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GLOBAL VS LOCAL/RADIO
source: cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blogs/
cooper/archives/mediabooke.pdf
www.wemfmedia.org/wsis
_media.html
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Contrary to the claims of commercial broadcasters, radio consolidation has had profound and negative effects on this democratic medium…- in the United States, for example, each week, radio reaches nearly 95% of the population over the age of 12. But more importantly, radio uses a frequency spectrum owned, ultimately, by the American public. Deregulation has allowed a few large radio companies to swallow many of the small ones;
- 10 parent companies dominate the radio spectrum, radio listener ship and radio revenues. Two parent companies in particular, Clear Channel and Viacom, control 42% of listeners and 45% of industry revenues. Virtually every geographic market is dominated by 4 firms controlling 70% of market share or greater. The largest 4 firms in most small markets control 90% of market share or more. These companies are sometimes regional or national station groups and not locally owned;
- in May 2002, the Future of Music Coalition commissioned a public opinion survey to measure citizens’ satisfaction with commercial radio. Citizens favour preservation of independent and locally owned stations. 80% of survey respondents support action to prevent further consolidation. 38% would go a step further, supporting congressional action that encourages more local ownership of radio stations;
- when asked about the quantity of ads, 60% of survey respondents said that radio has too much advertising. 25% of survey respondents said they hear too little of the music they like; 38% said that local artists are underexposed on the radio. 52% said that less repetition, more new music, or more local acts would most make radio more appealing. 75% said they would welcome low power radio stations into their communities;
- in Europe, the Luxembourg-based broadcasting RTL Group, is the largest private broadcasting company within the continent, with interests in 26 TV channels and 24 radio stations in 9 countries. It was created in 2000 following the merger of CLT-UFA, the TV and radio group owned by Bertelsmann (+ WAZ 20%) and the Belgian-Canadian Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL), with the British production company Pearson TV (owned by Pearson, UK). In July 2001 Bertelsmann became majority shareholder of the group (90,4%). RTL Group controls among others the following radio stations: Germany: 104,6 RTL, Radio Hamburg, RTL RADIO, Antenne Bayern; France: RTL, RTL2, Fun Radio; The Netherlands: Yorin FM, rtl fm; Belgium: Bel RTL, Radio Contact; Luxembourg: RTL Radio Lëtzebuerg International.
- the failure of commercial mass media to meet the needs of citizens is nowhere more evident than in minority communities. Radio consolidation has been a disaster for diversity of ownership and content and has destroyed localism in radio broadcasting. As large companies gobble up more and more local radio stations, they replace live and local announcers with canned ‘voice-tracked’ announcements.
In the many territories of the emerging countries, the new media of the information society is first and foremost radio. The figures speak for themselves… - there are 6.5 billion people on Earth, - 700 million own a computer, - 1.4 billion a mobile phone, - 3.5 billion a television set, - and 4.5 billion own a radio;
- radios are above all local media. Often they are the voice of a rural community. In Africa, where the state of technology is less developed than in Western countries and literacy is low, private radio stations seem to be booming. For example, ten years ago in Sub-Saharan Africa there were just 10 independent radio stations; now there are thousands.
- radio is so broadly accessible, so inexpensive to produce and transmit, and so limitless in its potential for diversity that it ought to be world’s great democratic medium for culture and commentary: community radio and television are seen as one part of the solution for improving the media coverage of civil society.
(1) Mark Cooper, “Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age”, Consumer Federation of America Center for the Internet & Society, Stanford Law School, 2003. [ cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blogs/
cooper/archives/mediabooke.pdf]
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