Public Service Broadcasting in the United States

In the past few years, American public broadcasting has faced severe pressures from conservative politicians, the challenge of preparing for new technologies, and fickle audiences. Yet it may be as well-off today as it ever has been, in part because public broadcasting has always been on the margins of American broadcasting. It has been in more parlous circumstances and in fact has certain advantages at this point. Public broadcasting in the United States is not essentially a public service broadcaster, although it sometimes acts as one. It thus has a certain flexibility in a time of great change. American public broadcasting is not a unified structure, but an ad hoc assemblage of stations united both by the fluctuating patronage of the institutions that fund them and in their cultivating the capricious support of the audiences they serve.