RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

they аге held. These discussions are summed up, but also meetings in numerous work organizations with a large number of employees, social organizations in bigger towns and cities, and in professional associations, where there is direct contact between particular sections of the general auditorium and the programme framers. The significance accorded to meetings at this level is indicated by the fact that they аге regularly attended by joumalists from regional and local media, and frequently from publications specialized for radio and television, as well as the big dailies. Proposals and criticism are collated and summarized in reports which are fonvarded to all programme bodies as well as the republican organs of socio-political organizations and the conclusions then reached by these represent the document that serves as the groundwork for composing a final version of the Draft Plan. The programme councils which determine the text of the programme plans for the coming уеаг have the final word. In exceptional cases, when medium-term plans are involved, which are not concerned solely with programme matters but economic, technical, personnel and other aspects as well, the fmal discussion is held in the republican parliament which, as the founder of RTB, has the ultimate decision as to whether ог not the proposed plan is to be adopted. Without a doubt public discussions on draft programme plans have given positive results, opening up new avenues for the broader social community to have an influence on radio and television programmes, and simultaneously have compelled programme framers to monitor with greater саге the reactions of the various strata of society to the material they аге presented, and encouraging the auđience to take a more active attitude towards particular programmes and even the media as such. But this is by no means all that can be done in developing this kind of contact between the audience and the programme people: this is evident especially from the substance of the discussions which tend to focus more on past programmes than on the proposals presented, and further from the numerous suggestions regarding what should be changed in the way in which the

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