RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

iv) I To ensure that nothing is included in programs which of-fends against good taste ог decency ог is likely to encourage ог incite crime ог to lead to disorder ог to be offensive to public feeling.' v) I To deliver the kind of services which they had promised when applying to use the frequency.' (HM Government, 1987:32) This comprehensive list of prohibitions amounts to rules đesigned to ensure that these community stations will be effectively apolitical in the widest sense of that term . If British government policies аге clearly marked by these terrors of subversion , it is legitimate to ask whether they аге well-grounded ог simply the result of right-wing nightmares . The simple answer is that in the short-term at least there аге no substantial grounds for the worries . Quite apart f rom one's assessment of the balance of class forces in the UK , the current practice of the likely operators of such stations provides little evidence of the need for such regulation 9 ) . The majority of bids for such stations аге likely to come from people whose major motivations аге commercial. If we look , for example , at the pirate stations who аге prepared to break the iaw to broadcast at the present time anđ who аге likely to make bids for franchises when there is a change of law , we f ind that of the 29 pirate stations broadcasting in London on the weekend of 7/8 Мау 1988, the breakdown was; '2O with "black music" , 3 Greek , one Arabic , one госк , one pop , one community and one "urban guerrilla radio" ' (Higham , 1988b). In the widest sense, the culture and social position of the stations serving the ethnic communities in London is a 'potitical puestion' , but most of these stations аге run by people whose рптагу and abiding motivation is to make топеу rather than change society . Again , if we look at those stations which claim have a тоге 'community' rather than musical orientation , we find that there аге deep divisions within them over the nature of the programming policies , extent of national links and so forth (Higham , I9BBd) 1 °). The projection in Bntain, as much as the experience from other countnes with much longer histories of community and local radio like ltaly and Australia, must be that the result of deregulation will be the domination of the spectrum by commercial programming policies with their cores m music and that , most of the time at least, the radical interpretation of 'community' will be a marginal element In the system. The overall lesson of this ехрепепсе seems to me be of тоге than parochial importance . Of course , the British debate is mflected by particular cultural concerns mhented from ог past and of course it is mfluenceđ by the sectional mterests

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