Abstract
This chapter reviews the justifications, economic, cultural, political and technical that led to regulation of the medium of television and the initial choice to subject public TV to the monopolistic system. These justifications are then applied to the study of the two historical, legal models of regulation (US commercial model and PSB model) and to the classifications applied by the scholarship. An analysis is also provided of the circulation of these two models around the world. The author deals briefly with the origin of PSB in Europe, the cultural features inherited from the BBC model and the circulation of this model outside Europe. Finally, she discusses some (heuristic) cultural models, created by scholars of other social sciences that may help to measure the relationship between the political system and public service broadcasting.
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Notes
- 1.
The theme of broadcasting regulation and the reasons that justify/justified State intervention is widely dealt with in the scholarship. Seminal works include: Hoffmann-Riem (1996), Gibbons (1998), and Goldberg et al. (1998, 2009). On the relationhip between TV and the press on the reasons for regulation, see the opposing theses in the classic works: Bollinger (1976, p. 11) and Powe (1987).
- 2.
Author’s translation.
- 3.
Author’s translation.
- 4.
This was the proposed classification: (1) systems involving a plurality of public and private enterprises (USA, Latin America and Australia); (2) monopolistic or single type systems (the largest group in 1951), further subdivided into 2.1. Enterprises taking the form of commercial companies (Italy, Luxembourg, Finland); 2.2. Enterprises in the form of a public establishment or office (Germany, Belgium, Romania, Poland); 2.3. Enterprises in the form of a special public service (France, Denmark, Egypt); 2.4. Enterprises in the form of an ordinary public service (Turkey); 2.5. Public enterprises constituted under a single system or placed under a common directorship (Yugoslavia, India); a third case overlapped these two groups; and (3) systems that separated the technical and programme services, granted to one or more companies (Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary, Bulgaria).
- 5.
Divided as follows: (1) monopoly conferred on organisms subject to the government such as the “Marxist systems,” in which the principle of the “leading role of the communist party” prevented the real autonomy of the broadcasting organizations which were used for propaganda purposes (China, Eastern Europe, former USSR and other countries, until in July 1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev suppressed the control of the CPSU on broadcasting by decree, turning it over to the Government of the Union and then to the Republics; Central and Eastern European countries and Third world countries which, according to the author, were young states in which broadcasting “apparaît comme un excellent moyen d’implantation de l’autorité gouvernementale; elle constitue souvent le seul véhicule culturel utilisable” (p. 22); (2) monopoly exercised by public or semi-public bodies (Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Nordic countries, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece); and (3) monopoly conferred on private companies (Luxembourg and Sweden).
- 6.
The pluralistic regimes recognize “la nécessité d’une concurrence dans le domaine de la radiodiffusion pour que les libertés d’opinion e d’information soient respectées. Ce pluralisme peut être cependant plus ou moins complet”; on this basis, the group is divided into the following categories: (1) total pluralism (United States, Australia, Canada and Japan) and (2) limited pluralism (characterized by the competition between a certain number of public bodies, in turn having a pluralism of financial origin—United Kingdom-, Federal, like Germany, and cultural: Belgium).
- 7.
Cryptotypes are implicit models, present in different legal systems, that act in a pervasive way in the determination of legal issues and are transmitted through generations of jurists (Sacco 1992, p. 128).
- 8.
The extra ordinem governments exercised a control of freedom expression both as regards substance (censorship, determination of the contents of broadcasts for propaganda purposes, etc.) and structure (governmental appointment of the top management bodies of the broadcasters). This was the case in Argentina during the dictatorship of General Lanusse, in 1972 with the nationalization of the private radio and television channels and in 1975 with the law on the expropriation of television channels relating to both repeaters and production (Muraro 1987); in Brazil, from the military coup of 1964–1984, in the twenty years in which several military governments succeeded each other, TV was controlled to dominate public opinion (in the first period of the mariscal Castelo Branco—1964–1966—the Empresa Brasileira de Telecomunicações (Embratel) was set up and the contract with the US Time-Life group was cancelled; in the second period of the mariscal Costa and Silva (1966–1968) institutional law n. 5 on the suppression of freedom of expression in the country was approved; for other periods: Capparelli and dos Santos 2002, pp. 77–78).
- 9.
