Funding of public service media

This report gives an accurate and comprehensive picture of the financial situation of our Members.
 
Our new report on the funding of public service media (PSM) shows a drop in PSM revenues, exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. PSM funding has fallen in 66% of markets from 2019 to 2020. Overall, PSM funding can be seen as falling in the long term: cumulative PSM funding dropped by 1.2% from 2016 to 2020. This represents a massive 6.9% contraction in financial resources when taking inflation into account.
 
On average, in 2020, citizens living in the EBU area paid EUR 0.10 per day to finance PSM in their respective countries. This is a small investment towards an essential contribution, as most of PSM revenue is reinjected into the European content industry. In the post-crisis period, PSM continue to be the driving force in this sector in Europe. PSM is also among the top-3 trusted news brands in 73% of European markets, which is crucial to all citizens, especially in such times we are facing. 

In this latest edition, you'll find a unique set of data and an in-depth analysis, with today's main challenges and recent changes to PSM funding mechanisms. The aim of the report is to support our Members’ advocacy activities as well as helping with planning and business strategies.

If you'd like to explore some figures on EBU Members’ operating revenues, staff costs and programming expenditures with historical series, an updated version of the Income and Expenditure Dataset 2021 (which is part of the Media Intelligence Survey 2021 publication) is available.