The Future of Community Broadcasting

Civil Society and Communications Policy

Elinor Rennie BA (Hons)

Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre

Queensland University of Technology

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of

Philosophy

2003

ii

iii

Keywords

access, civil society, communitarianism, community broadcasting,

communications policy, cultural policy, development, digital television, free

speech, new media policies, non-commercialism, quality

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Abstract

Will community television one day be lamented in the same way as the Glenn

Valley Bridge Club in Pennsylvania, where no one remains ‘who can tell us

precisely when or why the group broke up’ (Putnam, 2000: 15)? Robert

Putnam’s bestseller Bowling Alone proposed that people ‘need to reconnect

with one another’ and rebuild their communities for the good of society.

Although he may not have succeeded in instigating a revival of lawn bowls

and bridge, Putnam did spark a debate about the meaning of “community”

today and its role in bringing about positive social change. At a time when the

communications landscape is set to transform with the introduction of digital

broadcasting technology, this thesis looks at the status of community

broadcasting and its role within civil society. Taking Australia’s community

television sector as its starting point, it aims to define the pressures, public

philosophies and policy decisions that make community broadcasting what it

is.

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This thesis is structured thematically and geographically. The introductory

chapters establish the research question in relation to Australia’s community

broadcasting sector. As well as tracing the intellectual path of community

media studies, it sets out to locate community broadcasting within broader

intellectual debates around notions of community, governance and the media.

These are brought back to the “on-the-ground” reality throughout the thesis by

means of policy analysis, interviews and anecdotal evidence.

Chapters Three to Five map out the themes of access, the public interest and

development by reference to community broadcasting in different regions. In

North America I explore notions of free speech and first-come-first served

models of access. In Europe, notions of “quality”, public service broadcasting

and the difficult relationship that community broadcasting has with public

interest values. Through the Third World and the Third Way I examine how

community broadcasting is implicated within development discourse and

ideas of social change.

The final chapter of the thesis moves into the virtual region of the Internet,

looking at changing notions of access and the relevance of new

communications rationales to the community broadcasting project. At the

intersection of the various themes and models discussed throughout the thesis

exists a strong rationale for the future of community broadcasting. Although

new technologies may be interpreted as the beginning of the end of

community broadcasting, I have argued that in fact it is an idea whose time

has come.

Table of Contents

LIST OF DIAGRAMS ...........................................................................................................vi

ABBREVIATIONS................................................................................................................vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................x

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER ONE: AUSTRALIA ..........................................................................................15

CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL CONTEXTS ............................................................51

CHAPTER THREE: NORTH AMERICA .........................................................................79

CHAPTER FOUR: EUROPE ............................................................................................122

CHAPTER FIVE: THIRD WORLD AND THIRD WAY...............................................154

CHAPTER SIX: NEW POLICIES, NEW TECHNOLOGIES .......................................196

CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................225

BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................236

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List of Diagrams

DIAGRAM 1: THESIS OUTLINE ......................................................................................20

DIAGRAM 2: STATUS OF COMMUNITY BROADCASTING .....................................36

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Abbreviations

ABA Australian Broadcasting Authority

ABCB Australian Broadcasting Control Board

ABT Australian Broadcasting Tribunal

ACA Australian Consumers Association

ACE TV Adelaide Community and Educational Television

AFC Australian Film Commission

AMARC Association Mondiale des Radiodiffuseurs

Communautaires

ATSIC Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Commission

ATVA Asian Television Association

BENT TV Collective of queer television broadcasters

BRACS Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities

Scheme

BSA Broadcasting Services Act 1992

CAT TV Community Access Television Inc.

CBAA Community Broadcasting Association of Australia

CBF Community Broadcasting Foundation

CESPA Centre de Services de Production Audiovisuelle

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CIRAC Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre

CLC Communications Law Centre

CMA Community Media Association

CRTC Canadian Radio–television and Telecommunications

Commission

ERTC Ethnic Radio and Television Committee

FCC Federal Communications Commission

HDTV High Definition Television

HORSCOTCI House of Representatives Standing Committee on

Transport, Communications and Infrastructure

LPFM Low Power FM

LPTV Low Power Television

MCT31 Melbourne Community Television Consortium

NCPM National Centre for Popular Music

NIBS National Indigenous Broadcasting Service

PBAA Public Broadcasting Association of Australia

RMITV Club of the Student Representative Council, RMIT

University

SBS Special Broadcasting Service

SDTV Standard Definition Television

SKA TV St Kilda Access Television

TVCBF Télévision Communautaire des Bois-Francs

x

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for

a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and

belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by

another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself.

Elinor Rennie

June, 2003

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Acknowledgements

It seems that everyone who writes about community broadcasting has also

worked in the sector. Whether we get much of an audience in either pursuit is

beside the point – it is the process and networks that make both achievable

and worthwhile (although we do still cross our fingers and hope the content is

ok). Those who put-up with my rough edits and endured countless meetings

from both the broadcasting and academic communities get first thanks. My

supervisor, Christina Spurgeon, made this project happen and literally put the

world at my feet. The wise words of Stuart Cunningham and Barry Melville

(my associate supervisors) always pointed me in the right direction. In the

broadcasting community I am especially grateful to the CBAA team (Andrew

Brine, David Sice and Jan McArthur) whose collaboration on policy projects

influenced my thesis without them knowing it. Also to everyone at SKA TV

(in particular Jeff, Cam, Peter, John, Rose, Ntennis) who never gave up. As

Cam once said, ‘there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and for once it’s not

another train coming…’

Many people contributed their thoughts to this thesis. Thanks to everyone who

went out of their way to talk to me on my travels, including: Nicky Edmonds,

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Steve Buckley, Sylvia Harvey, Jeni Vine, John Trevitt, Chris Hewson, Dave

Rushton, Hitesh Popat, the Undercurrents gang, Nick Couldry, Peter Lewis,

Margaret Gillan, Sean O’Siorchu, Ollie McGlinchey, Nick Jankowski,

Martina Huyzenga, Erik van der Schaft, Jürgen Linke, Jonathan Levy, Zane

Blaney, Denise Brady, Ron Cooper, Kari Peterson, Ruben Abrue and MNN,

DCTV, Tara and Carlos at Paper Tiger, Kevin Howley, Curtis Henderson,

Isabelle Allende, André Desrochers, the Federation of Community Television

Stations in Quebec, Peter Foster, Catherine Edwards, Bunnie Riedell, Nantz

Rickard, Jim Blackman, Bevin Yeatman, Tracy Naughton, Christina Alvarez,

Kath Letch, everyone at OURMedia, IAMCR ComCom, the AMARC

delegates and everyone else who I spoke with in corridors or over coffee.

Thanks to my family and friends in Melbourne who I did not spend nearly

enough time with and all my Brisbane friends who were always there.

1

Introduction

Simply, the sector lacks the political power of both public

service radio and commercial radio. While the sector has

been sanctioned and offered some support by the state, it has

also been under-resourced in terms of material needs such as

equipment and funding and ignored in public debate,

analysis and polemic

– Albert Moran

The Research Question

Australia’s community television trial is coming to an end. For over a decade

community television groups have been analog broadcasting under an open

narrowcasting trial on the sixth free-to-air television channel. The expectation

has been that if the stations can prove their viability – with no government

funding and short one-year apparatus licence terms – that they will become

fully licensed community broadcasters. The amendments to the Broadcasting

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Services Act 1992 (BSA) that were passed in November 2002 did just that:

changing the existing community broadcast licence category to allow for the

particular needs of the television services. But, although the trial is not due to

end until December 2003, predicting the verdict is not so straightforward.

Community broadcasting licences are granted for a full five-year term.

However, there is no legislative guarantee that community television will be

allowed to occupy its current spectrum after 2006, when the changes to the

digital television plans are to occur. Despite the so-called “permanent”

licensing of community television, the situation is remains far from resolved1.

Albert Moran's 1995 observation requires revisiting. Since 1996 there has

been the justifiable perception in broadcasting industry and government

circles that the community broadcasting sector’s political stocks have been on

the ascendant. Over those 7 years the community radio sector has doubled in

size and, although it is not always prominent in ‘public debate, analysis and

polemic’, it has vastly increased levels of direct government support and

gained considerable recognition as a lobbying force. At the same time,

community television has been plagued by a policy inertia since its inception,

the cause of which has not been clearly identified in academic work.

1 Across all of licensed broadcasting (community, commercial and subscription) there is, strictly speaking, no “permanent” category of licence, although this term is used colloquially to refer to the community licence within the sector. In order to operate on the Broadcasting Services Band, each fully licensed station has to have a broadcasting services licence (BSA) and an apparatus licence (RadComms Act). The community licences are allocated under the BSA Part 6 for full 5 year terms and are renewable in perpetuity. What is novel about the situation is that because the moratorium on the introduction of a 4th commercial network expires in Dec 06 and the Minister must then review the situation, the ABA is unable to issue the apparatus licences beyond the Dec 06 date. At that point, the ABA and the Government will investigate options for digital carriage if they become available.

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Neither is community broadcasting an entirely neglected field of study. A

small but useful body of work exists that has attempted to describe the

community broadcasting sector and, in many cases, to justify its existence.

Within that literature parallel arguments are made in support of the sector's

existence from both the academic and policy arenas. It seems that the potential

for the sector to contribute to a range of areas has been established, including

localism, training and skills creation. The number of volunteer hours worked

in the production of community radio and television are without doubt an

indication that people are involved in community broadcasting for the love of

it. The diversity of the stations and the groups is undeniable. The small

amount of existing research into community broadcasting is enough to paint a

sufficient portrait of the sector. I do not wish to dispute the efforts of

community media researchers or to find some new theory that that will make

that research obsolete. If anything, these recurring themes are essential in

understanding what it is that the sector has achieved and where it is going.

They name and describe community broadcasting, contributing to its identity

and influencing its particular style of governance as well as its institutional

design.

But deeper questions still remain. The point of inquiry for this thesis is not

what community broadcasting would be capable of if there were no

constraining forces (what it is good for in an ideal world), but what these

forces and influences are and whether they are likely to persist. This requires

an examination into the broader policy trends within which community

broadcasting must function as well as the values that are attached to it. A

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separate set of questions arise: What significance is placed on access in the

changing media environment? How do “community” discourses such as those

invoked in discussions of social capital impact upon the expectations and

possibilities for community broadcasting? Where do we locate this media in

relation to social and political structures? How is it informed or constrained

by dominant public philosophies? The treatment of community policies in

general and the relationship of community broadcasting to broader political

agendas frame such issues. So does the nature of community itself and the

role that communication plays in the maintenance of community networks and

affiliations. Only through such analysis is it possible to see the policy inertia

that surrounds community television for what it is, to discover where change

might occur and which broader political influences determine and may re-

shape our notions of community broadcasting.

This thesis takes community television as its central problem. Australia's

transition to digital television transmission has meant that questions of

community broadcasting policy are now focused upon that issue. It is also fair

to say that community television has always presented the greater problem for

policy makers in terms of spectrum scarcity, costs and notions of what

“quality” television consists of. However, many of the issues discussed in this

thesis are also relevant to community radio (in many instances community

radio has experienced these issues first) and I have therefore included some

discussion of community radio where appropriate. My primary aim is to

define the forces that are influencing the development of community

television policy. Research into international experience and policy rationales

5

provides a means to more robust models. Therefore, this thesis looks at the

underlying motivations for community broadcasting around the world – the

rhetoric, policies and movements – to determine how alternative approaches

might be constructed.

Research Method

Suggesting the means towards sectoral development and engaging in policy

questions within an academic thesis is an approach that requires some

justification. I am fortunate to be able to rely not only on a tradition of

research in Australian cultural studies that takes such an approach, but which

has also defended and articulated its position. A great deal of cultural studies

work in Australia has concentrated on the intersection of culture and

government, including a prolific published debate over the worth of such

analyses (known as the "policy moment" of the 1990s. See Cunningham &

Flew, 2002). That debate is a useful reference point in explaining my interest

in the policies of community broadcasting as well as the difficulties that any

such analysis faces.

Most importantly, it was argued in the policy moment discussions that policy

studies allowed for an engagement with the national and cultural

infrastructure that could not be reached by focusing only on grand theories

(Cunningham & Flew, 2002; O'Regan, 1992). For Stuart Cunningham, linking

cultural studies to policy was a means to expand the field ‘but with methods

far more modest and specific than those to which we are accustomed’, making

6

it ‘far more sensitive to what is possible as much as to what is ideal’

(Cunningham, 1992). Not only could an emphasis on policy create more

socially relevant studies but theory itself could also benefit from an

understanding of the processes, ideas and structures created through the

technologies of government.

However, as pointed out by those opposing the policy turn, policy analysis

risks becoming the ‘handmaiden of practice’, of selling-out to a particular

climate (O'Regan, 1992). It was further argued that the social utility of policy

analysis could not be proven over the broader influences of critical theory and

inquiry. The former is a possible hazard within this thesis, which attempts to

locate community broadcasting within wider policy trends. However, my

primary concern is to move away from notions of community media that

depict it as something resistant to government and the economy (Hawkins,

1993). Community broadcasting is dependent upon and intersects with both,

as any investigation into bureaucratic attempt to accommodate the sector in

policy-terms clearly shows. To ignore these dynamics risks denying important

aspects of an already neglected area of the media within cultural studies.

