Broadcasting, advertising finance and the rationale for public broadcasting

A fundamental drawback with the business model of advertising-financed broadcasting is that the incentive to deliver viewers of desirable demographics to advertisers can cause excessive competition for certain viewer groups to the exclusion of others. A public TV channel has a clear role to play in providing programming to the groups who would otherwise be disenfranchised in the market system. The public broadcaster performs best when it has detailed information on the disutility of ads from different viewer segments and on advertiser valuations.