Catherine Johnson is Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, UK. She coordinated the PSM-AP project, which examined the impact of global streaming platforms on public broadcasters in seven European markets. The project ran from 2022 to 2025 and was funded by a €1.5 million CHANSE grant. Catherine is an expert in screen media industries, focusing on television, digital media, media policy and the promotional screen industries. Before joining the University of Leeds in 2023, she held positions at the University of Huddersfield and the University of Nottingham. She has served as a policy advisor to various institutions and organizations, including the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and her research has informed policy and strategy at Ofcom and the BBC.
The PSM-AP project has just come to a close. Which of the results surprised you the most?
The PSM-AP project examined how regulators, policymakers and PSBs are responding to platformization. We compared ten PSBs across seven very different media markets – Wallonia (RTBF) and Flanders (VRT) in Belgium, Canada (CBC), Denmark (DR and TV2), Italy (RAI), Poland (TVP) and the UK (BBC, ITV, Channel 4). Given the variations in size of nation, media market and language, transition to broadband, and regulation, funding model and legitimacy of PSM, I was surprised there was so much consistency across our case studies. Our final project report identified four core challenges that all PSBs in our study experienced as a consequence of platformization: 1) audience reach, 2) brand awareness and value, 3) organizational transformation, and 4) financial sustainability. Although these played out in various ways across our case study markets, the fact that these challenges are shared presents a clear picture of the potential threat that the rise of global platforms and streamers presents to PSM.
What can the ten broadcasters you studied learn from each other about tackling the organizational changes needed in the face of platformization?
The transition from public service broadcasting to public service media requires PSBs to adapt new digital ways of working to longstanding traditions of public service devised for broadcasting. In this sense, organizational change is not just structural, it is deeply cultural. PSBs can’t simply borrow the organizational structures, mindsets and cultures of platforms. These need to be adapted to serve PSM remits and values. At the same time, those very values may need to be revised for the new media landscape. The key learning, then, is how to adapt PSM values to the demands of the platform age and ensure that these are embedded across the organization and not lost in the process of structural transformation. We saw this work effectively when editorial and data science, and linear and digital, teams were integrated. But structural change alone is not enough – it needs to be accompanied by work to address cultural and mindset differences.
What is needed from a regulatory and policy perspective to better equip PSM to deal with the challenges of the platform age?
Our final report proposes seven key recommendations to future-proof PSM for the age of platforms. Crucially, we argue that there needs to be greater integration of platform/digital and PSM policymaking. Often, PSM regulation is narrowly focused on a particular broadcaster(s), overlooking PSM as a structural intervention into broadcast markets to ensure a media system that serves democracy and civil society. Our research demonstrates that global platforms can impede the ability of PSBs to fulfil their civic functions. We need more ambitious PSM policy that addresses head on the structural imbalances in our current media markets. Yet this also depends on PSBs being free from political interference. Our research shows that media capture impedes innovation and the ability for PSBs to adapt to platformization. Greater independence, transparency and accountability is vital in ensuring ongoing public support for PSM in a media landscape increasingly prone to polarization and misinformation.
Your research also addressed the issue of PSM’s dependence on third-party platforms, such as social networks. Are there any best practices for reducing PSM dependence on third-party platforms while still reaching the audience they attract?
The level of engagement with social media varied across the PSBs in our study. Most PSBs prioritized their own online services, while recognizing that they needed a presence on social media to reach younger audiences. Channel 4 in the UK was largely an outlier in adopting a platform-neutral approach to distribution. This was partly made possible through a deal to sell their own advertising around their youth-focused YouTube channel, Channel 4.0. Such deals are not available for all broadcasters and even a large broadcaster like the BBC said it could be difficult to get the major platforms to speak to them. And financial deals don’t solve the other problems of distributing on social media, including lack of transparency and accountability regarding content visibility, reduced access to data, and value conflict. We recommended that regulation is urgently needed to protect and encourage the distribution of PSM content on social media.
Which particular issues concerning PSM and platformization would you say require particular attention in future research?
One of the real benefits of PSM-AP was bringing academics and PSBs together to discuss these challenges and I would urge far greater collaboration to help secure a future for PSM. First, we need to assess how to ensure sufficient independence from political interference in the management and funding of PSM, including new ways of meaningfully engaging the public to increase accountability, legitimacy and trust. PSM will only survive into the future if the public continues to trust and value it. Second, we need more ambitious and systemic policy thinking about how to regulate the wider media ecosystem if we want to preserve the benefits of PSM. Third, we need more research on the market conditions and audience experiences of television in a platformized context. This needs to look holistically across TV, radio and social media at the more complex relationships between stakeholders and intertwined patterns of audience behaviour.
PSM are often discussed as potential providers of an alternative, public-value driven platform universe. In light of the challenges you outlined in the project, do you think they would be well suited to doing so?
A key benefit of PSM is that it is a regulated media system. With good regulation in place, PSM is ideally situated to be the backbone of a public-value driven media future. However, this is not without its challenges. It would be very difficult for existing PSBs to be charged with creating platforms to rival those – such as Google, Meta and Amazon – that are already so dominant across contemporary society. This is not to say that we shouldn’t imagine a future where PSBs offer alternative social and participatory spaces online, or alternative sites for accessing short and long-form content. But it is highly likely that these systems would still be dependent in some way on the infrastructure of the global tech giants. What is needed if we want a public-value driven future for our media system, is regulation of the tech giants to enable PSBs to thrive.