Streaming Public Service Television in the Age of Platforms: Lessons for the UK from a comparative analysis of VoD publishing and personalisation in seven markets

Recent years have brought a number of new challenges for public service media (PSM) all over the world. These include radical changes in media use, the emergence of streaming services and the dominance of big tech. These new competitors for the attention of audiences have challenged PSM as an institution and project, requiring public service broadcasters to transform into fully digital, online-first organisations. In recent years, the UK’s three largest public service broadcasters (BBC, ITV and Channel 4) have made their video-on-demand (VoD) services central to their content and distribution strategies and, in turn, media regulation has been required to keep pace. The passing of the Media Act 2024 brings all the UK broadcaster VoD services under the public service remit for the first time. It also introduces prominence legislation, requiring appropriate prominence of PSM content and services in connected devices and requiring public service remit content to be readily discoverable within the PSM’s VoD. In this context, we present results from research conducted during the second year of PSM-AP, a large-scale comparative research project analysing ‘Public Service Media in the Age of Platforms’. For this research we compared the user interfaces of PSM VoD services in seven markets: Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia), Canada, Denmark, Italy, Poland and the UK. Our analysis focused on the publishing and personalisation practices evident in these services. This brief presents core findings from the UK analysis of VoDs. It also proposes recommendations to aid with the future health of PSM, so that PSMs might best navigate the challenges associated with the platform age and public service values might be extended into the digital-first era.