THE TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC MEDIA IN THE NEW DIGITAL AGE

Public television systems in Europe go nowadays through an interesting period of transformation, since they have to face the challenge of whether or not they will be able to continue as main actors within technological scenarios that are significantly different from those in which they started their activity. The recent rise, in the last years, of concepts such as "digitalization", "desregulation" and "convergente of mediatic markets" aides when trying to find an answer to why many public media companies are having to struggle for their survival when compared to their highly-competitive commercially-oriented market opponents. On the other side, there is also a continuous and intense debate, both public and private, on the democratic developments that Internet should have within the context of European governments. The purpose of this article is to introduce some theoretical base statements in respect to the controversy that surrounds the future of media public services, in television and other vehicles, such as Internet. Basically, the role of the public media in the digital era plays a role that can be found between the media technology development and mediatic policies. options foreseen for the next future.