In Latin America, the relationship between politics and radio–television must be contextualized in a specific authoritarian declination of the form of presidential government implemented without (or with a strong attenuation) of that system of checks and balances affirmed in the USA to compensate for the excessive power (on paper) of the President. The presidential influence has manifested itself in different ways: from the holding of shares in radio and television groups by former Presidents (as for Miguel Alemán in Mexico), to the personal and direct management of agreements with the largest foreign corporations—above all from the USA—for the issuing of licences (as in Chile, before the military coup of 1973, with government decree 7039/1958) this became an actual tool for trading votes (in Brazil, the expression “coronelismo electrónico” is used to describe the relationship of political cronyism between those holding power in the public sphere and the owners of television stations, a particularly significant phenomenon in the period of transition from military regimes to the new democratic phase. What happened in Mexico is a clear example of this particular relationship between politics and TV: the constant union between the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the television (fundamentally represented by a private operator: Televisa) is summed up in the expression “Televisa fue a los medios electrónico lo que el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) fue al sistema político mexicano” (Fernández 2002, p. 17).
- 10.
In Chile, television became established at the end of the 1950s, later than in the other countries on the continent, mainly as public TV of the universities (secular or Catholic) unlike the radio that was born with private companies. In the initial phase, private TV played a marginal role in the broadcasting system and the great American giants remained of relative importance thanks to the development of public TV (Fuenzalida 1984). The reasons were economic (there was no tradition of large private national companies in the communications sector); cultural (the public and private university system was very prestigious and “had a well-developed cultural infrastructure […] such as theatres, symphony orchestras, choirs, dance groups, cinema, bookshops and publishing houses”: Fuenzalida 2002, p. 164) and political (on the one hand, university television was considered as a maximum guarantee of political and ideological pluralism; on the other hand, some Presidents were decisive in the policy of excluding private commercial television, that was considered unsuitable for upholding the cultural role that the country required).
- 11.
John Reith, in his address to the House of Lords on 22 May 1952, compared the introduction of commercial broadcasting to smallpox, the bubonic plague and the Black Death (Briggs 1961, p. 397ff.). The fierce opposition to the introduction of commercial TV was driven by the fear of diminishing the high level of quality ensured until then in the BBC broadcasts (see Craufurd Smith 1997, p. 38 and the bibliography to that effect mentioned therein).
- 12.
This is a Network of local broadcasters (a sort of confederation of television companies committed to countering the excessive attention that the BBC devoted to the London area), financed exclusively through the sale of advertising space. It is required to guarantee diversified programming that includes a national information service and local programming. ITV began broadcasting on 22 September 1955 in the London area, and after four years the service covered the whole territory of the British Isles.
- 13.
Confirmed by the 2003 Communications Act: in addition to the generic obligations related to high-quality programmes, Channel 4 is required to demonstrate “innovation, experiment and creativity” in the form and content of programmes, as well as to exhibit ‘a distinctive character, and to provide educational programming’: see S. 265(3).
- 14.
The 2003 Communications Act provides, in fact, a “layered” regulation of the broadcasters’ mandate: the first concerns the aforementioned standards, applicable to all radio and television broadcasters; the second includes obligations that burden all the broadcasters belonging to the PSB in a quantitatively different proportion (quotas for independent programming, for educational programmes, etc.); the third refers to qualitative obligations (in general, to provide high-quality programming and diversity of content).
- 15.
To BBC1 and BBC2, the channels of general interest, were added BBC Choice—for a younger audience with a time slot for children called CBBC—; BBC News 24; BBC Parliament and BBCi, an interactive teletext service.
- 16.
For a snapshot of enterprises currently operating in the television market directly or through shareholdings in larger groups: Yearbook. Film, television and video in Europe, published by the European Audiovisual Observatory of the Council of Europe, latest version (as well as the Mavise Database that can be accessed on http://mavise.obs.coe.int/).
- 17.
UNESCO Convention on the Protection and the Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions of 2007 that allows states to adopt measures aimed not only at protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions “within its territory (Art. 6.1)”, “but specifically at enhancing the diversity of the media including through public service broadcasting” (Art. 6.2.h).
- 18.
This study divides the Countries by areas according to the classification of Hallin and Mancini, to which it adds the countries of Eastern Europe (The Eastern European/Post-communist Media Model Countries, p. 303ff.).
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Pavani, G. (2018). Models for the Study and Regulation of Broadcasting Systems. In: The Structure and Governance of Public Service Broadcasting. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96731-8_2
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