Page 180 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Sabine Lang

local culture is intended to create a new listener segment among young
people.TheBBCisholdingabout15percentaudienceratingsinthispro-
gram segment and about 20 percent of adults in Great Britain listen to its
local stations regularly. Yet in recent years the BBC has embarked also on
quite expansive technological improvement projects such as digitaliza-
tion, which put the company in financial difficulties. Predictable results
werecutsonthejournalisticsideaswellasconcentrationprocesses,shift-
ing the focus from local autonomous productions to more regional co-
operation of its channels. Nevertheless, the BBC has so far made the most
successful attempt to creatively use the potential of public local radio to
combine dense local information with diverse, multicultural-oriented
entertainment segments. The BBC has also introduced formats such as
“talk shows” and “studio debates” that engage citizens in meaningful and
complex political discussions about their communities. These formats
are models for devising community-oriented participation venues with
less inflammatory content than found on American talk radio.
All in all, there were 7,934 radio stations in Western Europe in 1992, of
which 90 percent were local or regional providers (Koschnick 1995, 781).
Eastern European countries have also seen the establishment of a large
number of local radio stations since their transformation in the early
1990s (Thomass and Tzankoff 2001). In Hungary, today there are about
80 local radio stations (Bajomi-L´ az´ ar 2001, 198). In Poland, estimates
runuptoseveral hundred stations (see Hadamik 2001, 159). Similar lo-
calization and regionalization trends are visible in Russia where the BBC
Fund has invested considerably in the stabilization of local radio markets
by training journalists and technicians as well as providing infras-
tructure and technology. However, foreign media companies have in-
vested less in the Eastern European radio markets than for example in
the print market, because state regulation for foreign investments are
generally tighter in the former segment and advertisement revenues are
harder to anticipate and so far less optimistic.
In sum, global radio trends on the local level point toward more pri-
vatized and larger units of cooperation, thus privileging regional over
merely local issues, easy-listening formats over political programming,
younger over generationally mixed audiences, and advertising revenue
overeditorialrisks.Programsegmentsaddressingneighborhood,ethnic,
social, and political issues are on the decline, and so is the idea of local
radio as a citizen-driven technology. The only contradictory evidence
can be found in countries with a strong tradition of public radio such as
Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, and Germany. Some German

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