Abstract
It has been described as a general trend that public service media (PSM) lose their political power and support. Based on the research of the latest academic articles questioning the legitimacy of PSM in the 21st century, three ar- guments seem to lie at the core.
Firstly, it is argued that new digital media may cause the declining need for PSM while contributing to the increased accessibility of information, diversity or audience participation. Secondly, commercial model of the supply and demand is perceived as possibly serving better the audience needs when reflecting its preferences.
Last but not the least, the PSM relationship towards its public is discussed in general as it is often described as insufficient or asym- metrical. It is the goal of this article to analyze the common denominator of those arguments, the audience's role in PSM management.
It is argued that it is necessary to engage in a dialogue with the audience to gain its support and trust and that the audience should be involved in all the phases of public service delivering, particu- larly in evaluation. As a pilot study following this hypothesis, quantitative online research was conducted on a sample of 1050 respondents in the Czech Republic to examine their perception of the local PSM representative, Czech Television (CT).
Eleven statements were formulated to cover the key aspects of the CT services (overall perception, content, credibility or distinctiveness) and the evaluation was proved to be weakest in the area of audience's feeling of being important to the medium or able to influence its content in any way.