RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

that it might have some influence on radio , perhaps because radio didn't seem to matter that much апу more . Still, the CRTC đid license a few 'minority interest' stations in the early to miđ 19705. But neither the CRTC nor the ABT placed terribly specific or stringent demands upon rađio stations in terms of defining and serving their communities , perhaps because both had accepted the 'principle' that radio stations had to be run as economically as possible , which seemed to preclude highly specific program reguirements . As l've noted earlier , few nations have regulatory agencies , in part because few have needed them ; if there's only one national broadcasting service , an independent regulatorv адепсу doesn't maKe sense . But l've also noted that more countries are branching out into other uses for radio , and local stations are becoming more and тоге common. What's more , тапу of them are independent of the national broadcasting service . If those countries wished to impose licensing conditions that would insure community service , that would be simple to achieve , since they could start with a fresh slate : as no such stations hađ existed previously (or long since had disappeared ) , there'd, be no historical precedent or existing industry to stand in the way . When one looKs at the sorts of regulatory structures that have appeared in the 1980s, there's an interesting quality that characterizes most , if not all, of them: lacK of specif icity in setting conditions , at least where community service is concerned. The French Natlonal Commission for Communications anđ Liberties (CNCL) repuires a minimum percentage of French music on all radio stations , but nothmg else . Local cable authoritles in the Netherlands limit the amount of air time a cable radio service тау claim and don't permlt ads; they also insist that each new cable radio service not duplicate an exlsting one . There аге no other restrictions , The new cable and private broadcasting laws in West бегтапу specify that stations be governed by councils drawn from among the citizenry , just as аге the older State stations, and that they follow the same basic legal provisions as apply to the State stations. But those provisions аге very general, addressmg such broad issues as freedom of speech, religion , etc . , anđ đemanding politically 'balanced' broadcasts . Nothmg m them đeals with the evidence that might teli the licensmg authorities whether one applicant might be superior to апу other in servmg a given locale . Why this reluctance to specify conditions that would pertam to local broadcastmg? There could be several reasons , among them :

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