Interdependencies between Public and Private Sector

Abstract

In its origins, the development of broadcasting in Germany and the UK was promoted by the commercial sector. Although governments in both countries recognized early on the importance of the emerging media, they handled it quite differently. Whereas the Germans aimed for tight state control and licensed a company formerly affiliated to a department of the Foreign Ministry as sole service provider, in the UK, in 1927, the BBC became a public corporation, settled in a Royal Charter which lasted for a limited period of ten years.¹ Subsequently, the Charter needed to be renewed by the government, a practice still in place today.