Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Public broadcasting is the single most important social, cultural, and journalistic institution of the twentieth century. In the past fifteen years it has been assaulted politically, ideologically, technologically, and is everywhere in retreat. This book considers the idea of public service broadcasting and examines in detail the assault made upon it with specific emphasis on global developments and events in the United Kingdom, Japan, Europe, and the United States. Michael Tracey argues that public service broadcasting has been a vital and democratically significant institution now experiencing a terminal decline brought about by changes in political, economic, and technological circumstances. Based on years of research and extensive contact with leading public broadcasters around the world the author examines the idea of public service broadcasting and how for the most part it has vainly (and often ineffectually) struggled to survive in recent years . The author concludes that public broadcasting is, as was once said of Weimar, a corpse on leave. Its likely disappearance constitutes an indication of a real and deep-seated crisis within liberal democracy.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part 1
• 1 Public Service Broadcasting
• 2 Principles of Public Service
• 3 The Deconstruction of Public Service Broadcasting
• Part 2
• 4 Reinventing the BBC in the 1950s
• 5 The BBC and Funding
• 6 Conquerors, Culture, and Communication: The Foundation of Post-war Japanese Broadcasting
• 7 The Making of an Institution: The Rebirth of NHK
• 8 Conquerors, Culture, and Communication: The Intellectual Roots of Post-war German Broadcasting
• 9 Conquerors, Culture, and Communication: The Creation of Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
• Part 3
• 10 Video Kombat and Highway Building
• 11 The New Television in Britain
• 12 Broadcasting and New Technologies: The Case of Japan
• 13 A Stricken Place: The Condition of American Public Television
• Part 4
• 14 The Ceremony of Innocence: The Condition of Public Service Broadcasting
• Bibliography
• Index