Local Television, Public Service Broadcasting and Local Community Climate Action

The media have been struggling with to representing climate change, particularly in ways that inspire more people to do more (Braasch 2013). At the same time as reliable information and education about this topic is becoming more important, public service broadcasters find themselves under renewed threat. This article examines if local television, if it was reimagined as community-led and operating within a public service context, could provide a solution for both problems: a source of inspiring stories about climate action and a means to democratise public service broadcasting. We report back fromUsing our a research project on community-led television and climate action as a critical case study which ran in the first half of 2022 andfor a discussion of British public service television and its representation of climate change, we introduce our conceptualisation of a sustainable community which relies on key public service ideals to remain so. We show that television can play a key role in supporting communities in creating sustainable futures by creating community bonds and providing information and education.