Page 106 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

BEYOND BALANCED PLURALISM 95

of small and medium-sized enterprises being a traditional aim of the
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FRG’s industrial strategy. Finally, cabling was expected to stimulate the
German media economy by creating employment opportunities in the
telecommunications sector, opening the market to new entrants from the
private sector and boosting the broadcast advertising market.
The cautious social and political arguments for cable television, based
on the expansion of local communications and citizen participation in
the communication process, which had informed the debates under the
SPD/FDP coalition, were quickly replaced by a mixture of economic
and ideological rationales. Apart from the industrial benefits, the
advertisers welcomed the increased opportunities for advertising and
competition between the public broadcasters and the new networks in
selling airtime. The conservative politicians also looked to the new
channels to be more sympathetic to their point of view than the public
broadcasters, whom they considered ‘red’.
Although Christian Schwarz-Schilling insisted that the new cable grid
only created a technical infrastructure and did not therefore influence
broadcasting policy, he was clear how it should be used. According to
him, the investment of the huge sums necessary was justified because
public-service broadcasting was occupied by radicals and the left so that
it could no longer work towards social integration. Economic and
ideological arguments were yoked together. As the federal government
noted in 1985,

In the interests of diversity of opinion, [the federal government]
considers it not only desirable, but also necessary, that the
population will, on demand, be provided with the infrastructure to
distribute television and radio programmes via broadband cable
networks. Equally, it is the opinion of the federal government that
the new information and communication technologies, in
particular broadband cable technology, are important from an
economic point of view. 6

But what would be shown on these new cable channels? The federal
government saw satellite programmes as one way to increase the
number of services that could help sell the new cable networks. Only by
relaying an increasing number of German and European channels could
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cable be marketed cost-effectively. The Länder, who were legally
responsible for broadcasting policy, were virtually forced into allowing
new programmes, if they did not want to stand accused of putting a
major public investment at risk.