Policy analysis is one method employed within this thesis. I have sourced

policy documents from relevant government agencies in both Australia and

overseas. These have worked as “roadmaps” to determine the guidelines,

resources and restrictions that have shaped the broadcasters (and in some

cases cablecasters) within this study and provided a valuable starting point for

comparison. Where possible, I have endeavoured to also meet with policy

7

makers to hear their insights and reflections on the community broadcasting

sector as well as their personal difficulties in attempting to “deal with” a

sector that is not easily defined or managed. Material collected from industry

associations has been another primary policy source of information.

Attention to theory rivals use of policy in this thesis. Tom O'Regan has argued

that the policy polemic prioritises ‘both administrative process and the

“contents” of policy at the expense of wider political processes’, that it should

not be presumed that either theory or policy analysis has ‘more social utility

and effectiveness than the other’(O'Regan, 1992: 530). But there is also risk

that focusing on the wider philosophical issues might ‘construe “policy” as

“politics”’. Focusing on politics, histories and overviews ‘may equip policy

practitioners with useful understandings of political processes’ (523), but such

an analysis might also fall short of generating policy ideas. I consider wider

political processes to be essential in understanding the current position of

community television, even if the policy outcomes of the research are not

immediately apparent. The thesis sets out to contextualise community

broadcasting within a range of intellectual traditions including media theory.

If nothing else, this can provide a clearer picture of what is involved in the

development of alternative models for community television; proposals for

particular models are only suggested at here. They are the next step, requiring

a different type of investigation, involving a greater degree of stakeholder

input than is appropriate for this more philosophical task.

8

Michael Salzer's use of the term “public philosophy” describes the wider

context that I am interested in – not the theoretical, authored philosophies that

are learned and debated amongst scholars, but the related philosophies upon

which institutional design, values and the beliefs and biases of society are

based. Thomas Streeter's term “corporate liberalism”, used intermittently

throughout this thesis, is one such public philosophy (see Chapter Two).

Streeter uses the term corporate liberalism ‘to emphasise the ways in which

the institution is the product of social and political choices, not of accident or

impersonal economic or technological forces alone’ (Streeter, 1996: 6). This

restores the agency and intentionality to the way in which broadcasting is

constructed, reminding the reader that different choices and models are

possible. The commitment to freedom of speech within the notion of

community access is another such public philosophy – a derivative of notions

of liberty that guides and informs the way in which broadcasting is managed.

Philosophy, political science and cultural studies theory are all used within

this thesis as a means to discuss the “public philosophies” that inform

community broadcasting.

Interviews were conducted at a number of community television stations

during the course of this research. As the literature on community television

(Australian and international) is scarce, speaking to station managers, staff

and volunteers provided important insights into the concerns of stations here

and overseas. The stations visited were chosen, often with the assistance of

industry organisations, for their representativeness in terms of the character

and circumstances faced by community broadcasters in each country. The

9

level of involvement in policy issues of the individuals interviewed was also a

key factor in selecting which stations to visit. This material has been written

up to illustrate the themes discussed, rather than to act as case studies. The

anecdotes and experiences of those involved in community television

provided a means to discuss and interrogate the themes of this thesis which

could not have been captured through data collation or other such methods.

Although the research question is focused upon the future of community

television in Australia, I have used international experiences and histories to

discuss issues relevant to the Australian situation. At commencement of the

research, I soon discovered that there was little understanding within

Australian policy circles of community television in other parts of the world

(or studies to that purpose, with the exception of Naughton, 1993) and I was

interested to discover whether other places had encountered similar issues to

those being confronted in Australia. The experiences of community television

overseas proved to be a valuable source of information on the tensions,

assumptions and recurring issues common to community broadcasting.

Furthermore, international experience provided alternative approaches that

have not been tested here. The international material is therefore discussed

from an Australian perspective and it should not be treated as a complete

reference or overview of community television around the world but rather as

the international scene viewed from the position of Australia's specific

information needs. There is no international model that can be directly

appropriated that would solve the issue of the digital transmission of

community television. One of the main contentions of this thesis is that the

10

governance of community television can only be understood through the

wider social and political themes and priorities of a place and time. To impose

an international model upon Australia's unique cultural and political landscape

would be to ignore this fact. At the same time, overviews (beyond edited

volumes) of community broadcasting in different parts of the world –

television in particular – are scarce. I have therefore set out to sketch and

compare some of the histories, experiences and models of community

broadcasting. Therefore, although this thesis is aimed at Australia’s needs, it

is also an exploration into the global landscape of community broadcasting.

During the course of the research, I visited stations, industry organisations and

regulatory agencies in the United Kingdom, Ireland, The Netherlands,

Germany, the USA, Canada and New Zealand. These countries were chosen

as their community television models provided valuable comparisons to that

of Australia, and because they were undergoing changes in broadcasting

policy due to the introduction of digital technology. Information on countries

not visited was sourced through secondary material. In particular, the chapter

on development (Chapter Five) incorporates a discussion on Third World

community-based media that relies upon information derived from books and

reports. Alfonso Gumucio Dagron presented his collection of participatory

communications case studies commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation at

a 2001 OURMedia workshop in Washington DC. He urged the academic

community present to treat his study as a primary resource from which further

analysis could be developed. I have taken Alfonso up on that challenge.

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Thesis Outline

The thesis is structured thematically, with each area of inquiry focusing upon

a different geographical region (or regions). Chapter One provides

background to the research question, looking at the history of community

broadcasting in Australia and the issues currently facing the sector. Chapter

Two outlines my theoretical approach in more detail, examining the existing

literature and relevant theoretical frameworks. In particular, this chapter

explores notions of community and the relationship of community media to

the civil society debate. In Chapter Three I discuss notions of access and free

speech, using the North American experience to show the tensions involved in

the governance of speech rights. Chapter Four looks at the history of

community television in Europe from the days of pirate transmission through

to the establishment of local television in a number of countries. The

European experience captured here involves the position and role of

community television in relation to public service broadcasting, in particular

the values of public interest and quality. Community policies and strategies

for social development are discussed in relation to community broadcasting in

Chapter Five. This looks at the intellectual path of development

communications and compares it to more recent policies of neighbourhood

development in the First World. How these two areas of thinking on post-

scarcity deploy community towards political and social outcomes is the

central concern. Chapter Six departs from the geographical focus, looking at

the virtual space of the Internet. New technologies have altered the way in

which community media is understood theoretically as well as in

12

communications policy. Access, in particular, is revisited in order to explore

new possibilities for community broadcasting policy.

All of these themes are not restricted to the geographical regions I have

located them within. They intersect and influence each other and change over

time. The geographical focus is used to highlight the importance of the

overriding policy objectives and traditions within which community

broadcasting must function. To some extent it also works to show how and

why community broadcasting debates have acquired different preoccupations

in North America, for instance, than they have in the Third World or Europe.

It is possible to represent the themes of the thesis thus:

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Third World

development

public

interest access

third way

the new public interest

C.B. as a means to

social change: the

tension between the

“program” and the

grassroots; the

deployment of

community within

local policies and

global agendas;

Europe North

America

C.B. values and assumptions: Non-

commercialism and static notions of

community; community vs. public service

broadcasting; notions of quality and

amateurism; the homogenous public vs.

diversity.

C.B. as understood through access and

freedom of speech: the negotiation of

community building and individual rights;

the problems of the “minimalist”

interpretations of access/rights; access as

“access to” an otherwise controlled space.

Diagram 1. Thesis Outline

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As this diagram shows, the themes of this thesis combine in the centre. The

most current intellectual and policy frameworks (the New Public Interest and

Third Way) draw on all traditions and cross geographical borders to some

degree. They exist at the heart of civil society debates and, it is argued here,

define an emerging community broadcasting rationale.

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Chapter One: Australia

The Emergence of Community Broadcasting: Radio

From the start, momentum for community broadcasting in Australia was

checked by a broadcasting structure that sought to accommodate and appease

the interests of both public service and commercial broadcasting. According

to a history of community radio 2 by Phoebe Thornley (2001), at least one

advocate was concerned by the unusual lack of debate on the structure of

Australian broadcasting. To Max Keogh, this was due not only to Australians'

‘infamous apathy to public affairs’ but also to the dual broadcasting

arrangement that meant that other issues became disguised by the apparent

stability. Where the UK system was defined by a dominant public service

broadcaster and the US by its commercialism, Australia's combination of both

public and private meant that there was little discussion on the impediments to

growth inherent within this arrangement. The closure of experimental FM

broadcasts in 1961 caused Keogh to take action. He claimed that ‘to the public

2 Community broadcasting was referred to as “public broadcasting” until the 1992 BSA renamed it. For the sake of consistency I use the term “community broadcasting”, even though most of the early literature refers to “public”. This also avoids confusing community-based media with public service broadcasting media, often referred to in Australia as “national” broadcasting.

16

FM might just as well have been a time of day between AM and PM. In the

past ten years it has been kept just as much in the dark’ (Keogh in Thornley,

2001: 4). Keogh was later to become involved in the establishment of 2MBS-

FM, a Sydney classical music community station that was Australia’s first FM

radio licensee. Due to the efforts of campaigners such as Keogh, community

radio is now generally credited with pioneering the use of that part of the

broadcasting services bands (see Thompson, 1999).

This was not the only time that community broadcasting would be judged

against the commercial and public service broadcasters. In 1978 the Public

Broadcasting Association of Australia (PBAA, now CBAA) decided that

community programming should be ‘complementary and supplementary and

not seek to compete with existing services’ (Law in Tebbutt, 1989: 135) a

definition that was then pursued to the extreme by the commercial

broadcasting lobby who argued that community radio should not be allowed

to broadcast classical, light or popular music, or news, sport or talkback.

Although the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) deemed that request

excessive, they did make ‘complementary and supplementary’ programming a

requirement on community broadcasters. Tebbutt writes that although this was

impossible to police, ‘the most significant effect it had was the way it

informed [community] broadcasters’ understanding of themselves’ (Tebbutt,

1989: 135), enforcing their subordination to the established media. This

chapter looks at the emergence of community television in Australia,

beginning with the establishment of community radio. Following Keogh, I

17

focus upon the status of community broadcasting within Australia’s wider

media landscape towards an understanding of the position of the sector today.

The Australian community radio sector has always been comprised of a

diversity of interests and groups, although some were more dominant than

others in the policy circles through which legislative change eventuated.

Tebbutt writes of the Alternative Radio Association’s (ARA) frustrated

attempts to be included in the policy process. Formed after Melbourne’s pirate

stations 3DR (Draft Resistors) and 3PR (People’s Radio) were shut down by

the authorities, the ARA were not invited to the 1974 Department of Media’s

conference on community broadcasting until the oversight was made known.

Instead, it was the educational and fine music advocates of community media

that liaised with government on the possibilities for community radio.

However, even that somewhat less radical community broadcasting campaign

met with significant resistance. The then regulator, the Australian

Broadcasting and Control Board (ABCB, now the Australian Broadcasting

Authority (ABA)) argued against the establishment of community

broadcasting, claiming that there were no available frequencies for new

broadcasters and that, in any case, community broadcasting would be a waste

of spectrum. As a result, the first community radio stations were not issued

under broadcasting legislation by the ABCB but as “experimental” and

“education” stations by the Postmaster General under the Wireless and

Telegraphy Act (Tebbutt, 1989). The University of Adelaide and two fine

music stations in Melbourne and Sydney received these first licences. More

radical stations appeared in the mid to late 1970s after “limited commercial”

18

licences were awarded through the ABCB, including 3CR in Melbourne who

vigorously pursued an access philosophy. As Thornley points out, community

radio stations demonstrated a diverse range of models in the early days:

2RDJ-FM in Sydney ‘insisted on broadcasting to the local community as a

whole, opposing programs in languages other than English for local ethnic

communities’. She adds, ‘still their primary motivation remained a love of

radio’ (Thornley, 2001: 13).

That love currently attracts more than 20,000 volunteers on a regular basis to

radio alone, contributing approximately $2.79 million in unpaid work hours

each week (Forde, Meadows, & Foxwell, 2002). The continued growth of the

community radio sector is indicative of how many communities retain that

motivation. In 2002 there were 234 community broadcasters and 104 aspirant

stations (compared with 255 commercial radio stations). Sixty percent of full

licensees are located in metropolitan areas, and 37 community broadcasting

stations are the only available radio service (Forde et al., 2002). The

community radio sector is now comprised of not only fine music groups,

educational groups and political groups, but also ethnic groups, Indigenous

broadcasters, geographical communities, religious communities and, most

recently, youth radio.

