The European Union declares that for democracy and pluralism in member states a strong and independent public service broadcasting (PSB) is needed. Patterns chosen by each country and available time for development vary a lot. Despite the wide variety, the universal intersection and similar characteristics between countries and country groups can be found. At the time of increasing market pressure, securing quality, diversity and pluralism of available media content needed for democratic societies, is a task of communication policy. Analysis of the communication policy from political and economic aspects is a helpful tool for shaping the regulation of public service broadcasting in the digital era. The current article looks into overall relations between a country's economic standard, PSB financing levels, historical background and audience market share trends of European public service broadcasters. More detailed focus is on the Baltic countries' PSB financing and performance developments. The case study will open up a background where major political and economic factors affected the development of TV-broadcasting in Estonia during 1994-2010, as well as the modern role of Estonian Public Broadcasting.
This article explores the ways in which diff erent external and internal factors (especially politics and economics) have encouraged or hindered the evolution of Estonian Public Broadcasting. This article argues that the Estonian government's 'idealisation' of market forces that is supported by European Union (EU) media policy and driven by the common market ideology does not take into account the actual abilities of a small country's media companies to provide a wide range of media services, and thereby limits the off erings of high-quality local content. The research methodology is based on an analysis of EU media policy documents, Estonian media legislation and broadcasters' annual reports in the period from 1992 to 2014. The main fi nding of this article is that offi cial Estonian media policy is largely shaped by the fi nancial results of private media companies.
This article aims to explore the ways in which Estonian public broadcasting tackles one specific media service sphere; how television programmes for language minorities are created in a small country, how economics and European Union media policy have influenced this processes. The article highlights major tensions, namely between Estonian and Russian media outlets, Estonian and Russian speakers within Estonia and the EU and Estonia concerning the role of public service broadcasting (PSB). For research McQuail's (2010) theoretical framework of media institutions' influencers -politics, technology and economics -is used. For analyses media regulatory acts and audience surveys are accomplished with media institutions financial data from the beginning of 1990s until 2012. This kind of approach gives a comprehensive overview of development of Russian language media in such a small media market as Estonia is.
This article examines media concentration in the Baltic
The need to re-structure established media systems needs to be acknowledged. In a situation where new services will be provided by different actors of the digital economy, the role of public service media (PSM) requires attention. If, generally, PSM are under pressure in Europe, the situation in small national markets is even more complicated. PSM are under pressure and also need to find ways to reformulate their role in society and culture. Broad discussions and new agreements between politicians, citizens and the media industry are necessary to change this situation. We will approach the question of whether a specific gap still exists in the media market that can be filled by PSM? The article will seek these answers based on various survey data and collected statistics in Estonia.
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