This Research Round-Up presents three recent academic contributions centered around PSM funding, ranging from an overview of funding models in different countries, to studies on willingness to pay and the validity of the ‘crowding-out’ argument for PSM online news.
Public service media: funding and governance options
Georgina Born and Justin Lewis (Ed.) |
The British Academy, 2025
This international comparison, which is intended to inform the current BBC Charter renewal process, collects policy briefs on public service media (PSM) funding and governance mechanisms in ten countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Authored by media scholars from these countries, the volume provides a valuable insight in the current state of PSM funding in these countries. Through its country collection, the volume also sheds light on the broader trend of abandoning the traditional device-based licence fee in favour of funding PSM through general taxation, as in the Nordic countries, or via a household levy, as in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Finally, the report sets out potential avenues for a future BBC funding model based on the lessons learned from the international comparison.
Read the volume here.
Understanding the willingness to pay for public service media: Testing the role of socio-political trust and partisan selective exposure
Marína Urbániková, Manuel Goyanes and Klára Smejkal |
Journalism, 2026
This study analyzes the factors that determine Czech citizens’ willingness to pay (WTP) for public service media. It takes into account indicators such as media consumption and expenditure, sociopolitical trust, and partisan selective exposure. Based on a representative survey, the authors demonstrate that people who spend money on news and entertainment services generally also showed a greater willingness to pay for public radio and TV. In this vein, the article emphasizes that PSM and commercial media are not opposed forces with regard to paying for media content. Additionally, the study found a positive relationship between sociopolitical trust and WTP. Furthermore, women, younger individuals, and frequent users of PSM services were found to be willing to invest more money in PSM.
Read the full article here.
Who is Crowding Out Whom? The Impact of Public Service Media in the Swiss German Online News Market
Lukas Erbrich, Manuel Puppis, Sina Blassnig, Christian Zabel and Frank Lobigs |
International Journal on Media Management, 2026
Adding evidence to the policy debate about whether PSM online news distorts competition and harms domestic commercial operators, this study examines the Swiss German online news market. By analyzing the impact of SRF News, the authors demonstrate that dismantling the PSM digital news service would offer only marginal benefits to subscription-based commercial media, while free, advertising-funded news sites would reap the greatest rewards. In fact, use of SRF News was positively associated with willingness to pay for digital journalism and current payment behaviour. The authors conclude that restricting the online news remit of PSM would result in lower news reach, particularly among households with low incomes, lower levels of education and lower journalistic media use.
Read the full article here.