Others have attempted to research and record the specific attributes of the

community radio sector, the most thorough and recent report being that

conducted by Forde, Meadows and Foxwell (2002). Their work has provided

a valuable snapshot of the community radio sector and the issues that concern

19

those working in the stations today (gathered through focus group research

and questionaries). Culture, Commitment, Community also shows that the

themes of localism, funding (including identification with a non-commercial

ethic) and the role of community broadcasting within the wider media

environment continue to preoccupy as well as define the sector. It is these

concerns that I will focus on in the remainder of this introductory chapter. But

first it is necessary to take a more detailed look at the emergence of

community television.

Community Television

A report written by the Communications Law Centre (CLC) details the early

history of the campaign for community television (Communications Law

Centre, 1989/90). This account tells of the slow and much interrupted

progression towards community television test transmissions out of the video

access movement of the early 70s. With the support of the Australia Council,

ten independent video access centres and two resource centres were

established in 1974, which provided the community with access to video

production equipment and training. As pointed out by the CLC, the resources

concentrated into production were, at that time, out of proportion to the

available broadcast opportunities. The access centres hence became the sites

out of which community television campaign groups were formed. The first

proposal for community television, a mobile low power service to link the

access centres in Melbourne and Sydney, came in 1976, however, the

government opted to defer their decision to fund the initiative. It would be

20

almost two decades until a full community television service would finally get

off the ground. Throughout this period, successive governments retained a

generally supportive attitude towards the development of community

television but remained reluctant to commit resources to its development.

Although the Coalition parties made promises to introduce community

television by 1981 (Prime Minister Malcome Fraser even wrote a letter to the

PBAA to inform the organisation that he intended to call for licence

applications) no such efforts were made (Communications Law Centre,

1989/90).

The metropolitan producers had watched with interest as pirate (unlicensed)

television stations were established by Indigenous communities in remote

areas; the Pitjanjarra in Ernabella , South Australia, and the Walpiri of

Yuendumu, a township on the edge of central Australia’s Tanami desert

(Batty, 1993; Michaels, 1987). In 1987 the Department of Aboriginal Affairs

developed a framework for rural and remote Indigenous television services

through the Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme

(BRACS). When the BSA 1992 was introduced, these services (which had

progressed from “pirate” status to “limited licences”) became fully licensed

community broadcasters (Productivity Commission, 2000). Although

Indigenous broadcasting was to take a different legislative path to the

metropolitan stations, these first stations were a significant development in the

campaign for community television. Other efforts were also made to secure

community channels on cable television. Although that idea was thwarted by

the reluctance of government to impose carriage arrangements on the cable

21

sector, the persistence of various community television campaigns throughout

the country since the 1970s is evident. In 1982, community television

broadcasts were screened on SBS television on two weekends, coordinated by

the Open Channel video access centre in Melbourne3. In the years 1986–1988

community television groups sought incorporated association status with the

intention of transmitting low-power signals to their local neighbourhood.

RMITV, a founding member of MCT31, which continues to run out of RMIT

University, conducted the first test transmission which was permitted under

the Radiocommunications Act in 1987. This was followed by subsequent tests

established with the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal’s approval (predecessor

of the ABA) from SKA TV, CAT TV, ACE TV and others (see

Communications Law Centre, 1989).

Spectrum scarcity and the expense of television broadcasting were given as

reasons by successive governments to reject petitions for community

television beyond the test transmissions. As it had consistently been stated by

government agencies that community television would not receive direct

government funding, the community television test transmission groups

instead focused their attention on securing spectrum and permanent licences

with the intention of financing the stations by other means (Flew & Spurgeon,

2000). It was not until 1992 that the Government decided, following a

recommendation by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on

Transport, Communications and Infrastructure (HORSCOTCI), that the sixth

3 This experiment, which offered a possible alternative to stand-alone services, remains the most significant cross-sector broadcasting arrangement to date between community television and the public service broadcasters.

22

high power television channel4 should be used for community purposes until a

final decision was made on who would occupy it. As there was no

commitment from Government at this time to ensure permanent spectrum

allocation for community television, the stations began broadcasting on

temporary open narrowcasting class licences for the purposes of the BSA,

under what was to be known as the “community television trial”. Community

television services began broadcasting in Melbourne in 1994, followed by

Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Lismore and Perth. Attempts were also made to

launch stations in Hobart and Bendigo but the licences were withdrawn by the

ABA as the groups failed to fully launch their services within the allocated

time-frame. In May 1999 the Minister revoked the use of the sixth channel in

areas other than those holding existing broadcast licences due to digital

television planning. As a result, analog community television stations have

only been permitted in areas where there is an incumbent service or where

spectrum is available to be allocated on an ad hoc basis. For now, hopes of a

regional roll-out of community television will not be realised unless

legislative changes are made to accommodate community television services

in all television markets.

Programming on community television reflects a wide range of communities,

including language groups, social justice groups, gay and lesbian

programming, as well as local information and magazine-style entertainment.

A market research study commissioned by Access 31 (Perth) in 2001 found

4 So called because of Australia's existing three commercial and two government funded broadcasters.

23

that approximately 1.8 million people in the five capital city stations5 were

tuned in and watching community television – the equivalent of 23% of the

adult population living in areas that could receive a community television

service (Market Equity, 2001). Each station instituted a different

organisational model at its commencement and, as a result, the programming,

community access arrangements and revenue-raising activities of the stations

vary considerably. Funding sources include broadcast fees from program

providers, facilities hire and production fees for some programming,

membership fees, donations and grants. The stations were required to be not-

for-profit when they applied for their class licences and were expected to be

guided by community broadcasting licence restrictions in order to progress

beyond the trial phase.

It is fair to say that the community television trial lasted longer than anyone

expected. Despite the fact that the stations did manage to broadcast, no

decision on the licensing arrangement was forthcoming. As the stations

became increasingly frustrated by the lack of momentum, the bureaucrats also

complained throughout successive review processes that they were unable to

provide any real guidance or directives that would see the stations meet the

expectations of community licences. After all, the stations were not

community licensees but open narrowcasters – a much more sparsely defined

licence category. Community broadcasters were to represent the interests of

the community for which they were intended to serve, and allow for

community participation in programming as well as the running of the

5 The study did not survey Lismore.

24

organisation. But as the stations were not licensed as community broadcasters,

the regulator was unable to enforce these obligations during the trial phase.

Sponsorship was permitted under the community broadcasting licence but was

limited throughout the trial period to five minutes in the hour (as applied to

radio). That too could not be enforced.

In 1996 the ABA was instructed to report on the best use of the sixth free-to-

air channel. That report recommended that ‘the sixth channel, if put to any use

at all, should be used for community access television, as most socio-

economic benefits presently appear likely to follow from this use’ (Australian

Broadcasting Authority, 1997, xi). Community access television was preferred

as it was seen to be inclusive of multiple programming needs, freely available

and likely to reflect local interests and concerns. The sixth channel report also

found that long-term security for community television was required ‘instead

of continuing the open narrowcasting class licensing arrangements and the

uncertainty that they generate’ (Australian Broadcasting Authority, 1997: ix).

As the ABA’s 1996 report was not tabled in parliament the sector saw no

direct outcomes from these recommendations. Ralph McLean, Chairperson of

MCT31, has commented that many of community television's limitations were

‘imposed by virtue of it being “on trial”, both literally and figuratively, for

seven long years. Very few criminal trials last this long, but community TV

has been “on notice” all that time’ (McLean in Davey, 2002: 129). As

McLean's sentiments from 2001 clearly articulate, those involved in the

running of community television stations throughout the trial felt poorly

treated in government decision-making processes.

25

Issues

Indigenous Television: Finding a New Direction

Although remote Indigenous broadcasting services are the only television

services currently licensed under the community broadcasting licence

category, a number of Indigenous groups have in recent years begun

campaigning for the development of a separate licence category for

Indigenous broadcasters. Under the community broadcasting licence, the

groups argue, Indigenous radio (and potentially television) broadcasters must

compete for spectrum and licences with other aspiring community

broadcasters despite the fact that Indigenous radio and television are a “first

level of service” – the primary information and entertainment source – for

many Indigenous communities. Sponsorship restrictions also sit uneasily

against demands from Indigenous groups for new approaches to policy-

making that cease to see Indigenous people in terms of “welfare” and

dependency, and instead encourage social and economic reciprocity

(Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Commission, 2000; Pearson, 2000).

Issues surrounding the future of Indigenous broadcasting highlight the

tensions in the definition, use and role of community broadcasting: Who is

this media intended to serve? Who is excluded, or what interests are not met

by current services? Underpinning the Indigenous broadcasters’ demands is

the issue of whether the Australian government is willing to make a

commitment to identifying “air rights” (or spectrum rights) as a natural right

26

possessed by first peoples alongside land rights. That is an issue which is

related to the themes in this thesis but that requires its own separate study.

Marginal Culture

Mark Lyons, in his book The Third Sector: The Contribution of Nonprofit and

Cooperative Enterprises in Australia, points out that the greatest threat to

nonprofit organisations today is the lack of appreciation within government of

the particular nature and importance of the third sector. Whereas once

governments damaged the third sector through nationalising sections of it, out

of a belief that government could do better, today they no longer see

themselves as service providers. ‘The threat they offer to the third sector is

quite different’, writes Lyons. ‘It is the threat of non-recognition’ (2001: 221).

The treatment of community television in Australia reflects the apathy that

Lyons describes.

Community broadcasting was introduced along with a sweep of policies in the

1970s that were based on the principle of diversity. Multiculturalism, in

particular, signified a new approach to the way in which diversity was

managed. These programs sought to recognise difference and to cater for

minority languages and cultures, replacing previous notions of national

identity based on the idea of a unified and homogenous citizenry. The

establishment of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 1977 was seen as

a means to meet the needs of multicultural Australia in the broadcasting

environment. Although the Ethnic Television Review Panel considered the

27

provision of ethnic broadcasting through community television, they

concluded that:

[Community] television's overriding commitment to

alternative special purpose programs is too limited to serve

the needs of multicultural television. To locate multicultural

television under the aegis of… community television would

be to put it in the realm of broadcasting designed principally

to meet minority group needs. This would run counter to the

overriding objective of promoting multiculturalism among

the community (ERTC Second Report quoted in

Communications Law Centre, 1989/90).

As this demonstrates, community television has been depicted as marginal and

“alternative” from the start when seen in relation to larger policy concerns

such as multiculturalism. Diversity was still essentially distributed to viewers

rather than met through the participation of civil society groups. Whilst SBS

has successfully managed to bring a sense of cultural diversity to public

service broadcasting, it has nonetheless been criticised for presenting cultural

product that is cosmopolitan and does not sufficiently cater for Australia's

various diasporic groups (Hawkins, 1999).

The issues of quality, diversity and public service broadcasting are discussed

at greater length in relation to European broadcasting in Chapter Four.

Although attitudes prevail that cast community broadcasting as inferior to

public service broadcasting, this is not the only front on which notions of

28

marginality have been propagated. Stuart Cunningham has observed that

many government initiatives in which cultural diversity was given as a policy

objective have dismissed community broadcasting. Creative Nation (1994), in

particular, ‘simply reiterated the status quo for community broadcasting, while

all around it special initiative funding was being delivered for a wide variety

of related initiatives’ (Cunningham, 1997: 22). In an early instance of

community broadcasting being considered outside of “worthy” cultural

funding, a 1976 decision to shift responsibility for the video access centres

from the Australia Council to the Australian Film Commission (AFC) caused

serious set-backs for the community television campaign. Writes the

Communications Law Centre:

Following the transfer, there was a change of emphasis

towards more “professional” production and the AFC's

commitment to the video access project was revised. The

Commission's rationalisation of funding priorities resulted in

substantial disruption to the work of the video access centres

and the eventual closure of most programs and for a time

there was a decline in the activities of the community

television lobby (Communications Law Centre, 1989/90:

15).

It is plain to see that when community is described, it carries with it a set of

values and characteristics. Culturally, community is associated with

“amateurism”, as well as notions such as “political”, “authentic”, “social

concern”, “welfare”, “therapy”, and “worthy” – terms identified by Gay

29

Hawkins in her study of the mobilisation of community in Australia's cultural

policy context. As Hawkins points out, although these terms may challenge

the hegemony of the professional and the national, ‘they are also invoked as

terms of derision and dismissal, as signs of aesthetic fiascos and cultural lack’

(Hawkins, 1993: xix). Community is something that is often strived for, that

becomes part of the political discourse at times but is never fully realised. In

the Australian cultural policy context, community is represented as being an

alternative, a sincere yet problematic ideal that is not important in the greater

scheme of things.

The cultural status of community broadcasting within Australia's broadcasting

environment could be represented as being below the market, whereas public

service broadcasting and cultural policy have pursued notions of difference

that are seen to stand above the market:

Cultural Policy

Market

Community Broadcasting

Diagram 2. Status of Community Broadcasting

30

The marginalisation of community media is often attributed to its failure to

live up to its (largely self-proclaimed) desire to change broader media patterns

of ownership and control. Writes Albert Moran:

Over the past twenty years, this progressivism – the sense of

the alternative society that community radio might help

bring about, has been gradually marginalised by the growth

of the sector as a whole as well as by the soft

commercialism… Community radio is seen to have shifted

away from the original radical vision; indeed the sector is

drifting and may wither and die. Above all, there is a view

that it has failed to realise its potential’ (Moran, 1995: 159).

