The Rise And Fall Of British Public Service Broadcasting

Public service broadcasting (PSB) is the product of social democracy, which rose in British in early 20^th century. In order to perfect parliamentary democracy and gradually realize public ownership, which are two basic targets of social democracy, the idea of public service broadcasting came into being in the practice of broadcasting. The idea of public service demands that broadcasting should give service to the public. To achieve this demand, broadcasting should be independent from government and private benefits, neither owned by individual nor government, but owned by the public. It is in the guidance of such spirit that BBC, the earliest public broadcasting of the world, was established in Britain in 1926 and gained monopoly.BBC was completely independent from market because of monopoly and licence fee system, and independent from government because of the model of public ownership and principle of political neutrality. Being independent from market and government, BBC can function in public sphere and thereby be publicspherelized, which are realized in two intersectant steps: the part of one that provides all the people with sufficient and comprehensive information and the part of one that offers a platform to the discussion of public affairs. Being publicspherelized makes BBC exert great influence in Britain's democratic life and become recognized "cultural core" in Britain, which is the underlying reason for the prosperity of British broadcasting.After the middle of 1950s, as the market liberalism rose and government of conservative party introduced commercial TV and radio successively, BBC lost its monopoly, which led to common monopoly of BBC and ITA. Business logic enables the commercial broadcasting have the nature to clear up public sphere. However, because commercial broadcasting was strictly controlled, BBC's function in public sphere was only partially cleared up. Competition of viewing rate and mass entertaining culture are specific reasons for the clearing up of BBC's function in public sphere, which resulted in the decline of BBC and its influence.From the late of 1970s, the Neo-liberalism became flourishing while social democracy turned to decline. Under such circumstance, market liberalism gradually, replacing the public service, became a leading principle in making policies of British broadcasting. As being decontrolled, British broadcasting gradually marketized. Meanwhile, neo-liberalism is conservative-orienting in politics and culture so that Thatcher government intervene BBC's operation directly. In fact, conservative government dominate BBC by many means, such as privatization, menace of abrogating license fee, driving down license fee, placing personnel of his own side, directly intervening broadcasting directly, etc. Marketization and governmental intervention lead BBC to be restricted both by market and government. The most serious result given by that is BBC can not play his role in public sphere effectively, which further play down the importance of British PSB in British social life. BBC declined so progressively that once it even faced a crisis of survival.At the end of last century, social democracy appeared to be renascent. British government shifted its orientation in policy-making, desiring to establish a powerful and self-independent BBC which can play an important role in British democratic life. This change relieved the potential of privatization and brought BBC a free political environment, making BBC take a lead in British public service broadcasting. However, the progress of marketization in British public service broadcasting did not transform as the renaissance of social democracy. Marketization continuously exerted an impact on BBC public sphere. Namely, current public sphere of British broadcasting was not freed from the market inbreak. Comparing with governmental inbreak to public field, market inbreak was deeper, longer and more covert with greater threat. Although editing independence was guaranteed institutionally after new royal charter was released, BBC can not resume its role to be as important as that before it played in public sphere. Broadcasting public sphere was destined to be disbanded under the attack from market unless government controlled the commercial broadcasting as effectively as it did before 1980s which made the commercial broadcasting served the democracy. The future of British public service broadcasting depends on its roles whether it can continuously play in public field or not. The day British public service broadcasting turns out to be worthless in public sphere is the date British public service broadcasting comes to the end.The main line of this paper is to analyze how different social environment influences the function of PSB as public sphere in the broadcasting history, and leads to the rise and fall of PSB in UK. In the process of analyzing the function of PSB as public sphere, this paper attempts to show that the integration of the state and society, does not inevitably lead the market and the government to invade the public sphere, while Habermas said does. The real reason that the public sphere is invaded, even removed, by the market and the government, is market-oriented reform and commercialization of media. The commercialization and market-oriented reform of radio and television is just the product of Neo-liberalism which prevailed in the 1980s.