legislation gave public service entities a monopoly, for example, on political advertising or on modes foreclosed to independent competitors, such as tobacco or liquor advertising. In Russia, there was a significant arrangement in which much of the fiscal control of the state broadcaster was hived off to a single advertising agency that prepurchased all or most of the slots and then resold them at a profit Foreign investors, precluded from buying the state broadcaster, were permitted to invest in the advertising firm. At one time in the 1990s, a reform-minded director of ORT, Listyev, announced that he intended to change the nature of the relationship between advertising and the broadcaster. He placed a moratorium on advertising. Shortly thereafter he was murdered, and rumors persist as to a link between his death and his policy initiative If the concern is the balance between the private and the public, the mix of voices in the society, then a broadened privatization might be thought to occur when there is an intensification of an already private sector, the rendering of it, as it were, more private. Consider the historic existence of public interest obligations on American broadcasters, obligations, for example, to cover controversial events of public importance, or act as a voice for the local community. The removal of these obligations through the process of deregulation could be said to be a form of rendering the private more private. Similarly, allowing home-shopping channels to be designated as meeting American licensing standards or relieving stations of an obligation not to indulge in"overcommercialization"expanded the private nature of the system. In the United Kingdom, it was certainly a change in the balance to allow a single private competitor to the BBC, and it might be said to be a further altering of the balance when additional national or regional licenses for independent television were offered In many societies, systems became more private simply by becoming more open to foreign competition. Moreover, this openness could be established not through the process of licensing or any affirmative government action, but by the opening by operators of slots on cable television systems to satellite-delivered channels, usually foreign-owned. Certainly this was true in India, where the arrival of satellite channels created a vast change in thinking both about the system as a whole and about the state broadcasting system itself. In Turkey, the reaction to the existence of foreign satellite channels coming into the country was to establish a liberalization for private broadcasting within, and thereby attempt to harness or regulate the processes of change. A measure of the changing balance between the public and the private is the conduct of the consumer. In almost every system where new and private domestic channels compete(often because of cable and satellite), the impact on state broadcasters, in terms of share of the audience, is dramatic, sometimes terrifyingly so. State broadcasters decline from their monopoly position of 100 percent of the audience to 90 percent, then 60 percent and then far lower Privatization leads to programming that almost always enmeshes the public service broadcaster, rendering it less capable of meeting the needs of a public sphere. Whenever there is competition between an entity that has an unencumbered right to satisfy consumer demands and an entity where obligation of managers is to government, to stay in power, or to meet restrictive requirements, the unencumbered competitor will, in the long run, gain audience share. That has been the experience in all the post-Soviet markets. Privatization sharply reduces the role of the public service broadcaster and its audience share. The essential quality of"private"in this reading, is the strategy to meet public demand, and managers whose tenure, or success with investors, depends on meeting that demand Privati How can one measure whether the tendency toward the private contributes to the public sphere? ation may be a necessary method of having control of media reflect changed constituencies or power groups in society. This might be especially true where there has been a monopoly provider and plural society. It is theoretically the case that a monopoly provider, like the pre-lTV BBC, can become an accurate reflector of diversity of society, seeking to carry out a responsibility to represent various viewpoints and groups. But diversity is more credible, and usually more likely and more permanent if it springs from different sources. One could have diversity without privatization. The complex and mechanical process in the hey-day of Dutch broadcasting of semi-public entities dedicated to pluralism in the Netherlands was once an example. In the effort to have a plural federal broadcasting authority in federal Bosnia-Herzegovina, the posts of chief and deputy are allocated among the national representatives. But in many places, a shared public space would be unthinkable, and the aura of autonomy that often goes with private ownership is essential In some transition societies, privatization, or the emergence of private entities, is essential as a means of breaking the stranglehold of the state broadcaster that, through staleness, might itself be weakening state sovereignty. The existing state-controlled system may be outmoded precisely because it bespeaks an old, surpassed, and ineffective perception of the nation. The broadcasting bureaucracy
