An Appetite for Change
Reinventing politics and public affairs in an age of change

Pat Rabbite

Issue 349, vol.88, Spring 1999

Broadcasting

The United States has a particular history of broadcasting development. The continental scale as well as a particular mode of development - private sector broadcasting companies under public regulation and supervision combined with a series of federally sponsored public broadcasting initiatives dating from the mid 1960s - has led to national and competing networks operating through local affiliate stations. This has resulted in huge diversity of content, organisations and systems for commercial and public broadcasting, and many broadcasters.

The two principal systems are the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS, introduced in 1969) and National Public Radio (NPR, created in 1970). Above NPR and PBS sits the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB, established in 1967). CPB funding is supplemented by endowment, fund-raising and sponsorship.

In addition to the historic commercial networks and public broadcasting, cable has also developed in a very interesting manner in the US. Mr. Murdoch's Fox network is now an effective fourth national network. From the political point of view one of the most radical developments of the cable/satellite is the C-SPAN service (the Cable/Satellite Public Affairs Network). It has developed into a service comprising two television channels and three radio services - all dedicated to national and international public-affairs programming. C-SPAN claims access to 70 million TV households via 6,500 cable systems throughout the US.

In a sense we can think of US broadcasting as comprising three systems at this stage: the three national commercial networks of old; a large public broadcasting system; and the commercial cable and satellite system (which carries a particular public-service initiative). All of this has developed and achieved a wide diversity of programming, types of ownership, (including community ownership, small local private ownership, university or college broadcasting and so on) and styles of broadcasting and journalism.

The Crisis in Politics

Technology may be the key to the solution of the paradox of more media than ever but declining political and public-affairs coverage. The development of digital broadcasting in particular is of enormous potential significance. The present Oireachtas Joint Committee on Broadcasting and Parliamentary Information has since its establishment engaged in detailed discussion of parliamentary broadcasting and related issues including the implications of digital technology and the possibility of an Oireachtas sponsored experimental Public Affairs Broadcasting Service (PABS). Surprisingly, the Director has nothing to say about digital radio - Digital Audio Broadcasting or DAB. Radio also is a lively forum for public debate and discussion in Ireland.

With digital technology, broadcasting, electronic publishing, old-style and new-style telecommunications are converging into a single industry. It is, in my view, enormously relevant to the actions of the Director that the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting describes itself as a developer of "public telecommunications services".

At least some of these critics do not define public service broadcasting simply in terms of what the state broadcaster does. Public service is a (legitimate) content imposed by the State on broadcasters, public and private. The Economist of 4 July 1998 (the leading article "Here is the News" and the analysis of the news business, Stop press);

On the Web, sites visited included that of C-SPAN, www.c-span.org; NPR's www.npr.org; and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's www.cpb.org. The home pages of these organisations provide access to detailed corporate, organisational and programming information as well as -on the NPR site - access to that network's interesting ethical guidelines for journalists and programme-makers. CPB also provides information on digital broadcasting including links to some Australian sites on the topic.

Digital technology provides our polity with an opportunity to define and configure broadcasting (which is to say part of the public telecommunications system) in such a way as to create within it real diversity of content, players and organisational forms. It is a basis for creating a genuine Forum, enhancing accountability and, on the other side, access by the parliamentary and government systems to the public - the citizens. Of course it need not be configured in this way - we can simply leave the multiplexes effectively in private hands and to be commercially exploited. Such an approach would leave us all the poorer and, in the broader context of developments in media, would even damage our democracy.
Pat Rabbitte is a TD in Dáil Éireann