Although recent alternative media theory has begun to revise this “radical

vision” as something necessarily in opposition to the mainstream media (see

Chapter Two), in terms of policy justifications, it is diversity rather than

radicalism that has been the stronger motivation behind community

broadcasting in Australia. If anything, the particular diversity of community

broadcasting does not fit comfortably with government ideas of a dense and

varied cultural citizenry. Although Tebbutt (1989) tells of early attempts by

government to shut down radical community media, today, community

broadcasting suffers from not being “cutting edge” enough. Indeed, a greater

degree of “radicalism” in terms of provocative political content or avant

garde/experimental content might have helped community broadcasting’s

status – content such as that screened on SBS (whose government funding

continues to grow). On Melbourne's Channel 31, local football associations,

31

religious groups and taped performances from comedy clubs to weddings

accompany ethnic broadcasters such as the Australian Television Association

(ATVA) and alternative media (SKA TV, BENT TV). Although the more

“ordinary” associations, groups and cultural products make up a large part of

community broadcasting, they are generally only mentioned in discussions of

the sector's failures. For instance, Moran calls this aspect of community

broadcasting “weak multiculturalism”:

The mechanism of community radio that equates the needs

of Aboriginal Australians with those of country and western

fans, the needs of gay people with those of gamblers on the

turf, the needs of prisoners with those of community

sporting groups, smacks of a “weak” multiculturalism that

welcomes difference in the name of pluralism and

cosmopolitanism rather than see that some differences are

more important than others as evidence of continued social

inequalities and subjugation (Moran, 1995: 159–160).

Such assumptions about what community media should be are in direct

tension with notions of public access and participation. The marginality of

community broadcasting is reinforced by the policy approach to broadcasting

based upon carefully controlled and predetermined cultural objectives. These

themes are explored at much greater length in the context of notions of free

speech in North America, as well as changing notions of access that have

entered policy debates due to the rise of the Internet, in Chapters Two and Six.

A greater awareness of how such values saturate Australian broadcasting

32

policy is required in order to see the uses of community broadcasting and its

relevance for the emerging digital broadcasting environment.

Non-Commercialism/Funding

Funding is a difficult issue for the community broadcasting sector. The need

to raise revenue exists in constant tension with the non-commercial ethic of

the sector, reinforced by the licence restrictions and the Code of Practice. But

with decreasing government funding for radio, and none for television,

finding ways to raise money has become a major concern. According to

Forde, Meadows and Foxwell, core funding (funding which is guaranteed on

an annual basis) stood at around $1.27m in 1985 and was provided to 56

stations (aproximately $22,000 per station). This increased until 1995 (with

stations receiving on average $25,000 each) but dropped significantly from

that point onwards. In 2002/2003 core funding stands at around $15,300 per

station, or 3.58 million shared between 234 licensees. The new “targeted”

funding regime introduced in 1996 supplements the core funding, but is not

guaranteed and must be justified by the sector every three years. Taking into

account the distribution of targeted funding together with core funding, the

average amount per station for 2002/2003 works out to be $22,550. In real

terms this represents a significant drop in funding since the original 1985

amount. Competition for government money has increased between stations,

many now operating without any government funding at all (Forde et al.,

2002). The CBAA summed up the situation in their report to the Local Voices

Senate inquiry into regional radio: ‘Our biggest dilemma is that what you

33

might casually assume to be an abundance of riches (in spectrum terms)

becomes a major issue for sustaining viable services if government support

remains frozen or declines while new commercial and narrowcasting services

continue to devour the corporate sponsorship pie’ (Community Broadcasting

Association of Australia, 1999: 1). Community television has not been

included in the Community Broadcasting Foundation’s (CBF) distribution of

core government funding (nor is there an “abundance of riches” in spectrum

terms). With no government commitment to provide extra funds for television

on the horizon, the stations are likely to have to continue to rely on

sponsorship and sale of airtime as well as the lesser revenue sources of

membership/subscriber fees and donations.

Accessing market-based revenue sources is more difficult for some

broadcasters than others. Sandy Dann from Puranyangu Rangka-Kerrem

Media in Halls Creek described the situation at their radio station:

We’re just working on [sponsorship] at the moment, we do

that in kind… the bakery might donate a pizza, so we’ll

make mention that we’ve got a pizza to give away from the

local bakery, and we like to put that into local youth

programs, for the young ones… so that at least we know that

a group of kids out there has had something to eat… Halls

Creek is a lovely, vibrant community, but it’s also very

oppressed in certain respects… (Aboriginal and Torres

Straight Islander Commission, 2000: 7)

34

In contrast, a Sydney-based youth oriented temporary licensee, WILD-FM

estimated in 2000 that their sponsorship potential was around $3.5 to 4m

(O'Donnell, 2000). It is almost impossible to generalise about the financial

potential of either radio or television community broadcasting when the

stations exist in vastly different communities, some with substantial limits on

the amount of revenue available. However, this hasn't prevented some from

attempting to do so. In possibly the most confusing take on the funding of

community radio, a Senate report into regional radio in September 2001

concluded:

There were some calls in submissions for the limits on

sponsorship content to be lifted from 5 minutes per hour.

The Committee is not persuaded that such a move would

assist many stations. In its discussions with individual

stations in the course of this inquiry, many were unable to

fill the current 5 minutes. Increasing the level of sponsorship

allowed would also have implications for the commercial

radio broadcasters. It is ironic that radio stations which have

grown from the community are unable to gain sponsorship

support for their activities. Lifting the sponsorship time per

hour would advantage few stations unless they advance their

activities in obtaining sponsorship. Without proof of support

for community stations as demonstrated by sponsorship

support, there is little pressure for Government to subsidise

further the community broadcasting sector (House of

35

Representatives Standing Committee on Communications,

2001, paragraph 2.127, p. 40–41).

This position ignores the fact that some stations may never be able to achieve

financial independence from government sources. At the same time, it is

protective of the interests of the commercial sector by denying those

community broadcasters with the ability to raise more sponsorship revenue

from doing so. What is apparent from the Senate Committee's report is that

the real issue in terms of financing the community sector is not so much the

ability of stations to participate in the market or not, but confusion over the

appropriateness of that activity. The Senate Committee's viewpoint is one

where market participation acts as proof of the sector's worth, yet where that

activity may have ‘implications for the commercial radio broadcasters’. The

sector is depicted as inadequate when it cannot compete, and overstepping its

role when it does.

The influence of the commercial lobby in restricting the financial growth of

the community is a very real issue. This was particularly apparent in the case

of the youth-oriented dance music stations.

When HITZ-FM went on air in Melbourne for a ninety-day

test broadcast, it didn't take long for the commercial rock

music stations to notice the slump in their ratings. HITZ-FM

sounded terrific and programmed for a community that was

not well served, so it went on-air as it planned to continue. It

gave FOX-FM and other competitors a real shock, so much

36

so, they took their complaints to Canberra (O'Donnell, 2000:

96).

HITZ-FM's success came from the fact that they catered for a community of

dance music listeners, a highly lucrative demographic that placed the station

in competition with commercial radio stations for audiences. During its time

on air, a ratings survey found that the “Other FM” category had jumped from

1.8 to 16.1% of audience share in the 13–17 age group and from 3.3 to 12.8%

in the 18–24 age group (Counihan, 1996: 14). HITZ-FM later found that it had

its own competitor, another temporary community licensee called KISS-FM,

who also took their format to Sydney and started up a commercial

narrowcasting station Rhythm-FM. These stations clearly represent a

departure from the generally held image of the impoverished community

broadcaster. In the case of the HITZ-FM story it was the commercial

broadcasters, rather than the audience, who most vehemently opposed

community broadcasters participating in the market.

Anxiety over commercialism in the community broadcasting sector also

comes from within. Despite the fact that licensees are required to be not-for-

profit and are limited in the amount of sponsorship that they can broadcast,

activities that are seen to be in direct conflict with the community

broadcasting ethic are common. Albert Moran gives some examples of this

“creeping commercialism”:

In Cairns, 4CCR has charged an Aboriginal group a fee for

access to its airwaves. Before its present involvement with

37

the Australian Fine Music Network, 2NSB Chatswood

limited community programming in favour of a commercial-

music type format purchased from an American consultant.

2SSS Canberra is operated as a service for the racing and

gambling industry in the ACT. Three stations (4CRB Gold

Coast, 2CHY Coffs Harbour and 2GCR Goulburn) have

been questioned about their high levels of

sponsorship/advertising: 2CHY was opposed in its licence

renewal not only by FARB but also by some “S” class

stations (Moran, 1995: 158).

A more recent example is the retransmission of John Laws's notorious

commercial radio program on community radio6. For community television,

the screening of “billboard” advertising (non-moving graphic images) during

non-programming time has been known to exceed the sponsorship limits in

some cities. Possibly the most controversial activity in the community

television sector has been the sale of large blocks of airtime to commercial

companies. These particular issues are beginning to be resolved through

regulation: under the new licence conditions, the number of hours that can be

sold to a commercial programmers and non-profit organisations has been

restricted. In recognition of the need for diverse revenue sources, the

amendments did not prohibit the sale of airtime altogether and sponsorship

has been increased from five to seven minutes.

6 The program was the focus of an ABA inquiry known as “Cash for Comments” involving the broadcasting of paid product endorsements disguised as editorial.

38

Melbourne's 3RRR-FM had an estimated turnover of $1.1 million in the

financial year 2000–2001 divided equally from sponsorship and subscriber

income. Kath Letch, station manager of 3RRR FM and former President of

the CBAA, has expressed the need to uphold a community identity in order to

maintain audiences. She identifies two influential factors determining

appropriate sponsorship: available business partnership opportunities and

community acceptance.

Fundamentally, the sector puts itself forward as an

independent, non-commercial broadcast service – whether

that’s TV or radio – and sponsorship poses an inherent

tension in that dynamic. Because although its called

“sponsorship” in reality it is on-air promotion with a tag and

that’s advertising. There aren’t boundaries in the Act on

what you can and can’t take provided its tagged. So that

means that the decisions about what you will take operates

at a station level rather than at a regulatory level and I think

the decisions that stations can make in that regard are

affected by their location. So for example, many community

radio stations in large regional centres would run promotions

for McDonalds or Hungry Jacks. There are only a small

number of local businesses and only a smaller number that

have any advertising budget. If you have a large take-away

food chain that does have an advertising budget you are

probably going to take them, and they will quite possibly be

accepted by your community. So the test is: is it accepted by

39

your community and is it accepted by your listeners. And

there are many stations that could run a whole range of

things that couldn’t be run on 3RRR, not because of the type

of service that 3RRR delivers but because of its type of

identity in its community and its audience (Letch, 2002).

Behind this thinking is a clearly audience-driven approach to sponsorship,

whereby the listerners’ desire for a community “feel” or standard is prioritised

in order to retain audiences. The community ethic is as much an image –

signifying the station’s uniqueness – as it is a style of governance. In 3RRR’s

case that image has proved to be particularly lucrative.

For television, the funding issues faced by radio have been amplified as a

result of the increased transmission and production costs and complete

absence of government funding. The Communications Law Centre remarked

in their report on the test trials that, ‘without question, the failure to identify

an appropriate funding base for public television has been the most significant

impediment to its development’ (Communications Law Centre, 1989: 14).

Although, arguably, spectrum issues related to broader broadcasting

economics are surpassing cost as an impediment to growth, it remains a

prominent issue.

The CTV stations have existed on the brink of poverty with almost all having

had at least the threat of voluntary administration. Equipment maintenance,

including transmission, has been difficult. On a positive note, it has now been

accepted at government level that only a diversity of funding sources can

40

provide the sector with sufficient revenue to meet running costs. It is no

longer a question of whether market participation is acceptable, but how

much. If Letch’s view is correct then the viability of the stations is tied to their

ability to maintain a community identity without alienating themselves from

business. This is an area that requires further research in the community media

studies field if it is to receive the necessary attention, however, ideas of non-

commercialism first need revisiting (see Chapter Four).

Localism

Localism is an attribute of community broadcasting that attracts less attention

than it deserves. On the surface, the statistics are impressive: Access 31,

Perth’s community television station reported in 2001 that they were

screening 185 hours a month of local first-run programming (Brine 2001);

Briz 31 stated in a submission to the ABA that local content accounted for

over 40% of their total broadcast hours (Catchpoole, 2001). For radio the

figures are similarly high with two thirds of stations claiming that they

produce over 100 hours a week of local programming. These figures are

striking compared to the commercial broadcasting sector where local content

is on the decrease. In 2001 Southern Cross Broadcasting closed its regional

production centres in Cairns, Townsville, Canberra, Alice Springs and

Darwin. This was but one more blow in a steady loss of localism in Australian

commercial broadcasting since the 1980s (Davies, 1995). The Local Voices

Senate Inquiry into regional radio reported from the ABA’s evidence that the

number of networked stations increased by more than 80% between 1993 and

41

2000 due to liberalisation of ownership rules. Increased competition (due to a

greater number of licences) within local markets is also given as a reason for

the loss of localism, with stations resorting to greater levels of program

sharing in an effort to cut costs.

