Public were designed for an era of scarce channels and audiences.
Both conditions have gone, and the institutions remain.
Their defenders argue that the market under-supplies certain things reliably.
Regional news, children's programmes in a minority language and long investigations are the usual examples.
The argument is strong, and it is an argument for those rather than for an institution.
Funding models divide into three, and each buys a different kind of independence.
A household fee is stable and increasingly unpopular, since it applies to people who watch nothing.
Direct grants from a budget are simpler and place the broadcaster in an annual negotiation with a minister.
Advertising restores commercial pressure and with it the incentive to chase the largest audience.
Several countries have moved to a fixed multi-year , which is the least bad of the three.
The length of the matters more than its size.
An editor who must ask for money next spring behaves differently from one funded until the next decade.
Audiences have regardless of funding, and public now reach the young mainly through platforms they do not control.
Putting programmes there is necessary and hands the relationship to an .
No broadcaster has solved that, and the ones that refused to try are the ones losing a generation.