Page 144 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

The Franco dictatorship was concerned about political and ideological
control of broadcasting, but otherwise state broadcasting operated es-
sentiallyasacommercialenterprise;therewasneveralicensefee.Spanish
television was always supported by advertising, from 1982–92 exclusively
so; since then its deficits have meant a need for state subsidies (de Mateo
1997: 204). Radio was always a mixed commercial and state-owned
system. Spain also differed from the Italian pattern – to which the PSOE
government pointed in the 1980s as an example to avoid – in that state
never lost control of broadcast licensing, though it is true that regional
governments moved to establish local radio and TV before central gov-
ernment had authorized them (Maxwell 1995; Fern´ andez and Santana
2000) and that some pirate broadcasting did develop. The Spanish state
did, however, maintain tight control of broadcast licensing in general,
paying careful attention to the political affinities of licensees (Barrera
1995; Fern´ andez and Santana 2000) (broadcast licenses are granted di-
rectly by the government, rather than by an independent regulatory
agency). On the other hand, although terrestrial broadcasting is still
definedintheoryasan “essential public service” in Spanish law, pub-
lic service regulations are weak compared with those in Britain or the
Democratic Corporatist countries and also tend to be weakly enforced.
Market forces are heavily dominant and not much less so at RTVE
than at commercial broadcasters. One thing that is striking in read-
ing the history of debates over media policy in Spain is the weakness
of the discourse of public service: intervention by the state in media
markets is almost always seen – and with much reason – as a cynical at-
tempt at political control. Democracy, of course, was restored in Spain,
Portugal, and Greece at a time when the welfare state was on the de-
fensive in Europe and global forces of neoliberalism were strong. These
countries missed the historical period when social democracy was at
its strongest and instead have a history of a very different sort of state
intervention.
The notion of “savage deregulation” cannot really be extended to
France, though certain elements of the pattern could be said to ap-
ply. Dagnaud (2000) points out that although France has always had
a particularly strong rhetoric about the importance of public service
broadcasting as an institution of national culture, it was never as pure
a public service system as some. It was a mixed-revenue system, funded
in part by advertising, and public funding was limited compared with
much of the rest of Europe: thirty ECU per inhabitant, compared with
fifty-one in the United Kingdom and seventy-two in Germany (Spain

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