The benefits of localism should not be assumed. The provision of local news

services are generally deemed to be the most needed function of local

broadcasting (House of Representatives Standing Committee on

Communications, 2001). However, in the community sector it is local

entertainment, cultures and activities that make up the greater proportion of

broadcasting content. Where this is seen by some to be a deficiency of the

sector, the perpetuation and promotion of local culture deserves closer

attention than it has received. The role of local events promotion, discussion

of local issues through talkback or panel programs, as well as local music

(Australian music quotas are given in the Community Radio Codes of

Practice) are considered outside of the news genre yet are potentially

significant sources of local information.

It is evident, in any case, that the provision of localism in the community

broadcasting comes relatively easily – it is a by-product of access and

community group participation. The involvement of groups within the

production of broadcasting (91.3% of community radio stations cite the

provision of access to the media for local groups as their most important role

(Forde et al., 2002)) indicates that localism is integral to the structure and

function of community broadcasting stations in the majority of cases. Where

42

the issue of localism becomes problematic is how the worth of local content

can be measured and evaluated. In the context of this thesis, I have chosen to

focus upon the networks of civil society, as well as the deployment of

localism within development agendas. In this respect, localism is treated here

from a production angle rather than as a provision-based service. Although

community broadcasting may in fact serve the needs of local communities, it

is the desire for access that drives local content rather than need.

There are further questions that surround justifications for community media

based on localism. Community broadcasting stations are established where the

motivation to produce exists within the local community. For this reason it

can never be a blanket solution to the diminution of local content in regional

areas, at least not without efforts to stimulate interest in media production,

including training. At the same time, the opportunities presented by

community broadcasting for developing skills and creativity in localities are

poorly researched and overlooked in policy circles in Australia (see Creative

Industries Research and Applications Centre, 2002). This is discussed at

greater length in relation to UK community media initiatives in Chapter Four.

The Future: The Introduction of Digital Television

Digital terrestrial television broadcasting began in Australia in 20017,

implemented through a conservative and cautious transition regime. The

mandating of High Definition Television (HDTV) is the defining feature of

7 2003 for regional broadcasters.

43

the policy. It protects the interests of the existing free-to-air commercial

stations for the duration of the transition phase and necessitates that large

portions of spectrum be reserved for these broadcasters, using up space that

might otherwise be sold to new commercial services or used for other sectors.

The only means contained in the original Bill for new entrants to participate in

digital television is through a new licence category known as “datacasting”. It

was intended that these new commercial services would cater for niche

markets, providing informational content such as stock market reports and the

weather. However, severe limitations were contained in the datacasting

licence, including a prohibition on entertaining content or self-contained video

material of more than ten minutes in duration. The datacasting plans failed to

excite the market, leaving the commercial incumbents in a comfortable

position (despite the fact that they have been restricted from delivering extra

channels). The public service broadcasters are permitted to multichannel, but

no extra funds have been provided to produce content for these channels.

There was no provision in the Digital Television and Datacasting

amendments (2000) for community television services to migrate to digital

television along with the other free-to-air stations, nor was there any

guarantee that it would do so at any future point during or after the simulcast

period. The rationale behind HDTV is that consumers will be enticed to

replace their analog sets for digital sets by the superior quality of them rather

than because of new content. Although digital content can be received with a

much cheaper set-top box, HDTV can only be received with an expensive

wide-screen high definition set. The groups that occupy community television

44

have not yet been given the means to participate in digital television.

However, it appears that there is one minority that will be very well catered

for. Twenty hours a week, in fact, of television content broadcast on the

digital spectrum will be seen only by the HDTV audience that can afford it.

The absence of community television from the digital television transition

regime came as a surprise to the community television sector. The groups had

welcomed the 1998 legislation, despite some misgivings concerning an

imposed carriage relationship between datacasters and community

broadcasters. The amendments contained the first legislative recognition of

the developing sector and provided a framework under which the sector could

potentially progress. Section 59 (e) of schedule 4 of the Broadcasting

Services Act 1992 (BSA) required the Minister to conduct a review into the

regulatory arrangements that would apply to ‘the digital transmission of a

community television services, free of charge, using spectrum in the

broadcasting services bands allocated for use for the provision of datacasting

services’ (House of Representatives, 1998). Spurgeon and Flew wrote of

implied carriage arrangement:

The main advantage of this approach is that community

groups are freed from the burden of financing and

maintaining complex and costly TV broadcasting and

distribution systems and can concentrate resources on

program making, by “piggybacking” their services onto

infrastructure developed by commercial providers (Flew &

Spurgeon, 200: 70).

45

However, they also warned that the interests of the not-for-profit groups

would most likely be made vulnerable through their relationship with the

commercial carrier. The CBAA further pointed out that under such an

arrangement, community television services would only exist in those areas

where there was a viable datacasting market (Community Broadcasting

Association of Australia, 1998: 3). In general, these hesitations did not

overshadow the sector’s belief throughout 1999 and the first half of 2000 that

a licence condition for the carriage of community television to be imposed

upon a datacaster was at least one way for the sector to enter the digital

broadcasting environment.

Although the 1998 legislation put in place a statutory requirement for a review

into the possible regulatory arrangements for community television, the

situation remained uncertain – despite a Ministerial promise in 1998 that

community television services would be granted digital access:

The digital environment opens up new localised

programming opportunities for all broadcasters, including

the community television sector which will be guaranteed

free access to the spectrum needed to broadcast one standard

definition digital channel (Alston, 1998).

The report that came out of the section 59 review was expected to deliver the

arrangements for community television but was still not tabled at the time of

the Senate hearings into the 2000 Bill. Although the ACA submitted the report

to the Minister, the Government did not feel it would be in a position to

46

finalise matters ‘until the ABA’s digital channel plans are finalised and the

quantum of spectrum available for datacasting is known, towards the end of

2000’ (Department of Communications Information Technology and the Arts,

2000). Community television was left in the same tenuous position whilst the

commercial and government broadcasters and the new datacasting industry

were assured a place in digital broadcasting. The CBAA expressed their

concern that if provision was not made for community television in the

legislation then any subsequent efforts to provide digital spectrum would be

difficult and unlikely. Once spectrum was assigned for datacasting and

licences auctioned it would be too late to impose a carriage requirement as

‘the market would have already determined an access price predicated on the

uptake of a full 7 MHz bandwidth’ (Community Broadcasting Association of

Australia, 2000: 1). As it turned out, the government cancelled the datacasting

spectrum auctions in May 2001 due to lack of interest. What will happen to

the two channels set aside for datacasting is not yet known.

Australia’s policy for digital broadcasting transition will make television

slower to adapt to the changes brought about by convergence than other media

and service industries, with the exception of radio. The rationale behind the

digital television legislation favours industry stability over increased

competition and potential disruption of existing services, the result being that

the economic interests of the incumbent free-to-air broadcasters will not be

threatened before the end of 2006, when new entrants to the free-to-air market

will be considered. There has been much criticism of the digital television

transition policy for favouring the interests of incumbents to the detriment of

47

potential new services. The triplecast obligation of the digital television

legislation, which required free-to-air broadcasters to transmit their signal in

high definition digital, standard definition digital and analog formats, was

described by the Australian Consumer’s Association (ACA) as a ‘bandwidth

intensive white elephant’ designed to take up spectrum that could otherwise

be given or sold to new entrants (Australian Consumer's Association, 2000:

4).

This does not mean that the cultural objectives currently pursued through

broadcasting policy have not been put under pressure as a result of the

introduction of digital television. With the increased spectrum capacity, a

range of new players stepped forward to express their interest in participating

in digital television broadcasting, mostly from the press and

telecommunications sectors. Somewhat more accustomed to competition

policy approaches, these players pushed arguments of consumer choice and

the development of innovative new services via market forces. In the words of

Ben Goldsmith and Tom O’Regan, ‘the presence of these players ensured

intense debate, signalled the break up of any consensus about the agenda

within which debates would be constructed and conducted in both film and

broadcasting policy alike, and ensured that any decisions taken were likely to

be at most provisional’ (O'Regan & Goldsmith, 2001: 14). Even though

ultimately the Australian government opted to maintain its status quo in the

short term, debate continues as to whether this approach will stand up,

particularly in light of the slow consumer uptake of digital television in

countries with less conservative digital television regimes (such as the United

48

Kingdom). A convergent media environment has meant new emphasis on

issues such as privacy protection, copyright, standards, access to

infrastructure, and commercial robustness. Previous regulatory concerns that

focused on cultural maintenance and support can no longer claim such

distinct, or primary, importance.

The cultural role of community broadcasting is also being revised in light of

new market pressures. Although spectrum scarcity excuses for denying

permanent allocation to community television are less convincing with the

introduction of digital technology, commercial interest in spectrum has also

increased. The Productivity Commission, a government agency required to

advise on microeconomic policy and regulation, wrote in their Broadcasting

Inquiry Report that, ‘the major cost to the general community of community

broadcasting is the opportunity cost of the spectrum they use’ (2000: 275–

276) and recommended that the ABA conduct regular research on the demand

for community radio and television programming. Digital technology may

have delivered more channels through increased spectrum capacity, but it has

also brought with it new pressures to see spectrum in purely economic terms.

In such an environment community broadcasting is in danger of being seen as

a “waste” of a profitable resource.

It is possible that the motives for community broadcasting do not have to

comply with the “state versus the market” formula, an equation of revenue

lost and social capital gained; instead, it may be the case that the two

philosophies are not opposed, that social and cultural capital, as well as civil

49

society development, can actually lead to economic growth. Such an approach

would lead away from conceptions of community media based on welfare and

towards what Anthony Giddens calls “generative politics”. Community media

fits well with ‘a politics which seeks to allow individuals and groups to make

things happen, rather than have things happen to them, in the context of

overall social concerns and goals’(1994: 15). This approach is discussed at

greater length in Chapter Five. How we prove that this is the outcome of

community media and that more social and economic (eg micro business)

benefits are likely to ensue from community television than from a greater

number of commercial television broadcasters is another area for further

research.

As the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Digital Television and

Datacasting) Bill 2000 made its passage through the Senate it was amended to

include a new object. That object reads:

To ensure the maintenance and, where possible the

development of diversity, including public, community and

indigenous broadcasting in the Australian Broadcasting

system in the transition to digital broadcasting (3 (1) (n) of

Schedule 1 of the BSA)

This object sits alongside other aims and intents of the Act, such as the

development of an efficient and competitive broadcasting industry, the need

for broadcasting to reflect a sense of Australian identity and culture, fair and

accurate coverage of matters of public interest, and the protection of children

50

from harmful content. It is the only paragraph in the Act's objectives to

mention digital broadcasting, and refers to the short-term imperative of the

transition to digital, thus giving it an uncharacteristically specific time-frame.

It is also the first legislative recognition of Indigenous broadcasting as being

distinct from community and public broadcasting. Goldsmith, O'Regan and

Cunningham (Goldsmith, Thomas, O'Regan, & Cunningham, 2001: 9) have

observed that ‘although the BSA's objects may in many ways appear remote

from the real history and current practice of Australian media regulation, they

embody many of the key terms and ideas which frame debate over future

policy directions’. Object 3 (1) (n) stands as a reminder that our immediate

cultural concerns are as important as our long-term ones, that there are areas

being left-out, marginalised or avoided that digital television policy has yet to

address. The next chapter takes a more in-depth look at what it means to

implement community broadcasting – the solutions that “community”

purports to advance and the theoretical frameworks it arises out of.

51

Chapter Two: Theoretical Contexts

Within the claim that spectrum should be handed over for community use is

the endorsement of community as a sphere of activity outside of the state and

economy that requires attention, status and resources. Community is named

and validated – named as having a substantial interest, if not a right, to

broadcast. But what is community, and on what grounds can it make such a

demand? In order to answer this question it is necessary to focus on the

deployment of community as a sector, as a type of governance – as an

identifiable means to achieve certain political outcomes. Tracing some of the

theoretical constructions of community is useful in this process as it can

inform the qualities that a politics of community carries with it. This chapter

will therefore move through some of these debates – not to find a correct

definition of community, but with the aim of arriving at some idea of the

different tensions that the term carries with it into political life, in particular to

broadcasting. My analysis is concerned with the various political languages,

policies and theoretical ideas that employ notions of community. In the

second half of this chapter I turn to the small but important body of media

studies work that has attempted to define the meaning and use of community

media. First, however, I will survey the political approaches to community

52

that have prevailed in recent years, in particular the debates around civil

society.

The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is not to find what is “right” about

community or to endorse it as an ideology, but to view it as a ‘remaking of

political subjectivity’ (Rose, 1999: 176) that brings new options into the

political field. This is an understanding of community that is not singular or

uniform but located in the diverse networks and allegiances of everyday life,

at the point where such configurations meet with the strategies of government.

