Page 183 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North/Central European Model

any commercial revenue for public broadcasting, while Sweden also has
minimal commercial revenue.

GOVERNANCE OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING
The intent to establish public broadcasting systems that would serve the
general interest obviously raises the question of how these systems will
be governed. There is a fair amount of variation among the Democratic
Corporatistcountriesinthisregard.Intermsofthefourmodelsofpublic
broadcast governance introduced in Chapter 2 – the government, par-
liamentary, professional, and civic models – the Democratic Corporatist
countries show various combinations of the last three. Given the strong
emphasis on consensus among diverse political groups that character-
izes democratic corporatism, it is not surprising that all have moved
away from the government model that remains strong in many of the
Polarized Pluralist countries – all, that is, have developed mechanisms
to insulate public broadcasting from control by the political majority.
All give broadcasting professionals fairly high levels of autonomy, and
in this sense are similar to the professional model, whose classic case
is the BBC. But compared with the Liberal systems, Democratic Cor-
poratist countries often give a greater role in the governance of public
broadcasting to organized political forces, either in the form of polit-
ical parties (this is what defines the parliamentary model) or in the
form of “socially relevant groups” other than political parties (the civic
model).
The Dutch system is a particularly strong and unusual case of a system
based on the representation of organized social groups. Dutch broad-
casting was organized originally following the same “pillarized” struc-
ture that prevailed in the print press. Time on the publicly owned radio
channels was divided among broadcasting organizations linked to the
existing social pillars: the Catholic KRO, the Protestant NCRV, the
Socialist VARA, and AVRO, a “neutral” organization that was supported
bytheliberalsubculture.Fundingandbroadcasttimewasdividedamong
theseorganizationsoriginallyaccordingtopoliticalcriteria,andfromthe
1960s according to their memberships, as reflected in subscriptions to
their program guides. Television was organized along the same lines. In
1967 a common umbrella organization, the Dutch Broadcasting Foun-
dation (NOS), was established. NOS produced the main daily news pro-
gram as well as sports programming. It represented the beginning of a
process of standardization and secularization that would later accelerate

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