The main mission of public service media, including public service radio stations, is to act in the public interest. So they have to provide their audiences with high quality news, culture, entertainment and educational content. Production of high quality content is usually costly, that is why they are publicly funded. For all these reasons public service radio stations have to differ from commercial radio programs, which are entirely left to market forces. Nevertheless, public service radio programs compete with commercial radio stations for listeners, therefore they
develop certain strategies of reaction to commercial rivals. The Slovene public service radio program Val 202 and the Austrian public service radio station Ö3 want to address listeners in a more relaxed way and both of them try to attract as many younger listeners as possible. Despite
similar goals their approaches are considerably different. Val 202 offers a lot of longer and indepth speech content and plays mostly noncommercial music. On the other hand Ö3 follows the principle »more music, less talk« with an emphasis on entertainment and hit songs. Based on the analysis of sources, interviews with the management staff, and systematic listening of both mentioned radio stations I have analyzed their characteristics – similarities and differences – and especially the ways they are fulfilling their obligation to act in public interest.
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