RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

MarKet' and, agaln with IBA approval, taken over by the 'Miss World Group' (Anon A , 1988). At the level of program prođuction , the IBA has been increasingly reađy to allow stations to split their broadcasts between the AM and FM frequencies and to run syndicated programs , bought from larger companies like Virgin (Higham, 1988c). There is thus already considerable substance to moves towards national commercial radio channels , with the larger existing local companies lIKe Capital, the most successful of the products of the smaller local companies like Oyston and new capital from estabiished leisure sectors like Virgin, poised to establish full services 71 . The other pressure is towards smaller and more locai stations with some sort of pretensions to serving the community . This comes from a vanety of sources , including some like the Community Radio Association (CRA ) who have long had a 'radical' interpretation of that relationship . It would , however , be wrong to imagine that all of the proponents of 'community radio' аге agreed as to the nature and functions of what they wish to construct, but they have certainly all been regarded with some suspicion by the government , We can see an example of thls if we look at the conditions surrounding an earlier British venture into 'Community Radio'. In the mid-1970's a small number of non-profit cable-based radio stations were set up as expenments under Home Office supervision , The fact that these experiments were cable-based is of extreme importance since it meant that there were none of the usual 'technical' reasons of scarce spectrum resources to act as camouflage for the direct hand of political control . These stations were m fact subordinated to much more direct control than was then common in Bntlsh broadcastmg: in particular, the members of the governmg structures of these half-dozen stations had to be approved by the Home Office (Partridge, 1982:31-32). This was a đegree of control on roughly the same formal level as that exerclseđ by the Home Office over the broađcastmg giants of the BBC anđ IBA and , given the very much smaller scale of these orgamzations , meant that in substance the control exercised was very much greater . The only expianation for a major government department wantmg to exercise such close supervision of a few tmy expenmental stations of only margmal sigmficance is that these was a perceived danger of socially of politically undesirable elements influencing programming policy . Similar wornes seem to have surroundeđ the expenment mitiated m 1985 of mvitmg bids for 2 1 broadcast commumty stations, anđ it. was termmated a уеаг later without апу of the licenses bemg granted B ' . The central problem facmg the government in t.heir attempt to alter the current situation in radio is how to reconcile the two conflictmg pressures of the liftmg of regulatorv eontrols

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