Antonio Arcidiacono, Director of Technology & Innovation, EBU
EBU Members today face the potentially existential challenge of how to survive in a fragmented, platform-dominated digital ecosystem. The mission of public service media – to inform, educate, and entertain – is more necessary than ever before but is harder to fulfil.
The answer will not be found in competing head-on with the global platforms. There is a huge imbalance in terms of scale and financial means; content distribution is governed by opaque algorithms; and the global platforms have fewer regulatory constraints and often no regard for ethical considerations.
Where PSM prioritize public value, quality and trust, for social media platforms all that counts are engagement and monetization. The challenge for PSM is not one of content quality – that remains assured – but one of loss of control over discovery and the audience relationship.
Losing control
There may be a temptation for some PSM organizations to adapt to the logic and rules of the global giants, but this is strategically dangerous. Mimicking the language and formats of social media risks diluting the identity and strengths of PSM. There are also risks related to data sovereignty if the relationship with the audience is handed over to third parties.
Live broadcasting is the area where PSM can continue to dominate and are irreplaceable. The timeliness, reliability and local presence of EBU Members in their own markets cannot be replaced by influencers or algorithms. Live content creates immediacy and a shared experience, reinforcing trust through a direct relationship, without intermediaries.
The global platforms target individuals who scroll (endlessly!); PSM focus on communities that stay.
Underpinning this continuity of community must be direct ownership of the relationships with the audience. This is possible through prioritizing live broadcasts (television, radio, streaming), owned portals and native apps, direct-to-user services, and physical and hybrid public events.
Lower barriers
With PSM organizations everywhere under cost pressures, they must take advantage of technological advances that have removed the cost barriers to live production. New IP- and software-based production models are dramatically reducing costs and complexity – think of 5G production standards (as developed by 5G-MAG), low-latency satellite connectivity, and cloud-based remote production.
We have seen notable examples of broadcasters leveraging these new technologies, whether at the Paris Olympics or the Tour de France, or in SVT’s coverage of Vasaloppet, the world’s biggest cross-country ski competition. Coverage of the latter has been transformed by the use of drones and connected cameras, eliminating the need for costly (including in carbon terms) helicopters.
Live coverage is no longer a niche luxury – it can be the backbone of PSM production.
And in shifting to these new technologies we must ditch legacy workflows. Staying with SVT, we’ve seen proposals from Adde Granberg and his colleagues to structure production around how content is distributed and consumed. Having more flexible software-defined production enables more sources, more perspectives, and a means of better serving the audience with no loss of quality.
AI too will play an important role. This is not about automation but about leveraging PSM’s vast archives and trusted news coverage to restore direct relationships with the audience. The EBU’s own NEO project is showing how PSM organizations can establish a direct dialogue with the audience based squarely on trusted content. This is already in operation at Sveriges Radio in Sweden, LSM in Latvia, and SRG in Switzerland.
The strategic core of PSM’s future must be owned, live, community-centred platforms. Social media is used for promotion only; AI-enabled dialogue replaces dependence on algorithmic feeds; and media literacy and participation are central to the mission.
It is time to stop chasing platform algorithms and reclaim our relevance with the audience, enabled by radically cheaper live production technologies and trusted, AI-powered dialogue.
This article first appeared in the March 2026 issue of tech-i magazine.