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David Fernández Quijada, EBU-Strategieabteilung Bringing Value to Citizens Public service media is an intrinsically European construct: an idea born in Europe that develops some of the European ideals of post-World War II and reflects Europe and its nations.

We are close to the first century of public radio, the starting point of today's public service media organizations. During those 100 years, public media have transformed themselves in parallel to the transformation of the societies and the citizens they serve, reflecting them. This means that they have been part of key moments of happy and sad moments of our history: the drama of World War II, the recovery after the war, the creation of the European welfare model, or the most recent crisis shared by European countries: the COVID-19 outbreak.

This last example is paramount of the meaning of public service media. Putting the needs of the citizens at the center, public service media organizations across Europe reacted quickly to the challenges of the pandemic by modifying their programs and offers at fast speed. For example, shortly after the outbreak started to reveal its true dramatic dimension, ORF reactivated its educational programming with the 3-hours-show "Freistunde" on weekdays, including the exclusively created news show ZiB Zack, allowing the participation of pupils and teachers through videos.

This is a practical example of how public broadcasters carry a mission to deliver value to their stakeholders instead of delivering profit to their shareholders. There are many others and the European Broadcasting Union has been busy in the last years to document some of those. In fact, what characterizes the activities of public service media is their focus on citizens and its capability to adapt to an increasingly changing society.

An example of this citizen-centric approach that everybody will understand is the direct exposure for a cause and funds public media collect for good causes in their telethons. In 2018, European public broadcasters collected more than 400 million Euros to support a broad range of causes, from children in need to disaster relief and medical research. ORF's soon-to-turn-50 "Licht ins Dunkel" is one of the oldest and best considered examples.

An additional contribution of public broadcasters is their role as bedrocks of the national creative industries. In 2018, European public broadcasters invested 19.5 billion Euros in content creation, 84% of them allocated to original programming (in-house, commissioned or co-produced). Nearly 90% of that money went to local players, which also benefit from the race to the top generated by public broadcasters: their competitiveness forces commercial broadcasters to rise their standards of original programming and quantity, generating an spill over effect that benefits the local production companies.

So even without considering their key role in keeping power accountable and democracy healthy -they are typically the most trusted news source in most European countries-, public service media play a vital -and sometimes unnoticed- role in the lives of hundreds of millions Europeans who would otherwise enjoy a weakest democracy, a less enlightening media, or more difficult access to stories that reflect their own history and culture.