legislation gave public service entities a monopoly, for example, on political advertising or on modes foreclosed to independent competitors, such as tobacco or liquor advertising. In Russia, there was a significant arrangement in which much of the fiscal control of the state broadcaster was hived off to a single advertising agency that prepurchased all or most of the slots and then resold them at a profit. Foreign investors, precluded from buying the state broadcaster, were permitted to invest in the advertising firm. At one time in the 1990s, a reform-minded director of ORT, Listyev, announced that he intended to change the nature of the relationship between advertising and the broadcaster. He placed a moratorium on advertising. Shortly thereafter he was murdered, and rumors persist as to a link between his death and his policy initiative. If the concern is the balance between the private and the public, the mix of voices in the society, then a broadened privatization might be thought to occur when there is an intensification of an already private sector, the rendering of it, as it were, more private. Consider the historic existence of public interest obligations on American broadcasters, obligations, for example, to cover controversial events of public importance, or act as a voice for the local community.7 The removal of these obligations through the process of deregulation could be said to be a form of rendering the private more private. Similarly, allowing home-shopping channels to be designated as meeting American licensing standards or relieving stations of an obligation not to indulge in “overcommercialization” expanded the private nature of the system. In the United Kingdom, it was certainly a change in the balance to allow a single private competitor to the BBC, and it might be said to be a further altering of the balance when additional national or regional licenses for independent television were offered.8 In many societies, systems became more private simply by becoming more open to foreign competition. Moreover, this openness could be established not through the process of licensing or any affirmative government action, but by the opening by operators of slots on cable television systems to satellite-delivered channels, usually foreign-owned. Certainly this was true in India, where the arrival of satellite channels created a vast change in thinking both about the system as a whole and about the state broadcasting system itself.9 In Turkey, the reaction to the existence of foreign satellite channels coming into the country was to establish a liberalization for private broadcasting within, and thereby attempt to harness or regulate the processes of change. A measure of the changing balance between the public and the private is the conduct of the consumer. In almost every system where new and private domestic channels compete (often because of cable and satellite), the impact on state broadcasters, in terms of share of the audience, is dramatic, sometimes terrifyingly so. State broadcasters decline from their monopoly position of 100 percent of the audience to 90 percent, then 60 percent and then far lower. Privatization leads to programming that almost always enmeshes the public service broadcaster, rendering it less capable of meeting the needs of a public sphere. Whenever there is competition between an entity that has an unencumbered right to satisfy consumer demands and an entity where obligation of managers is to government, to stay in power, or to meet restrictive requirements, the unencumbered competitor will, in the long run, gain audience share. That has been the experience in all the post-Soviet markets. Privatization sharply reduces the role of the public service broadcaster and its audience share. The essential quality of “private” in this reading, is the strategy to meet public demand, and managers whose tenure, or success with investors, depends on meeting that demand. How can one measure whether the tendency toward the private contributes to the public sphere? Privatization may be a necessary method of having control of media reflect changed constituencies or power groups in society. This might be especially true where there has been a monopoly provider and a plural society. It is theoretically the case that a monopoly provider, like the pre-ITV BBC, can become an accurate reflector of diversity of society, seeking to carry out a responsibility to represent various viewpoints and groups. But diversity is more credible, and usually more likely and more permanent if it springs from different sources. One could have diversity without privatization. The complex and mechanical process in the hey-day of Dutch broadcasting of semi-public entities dedicated to pluralism in the Netherlands was once an example. In the effort to have a plural federal broadcasting authority in federal Bosnia-Herzegovina, the posts of chief and deputy are allocated among the national representatives. But in many places, a shared public space would be unthinkable, and the aura of autonomy that often goes with private ownership is essential. In some transition societies, privatization, or the emergence of private entities, is essential as a means of breaking the stranglehold of the state broadcaster that, through staleness, might itself be weakening state sovereignty. The existing state-controlled system may be outmoded precisely because it bespeaks an old, surpassed, and ineffective perception of the nation. The broadcasting bureaucracy
