RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

licenses (common in France anđ ltaly) ог have ceased broadcasting . Most of the remaining pirates are hobbvists who епјоу hearing their own voices and their own favorite music; few are 'activists' . So perhaps the pirates on the late 1980s are throw-backs to the radio amateurs of the 19205, except that there's little about them besiđes physical location that's truly local. Тће more important guestion is 'How local аге the authorized stations of the 1970 sand 1980s?' The answer to that guestion depends in part upon how such stations are regulated . REGULATING LOCAL RADIO A broadcaster might choose to think of l community' in a number of ways : educational, economic , religious , occupational, political, recreational, ethnic anđ linguistic probably would lead the list. History might be important, as weli, especially as it includes local traditions in music , dance , storytelling and other elements that make up Чоса! culture.' And if a broadcaster were to ехапте some of the sociological literature , other elements might seem important . For example , Norton Long suggests that communities can be seen as a set of 'games' that inđividuals and groups play in order to assert their leadership , and that the mass međia (in his study , the newspapers ) assist in that process by acting аз 'chromclers of the great.' l3 ) Sensitivity to that concept on the part of local station staff could remind them of the neeđ to search out the pomts of view of the not-so-great . Roland Warren suggests that perhaps a 'good' (here meanmg 'vital' ) community should mclude a certain measure of confhct . 141 which could be an argument for the use of radio to act as a forum for that conflict. No one doubts that 'community' is an amorphous term , but it appears frequently whenever there's consiđeration of critena for the licensing and relicensing of local radio or for justlfying expenditures for its creation and contmuation . The easiest criter-ion was anđ is geographic; a station is located m a given town and has a given range of signal coverage . Language used to be almost as easy ; seiect the dommant language of the locale , anđ that will afford the greatest accessibility for the'greatest number of listeners . As some nations began to license several stations m given locales , the idea of servmg the greatest number of hsteners lost some of its seemmg validity, although m practice the stations usuallv contmued to concentrate on the dommant language, if only because they consiđeređ mmonty language audiences to be less attractive commercially . But further critena largely went undefmed or unused throughout most of the historv of local radio , m part because of lack of regulatory measures to that end .

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