Future prospects for public broadcasting
SRG is too big for smaller competitors, who have to finance themselves privately, to be able to compete against it on the Internet with their own multimedia offerings. In global competition, on the other hand, it is too small. By Stephan Russ-Mohl
Large organizations, especially publicly funded ones, develop a life of their own and a momentum of their own - even when they are "actually" no longer needed. Cyril Northcote Parkinson was the first to put this in a nutshell using the example of the British Navy: After the First World War, the United Kingdom's fleet shrank, while at the same time the force of dock workers who supplied the ships and the Admiralty's water head grew - the latter even disproportionately. Other bureaucracies are also threatened by Parkinson's "law" and, on top of that, by a shift in objectives - especially if, like the public broadcasters in Europe, they essentially control themselves. The supervisory bodies are often staffed by parliamentarians who, for their part, are dependent on television reporting positively about them. They regard broadcasting as their favorite toy and not so much as a sprawling apparatus that needs to be put in its place. In Germany, the Federal Constitutional Court has just set a small example and ensured that there are a few fewer politicians on the ZDF broadcasting council.
At the same time, we organized a series of seminars in Lugano to mark the 10th anniversary of the European Journalism Observatory in order to discuss the future prospects of public television and radio with international experts. The Ticino Journa listenverband and Corsi, the cooperative that supports public broadcasting in Italian-speaking Switzerland, were also involved.
The conclusion and highlight of the series of events was a debate between SRG Director General Roger de Weck and financier Tito Tettamanti, who has also been involved in the newspaper business for years. Tettamanti first amazed his audience with a very simple trick: he pulled the previous day's Swiss television program out of his jacket pocket, read it out - and then asked the not entirely unjustified question as to what really constituted a "public service"... De Weck countered by pointing in particular to the wide range of cultural services that would not be provided without SRG.
Otherwise, three insights have crystallized in the course of the cycle that I think are worth sharing: Firstly, all the cogent reasons that once led to the decision in Europe to organize broadcasting on a public rather than a private basis have been rendered obsolete by digitalization and the Internet. We need to rethink from scratch what role public broadcasting, which will inevitably become more and more of a public Internet provider, should play.
Secondly, it is important to take a close look - and Roger de Weck was able to score points here: Where there is a corresponding culture of public service, of "public service" in the literal sense of serving, it remains an important cultural carrier, an instrument of national integration and also of minority protection. Such a culture exists in Switzerland and probably also in the UK (despite the various crises through which the BBC has staggered). In other countries, for example in Italy, the tendency of politicians and program makers to regard RAI as a self-service store is much more pronounced. The fact that even in Germany and the UK, broadcasting directors earn more than the British Prime Minister or the German Chancellor is probably a further indication of the mentality of service - as we all know, the fish stinks from the head down.
Thirdly, SRG is a giant in Switzerland, but a small sprat in the shark tank of global competition. It is possible that public broadcasters - even giants such as the BBC, ARD and ZDF - are far too small to face up to the real challenges of the digital age: It would be necessary to prevent giants such as Google and Facebook from increasingly becoming monopolists in their markets, spying on all of our private lives and, on top of that, increasingly acting as gatekeepers who use their algorithms to remotely control what each and every one of us learns about the world.
On the other hand, the BBC, ARD and ZDF, as well as the SRG with all their billions in license fees, are too big for smaller competitors from the publishing industry, which have to finance themselves privately, to be able to hold their own against them on the Internet with their own multimedia offerings. For Switzerland, this means that apart from SRG, only Tamedia and perhaps Ringier have a chance of surviving in the fierce online competition. I see an opportunity for the NZZ if it succeeds in cooperating closely with foreign titles such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Presse in Vienna. Media diversity is under threat like never before. The Schaffhauser Nachrichten, La Regione and Le Temps probably don't stand a chance against the big players in the industry, including the SRG and its offshoots in French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino.
Stephan Russ-Mohl directs the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