at the moment of transition has been weighed down by ingrained modes of thinking and the legacy of warehoused personnel, and inherited and inflexible attitudes toward society have squeezed out the voices of difference. No matter how much the leadership of a massive broadcasting bureaucracy of the ancien regime changes, it can be an albatross against the efforts for change. Without the competition of forces or tendencies in the society. In India it required the competition from cable television an the private, it may be difficult for the entirety of the enterprise to represent adequately new channels carrying satellite signals from abroad to force substantial changes in the programming strategies of Doordarshan. In Turkey, it was competition from new quasi-pirate stations-some unofficially supported by the government -that led to greater reflections of diversity in the information space. Only because of satellite-delivered private programming, pro-Islamic in nature, was the monolithic nature of a possibly outdated approach to information and culture ameliorated. In each of these contexts, changes in the state monopoly and challenges from the private sector affected political identities and, it could be argued, ultimately elections and their processes. For all these places, changes in media structure in terms of sovereignty may have increased the viability of the state. An increase in private stations can weaken the power of the incumbent, but in the process redefine and reinvigorate sovereignty in terms of pluralism. Many governments view this kind of potential as an attack on sovereignty when it is merely an attack on the status quo G, s.x In Russia, one misleading possibility would be to understand the transformation of ownership of the first network from a state monopoly to a mixed state and private ownership in this way. The private is invited in as a means of diversifying control and of altering or eliminating the total hold of prior political es. The media sphere is required to match the politico-economic sphere as major interests control segments of the economy. But in the Russian case, the opening was not necessarily to new and diverse voices: privatization, paradoxically, was used, but not always successfully, as a means of extending and reinforcing control by the administration. The private may, in this instance, be imported as a means of limiting a civil society that is inchoate within the public service broadcasting staff. Predominantly, though, the very presence of the private, newly independent stations fostered by Western aid or NTV, represent at some critical moments a separate and distinct voice. In Russia, during the key days of the 1993 coup attempt, and in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic the consequence of privatization was to give breathing room and a voice for groups that might feel otherwise underrepresented Fostering the private also relates to the policies of USAId and others, often working through extraordinary non-government organizations like Internews, to foster"free and independent media in transition societies. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been expended to foster a public sphere by identifying potential entrepreneurs-often individuals who have not had media experience-and encouraging them to become fledgling broadcasters. Internews and similar organizations assist them by providing equipment, sometimes providing direct financing, training and providing legal assistance to shape a framework supportive of such initiatives. The goal is to create an abundance of voices, not just a single commercial alternative, to the state. In Armenia,s Shirak region, the Eurasia Foundation's Small Business Loan program helped finance the Tsayg television station, the first private television company in the country. By the fall of 1999, the station claimed a 60 percent market share in the gyumri and Shirak regions, attracting an audience through a more liberalized and flexible schedule of music, sports and politics, as well as its coverage of local and national news, and analysis of current events. The station is typical of post-Soviet transitions, first begun by individuals through their personal resources, and then turning to Western s,such as the Eurasia Foundation. The foundation not only provided loan funds, but also assisted in building expertise in running advertising and making commercials. The station then expanded, like so many of its private predecessors around the world, into such things as producing and distributing movies and music videos These are cases where additional voices bring a critique or alternative perspective to that of the government. But the move to the private can also be a shorthand for the commercial, and, in that sense, for an avoidance of controversy, pluralism, and involvement in the public sphere. It is possible that the e a means of reducing the possibility of dissent. in the case of the United States, during the Nixon an benefits to the public sphere from the move to the private are exaggerated privatising broadcasting Administration there was an explicit effort to weaken the impact of public broadcasting on the ground that it had hidden partisan tendencies or, at the least, promulgated views of society that were thought inconsistent with the Administration s goals. In that instance, the approach was not the rendering of the public broadcaster more private, but, rather, preventing measures that would lead it to become more centralized and stronger
