RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Jewish programs, (BarbrooK 1987: 115) Neither the CRA nor the Home Office has worked out how such inevitable conflicts will be managed when llcenses are issued in Britain , In London, it will even more difficult deciding which of the dozens of black dance music stations should be licensed . Such a service will also meet with great opposition from commercial operators whether of the existing ILRs or of new stations . Once community rađio moves from the margins into the mainstream , it begins to threaten the whole use of the airwaves for corporate profit-making . If the CRA's plans were implemented , the community radio sectors would become a major part of Britain's growing co-operative sector . This shows how the CRA is an integral part of the wide variety of initiatives which grew out of the New Lef t . It is estimated that an average station will need i 4 5,000 in start-up costs and 111,000 for annual running costs . Following overseas examples , this топеу could be raised by subscriptions , appeals , advertising , sponsorship , merchanđise sales, donations from trusts, job training schemes and local authority grants . (Buckley 1988) A community radio sector of around 1,000 stations could turn over iml69 annually. (Barbrook and Davis 1986) However it is only if the expansion of radio broadcasting is delayed until the election of a Labor government will the CRA solution апу hope of being adopted as part of an overall strategy . In the last election, Labor promised to support a CRA-style expansion in radio . (Labor Party 1987) It is ironic that only bureaucratic inertia can give community radio a chance to enter the mainstream in the long-term. CONCLUSION The future of British radio broađcasting is obscured by тапу promises and much hype . The Home Office has undertaken тапу times to relax its controls over radio , but has never fulfilled its pledges . This inability to plan a strategy for the future radio in Britain is no accident. It reveals fundamental contrađictions within government policy . The Tories find their options confined by the political and economic conseguences of the diff erent possibilities for expanding radio broadcasting . The divergence between the theory and reality of free-market solutions for the growth of radio are particularly difficult for Thatcher's government . The deregulation anđ privatization of the есопоту is the Tone's major economic anđ sociai strategy The abandonment of government controls and ownership over radio broadcasting is seen by laissez-faire economists as the only way of expanding broadcasting . Their supporters m the DTI have championed this solution within the government . This

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