BBC: Public Service Broadcasting Promotes “Race to the Top” with Commercial Sector

LONDON: A new global study published today by the BBC concludes that public service broadcasting has an overall positive effect on commercial broadcasting, promoting a "race to the top" between the sectors and improving industry standards.

The report, Public and Private Broadcasters Across the World: The Race to the Top, finds a strong relationship between public funding and commercial revenues. Territories with higher levels of public funding per person correspond with high levels of commercial revenue (advertising and subscription based) per person as well.

The research also cites a positive correlation between expenditure of content and programming by a public broadcaster and its commercial competitors within that territory. In countries where the main pubcaster shows a diverse range of genres and content, there also tends to be commercial channels broadcasting a wide-ranging offerings. This was particularly prevalent in the U.K., Germany and Denmark, which were found to have the most distinctive schedules on their public and commercial TV channels.

The global study finds a clear correlation between audiences' perception of quality of the main public service broadcaster and the main commercial counterpart. Audiences who rated their pubcasters as high quality tended to also rate the main commercial channels of that country similarly well.

Giving further support, it was found that in countries where public broadcasting appears less strong, the commercial markets also tend to be weak. This is particularly shown in data from Portugal and Italy.

Daniel Wilson, BBC Head of International Policy, said: “The suggestion that the BBC and public service broadcasting crowd out commercial investment misunderstands the dynamics at play in the U.K. creative sector. In practice, the BBC’s presence has had the opposite effect.

“In the U.K., we’ve long seen the BBC and commercially funded broadcasters ‘competing for quality’ whether on the Saturday night schedule or the latest crime drama series.

“This international research suggests that public broadcasting can help halt a lowering of standards and a ‘race to the bottom’ in increasingly competitive global markets.

“Instead, strong public broadcasting spurs a ‘race to the top’ between public and commercial media, raising overall standards across the industry. This contributes towards the sector’s economic success, cultural vibrancy and audience satisfaction.”