I begin where Jean Luc Nancy has left off, that is, at the recognition that the

Western philosophical tradition of community (beginning with Rousseau and

Marx) ‘ended up giving us only various programs for the realisation of an

essence of community’ (Nancy, 1991: 12). That single solution approach,

which sought a totalising account of community in order to justify a larger

operational goal, is unconvincing in a post-communist world dealing with the

contradictions of global capital and culture. Furthermore, it denies the

inherent “incompleteness” of community: community is a process, a

relationship; it is interaction and communication (Nancy, 1991).

The current political movements that rely upon notions of community are not

without their difficulties and inconsistencies (discussed throughout this

thesis). Their use, as Paul Hirst contends in his discussion of associationalism,

lies in the recognition that politics is no longer a matter of two competing

options (Left and Right) (Hirst, 1994). Contemporary shifts towards

community do not seek to find the truth of community, but see it as a means to

53

new opportunities for political change. These debates and political movements

are applicable and relevant to this thesis precisely because they attempt to

explain the use of community as a field of government in contemporary

liberal democracies. Community broadcasting has not been discussed in these

terms before, despite the fact that broadcasting is ‘the product of social and

political choices, not of accident or impersonal economic or technological

forces alone’ (Streeter, 1996: 6). Community broadcasting has mostly been

seen as a means to counter or overcome existing systems rather than to

complement them. My focus in this thesis is on the possibilities and options

that community brings to current broadcasting contexts.

Community and Governance

The work of Nikolas Rose is the most useful starting point in understanding

the deployment of community. Rose sees community as a space that claims to

be outside of politics – even regarded by some as pre-political – that

nonetheless requires political action to bring it about. ‘It is the objectification

of a plane formed at the unstable and uncomfortable intersections between

politics and that which should and must remain beyond its reach’ (Rose, 1999:

182). Community is uncalculated, formed through a sense of affinity and

identification, a recognised essence or a sense of belonging. It also involves

processes of group formation, mobilisation and public participation. When

community is instituted as a third sector, and in this case as a participant in a

regulated broadcasting environment, it becomes an object of governance (an

approach which originates from Foucault). Uncalculated communities are

54

made operational via this transaction and become an instrument through

which values and culture are directed. In this way, community broadcasting

embodies the paradox of the third sector. It appears, on the one hand, as a

space beyond politics, ‘a kind of natural, extra-political zone of human

relations’ (Rose, 1999: 167). However, it is also very much a concerted

political style, one that supports and allows a type of government and its

programs to work. Viewing community as a political technology opens

analysis up to how community has been deployed and mobilised, moving

away from viewing it as given (which leads to conceptions of community that

are static and caught up in notions of truth). Seen as a transaction of

governance, it is possible to understand how interventions have shaped

cultural forms, what interests have been supported or weakened, how

community has functioned in the project of democracy. And in this case, how

community has fared as a sector of broadcasting.

As community broadcasting is at the intersection of the administratively

controlled broadcasting environment (having to comply to licence conditions

and regulation) and the more random, messy and “natural” configurations of

the community sphere, it is not an easy subject of study. In many respects, the

institution of community broadcasting is a means to manage something that

has previously managed itself, and this creates a set of dilemmas that are

unique to community broadcasting. There is constant tension between who

should gain access, what level of editorial control stations should maintain,

how to determine whether stations are representative of the community their

licence was intended for. Studying community broadcasting is not just an

55

investigation into the management of broadcasting, but of community as well.

It is these qualities that make community broadcasting a unique object of

study and why it is that community broadcasting not only requires but brings

with it alternative policy approaches.

Communitarianism vs. Liberalism

For those who attempt to defend community on normative grounds,

community is inescapable. It is essential to understanding the social as being a

social context, that our identity, culture and ideas are shared with others, not

developed in isolation. Community is a social web, or bonds that are shared.

These bonds ‘carry a set of shared moral and social values’ (Etzioni,

1995:19), duties and responsibilities that are essential to social cohesion. The

communitarian argument, which sees this as the primary organising principle

upon which social structures should be designed, has been criticised for

relying on romantic notions of natural unity and for claiming to be progressive

when it is, in fact, often based on conservative and nostalgic ideals. Iris

Marion Young has written that the desire for unity through community can

lead to the denial of difference by creating an opposition between what is

considered to be “authentic” and “inauthentic” social life. She feels that many

who appeal to the ideal of community ‘tend to evoke an effective value’

through their desire for social wholeness, unity and meaning (Young, 1990:

302). Insular communities border on fanaticism, devaluing that which is not

within the community as “other”. Community shelters and closes off

communication in these discussions. It negates the existing reality,

56

detemporalising social change, ‘providing no understanding of the move from

here to there that would be rooted in an understanding of the contradictions

and possibilities of existing society’ (Young, 1990: 302). Proponents of

community often invoke nostalgic desires, promoting a return to the ‘warm,

encompassing (and closed) communities of the premodern era’ (Dionne,

1998: 6). Andrew Jacubowicz has written of SBS radio that programs can

become ‘avenues for the propagation of the “imagined communities” of the

immigrants – strange, limited, partial expressions of their experience’

(Jakubowicz, 1989: 111). Such tendencies also apply to community group

broadcasting. Community can be progressive and radical, conservative and

moralistic, nostalgic or revolutionary. In modern capitalist societies, diversity

appears to be its only defining feature.

The debate about what community is, and what importance it should be given

politically is played out most forcefully in the rights debate between

communitarians and liberals. The liberal argument asserts that individual

rights must be the primary concern of political society as only through the

protection of the individual's rights is the good life most likely to occur. Much

of the liberal argument is reliant upon the “state of nature” or variations of it:

a hypothetical position in which individuals are stripped of their memory of

history, class, knowledge or the place that they occupied within society. In

these circumstances any rational individual would choose a system of equality

in which a set of basic rights were protected. No matter how she (or he – she

does not know her gender) was to “end up” when her life attributes were

returned, she would be guaranteed a level of safety and wellbeing. On this

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basis it is possible to arrive at a set of minimum rights that will ensure the best

possible outcome for all. Chandran Kukathas, for instance, believes that

although groups matter, ‘there is no need to depart from the liberal language

of individual rights to do justice to them’. He argues that it is not acceptable

to elevate or create political institutions or legal rights that are structured or

based around cultural interest as ‘those very institutions or rights will

profoundly affect the kinds of cultural communities individuals decide to

perpetuate or to form’ (1995: 230). Furthermore, individual liberty may be

jeopardised if the interests of the individual become secondary to the rights of

the group. A liberal framework is paramount as groups are not fixed entities

but are constantly forming and dissolving in response to political and

institutional circumstances. In this portrait of liberal rights, community exists

outside of the political realm, it is a matter of personal affiliation that political

action would only distort to the favour of some over others (see also Dworkin,

1977/1991).

Communitarians are dissatisfied with this argument and assert the primacy of

the social over the individual. Our culture, ideas, material circumstances and

values do matter and it is through our interaction with others that society

exists. Furthermore, a focus on individual rights overlooks the duties and

values (civic virtue) that are fostered by community and that are necessary for

a well-functioning society. MacIntyre finds the abstract self to be

unacceptable as ‘particularities can never be simply left behind or obliterated’

(MacIntyre, 1984: 219). In its most adamant form, communitarianism asserts

that the emphasis on individualism in liberal theory fosters an amoral,

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fragmented society. Liberalism promotes discontents such as isolation, the rat

race, apathy and divorce. As Michael Sandel sums it up in reference to

American liberalism, ‘the procedural republic cannot secure the liberty it

promises, because it cannot sustain the kind of political community and civic

engagement that liberty requires’ (Sandel, 1996: 24). The more moderate

communitarian, Michael Walzer, finds a contradiction within such arguments.

Communitarians on the one hand argue that liberalism misrepresents our

situation as we are inevitably part of a society, with ties to family, cultural

groups, friends, work colleagues, etc. But at the same time communitarians

assert that society has lost the togetherness that it once possessed. These two

communitarian arguments are ‘mutually inconsistent; they cannot both be

true. Liberal separatism either represents or misrepresents the conditions of

everyday life’ (Walzer, 1995a: 57). On the strand of thinking that sees society

as having become fragmented ‘into the problematic coexistance of

individuals’, he contends that we may as well ‘assume that liberal politics is

the best way to deal with the problems of decomposition’ (Walzer, 1995a:

55). In other words, if we are ‘a community of strangers’ then the liberal

justice approach is the most suitable system. However, Walzer asserts that

communitarianism does make an important contribution that is not

incompatible with liberalism. It is possible that liberalism can prevent us from

seeing the value of the historical path and from recognising that we could

know and treat each other better. Liberalism is the only means to ensure

freedom but, within that, the notion of community can be a correction that

enhances liberal values. It can never be a totalising theory, but is a useful and

59

necessary recurrent theme that reminds us of what type of society we would

like to live in.

For many democratic theorists the hard opposition between liberalism and

communitarianism is unnecessary. Young writes that ‘unlike reactionary

appeals to community which consistently assert the subordination of

individual aims and values to the collective, most radical theorists assert that

community itself consists in the respect for and fulfilment of individual aims

and capacities. The neat distinction between individualism and community

thus generates a dialectic in which each is a condition for the other’ (Young,

1990: 307). Cohen and Arato agree that it is useful to move beyond the

stalemate of two normative and irreconcilable theories. They believe that

today, the two principles belong to the ‘same political culture’ (Cohen &

Arato, 1992: 20) and that the usefulness of the debate lies in the reconciliation

of the two schools of thought rather than the continued assertion of their

fundamental polarities. The actual dialogue made possible by the two theories

– our use of their universal norms for the sake of argument – is what allows us

to dispute and to engage with the institutional realisation of both individual

rights and the social whole. Although their take on the matter is still

essentially intersubjective – possibly closer to the communitarian critique as it

starts from the social context – they do not dismiss the importance of the

rights thesis. In fact, they argue that rights are essential to ensure that free

dialogue and engagement on political issues occurs:

In short, rights do not only secure negative liberty, the

autonomy of private, disconnected individuals. They also

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secure the autonomous (freed from state control)

communicative interaction of individuals with one another

in the public and private spheres of civil society, as well as a

new relation of individuals to the public and the political

spheres of society and state (including, of course, citizenship

rights)... The rights to communication, to assembly, and

association, among others, constitute the public and

associational spheres of civil society as spheres of positive

freedom within which agents can collectively debate issues

of common concern, act in concert, assert new rights, and

exercise influence on political (and potentially economic)

society (Cohen & Arato, 1992: 22–23).

It is this approach that carries the most weight in the context of this thesis.

Rather than attempting to base an understanding of community broadcasting

within a philosophically irrefutable notion of community, my aim is to focus

upon the use of community as it is deployed to reach certain cultural and

political ends. Cohen and Arato locate this activity within the sphere of civil

society.

The Civil Society Debate

Civil society is a domain created by people through their associations, bonds

and allegiances, separate from the state and the market but tied to both. For

Walzer, civil society is ‘the space of uncoerced human association and also

61

the set of relational networks – formed for the sake of family, faith, interest

and ideology – that fill this space’ (Walzer, 1998: 129). Some theorists place

emphasis on the ‘clubs’ and non-profit groups that we voluntarily take part in

– from bowling clubs and bridge to scouts and political parties (Putnam,

2000). Others include the more disparate networks of new social movements

and Internet discussion groups (Cohen, 1999; Huesca, 2001). Civil society is

most easily explained as ‘relations of conscious association, of self-

organisation and organised communication’ (Cohen & Arato, 1992: x) which

are either institutions or near-institutions. In some respects civil society is a

means of speaking about community beyond the “natural”

intercommunication between people – it is community as a sphere of social

activity within liberal democracies, firmly positioned within the structures that

make up modern politics. It is not far removed from the concept of

community – in fact, it has become popular to speak of the renewal of civil

society as a political strategy to advance the cause of community and to argue

against individual-centred politics (Dionne, 1998). Here civil society is used

to mean a sphere of social life. This allows for a reading of community media

that focuses upon its management and institution, upon its position within a

wider broadcasting context and as a product of a larger sphere of closely

related activities and networks. But it is also important to see what community

broadcasting is seen to achieve, what compromises between government and

citizens, what corrections to existing structures and how it attempts to reshape

communication. The tensions, contradictions and possibilities of civil society

can help explain how and why community broadcasting performs, and is

treated, in a particular way.

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Cohen and Arato see the concept of civil society as capable of reconciling

some of the contemporary debates around issues of democracy, participation,

rights and welfare. But for civil society to be capable of engaging with such

issues, they assert that civil society cannot only exist in the private realm.

Cohen and Arato's Civil Society and Political Theory therefore departs from

theories of civil society that see involvement in the voluntary sector, family,

etc, as occurring outside of the political sphere. The pluralist model, for

instance (see Chapter Three), depicts society as collection of groups and the

state as an organisation of individual citizens, where ‘society and state, though

they constantly interact, are formally distinct’ (Walzer, 1995b: 148). For

Cohen and Arato, this approach denies the possibilities presented by

associational life, the public sphere and new social movements as ‘spheres of

positive freedom’ (Cohen & Arato, 1992: 23) in which people learn difference

and debate issues – activities that are political, transformative, engaging and

participative. It could also be said that if civil society continues to be seen as

non-political then it will become even more marginal (Hirst, 1996). John

Keane also agrees that civil society should not be relegated to the realm of the

“private” but understood as part of the political process. He writes that

democracy is ‘a special type of political system in which civil society and

state institutions tend to function as two necessary moments, separate but

contiguous, distinct but interdependent, internal articulations of a system in

which the exercise of power, whether in the household or the boardroom and

government office, is subject to public disputation, compromise and

agreement’ (1998). From a media studies position (which implicitly takes it as

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a given that non-state activity as an important area of social life) this

definition of civil society is the most useful and appropriate. In both the work

of Cohen and Arato, and Keane, communication is identified as being

essential to the processes of civil society. For this reason, I shall focus on

these works in my discussion of community broadcasting.

