The challenge of diversity in public service media: A case study of Spanish regional Broadcast Video on Demand portals

As European public service media (PSM) corporations adapt to the platformed context, the challenge of preserving diversity, one of their essential elements of public value, has become increasingly complex, especially in the case of regional corporations. In this context, this article focuses on a Spanish case study and examines how the four Spanish regional PSM with Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD) services – EITB (Basque Country), CCMA (Catalonia), CSAG (Galicia), and RTVA (Andalusia) – integrate diversity in the design and management of these portals (Primeran, 3Cat, AGalega and CanalSur Más). For an empirical and comparative analysis of the strategies, constraints, and tensions that are developing, the study draws on twelve in-depth interviews with the BVOD managers, content directors, and innovation officers of these PSM online services, conducted between 2023 and 2024. The findings show that online portals offer new opportunities to promote diversity as a multidimensional element of public value that goes beyond cultural representation to encompass governance, production, and programming. The study identifies two diversity management strategies – visible and invisible – each reflecting different operational logics that contribute to the renewal of the social contract between PSM and the societies they serve.