralism seem more central to PSM than
at any time since the mid-20th century. We
propose that a core challenge for PSM today
is to revitalise their offering to multiple social
groups and to more adequately address
the distinctive, as well as the shared, needs
of the UK population wherever they live.
Increased pressures for devolution make this
an especially urgent task.
We suggest that rather than the earlier twoway
relationship (commons/minorities),
PSM should now shape a three-way, multiplatform
public sphere. In addition to mass
or national channels or events, this takes the
form of content and services that can create
a counterpoint between mass and minority
audiences, including services aimed at
supporting both intercultural and intracultural
modes of address.
Intercultural is when a minority speaks both
to the majority and to other minorities,
a core function of a pluralist PSM. Here,
universal channels and events become the
means of exposure to and connection with
others’ imaginative and expressive worlds
via the self-representation of minorities in
their own ‘voice’. It encompasses ‘minority’
programming on mainstream channels,
including black and Asian sitcoms, drama
and current affairs, community access
programming, as well as internet-based
content and cross-platform events.
Intracultural is when a minority speaks to
itself via services and programming that
act as arenas for shared experience and
deliberation by minorities about their own
cultures, needs and strategies, enhancing selfexpression
and self-understanding. Crucially,
on PSM this output – whether on the internet,
radio or TV – is also always accessible to the
majority and to other minorities, who gain
understanding of the core minority culture as
well as pleasure from such encounters.
All three modes of address – universal,
intercultural and intracultural – are necessary
components of PSM’s orchestration, via both
mass and niche services and programming,
of a democratic communicative pluralism.
Clearly, digital platforms have enhanced and
will continue to enhance the realisation of this
three-way, multi-platform public sphere. 66
65
Ofcom, Renewal of the Channel 4 licence, 2013.
66
See Georgina Born, ‘Mediating the public sphere: Digitisation, pluralism, and communicative democracy’, pp. 119-146, in C. J. Emden and D. Midgely (eds),
Beyond Habermas: Democracy, Knowledge and the Public Sphere, London: Berghahn, 2012.
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