Keane's discussion of the role of communication in civil society is framed as

an argument against Nicholas Garnham's theory that a healthy public sphere is

best realised through public service broadcasting. He insists instead on a more

pluralistic account of public life that is inclusive of all media forms, with

multiple public spheres. For Keane, ‘a healthy democratic regime is one in

which various types of public spheres are thriving, with no single one of them

actually enjoying a monopoly in public disputes about the distribution of

power’ (Keane, 1998: 186). Keane's view of the role of the media in civil

society is one where a plurality of groups express their solidarities and

oppositions to each other, rather than seeking out an ideal, uncontaminated

model of communication. He asks in the closing paragraphs of Civil Society

whether ‘the future is likely to see a variety of contradictory trends, including

not only new modes of domination but also unprecedented public battles to

define and to control the spaces in which citizens appear’ (Keane, 1998: 189).

He recognises that in current civil society discussions, questions around the

media and communication, and their role within civil society, are so far only

‘poorly formulated’.

64

This thesis attempts to address such concerns, at least where community-

produced communication is involved. I take as a given Garnham's axiom that

communicative action in some form ‘lies at the heart of both the theory and

the practice of democracy’ (Garnham, 1986: 364). The public sphere, defined

as ‘the social space generated in communicative action’ (Habermas, 1996:

360), is implicit within the notion of civil society, as only an understanding of

communication within public space can link civil society to democratic theory

(Cohen, 1999). It is, therefore, a significant gap that so little work on civil

society takes into account the role of the media, except to see it as a

destructive of face-to-face forums (for instance Putnam, 2000). Community

broadcasting, being a media that is produced by civil society groups, has a

unique relationship to the types of citizen participation that occur through civil

society engagement.

The inclusion of all media within the realm of civil society by Keane (here he

departs from Cohen and Arato) is compatible with his definition of civil

society that includes the market. Keane's basic state – civil society distinction

is justified on the grounds that the separation of civil society from the

economy falsely renders civil society economically passive. Furthermore, he

holds that accounts which see civil society as distinct from the market tend to

depict non-profit alliances as ‘good’ while the market is ‘bad’ – a binary that

is not necessarily a true representation of either. His recognition of the mutual

dependency of civil society and the market is also important: ‘where there are

no markets, civil societies find it impossible to survive. But the converse rule

also applies: where there is no civil society there can be no markets’ (1998:

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19). Keane's observation of the falsity of an economy – civil society divide is

pertinent. The relationship of the two spheres is discussed in this thesis in

terms of the tensions between community media and market participation.

In particular I refer to the anti-commercialism associated with community

media and how this may work to marginalise the sector and reinforce the

interests and power of the commercial sector. However, I do see it as

necessary to conceptually separate the market from civil society. In

contemporary liberal democracies the economy is often seen as the only

alternative to the welfare state. I am interested in a third approach, whereby

the associations formed out of non-profit motives are seen as legitimate

participants in governance. In a structure where the power holders are just as

likely (if not more) to be privately owned economic actors than

bureaucratically organised governments, the non-profit sector should be

recognised as an identifiable alternative model. In the broadcasting realm, the

non-profit construction of community broadcasting is a deliberate measure to

ensure that community interests are not overlooked or overcome as a result of

economic incentives. This does not mean that community broadcasting should

be banned from participating in the economy (which only serves to keep it

impoverished and ineffectual) but that its organisational model should reflect

community aims. At a purely empirical level, broadcasting is an

administratively achieved space of defined interests, in which civil society has

sought representation as something other than public and private media and

this self-definition suffices. I do not dispute the view that all media play a role

in civil society, however, I am concerned with the media that civil society

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chooses to create as something distinct from market and state. My definition

of civil society is, therefore, one that is associational and non-profit, generated

for civil society and by civil society rather than the state or the market.

The concept of civil society and the debates around it is dealt with in this

thesis in a range of contexts. Firstly, it as necessary to recognise that people's

engagement in civil society is the reason why some of us set out to establish

community media in the first place. Community broadcasting is created out of

the belief that civil society requires communication platforms – the two are, in

this respect, mutually dependent. This is seen in the campaigning efforts of

aspiring community broadcasters around the world – the non-commercial

pirates and the test transmissions that have lead to the establishment of

community media. As has been observed in the European context, community

broadcasting, in the majority of cases, was established as a result of continued

pressure from community groups rather than by government-inspired

directives (see Chapter Four). Community broadcasting should therefore be

seen as a means to the maintenance and extension of civil society by civil

society itself.

Secondly, the concept of civil society is useful when discussing community

broadcasting as it avoids making generalisations about the nature of

community media. Much writing on community broadcasting (literature

discussed at greater length below) focuses only on the radically progressive

aspects of programming and the production process. As a result, community

media as a whole has attracted much less attention than has one of its

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components – alternative, or radical, media. Although these studies are

important in that they examine what is unique about community expression,

they do not account for the large amount of community media that is not

radical or social change focused. Using the notion of civil society expands the

field to encompass all community media.

Thirdly, the concept of civil society as a contributor to the field of political

action presents a range of policy options that deserve consideration in the

broadcasting context. For instance, Paul Hirst writes of the failure of left and

right to institute effective social democracy. For Hirst, the politicisation of

property relations and the struggle for exclusive control of the one political

space has resulted in the left-right opposition, both of which ‘strove to make

their control of the state permanent and that policy irreversible’ (Hirst, 1994:

8). Politics now consists also of campaigns of resistance – feminism,

environmentalism, anti-racism – as well cultural groups, pressure groups,

support groups and others. These movements arise from anywhere, often from

intolerable situations, and sometimes from everyday routine. They are not

fixed although they may be organised and long lasting. Hirst concedes that

politics was never entirely dominated by left and right, but maintains that

more and more non-state, regional and supra-national players have the ability

to influence policy. For Hirst, this denotes, or requires, a return to

associationalism – governance of social affairs through civil society and

voluntary organisation. This does not involve the wholesale supplanting of

existing institutions, rather it provides a vital supplement to them that enables

their defects to be meliorated (Hirst, 1994: 12). This rethinking of institutional

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arrangements is one that is supportive of voluntary, non-profit organisations.

Within such a vision, community does not have to be marginal or defined by

opposition, but is capable of offering new avenues for participation that work

with an acceptance of the difference, diversity and power structures of the

contemporary world. Other relatively new political theories and movements

are also contributing to what can only be seen as a revival in the idea of civil

society. Included in this ‘search for new compromises between states and

societies’ in which ‘grand fictions about the primacy of state institutions are

thus laid to rest’ (Keane, 1991: 35) are the Third Way attempts to “connect”

government with community (Giddens, 1994, 2000). I also add “alternative

development” to this group of “new” politics as it aims to construct a post-

scarcity society through community participation (this is discussed in the

media context in Chapter Five).

None of these movements are without their problems – in fact I think their

deployment in the communications field has already proved fraught with

difficulties. The purpose of including them within the context of this thesis is

only to demonstrate how community has been mobilised to achieve certain

ends. In many respects community media is already contributing alternative

models of organisation and information distribution (see Chapter Six) which

have gone largely unrecognised. The question remains how these “natural”

formations may inform new policy possibilities in a rapidly changing

communications arena. The debates currently occurring around civil society in

popular and political theory provide a “way in” to these issues.

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This brings me to my final reason for considering community broadcasting in

the civil society context. Civil society is separate from the state, but in many

respects requires a relationship with the state in order for it to exist. For

community broadcasting, the relationship with the state is made clear by the

legislative frameworks and policy decisions that define how this somewhat

dispersed and varied activity will be implemented. Theories that do not take

into account the dependency of community broadcasting upon state structures

and administrators risk overlooking the positive role that the state can play

towards the development of community media.

The organisations of the third sector provide a means for citizens to learn

responsibility and to collectively influence the workings of the state and the

market through civil society. But, although ideas and issues are shared and

deliberated within civil society, civil society is also partial, inconclusive, and

not easily understood (Walzer, 1989). As a result, theories that uphold the

democratic potential of community are in constant danger of generalisation, of

idealising that which is arbitrary and of proclaiming benefits which cannot be

easily proven (Kymlicka & Norman, 1994: 363). As Walzer writes:

... more like working in an ethnic alliance or a feminist

support group than canvassing in an election, more like

shaping a co-op budget than deciding on national fiscal

policy. But can any of these local and small-scale activities

ever carry with them the honour of citizenship? Sometimes,

certainly, they are narrowly conceived, partial and

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particularistic; they need political correction. The greater

problem, however, is that they seem so ordinary. Living in

civil society, one might think, is like speaking in prose

(Walzer, 1992: 106).

Previous Approaches to Community Broadcasting

The assumptions of marginality that surround community media are only

reinforced by the scant attention that has been devoted to it in the field of

media studies. This deficiency has recently begun to be acknowledged by a

group of media scholars attempting to redress the issue, most notably

Clemencia Rodriguez, Nick Couldry, and Chris Atton. With them, in the

effort to reinvigorate the field of community media studies, are a number of

authors who have been there from the start. My reference to these earlier texts

(and later versions of them) throughout this thesis is testament to their

usefulness. This includes the work of John Downing, Nick Jankowski, Peter

Lewis, Ole Pren and Per Jauert, to name a few8. Academic work on

community media does not always refer to “community media” –

“alternative” media, “radical” media and “citizens' media” are terms/objects

of study more often used (a point I will return to). As it currently stands, there

is no substantial body of work that focuses on the construction of community

media in a policy context, or that attempts to contextualise community media

in terms of the “public philosophies” that it draws on. However, recent

8 Although a substantial body of work originating from South America has been cited within texts that I refer to, lack of translation (confirming

the low status of community media studies) has prevented me from accessing that work. I am grateful for the lucid accounts of this material in

the work of Rodriguez in particular.

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community media studies works do contribute substantially to the project of

discovering community media’s importance. Despite the fact that the

governmental aspects remain largely unexplored, this work can assist in

discovering why community media has made it into policy agendas in a

particular way and why it remains problematic. One of the central tenets of

this thesis is that the rethinking of community media might help overcome

stagnation in the policy context, and the work that is currently being done in

the area is likely to prove valuable towards that end. The revival of

community media studies is still a new project, but one with the promise and

potential to yield new policy directions.

Community media studies emerged out of efforts to “democratise” the media.

In 1976 UNESCO established a commission to examine international

communications problems, in particular the inequality of information flows

between the First and Third World. The resulting MacBride Report

recommended more democratic national policies, the fostering of South-to-

South communication and a code of ethics for the mass media (Rodriguez,

2001). The ultimate purpose was to bring about a New World Information and

Communication Order (NWICO). The failure of NWICO is today generally

acknowledged in that ‘not only do information and communication flows

remain unbalanced, but the mass media are controlled by fewer and fewer

owners’ (Rodriguez, 2001: 7). The failure of NWICO caused communications

scholars to look towards existing grassroots media as a counter-trend with the

potential to overcome the imperialist threat of the mass media. Alternative

media initiatives were said to destabilise the one-to-many communication

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structures of the mass media through their participatory, two-way structure.

The passive audience could be transformed into active producers. Alternative

media, in this way, was positioned in relation to a conception of popular

media as monolithic and singular. Even critics of alternative media began to

apply the same paradigm, asserting that the promise of community media

must be checked by the reality that small-scale media could not, and never

would, compete with the mass media for audiences. For instance, Atton

recounts a study by Comedia in 1984 which argued that the alternative press

will remain marginal as long as it continues to adopt non-hierarchical,

collective structures ‘adopted for political, never for economic ends’ (Atton,

2002: 34). (Atton instead seeks to understand what is offered by alternative

organisational models in their own right.)

