fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2247 ]

[ SECRET POST #2247 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2247 ⌋

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So anyone living in a country with strong public broadcasters*, what do you think will happen to it in the future? Will it still exist? And to what degree?

Oh and while we are on the subject: methods of paying for Public broadcasting?

*Like the BBC and similar.

Edited 2013-02-27 01:06 (UTC)

France here. We have: France 2, France 3, France 4, France 5, France Ô. (yay, creative names!). Basically, France 2 is the biggest broadcaster, with the widest audience. France 3 is more locally-oriented and... err... more older-people oriented. France 4 is still young, and many made of reruns. France 5, I think is mostly documentaries, and France Ô mainly oriented towards the overseas. There was a big change a few years ago, when any advertisement after 8 pm was forbidden on all of these, and a push for more cultural programs (with varying degrees of success). Radios: Radio France. France Inter, France Culture, France Info... etc. (creativity!)

We have a few problems though: first, the executive power of all of these TV channels is chosen directly by the country's president (that reform passed alongside the no ads law, and it caused lots and lots our frictions. The last president had many friends in the media (think: his son's godfather's friends) and was repeatedly accused of using the media for his own political advantage, thus refraining journalistic freedom. Now that the president has changed, there have been talks about changing this law. There are budget troubles with France 3 regional broadcasts, since they have HQs in each department (think of it as a county) and the national HQ is more and more reluctant to keep them all.

Method of paying: revenue off adverstisements, State subventions, and taxes. Every household with a TV must pay 131€/year, except households with low income and people with hearing or sight impairments. The broadcasters, however, also subsidise the production costs of French cinema (although not to the extent of Canal +, which is a private channel).

The future? Well, for one, I think there will be changes in the way the broadcasters' president is chosen. I'm not sure how long people who receive those channels via their computers only will be able to avoid paying the annual tax, since they receive the same service as the others but don't pay for it. I don't know, this requires more attention than I have given it, but this is certainly an upcoming debate.

The watching via the internet thing is interesting to me. Here in Britain you need to pay the licence fee to watch or record TV as broadcast. So if you watch TV via the catch-up services (iPlayer, ITVPlayer, 4OD, Demand Five, etc) then you are exempt, however if you live stream using those services (iPlayer definitely allows this, I'm not sure about the others) then you are expected to have a valid licence. This is because they are so massively behind the times when it comes to technology, its basically a loophole that may or may not be fixed at some point.

Aside from that, there are other restrictions that come from the licence fee, like in the UK we can't watch anything from BBC America (it's region blocked) because that's all paid for through advertising and if the BBC made a licence fee payer watch an advert they'd be in breach of their terms.

As for the future, I don't know. I can't believe any government would be comfortable being the ones who 'killed' the BBC, but who knows.

Oh I remember our professor was talking about France, we really don't run our Public Broadcast the same (and as they are named NRK1, NRK2 and NRK*3/Super we didn't use any imagination naming them). Our channels are paid for completely by the licence fee and might be owned by the state, but we got laws so it can't be controlled by the state. Except for the list of stuff our channels gotta do: enough of both sets of Norwegian and content for minorities and stuff like that, nothing political. But then again Political commercials and stuff is illegal in Norway.

Oh and thank you!

*Norwegian Broadcasting Company

Late reply is late:

French public channels have roughly the same set of rules: must encourage French fiction, cultural and educational programs, must be available for the whole country, and no opinion pieces. There are political debates, but no show to the glory of one party (except for short programs that are virtually 5-minutes soapboxes for all parties and unions). That's the theory. In practice... Well, journalism is not always unbiased, but all in all, it is rather neutral.

It was like 2 hours after I replied, so no worries.

We do the same, except our channels are for the most time (like 98% of the time) completely unbiased. Mostly thanks to the rule NRK got that goes along the lines of: NRK shall bring forth any and all issues in society (be it individuals, companies or the government) that are questionable and/or necessary for the public to know.

We only have political debates, all political comercial/slogans and so on are not allowed on television. Instead our political parties all get about the same amount of time in the spotlight to make sure they in debates and interviews can get their points across. We also got pretty strict rules about how much money individuals and companies can give to a political party. We like to pretend everyone is equal in Norway*.

*I am not taking a piss, seriously our entire society is built around everyone should be treated the same, and it is idiotic.

Regarding politics, the funniest time of the year is during election days. The CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel, that's the overarching organisation which controls content and ratings) requires that EVERY party must have an exact equal amount of time on TV, at reasonable hours (as much as I'd like the far-right to have a slot between 3 am and 4 am on a weekday, that's not possible). So we get hilarious hysteria about clocks and seconds and it's really more ridiculous than anything, even though I get the sentiment behind it. Technically, no party should be allowed to have more exposure because it has more money. Similarly, there are rules about subsidies to parties and political groups in the assembly, enough that we really had a good laugh a few weeks ago (it's going to be long, but hilarious. Well, for me it is, anyway.)

