Television in a digital age: what role for public service broadcasting?*

‘Market provision of broadcasting: A welfare analysis’, mimeo

Shaun Hargreaves Heap and Paul Seabright

Economic Policy, 2005, vol. 20, issue 41, 112-157

Abstract: Summary Public service broadcastingThe television broadcasting industry is subject to an exceptionally high level of public intervention, but one of the reasons for this, the absence of competition, is fast disappearing as households become multi-channel. This paper is concerned with whether a case for public service broadcasting remains and, if so, what form it should take. There are several other potential sources of market failure, but a lack of evidence often makes judging their practical significance difficult. To help overcome this problem and provide the basis for improved public accountability, the paper proposes several measures of public service broadcasting performance. The paper also considers when the appropriate remedy for these failures might take the form of dedicated public service broadcasters like the BBC, RAI, ARD, France 2, etc. It suggests that, in general, targeted supply side interventions of this sort only make sense when they address a supply side failure and that dedicated public service broadcasters are to be preferred to alternative types of targeted intervention, like an ‘Arts Council of the Air’, on contractual grounds.— Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1468-0327.2005.00134.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:20:y:2005:i:41:p:112-157.

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Policy is currently edited by Ghazala Azmat, Roberto Galbiati, Isabelle Mejean and Moritz Schularick

More articles in Economic Policy from CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po Contact information at EDIRC., CES Contact information at EDIRC., MSH Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().