RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

electronic media (televiaion) differ from the older ones (e.g. books, painting) in that they are not class-determineđ and exclusive but rather egalitarian in the structure . "Potentially , the new media do away with all educational privileges and thereby with the cultural monopoly of the bourgeois inteligentsia ." However, the thirty-year history of television clearly falsifies this utopian belief . In spite of its emancipatory potentials , television never achieved the revolutionary significance of print media they have had from the period of Enlightment to the Spring of Nations . Nowadays , 'telematic media' are believeđ to have the same emancipatory power . . . 6 . Although listening to radio commonly became a secondary activity after the development of television , radio experiences in a number of countries new social rather than technological impulses . Although technological innovations make radio broadcasting тоге accessible even to non-professionals and more adaptable for the needs of both communicators and listeners , I believe that technological changes do not have the decisive role in transforming the social patterns of radio broadcasting . Rather , they mainly help to extend anđ diversify traditional forms of radio broadcasting by supplying new technological f acilities . On the other hand , new political ideas and the expansion of national economies in the sixties influenced changes in relationship between radio and the other media and, particularly , new ways of organizing communication processes for both commercial profit and community interests . Unlike print media , radio was dominated very early by the largest industries. The periođ of small (private) radio stations was very short or even did not exist (Stevens , Garcia , 19 80). In most countries , with a significant exception of the United States , broadcasting became very early strictly a government-owned monopoly regardless of whether it was established as a centralized system . However, such an organization of rađio broađcasting restrain neither its profitab/lity for large corporations having produced radio receiver sets , transmitters and other parts , nor the process of delivering auđiences to advertisers , but it certainly strongly limited the access of audiences ог citizens to the medium . Not before the sixties and the seventies , the availability of new electronic technologies made possible to materialize the ideas of an alternative drganization of radio and later on television broadcasting. As Richeri (1983: 403) stated for ltaly , "while, on the one hand , this new technology seemed ideally suiteđ . thanks to its adaptability and low costs , for decentralizmg the planning and production of RAI broađcasts as well as for meeting the needs for local public access communication channels , it also proviđed economic and political pressure