- So: the last president lost the election in May 2012 and is now touring the world with $100,000 conferences. His party, which he used to control, was left with plenty of people who were civil to each other when he was there but who hate each other's guts and want nothing more than to grind the other's face into the dirt. Possibly with steel-toed boots.

- They decided to have an election to choose the new leader of the party, in which every member could participate. There were 4 candidates originally, only 2 were really likely to win. On the right side: former secretary of the party, twitchy, simpering, downright scary man. On the less right side: former Prime Minister, sinister, rich, rather bland man.

- Election day came. It was the worst mess ever. One candidate claimed they had won. Then the other did. During the day there was evidence of fraud, heavy fraud. They all said nasty things to each other. The accountant of one side said there was fiscal fraud and left for the other side. A former Prime Minister stepped it and gave up in less than 24 hours (there was probably frustrated screaming involved). Former president said he would tell everyone they were incompetent twats if they didn't stop arguing (as if we didn't already know that). There were several organisations involved who were supposed to recount the votes, none of them said the same thing. Apparently some votes were forgotten.

- It lasted for days and days. At some point, one of them took the deputies who were favorable to him and created a new political group in the Assembly (RUMP, as it was lovingly called) and everyone kind of panicked because that would mean less money for the party.

- In the end: they've settled on doing a new election sometime soon. Now, yesterday, one of them held a meeting to say he intended to be the party's candidate for the presidential elections (in 4 YEARS). The other held a meeting with the party at the exact same time. So they're faking a nice solidarity when in fact what happened has made everyone hate each other even more than before. They have to put ADS in the papers to find candidates for the 2014 local elections.

The funniest thing is that they have squandered HOURS of their allotted speaking time on national media because of this.

Come to think of it, we have also rules about how much money an individual can give to a party. That's why our last president was accused (and it is still an ongoing case) of fraud during the 2007 election. But he's accused of plenty of other things as well... Like our other last president was, before charges were (mostly) dropped. He was from the same party. Created it, in fact.

And you're welcome! :-)

Assuming you're asking about this for school (I took a glance at your profile), I'm going to direct you to one of my profs who does a lot of work on public service broadcasting. His name is Petros Iosifidis, and some of the books you might be interested in include: European Television Industries (2005), Public Television in the Digital Era: Technological Challenges and New Strategies for Europe (2007 and 2012), and Reinventing Public Service Communication: European Broadcasters and Beyond (2010).

I hope this helps. Then again, it's entirely possible/probable that you already know about him. I personally don't have much to say on the topic of public service broadcasting, since I grew up in a country that only kind of has it and it's not my focus, but I do know that the people who care about it are fairly ardent.

I am asking for school, but not in the way it seems like people though. I suck at phrasing things so it is probably my fault.

I got one of those books actually (or something with a similar title), and I'm not looking for facts I am looking for thoughts on what will happen. I do live in a country with a strong public broadcasters so I know about them.

Thank you for our answer!

Edited 2013-02-27 08:28 (UTC)

I live in Mexico, and as far as I know public broadcasting is totally free for the users? They make their money back through ads. Holy shit, there are so many ads in free channels. Like, around 5 minutes long, some commercial breaks? It's insane.

The biggest company is called Televisa and they've got their fingers in all the media pies. All of them. It would be a monopoly if it wasn't for TV Azteca (which also likes to the play the "my fingers in all the money pies" game), and possibly others? But those two are the big ones.

I doubt they will be going away any time soon, they're frankly too powerful politically and economically to just fade away. Something drastic would have to happen, like a game changer at every level, not just media.

Wait how can it be a public broadcaster when it isn't owned by the state?

I assumed that "public" meant "free/open" in this context? sorry, my bad then! D:

Public Broadcast is the name that is given to all "state" run channels, and everyone's "big brother" is the BBC.

And I get your confusion, because if I remember correctly Mexico, like the US don't really do public broadcasting to the same degree as most European countries.

And I forgot to say thank you in my first comment, so thank you Anon!

Ah, I see! No, we really don't have anything like that either (this is all very interesting, actually, thank you for the thread and for your replies!)

If it helps, there is this: (you could run it through a translator?)

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Canales_de_televisi%C3%B3n_en_M%C3%A9xico

Um, some channels appear to come from universities, another one from the National Counsel for Culture and the Arts, others from private companies, and there is also a non-profit organization that clusters together 50 radio and television broadcasters

I am learning things too, it seems :V

I don't remember much, but in Italy, there were 6 public broadcasting channels, three of them owned by Berlusconi, the other three by the government

you had to pay a fee each year to watch them

Italy's political future as a whole is uncertain, so who knows vOv

Thank you for answering!

Well I'm Dutch and we have 3 public broadcasting channels paid by advertising/taxes but most programs are made by different organisations who bring different political viewpoints to the programs (this stems from the time Dutch society was completely segregated along the lines of religions and political beliefs. Anyone who can find enough members can start their own broadcasting organisation and make programs. But there are a lot of plans to reform this system because it is to complicated/expensive.

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[ SECRET POST #2247 ]

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