Page 294 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

the push for commercial broadcasting by media companies hungry to
expand into electronic media. To some extent laws limiting concentra-
tion in print media encouraged this desire, as many companies could
not expand their print empires without running afoul of these limits.
Another, very different kind of force that in many cases pushed toward
private broadcasting came from social movements (student movements,
unions, etc.) that were looking for new opportunities and means to ex-
press their voice outside of the established circuits of communication,
often turning to pirate broadcasting to obtain that voice.
Also significant was the fact that funding for public broadcasting be-
came increasingly problematic as the market for color television sets
became saturated, and natural growth in license fee revenue therefore
leveled off. From that point forward, additional license fee revenue could
onlybeobtainedbyraisingthefee,whichwasofcoursepoliticallyunpop-
ular. This meant that expansion of television beyond the limited number
of channels then in operation seemed to depend on the introduction of
private broadcasting.
Finally, economic globalization, both in general and in media indus-
tries specifically, played an important and many-sided role. As early as
1974, the European Court of Justice ruled that broadcasting was covered
as a form of trade under the Treaty of Rome. This decision was reaffirmed
on a number of occasions in the early 1980s, in the context of strong shift
globally toward liberalizing trade in services – the General Agreement on
TradeinServiceswas ratified in 1994 – and toward defining broadcasting
in these terms, rather than as a national social and cultural institution.
When the European Commission turned its attention to broadcasting
policy in the 1980s – producing the Television without Frontiers Di-
rective in 1989 – it stressed the goal of creating a common European
audiovisual market that would facilitate the development of transna-
tional media companies capable of competing with American media
conglomerates. Individual European governments, as well, increasingly
saw media policy in terms of global competition in the cutting-edge in-
formation industries. These policies facilitated the transnationalization
of media industries, in which ownership is increasingly international-
ized (e.g., the Spanish television channel Tele5 was owned, in 1998, by
Berlusconi [25 percent], by the German firm Kirch [25 percent], and
by the Bank of Luxembourg [13 percent], with some participation from
Bertelsmann),coproductionisoftennecessarytocompeteinglobalmar-
kets, and in general the forces of the global market tend to displace the
national political forces that once shaped the media.

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