Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive funding from public financing, license fees, individual contributions and donations, commercial advertising and corporate underwriting.
A public service broadcaster should operate as a non-partisan entity, guided by a clear public interest mandate and avoid media bias or political bias. Public service broadcasters should be safeguarded from external interference—especially of a political or commercial nature—in matters related to governance, budgeting, and editorial decision-making, typically as a non-profit entity. The public service broadcasting model relies on an independent and transparent system of governance, encompassing key areas such as editorial policy, managerial appointments, and financial oversight.
Common media include AM, FM, and shortwave radio; television; and the Internet. Public broadcasting may be nationally or locally operated, depending on the country and the station. In some countries a single organization runs public broadcasting. Other countries have multiple public-broadcasting organizations operating regionally or in different languages. Historically, public broadcasting was once the dominant or only form of broadcasting in many countries (with the notable exceptions of the United States, Mexico, and Brazil).
Definition The primary mission of public broadcasting is that of public service, speaking to and engaging as a citizen. The British model is often referenced in definitions. The model embodies the following principles:
Universal geographic accessibility Universal appeal Attention to minorities ("special provision for minorities") Contribution to national identity and sense of community Distance from vested interests Direct funding and universality of payment Encourage competition "in good programming rather than competition for numbers" Guidelines that liberate rather than restrict
While the application of certain principles may be straightforward, as in the case of accessibility, some of the principles may be poorly defined or difficult to implement. In the context of a shifting national identity, the role of public broadcasting may be unclear. Likewise, the subjective nature of good programming may raise the question of individual or public taste.
Within public broadcasting there are two different views regarding commercial activity. One is that public broadcasting is incompatible with commercial objectives. The other is that public broadcasting can and should compete in the marketplace with commercial broadcasters. This dichotomy is highlighted by the public service aspects of traditional commercial broadcasters. Public broadcasters in each jurisdiction may or may not be synonymous with government controlled broadcasters.
Cultural policy Additionally, public broadcasting may facilitate the implementation of a cultural policy (an industrial policy and investment policy for culture). Examples include:
In Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is legally required to 'encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia' and 'broadcasting programmes that contribute to a sense of national identity' with specific emphasis on regional and rural Australia'.Charter of the Corporation (ABC). Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983: Section 6 . Furthermore, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is intended to reflect the spirit and sense of multicultural richness and the unique international cultural values within Australian society.
Etymology Who exactly coined the term "public broadcasting" is disputed. Various sources credit Morris S. Novik, who served 20 years as station manager for New York City's WNYC, the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting, and the Rocky Mountain Radio Council.
Operating structures When television started out in many countries in the 1960's, the reliance on analogue terrestrial television severely limited the number of possible TV channels in a geographical area, and many countries only had 1 or 2 channels until well into the 1980's. As such, there were heavy differences between countries' approaches during that time on how to operate those channels, including: 1 channel operated by 1 company (NRK in Norway; previously RTÉ in Republic of Ireland until 1978). 2 channels operated by 1 company (BBC; SVT in Sweden). Regional public broadcasters co-operating to create national channels (Das Erste in Germany). Regional public broadcasters with no national co-operations (VRT and RTBF in Belgium, which later also included BRT). 1 or 2 channels with timeslots allocated to various broadcaster companies (NPO in The Netherlands; previously Yle in Finland). Local public broadcasters co-operating to create national channels (PBS in the United States).
As digital satellite television and analogue (and later digital) cable television became broadly available in large parts of Europe and elsewhere in the 1980's, which both opened up more channel frequencies for existing public broadcasters and made foreign-based commercial channels like Sky Television available even in countries that didn't allow them at the time, the public broadcasters' operating structures became less strict, though many of their core structures remain in for instance Germany and The Netherlands as of 2025.
Economics Public broadcasters may receive their funding from an obligatory television licence fee, individual contributions, government funding or commercial sources. Public broadcasters do not rely on advertising to the same degree as commercial broadcasters, or at all; this allows public broadcasters to transmit programmes that are not commercially viable to the mass market, such as public affairs shows, radio and television documentaries, and educational programmes.
