RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

broadcasting in practical terms and also to new theoretical generalisations. We recall how our radio was able to gather people together and incorporate them in rebuilding the country afler the war, in resisting the Informbureau a little later, and since 1950 in awakening the general consciousness of the rights of man and of the need for direct personal participation in solving social problems. The contents of the programmes, inspired by sociai and political events, as well as by increasing- đemocratisation on the country, made it possible for those engaged in radio broadcasting to fmd increasingly effective ways of informing their listeners. What I think has been most valuable in these round table discussions has been the dissatisfaction which has emergeđ from them regarding existing practice and a readiness to try and make our programmes grow and develop in tune with the needs of those free personalities who аге more and more becoming masters of their own happiness. If we want a self-managing radio service for the self-managers, does this mean that radio as it is at present does not follow the spirit of self-management to a sufficient degree? I think that radio has shown in its best creations that it is keeping up with ог is even sometimes one step ahead of real and concrete self-.management experience, the practical self-management which we are trying to raise to the desired level. Research would probably show that radlo and television programmes have grown more quickly and changed more fundamentally in order to fit more adequately into the self-managing pattem. Better radio broadcasting than we have at present I see as being non-authoritative, more democratic, and more in tune with seif-managament. I don t mean here radio ss a means of mass communication, as one of the so-called mass media, but a radio service which treats its listeners not as a mass but as individual personalides in front of their sets... It appears obvious to me that we have to re-defme and transform the ; present theory and practice of the mass media. And the essence oi this woulđ be to fmd a method of communicadon. For depending on: n how we approach the man by his set, we determine whether the medium itself is authoritadve (undemocradc) or self-managing (that 1 1 is, democratic to an increasing degree but not yet fully so). If we put the method of communicadon in the forefront, this means that the | a programme material (an endless choice of subjects) will set the tone of our radio anđ television broadcasdng through its ideological direcdon and colour. But the programme material cannot by itself 1 make the programmes sadsfactory in the communication sense without the creative side contained in interpretation. The problem of, h

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