Public service media: funding and governance options

The BBC’s Charter is up for renewal in 2027. To coincide with the start of the renewal process in late 2025, the British Academy commissioned this collection of 12 policy briefs to help inform decisions around the future funding and governance of the BBC.

See more from The British Academy's Governance, Trust and Voice programme.

The contributions to this volume come from Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, and include three comparative international studies. Together they aim to highlight what we might learn from around the world about the best public service media (PSM) models and approaches for serving a complex range of public needs and interests.

The next BBC Charter renewal in 2027 comes at a critical time. The licence fee no longer provides an adequate and stable source of income, while the need for PSM organisations to provide independent, high quality and trusted content in the public interest remains critical.

The UK Government must make difficult but crucial decisions on the BBC and the wider PSM landscape which ensure its long-term sustainability in ways that will benefit audiences, the UK’s creative economy and democratic life. This requires a robust and coherent evidence base from which to make informed decisions.

This volume seeks to address this challenge by bringing together evidence into what works (and what doesn’t) from PSM models around the world, offering insights and options for policymakers to consider in the UK context.

Acknowledgements

This report was co-edited by Professor Georgina Born OBE FBA and Professor Justin Lewis FBA as Lead Fellows of this project. The British Academy would like to express its gratitude to them for their indispensable academic leadership on this crucial topic.

The Academy would also like to thank the authors of the papers in this report: Annika Sehl, Natascha Zeitel-Bank, Josef Trappel, Tales Tomaz, Marius Dragomir, Minna Horowitz, Hannu Nieminen, Julie Münter Lassen, Helle Sjøvaag, Christian Christensen, Fredrik Stiernstedt, Jessica Johnson, Emma Wilkie, Matthew Ricketson, Patrick Mullins, Patrick Barwise, Lee Edwards, Giles Moss, Catherine Johnson and Dan Martin.