One of the principles of public broadcasting is to provide coverage of interests for which there are missing or small markets. Public broadcasting attempts to supply topics of social benefit that are otherwise not provided by commercial broadcasters. Typically, such underprovision is argued to exist when the benefits to viewers are relatively high in comparison to the benefits to advertisers from contacting viewers. This frequently is the case in undeveloped countries that normally have low benefits to advertising.
An alternative funding model proposed by Michael Slaby is to give every citizen credits they can use to pay qualified media sources for civic information and reporting. In the early 2020s, many of the public international broadcasters that court audiences abroad have seen their budgets shrink, with the exception of Deutsche Welle, while state media outlets from authoritarian countries like Russia, China, and Iran have been increasing their budgets since the early 2000s.
Select examples
Brazil
In Brazil, the two main national broadcasters are Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC) and the Fundação Padre Anchieta (FPA). EBC was created in 2007 to manage the Brazilian federal government's radio and television stations. EBC owns broadcast the television channel TV Brasil (launched in 2007, being the merger of TVE Brasil, launched in Rio de Janeiro in 1975, and TV Nacional, launched in Brasilia in 1960), the radio stations Rádio Nacional and Rádio MEC, broadcast to Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Recife, and Tabatinga, Rádio Nacional da Amazônia, a shortwave radio station based in Brasília with programming aimed to the population of the Amazon region, and Agência Brasil, a news agency. Starting in 2021, EBC expanded the coverage of its radio stations through the new FM extended band to the metropolitan areas of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Recife, important Brazilian regions which did not have EBC radio stations.
Fundação Padre Anchieta is a non-profit foundation created by the government of the state of São Paulo in 1967 and includes a national educational public television network (TV Cultura, launched in 1969 in São Paulo, which is available in all Brazilian states through its 135 affiliates), two radio stations (Rádio Cultura FM and Rádio Cultura Brasil, both broadcasting to Greater São Paulo), two educational TV channels aimed at distance education (TV Educação and Univesp TV, which is available on free-to-air digital TV in São Paulo and nationally by cable and satellite), and the children's TV channel TV Rá-Tim-Bum, available nationally on pay TV.
Many Brazilian states also have regional and statewide public radio and television stations. One example is Minas Gerais, which has the EMC (Empresa Mineira de Comunicação), a public corporation created in 2016 modelled on EBC, formed by Rede Minas, a statewide television network and the two stations of Rádio Inconfidência, which operates in AM, FM and shortwave; in the state of Pará, the state-funded foundation FUNTELPA (Fundação Paraense de Radiodifusão) operates the public educational state-wide television network Rede Cultura do Pará (which covers the entire state of Pará, reaching many cities of Brazilian Amazon) and Rádio Cultura, a public radio station which broadcasts in FM for Belém. The state of Espírito Santo has the RTV-ES (Rádio e Televisão Espírito Santo), with its television channel TVE-ES (TV Educativa do Espírito Santo) and an AM radio station (Rádio Espírito Santo), and in Rio Grande do Sul, the state-wide public television channel TVE-RS (TV Educativa do Rio Grande do Sul) and the public radio station FM Cultura (which broadcasts for Porto Alegre metropolitan area) are the two public broadcasters in the state. Regional public television channels in Brazil often broadcast part of TV Brasil or TV Cultura programming among with some hours of local programming.
Since the government of Michel Temer, EBC has received several criticism from some politicians for having an alleged political bias. The president of Brazil from 2019 to 2022, Jair Bolsonaro, said in his campaign for the presidential election in 2018 that the public broadcaster is allegedly a "job hanger" (public company existing only for the purpose of securing positions for political allies) and has proposed to privatize or extinguish the public company. On April 9, 2021, the president inserted the public company into the National Privatization Program, with the intention of carrying out studies about the possibility of privatization of the public broadcaster. Some states often had problems with their public broadcasting services. In São Paulo, FPA had sometimes dealt with budget cuts, labor disputes and strikes. In Rio Grande do Sul, TVE-RS and FM Cultura were managed by the Piratini Foundation, a non-profit state foundation. However, due to the public debt crisis in the state, in 2018, the Piratini Foundation had its activities closed, and TVE-RS and FM Cultura started to be managed by the Secretariat of Communication of the state government. Brazil also has many campus radio and community radio stations and several educational local TV channels (many of them belonging to public and private universities).
Canada