The Public Service Broadcaster of Lithuania in the Era of Commercialization

Abstract: The television industry in Lithuania is analyzed in this thesis with a focus on the impact of commercialization on the public service broadcaster. The purpose of the research paper is to describe the impact of the changing market on the public service broadcaster of Lithuania using as theoretical framework the approach of the political economy of the media and communication and quantitative methods. One part of the thesis is the theoretical research, which is done by analyzing and systematically presenting books and articles that relate to the thesis’s topic. In the second part of the work, the theoretical framework is applied to the Lithuanian television market. In addition, an empirical study is conducted in order to apply the theoretical discussion and answer the main research question. The main results of the study suggest that the public service broadcaster of Lithuania managed to maintain its programmes’ diversity. However, the amount of entertainment, imported production and advertising has increased. Therefore, a certain concern about growing commercialization is reasonable. These changes correspond to the tendencies in the European television industry. However, Lithuanian viewers seem to prefer the more heavily commercialized programmes since the leader of the market is a commercial television station, whose market share is almost twice bigger than LTV’s. Thus, LTV is facing a dilemma between preserving quality and diversity and commercializing its programmes in order to increase its audience share (dilemma between quality and audience share).