The EBU has its administrative headquarters in Geneva, where it also maintains the Eurovision control center. It has TV news coordination bureaus in New York, Washington, and Moscow and an office in Brussels, which represents the interests of the public service broadcasters before the European institutions. Its much smaller and younger counterpart, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT), caters to the interests of commercial/private broadcasting stations in Europe. 

The EBU was founded on February 12, 1950, by mainly Western European broadcasting stations at a conference in the Devonshire coastal resort of Torquay, England. Following the political changes in Eastern Europe, in 1993 the EBU merged with the International Radio and Television Organisation (OIRT), the former umbrella organization of radio and TV services in Eastern Europe. The EBU now has 71 active full members from 52 countries in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East and 45 associate members in 28 more countries. Members are radio and television companies, most of which are public service broadcasters or privately owned stations with public missions. Full active members are based in countries from Algeria to the Vatican, including almost all European countries. Associate members are not limited to those from European countries and the Mediterranean but include broadcasters from Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, India, and Hong Kong as well as many others. Associate members from the United States include the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. At a global level, EBY works in close collaboration with sister unions on other continents: the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), the North American Broadcasters’ Association (NABA), the Union of National Radio & Television Organizations of Africa (URTNA), the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU), and the Organización de la Televisión Iberoamericana (OTI).

Based in Geneva, the EVU is a nongovernmental international association governed by Swiss law and its own statutes. It is the successor to the first international association of broadcasters, the International Broadcasting Union (1925), which was also based in Geneva. Its principal aims are to promote cooperation between members and with broadcasting organizations throughout the world and to represent its members’ interests in the legal, technical, and programming fields.

The EBU is administered by a general assembly that meets annually and elects an administrative council composed of 15 active members. A president and two vice presidents are chosen by the assembly from among the representatives of the members making up the council. Council membership is for four years, with reelection permitted. Because the EBU is based in Switzerland, the Swiss member, Société Suisse de Radiodiffusion et Télévision (SSR), has a permanent seat on the council. Four permanent committees- the Radio Department, the Television Department, the Legal Department, and the Technical Department–report to the council on their working and ad hoc groups. Day-to-day operations are carried out by the Permanent Services staff, headed by the secretary-general.

One of the major activities of the EBU is the Eurovision scheme, consisting of program pooling and joint purchasing operations. Eurovision was the idea of Marcel Bezençon, once director of the SSR and president of the EBU. Eurovision was and is a television program clearinghouse that facilitates the exchange of programming between national networks throughout Europe. One of the early successes of the EBU was the relay on June 2, 1953, of the transmission of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. The official birth of Eurovision as an international television network occurred on June 6, 1954, when the Narcissus Festival from Montreux, Switzerland, opened a series of live transmissions, the “Television Summer Season of 1954.”

Today the Eurovision permanent global network (of up to 50 digital channels on five different satellites) carries constant exchanges of news and programs. Each year, around 30,000 news items and 4,000 programs are transmitted. The EBU is often the operator of the only generally available broadcasting facilities in crisis situations, such as during the Gulf War on the conflicts in Rwanda, the Balkans, and the Middle East. The news exchange began on a trial basis in 1958 and became regularized in 1961. It has been supplemented by a multilingual channel known as Euronews, which began broadcasting in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish on January 1, 1993, from Lyon, France. Euronews is designed to provide Europeans with world and local news coverage from a European viewpoint. The individual coverage of television channels (members and non-members) also transit via the Eurovision network. In 2001, the EBU’s operational staff rounded more than 120,000 transmissions. 

Another major Eurovision activity is cultural and sports programming. Approximately 12,000 hours of sports and cultural programs are transmitted on an annual basis. Eurovision operates a joint purchasing scheme for international sporting events such as the Olympic Games and the World Soccer Championships. When members from two or more EBU countries are interested in a sporting event, they request coordination from the EBU, which either carries on negotiations itself or deputizes a member to do so on behalf of the EBU. Members may not carry out negotiations for national rights after joint negotiations have commenced, unless the joint negotiations fail. If the joint negotiations succeed, the rights are acquired on behalf of the interested members, who share the rights.

Television cooperation is also important in other areas ranging from educational programs, documentaries, and coproductions of animation series to competitions for younger musicians, young dancers, and screenwriters as well as traditional light entertainment, such as the Eurovision Song Contest.

Radio collaboration is a multifaceted activity covering music, news, sports, youth programs, and local and regional stations. The Euroradio satellite network carries, on average, some 2,000 concerts and operas, 400 sports events, and 120 major news events each year. In 1998, the EBU launched the first interbroadcaster European music channel, specializing in classical music (Euroclassic-Notturno). The EBU’s next goal is to become a major player in popular contemporary music. The new Eurosonic unit is developing partnerships with artists and record labels and acquiring broadcasting rights to major rock and pop festivals. 

Cooperation in the technical sphere is another of the EBU’s major activities. The EBU is at the forefront of research and development of new broadcast media and digital online services and has led or contributed to the development of many new radio and TV systems: radio data systems (RDS), digital audio broadcasting (DAB), digital video broadcasting (DVB), and high definition TV (HDTV).