Modern broadcasting policy faces a number of challenges: how to regulate the growing commercial sector; the position and funding of public service television; and finding appropriate forms of public accountability in the changed media environment.

Television and the Public Interest examines these challenges and how they are being addressed in the media systems of eight European nations. The authors' aim throughout is to identify the basic values that European policymakers, politicians, broadcasters and civic groups of all kinds regard as vulnerable in the new conditions and are striving to protect from market pressures. The book includes a wealth of information on broadcasting policy issues and practice in Western European nations and offers a major appraisal of the values enshrined in such policy, how they are protected institutionally in different systems, and how such systems are coping with the challenges of the new media landscape.