RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Richarđ Barbrook ,

Centre for Communication anđ Information

Studies , London

CHANGING MODELS OF RADIO OWNERSHIP AND FINANCE IN BRITAIN

INTRODUCTION The examination of the media has always been politically sensitive . This is not simply because of the political power of međia organizations over readers, listeners ог viewers dependent on their output for their knowledge about the world. Discussions about the media have also been ways of talking about the most fundamentai developments within post-feudal societies . The appearance and growth of the mass media is one of the most striking characteristics of industrial societies . In the Wešt, discourses on the future of the media are still centred around the rhetoric of the liberal-bourgeois revolutions , such as the First Amendment to the American Constitution or the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen . In Eastern industrial societies , analysts of the media must also рау homage to their revolutionary heritage . Lenin's break with the Second International was centred arounđ his use of the newspaper as the prlmary method of revolutionary organization . Both inspirations for media analysis are ahistorical, seeing the media either in terms of civil nghts ог strategies for political mobilization. These approaches examine the međia as part of the 'superstructure' of society , separated from other branches of production . But the međia is not just the object of media politics , it is also a place of work! The growing importance of the media as a sector of the есопоту means that it can no longer be examined solely as the guardian of civil liberties or disseminator of specific ideologies . The ahistorical explanations of the media are primarily interested in its content and its effects on the audience . They are not concerned with how the output of the media is produceđ by human labor working within the confines of specific structures . But even Jefferson's and Lenin's newspapers had to be wntten, typeset , printed and distributed! This is why it is now necessary to construct a political есопоту of the media . This type of analysis doesn't just provide a тоге historical and materialist analysis of the media. It can also ехрозе the