Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

BROADCASTING POLICY 101
it has on genuine diversity of opinions and market entry. Digitization is
a costly business, whether it is radio or television, and is most likely to
lead to further consolidation of media companies and services (Hendy
2000). Indeed, the Canadian broadcasting industry successfully lobbied
for the consolidation of ownership from only one AM and FM station to
a multiple license model from 1998 (Parnis 2000: 237). Thus, the Canadian
regulator CRTC facilitated and shaped the radio landscape through
changes in ownership requirements, as well as the format of broadcasting,
which also changed to simulcasting, that is, broadcasting the same
programme on more than one station at the same time (Parnis 2000).
The normative framework for this direction of reregulation was offered
through the context of ‘replacement technology’ – this allowed the
CRTC to make exceptional allowances of consolidation and simulcasting
thereby largely breaking away from accepted restrictions (Parnis 2000).
The importance of framing policy problems and objectives is addressed
by scholars who point out the significance of ‘naming’ not only at the
early stages of an agenda-setting process but also throughout the course of
policy-making and its representation to the public. Through the discourse
of ‘replacement technology’ the CRTC was able to move towards policy
that was easier to justify and therefore legitimize in the eyes of critics. This
was particularly important as the CRTC had to rule effectively against
its own tradition and principles of ensuring a diverse media landscape.
Favouring existing industries and blocking the entry into the market of
new broadcasters was the Australian government’s broadcasting policy in
order to drive the development of High Definition Television (HDTV)
(Brown 2002). Evidently, it was not a successful market policy as audiences
have shown little interest in investing in HDTV sets (which are more
expensive than conventional digital or digital terrestrial sets). Despite
the outcome, which represents a typical ‘market failure’ case (Brown
2002: 284), the intentions of the regulator (heavily influenced by the
commercial broadcasters in the late 1990s) to ensure commercial viability
for private interests and the maintenance of a broadcasting oligopoly were
matched by its rhetoric of taking into account the ‘expensive transition
to digital television’ (Alston 1998, cited in Brown 2002).
The combination of deregulatory policy and the lack of restrictions
over ownership concentration has created a regulatory vacuum in Europe
that has been used by media conglomerates to assert and secure their
position in the market and also to expand to new ones (Central and
Eastern Europe). For any future ‘successful’ policy, the aim to impose
some restriction or control over the degree of concentration will be a
pointless or at best a decorative exercise in rhetoric, as it will be almost
impossible for the European legislator to reverse existing patterns of