Can public service be owned? - A story of noble ideals, legal tensions, and the 140,300 SEK question of what public service really is and who has the right to use it as a brand

This article examines a dispute that attracted the attention of the Swedish media, concerning a group of freelance journalists who launched a magazine named Public Service, devoted to journalism and society reportage. However, after publication of the first issue, they discovered that not everybody found the name as fitting as they did. The Swedish publiclyfunded radio broadcaster, Sveriges Radio (SR), argued that only the public service broadcasters had the right to call themselves “public service” and threatened to take legal action against the magazine. Although the magazine journalists believed that what they were doing was exactly what public service should be about – journalism in the service of the public – they knew they lacked the financial resources to defend their position in a court case. Instead, they changed the magazine’s name to Re:public Service, and auctioned off the Public Service publishing licence. SR won the bidding, acquiring the licence for a reported 140 300 SEK (approx €15 000). This chain of events raises some interesting questions for research in the context of the management and protection of the ‘public service brand’ by publicly-funded broadcasters. 2 Firstly the case provides a colourful case-study within which we examine the debate about the concept of “public service”: what is it, what should it be, and who has the right to define it? Secondly, by analyzing the event and the actions taken by the involved actors we discuss whether or how “public service” should form part of publicly-funded broadcasters’ branding strategies. We conclude by saying that even though public service broadcasters do not seem to be able to legally prove ownership of the public service phrase, it is still of strategic importance for them to prevent other actors from using the phrase to describe their products and services.