Public Service Broadcasting, Popular Entertainment and the Construction of Trust

Abstract

Studies on the transformiation of pu-blic service broadcasting tend to stress the negative influence of working in a com petitive-multichannel environment and speculate about the loss of a unique identity in terms of civic responsibility. This article criticizes this view for using a perspective rooted in a rational enlightenment ideal; for its usual modernist distrust of popular culture/programnmning; and for failing to theorize public service broadcasting into a wider societal context of changing symbolic power. Inspired by social capital and trust studies, this article indicates how some public service broadcasting companies try to construct an Laura of trust, which includes a feeling of quality, reliability, honesty, competence and good intentions. In this article, I concentrate upon the overall prograrrumming strategies, generic choices and. discourses through which some public service broadcasting organizations position themselves as central trustful institutions in a risk society. © 2004, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.