Fulfilling the 'cultural mission': popular genre and public remit

Over the last three decades, public broadcasting in Europe, like other public institutions, has been under sustained pressure in various forms, including attacks on public provision from positions within, neoclassical economics and new right politics; left critique of public broadcast institutions and texts as reproductive of power formations; and development of new flexible media delivery systems and technologies. Public broadcasting has been required to justify itself under circumstances where conmmercial free-to-air broadcasting has been progressively challenged by pay TV in the broadcasting environment and where its necessarily national framework has been threatened by globalizing processes and. the flow of audiovisual technologies and content across national borders. One key site where these tensions are being played out is in the popular television genre of sport. Television sport is probably the most spectacular and regular vehicle for conveying and communicating both global and national culture. however these concepts might be critiqued and contested. Ini Europc, public broadcasters have played a foundational role in the development and nurturing of broadcast sport as national culture. Sport, therefore, is an especially important subject for debates about the state and future of the popular in public broadcasting. This article uses television sport as a case study in the exploration and analysis of the dilemrmrras of public broadcasting in Europe arid seeks to propose a tenable normrative framework for both its maintenance and development