Le service public de la television : les origines du concept et les defis de la responsabilite publique

Abstract EN

The objective of this study is to constitute a reflection on the public responsibility of public television in a context of a vague definition of the broader concept of public service itself, which lack the consensus of clarification.

The concept of the public service exists since already the medieval period and is seen developed in the sandstone from the mutations and developments that the society knows over the centuries is present in all sectors of activities.

The service of public television (the interest of this study) Long regarded as amalgam between the French concept of public service which qualifies more of” general interest” and “public service” and built on public monopolies regulated and the concept AngloSaxon which it is qualified of” public interest” and “public utilities” where the role of the government authority only has the mission to regulation, the definition of the public television service remains mixed and is experiencing a crisis of restructuring.

It is then easier in this context, to describe this concept that to define Several factors are taken into account also in the determination of public responsibilities that must assume the public televisions, namely the different characteristics that differentiate the public entity of the state or commercial.

The public entity where the political pressures are inevitable.

The state television is first of all the property of the State, its source of funding is also state, then it is a privileged space where the political powers to engage in political pressure in order to ensure their place and ensure an authority in the political row.

For the commercial entity, commercial gain financial or is the primary objective, as well the sources and the means of funding come from the different economic actors in society, a situation that exposes the public television has economic pressures exerted by the economic giants on the one hand, and on the other hand, it exposes the public media to different pressures of the markets which obey a economic logic based on the law of supply and demand also with the different fluctuation which the economic market is characterized.

The question of the financing of public television constitutes a crucial debate when the supply of its operating budget.

Even if the public television is to commercial vocation but works non-profit, it needs to finance its loads.

Several systems of funding are chosen to ensure this task.

Nevertheless, the mode for the granting of these financial sources is widely debated.

Member State, commercial, public or mixed, the public company faces several pressures: public power if it is state, fluctuation and economic pressures if it is commercial, insufficient if it is exclusively public.

It is a question not to be taken lightly particularly with the opening of the audiovisual sector in the world that has allowed the penetration of private television stations in the market in the media, and who exercise a fierce competition in the public television service.

Facing New Challenges of Technological order, public service television must modernize its practices and diversify its supports in order to propose innovative content and specific, the purpose would be to preserve its hearing if this is the increase, it is its only reason for existence.

Indeed, the advent of new media, Internet particularly which presents the benefits of accessibility and of profitability to the users, the television of public service risk of archaic become if it does not follow the evolution of technology.