at the moment of transition has been weighed down by ingrained modes of thinking and the legacy of warehoused personnel, and inherited and inflexible attitudes toward society have squeezed out the voices of difference. No matter how much the leadership of a massive broadcasting bureaucracy of the ancien regime changes, it can be an albatross against the efforts for change. Without the competition of the private, it may be difficult for the entirety of the enterprise to represent adequately new political forces or tendencies in the society. In India it required the competition from cable television and channels carrying satellite signals from abroad to force substantial changes in the programming strategies of Doordarshan. 10 In Turkey, it was competition from new quasi-pirate stations—some unofficially supported by the government—that led to greater reflections of diversity in the information space. Only because of satellite-delivered private programming, pro-Islamic in nature, was the monolithic nature of a possibly outdated approach to information and culture ameliorated. In each of these contexts, changes in the state monopoly and challenges from the private sector affected political identities and, it could be argued, ultimately elections and their processes. For all these places, changes in media structure in terms of sovereignty may have increased the viability of the state. An increase in private stations can weaken the power of the incumbent, but in the process redefine and reinvigorate sovereignty in terms of pluralism. Many governments view this kind of potential as an attack on sovereignty when it is merely an attack on the status quo. In Russia, one misleading possibility would be to understand the transformation of ownership of the first network from a state monopoly to a mixed state and private ownership in this way. The private is invited in as a means of diversifying control and of altering or eliminating the total hold of prior political voices. The media sphere is required to match the politico-economic sphere as major interests control segments of the economy. But in the Russian case, the opening was not necessarily to new and diverse voices; privatization, paradoxically, was used, but not always successfully, as a means of extending and reinforcing control by the administration. The private may, in this instance, be imported as a means of limiting a civil society that is inchoate within the public service broadcasting staff. Predominantly, though, the very presence of the private, newly independent stations fostered by Western aid or NTV, represent at some critical moments a separate and distinct voice. In Russia, during the key days of the 1993 coup attempt, and in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, the consequence of privatization was to give breathing room and a voice for groups that might feel otherwise underrepresented. Fostering the private also relates to the policies of USAID and others, often working through extraordinary non-government organizations like Internews, to foster “free and independent” media in transition societies. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been expended to foster a public sphere by identifying potential entrepreneurs—often individuals who have not had media experience—and encouraging them to become fledgling broadcasters. Internews and similar organizations assist them by providing equipment, sometimes providing direct financing, training, and providing legal assistance to shape a framework supportive of such initiatives. The goal is to create an abundance of voices, not just a single commercial alternative, to the state. In Armenia’s Shirak region, the Eurasia Foundation's Small Business Loan program helped finance the Tsayg television station, the first private television company in the country. By the fall of 1999, the station claimed a 60 percent market share in the Gyumri and Shirak regions, attracting an audience through a more liberalized and flexible schedule of music, sports, and politics, as well as its coverage of local and national news, and analysis of current events. The station is typical of post-Soviet transitions, first begun by individuals through their personal resources, and then turning to Western sources, such as the Eurasia Foundation. The foundation not only provided loan funds, but also assisted in building expertise in running advertising and making commercials. The station then expanded, like so many of its private predecessors around the world, into such things as producing and distributing movies and music videos. These are cases where additional voices bring a critique or alternative perspective to that of the government. But the move to the private can also be a shorthand for the commercial, and, in that sense, for an avoidance of controversy, pluralism, and involvement in the public sphere. It is possible that the benefits to the public sphere from the move to the private are exaggerated; privatising broadcasting can be a means of reducing the possibility of dissent. In the case of the United States, during the Nixon Administration there was an explicit effort to weaken the impact of public broadcasting on the ground that it had hidden partisan tendencies or, at the least, promulgated views of society that were thought inconsistent with the Administration’s goals. In that instance, the approach was not the rendering of the public broadcaster more private, but, rather, preventing measures that would lead it to become more centralized and stronger