O financiamento do serviço público de televisão em Portugal

: uma revisão de literatura

Abstract

Public broadcasting service represents one of the largest annual expenses that the portuguese state has in direct grants. It is thus, inevitable, notably in the current context of economic and financial crisis, to question the need for this expense. As such, the main objective of this paper was to explore whether the state should or not be responsible for funding public broadcasting service. This work entailed the collection and analysis of bibliography – mostly written by economists – related to financing public broadcasting service. A survey of the most important arguments was done, which involved the study of both arguments support and against this type of funding. Subsequently, given the collected arguments, a contrasting analysis between them was conducted, in order to reach a conclusion as to the justification, or not, of the public broadcasting service funding by the state. In conclusion, this work highlights the importance, even nowadays, of the transmission of public service contents. It also emphasizes the diversity of models for the organization and finance of public broadcasting service, being that some of these models do not depart from the assumption that it is up to the state – and, in the end, all taxpayers – to finance this service. In this way, this paper aims to contribute to the reflection about the funding of public broadcasting service and about the reasons why the current model is challenged.

Date of Award	Mar 2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Lourenço (Supervisor)