With Amazon, Netflix, Google and Apple pouring billions of dollars into original television production and Facebook luring advertisers — and viewers — away from news providers, concerns are growing across Europe that the central role of public service broadcasters, or PSBs, will diminish.

 “The growth and dominance of these companies is a threat to our entire media ecosystem,” said Noel Curran, director-general of the European Broadcasting Union, which represents PSBs. “Everybody in European media needs to ask: where are we going to be in five to 10 years?”

In Britain, programming delivered via broadband and made available on-demand has shaken television’s hierarchy, under which PSBs were the first ports of call on a television’s remote control and were easily regulated.

 “What we have taken for granted as critical to the health of UK television is coming under serious threat,” said Jonathan Thompson, chief executive of Digital UK, which is owned by the BBC, ITV and Arqiva, the company that owns and operates the national transmitter network.

Under UK broadcasting regulations, public service channels must be prominently displayed in the electronic programme guides of cable and satellite providers. But no such regulations exist for programming viewed on-demand: global digital subscription services such as Netflix “with deep pockets and big ambitions . . . are quickly muscling their way into prime position,” Mr Thompson said.

There are other consequences to the growth of digital services. In the UK, PSBs have quotas to fill on local production and must provide news programming but the new generation of global digital services have no such obligations.

Projections for the total amount spent on UK programming are gloomy over the next decade, according to analysts at research firm Mediatique. It is forecasting a £500m shortfall by 2026 as pay-TV operators and commercial channels reduce spending on programming in line with audience share lost to their online rivals.

“It is open to question whether, in a decade’s time, the UK’s PSBs can retain sufficiently large audiences to attract the advertising revenues required to fund high quality and popular content,” Enders Analysis, the media research firm, wrote in a recent note.

It is unclear what levers broadcasters in the UK and Europe can pull to ward off the incursion by US digital players. In the UK, PSBs are pushing for Ofcom to secure prominent spots for their programming in on-demand services.