Page 181 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Local Political Communication

state-regulation authorities, for example, tried to mediate the effects of
commercial network radio at the height of privatization efforts by licens-
7
ing a number of subregional and local radio stations, but most of these
small community radio stations turned out to be rather unattractive for
audiences, lacking professional production and trained staff. Conversely,
they were not able to attract a steady flow of advertisement clients due
to their narrow reach. Moreover, what had been hailed in the 1970s in
Western Europe and the United States as the dawn of a “community ra-
dio movement” seems today like a marginal facet of local radio markets.
The principles of community radio, namely democratically organized
access for citizens, joint use of all media resources, a focus on local
and neighborhood issues, and participatory structures do not succeed
in highly competitive media markets. Without steady and financially
strong sponsorship from engaged citizens, foundations, universities, or
public agencies, community radio never leaves the precarious state of
producing under highly adversarial conditions (for Great Britain and
Canada, Berrigan 1977; for the United States, Widlok 1992). The alterna-
tive between “amateur-driven radio-club models” and “recipient-driven
public-service models” has been almost unequivocally settled in favor
of the latter. Thus we can predict that only in local radio markets where
the public sector sponsors a professionalized public-service model will
community radio in the future become a viable third column next to
existing public and private radio stations.

Local Television
The strongest competitor for the local press and radio is local tele-
vision. Whereas local television did not seem to have much economic
drive and attraction in the beginning, this changed rapidly with the ad-
vent in the United States of cable broadcast networks consisting largely
of independent local affiliate stations. In most Western European coun-
tries, local television got to a bumpy start on the community level in the
mid-1980s. Likewise, as a commercial enterprise it has not lived up to
theexpectationsitproduced.InGermanytoday,therearethirtycommer-
cial local television stations – if we include regional channels that offer
substantial local programming windows. All of these produce deficits
and can only survive by operating under the umbrella of larger media
conglomerates.

7 This happened in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Hamburg, and Northrhine-
Westphalia (see Jarren 1994, 303).

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