Although such intellectual constructions of community media still remain, the

argument is essentially flawed. It might even seem irrelevant for many living

in Western democracies that do not see the popular media as crudely

repressive. How can we argue for the need for “revolutionary” media when

we, as the audience, have the ability to make our own cultural choices and

possess the capacity to take or leave the values, products and cultures

available in the media? As Hartley (1999) has most convincingly argued,

popular television can teach its voluntary, entertainment-seeking audience

about identity and difference, maintaining and advancing citizenship – what

he calls “democratainment”. The shift in media studies towards a conception

of the active audience has put into question the aspects of the NWICO debate

that stirred ideas of an audience being controlled by American content. But

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whilst media theory has moved beyond imperialist notions of domination over

the thoughts and tastes of the audience, the critical left remains ‘firmly

couched within transmission models of communication’ that imposes the

dominant culture upon the receiver (Ang, 1996: 165). This has only served to

leave community media studies out of touch with important developments in

the media studies field that have incorporated more complex ideas of power,

identity and cultural change. That said, community media studies is now

beginning to acknowledge the inadequacies of its own tradition. Chris Atton

points out that the classification of fanzines as “subcultural” runs the risk ‘of

collapsing a range of class positions, social relations, political and cultural

ends, and claims to solidarity and opposition into a social setting that is

essentially structural’ (Atton, 2002). Downing has written that justifications

for alternative media (or “radical media” as he prefers) need to be

disentangled ‘from the often axiomatic assumptions we have about audiences’

(2001: 9). For Downing, alternative media is in fact, ‘the most active form of

the active audience’ ( 3), an interaction with media and culture in general

rather than an argument against the possibilities for media engagement.

Nick Couldry writes that the lack of media studies work concerned with

alternative/community media is only justifiable if it is unconnected with the

wider research agenda. However, ‘if we are concerned with the broader social

process of mediation – characterised by an extremely uneven distribution of

symbolic resources – then ignoring alternative media is not only arbitrary, but

it misses the key point about them: that they are the weapons of the weak

(Couldry, 2002: 27). For Couldry, ignoring community media does not make

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sense when the starting point of media studies is the construction of one's own

reality and others and how that is distributed (symbolic power). The fact is

that people's efforts to put themselves within the media frame may be only a

small contribution to the mediascape compared with the large amount of

material generated from the media industry. However, this alone should not

make it marginal as an object of study. For Couldry, the attempt to alter the

dynamics of symbolic power is intensely interesting precisely because it is

posed as a challenge, a disruption, or (in de Certeau's (1984) terms) as a tactic.

Couldry's assertion of the relevance of alternative media to the media studies

academy recognises the oppositional quality of alternative media without

resorting to a binary position on its role in relation to the mainstream media.

He privileges ‘alternative media practices’ wider concern with the politics of

speech, rather than its positions on formal politics’ in order to open ‘a debate

on the conditions for effective democracy in mediated societies’ (Couldry,

2002: 26). The move to see alternative media within a more complex

understanding of power has been important within the reinvigoration of

community media as an area of study.

Clemencia Rodriguez writes that she was compelled to find ‘a new route to

conceptualising community media’ upon realising that her experiences of

working within groups in Colombia, Texas and Catalonia did not fit easily

within the available theoretical frameworks.

Our theorising uses categories too narrow to encompass the

lived experiences of those involved with alternative media.

Communication academics and media activists began

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looking at alternative media as a hopeful option to

counterbalance the unequal distribution of communication

resources that came with the growth of big media

corporations. This origin has located the debate within rigid

categories of power and binary conceptions of domination

and subordination that elude the fluidity and complexity of

alternative media as a social, political, and cultural

phenomenon (Rodriguez, 2001: 3–4).

By reframing alternative and community-based media as “citizens’ media”,

Rodriguez seeks to move beyond previous academic discourses that position

community media projects as linear and ‘conscious processes towards a

common goal’ (Rodriguez, 2001: 22). The fragmented, messy and often

contradictory existences and ambitions of alternative media are not indications

of its failure but evidence that our previous assumptions about alternative

media have been misplaced. Using Mouffe’s (1992a) radical democracy

theory, Rodriguez seeks to show how the efforts of these groups can be seen

as an articulation of citizenship, when citizenship is seen as the day-to-day

endeavour to renegotiate and construct new levels of democracy and equality.

Central to this conception of alternative media is Mouffe’s demand that

citizenship be thought of through a liberal democratic regime that is inclusive

of pluralism and yet able to account for different subject positions and social

relations. Rather than citizenship being simply the minimum framework of

liberalism or the all-encompassing preoccupation of civic republicanism,

Mouffe sees citizenship as an ‘articulating principle’ that allows for a plurality

of specific allegiances whilst maintaining equality and liberty. Citizenship

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must ‘always be recreated and renegotiated’ within this context (1992b: 14).

Rodriguez' shift to “citizens' media” does not remove the themes that have

always been the focus of alternative media: protest and dissent, collective

organisation and participation, culture and the media, watching and

producing. However, these themes are not strung together in order to produce

a singular project or a cohesive, rational goal for the project of democratic

media, but are instead seen as multiple fronts upon which citizenship is being

constantly negotiated through expressions of identity and cultural strategies.

The possibilities of these new conceptions of citizenship enactment or

expression through community media are important in the context of this

thesis. By opening up new, non-essentialist notions of participation,

community media becomes relevant and empowering. Early understandings of

community media imposed a false (and most likely impossible) ideal –

neglecting the subtleties and complex dynamics of mainstream media uses as

much as those of alternative media itself. This discourse closed off

community media to other uses and led to depictions of its small-scale nature

as an indication of failure, and its ordinariness as its lack of power. Neither

scale nor aesthetics are the central dilemma in Rodriguez's, Couldry's or

Atton's view.

Much of the debate on alternative media is taken up with what alternative

media is. For Atton, production, distribution and organisation define

alternative media as much as content. In this way, he manages to include a

discussion of highly personal/individual zines within an area usually defined

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by group activity. Clemencia Rodriguez has gone to lengths to elaborate on

why some small-scale media can be considered “citizens’ media” –

empowering, progressive and alternative – whereas others cannot (Rodriguez,

2002). Reading a video produced as part of a citizens’ media project by three

young Chicana girls, Rodriguez writes that the video, opens ‘a path toward a

rendition of the barrio grounded in the love of three girls for the place of their

childhood’ (Rodriguez, 2002: 85). The typical renditions of the barrio

characterised by sepia tones and violent scenes are not found in the video Wild

Fields. Instead it conveys inconclusiveness – shown through diffused light –

and flux, which is conveyed by the constantly moving camera. For Rodriguez,

citizens’ media leaves behind ‘all legacies of preexisting codes’, plunging into

‘the in-betweens; before entities were coded as subject or object, dream or

reality; before each were assigned a value, which inevitably confines us all to

a system of exchangeable units’ (Rodriguez, 2002: 85). It is these qualities

that distinguish citizens’ (or alternative) media from the ‘endeavours of

skinheads and white supremacists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-Nazi

groups which intend to tighten still further the order of Being's straightjacket’.

Although I do not dispute the potential to differentiate different types of

community media on aesthetic or ethical grounds, in practice the decision to

accept some types of community media over others is problematic. In Chapter

Two these tensions are discussed in terms of freedom of speech models that

employ first-come-first-served strategies and access regimes that seek to

institute programming in terms of community needs. My concern is not that

some content is more desirable than other content. The issue in the context of

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this thesis is whether or not structures exist that can “steer” community media

in positive directions and whether that is necessary at all.

If there is a gap in the work of alternative media theorists, it is that they

choose to focus only on one aspect of community media activity. My use of

civil society theory is intended to rectify this and to account for the range of

community media content that is found in Australia, if not across the globe.

Uniting the theoretical contribution to the issues and “on-the-ground” reality

of community broadcasting is the intention of the next three chapters. Themes

of access, quality, public interest and civil society advancement have already

been raised. In order to get closer to these issues and to develop an idea of the

international landscape of community broadcasting, these themes will be

mapped across North America, Europe and the Third World.

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Chapter Three: North America

Origins of Public Access in America

In 1968, in the slums of Montreal, a local organisation known as the Saint

Jacques Citizens’ Committee, took to the streets with portable cameras,

interviewing residents and later discussing their footage at public meetings.

The project, organised by Dorothy Todd Hénaut and Bonnie Klein, was part

of Challenge for Change, a National Film Board of Canada initiative designed

to address poverty by provoking social change through the use of film. Hénaut

and Klein in their report on the Montreal project expressed hopes that one day

citizens’ groups would be able to make programs for local television outlets

(Engelman, 1990). In a parallel development in Virginia, USA, the first

community access channel had just begun cablecasting. This chapter begins

with the United States, and the history of access in that country, to more

recent developments in Canada in the final section.

Ralph Engleman’s (Engelman, 1990) history of public access television

details the progression from the Canadian experiments to the establishment of

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public access television as it now exists in the United States. The Challenge

for Change approach was summed up in a report of the time as ‘the concept of

the filmmaker as an organiser, activist, stimulator, catalyst, or whatever he

might choose to call himself, as distinct from his usual role’ (Boyce

Richardson in Engelman, 1990). The idea that the filmmaker could, through

her use of technology, shape social relations in ways different to predominant

mass media formats became the first justification for community broadcasting

and cablecasting. At its heart was the concept of access – access to the means

to produce programs and to distribute them via broadcast or cable technology.

It was this that led a group called Town Talk to establish community access to

cable television at the crucial time of licence renewal in Thunder Bay,

Ontario, in 1970. Challenge for Change provided equipment and training to

Thunder Bay, and programming consisting of locally produced programs, live

studio segments and phone-ins was developed. However, Engleman writes

that despite the substantial following that the programs attracted, the

community television group was not able to withstand its opponents:

Local authorities were opposed to the presence of video

crews at certain meetings. Some government officials in

Ottawa charged that the project was controlled by radicals.

The local cable company, backed by the national association

of the Canadian cable industry, opposed giving up control of

programming and finances to a citizens’ group. The

company asserted greater control by requiring submission of

programs three weeks in advance and an end to phone-ins

(Engelman, 1990: 15).

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Power dynamics such as those described by Engleman – editorial control by

the cable company, as well as government support for industry over the

establishment of a public space – are recurrent themes in the history of

community television and radio. These forces caused the end of the Thunder

Bay experiment before the year was out. However, community broadcasting

did develop in Canada and it is now seen by many as the birthplace of the

community broadcasting movement in the First World.

The Canadian experience provided a fundamental argument for the

establishment of community broadcasting. This chapter looks at that defining

principle known as “access” and the obstacles it has experienced in North

America. In the U.S.A, access television became equated with the nation’s

commitment to free speech – a principle that is confronted every day through

the use of access television by local communities and individuals. Some

authors choose to distinguish between “access” and “community” media with

the latter being locally produced and more coordinated (for instance

Jankowski, 2002). In Australia the two concepts are closely related and it is

the negotiation of access, localism and community building that often defines

a station’s success in terms of its ability to fulfil community needs. North

America’s re-evaluation of access, therefore, provides a useful means of

discussing the dominant values behind both approaches.

Both access and free speech need to be seen within the wider North American

broadcasting context. Thomas Streeter describes this as a system of ‘corporate

liberalism’ – not in a purely theoretical sense, but in terms of the guiding

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belief and vision that informs policy and government decisions. This is a

‘messier, cruder’ form of liberalism than that conceived of by the

Enlightenment thinkers and somewhat paradoxical in its implementation.

Corporate liberalism involves bureaucratic structures (“corporations” as in

agencies and institutions) working to create the market, to make it work, and

is therefore, ‘a dynamic response to complex social contradictions and

conditions, conditions that include various forms of resistance to corporate

control’ (Streeter, 1996: 40). Even seemingly non-market notions such as the

public interest are a means to create harmony between competing forces in

society, resulting in a compromise that ultimately falls in favour of private

interests. Streeter sees access as part of this agenda. Although access policies

and campaigns draw attention to the unequal distribution of power and

resources in broadcasting, they are also a demand for access to a resource that

someone else owns or controls, therefore presupposing the legitimacy of that

ownership. Furthermore, it should be seen as an administratively achieved

means to appease interests with an objective of neutrality. ‘The granting of

access is thus easily interpreted as one of technocratic corporate liberal

adjustments useful for maintaining smooth relations between corporations and

the consuming public’ (Streeter, 1996: 195). Streeter explains that his analysis

is not intended to prove or contest the dominant liberal philosophy but to

uncover the contradictions and tensions within it. My aim is to highlight the

difficulties that this dominant paradigm presents for the development of

community television.

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Streeter’s point that access is a marginal concession within a system that

serves private interests is seen within the administrative and legal treatment of

access television in America (discussed below). However, access television

also deals with social forces that exist outside of the market – with

communities and issues that do not fit easily inside the framework within

which they operate. This chapter looks at these tensions, moving beyond the

claims to access and free speech and towards the attempt to construct civil

society through access television. This involves a change in the notion of

access, based on a more complex idea of empowerment rather than the earlier

(minimalistic) individual rights-based conceptions. In the USA this is being

contested at the station level. In Canada, policy is being created that attempts

to guarantee a model of access closer to the empowerment model. Therefore

both the “on the ground” station management policies and the legal contracts

and licences that permit access are entry points to understanding how civil

society is hindered or helped in its participation in television and radio in

North America.

United States of America

George Stoney, a New York academic, worked as a guest executive producer

for Challenge for Change from 1968 to 1970. Upon his return to the United

States he set up the Alternative Media Centre at New York University with

Canadian documentary producer Red Burns. The centre’s objectives included

media education, the encouragement of communication for diverse groups and

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greater public control of the media. One significant achievement of the

Alternative Media Centre was an intern program, through which groups of

people were trained to work at cable companies around the country. The

interns then went on to establish the first access facilities and channels and

soon became involved in lobbying the FCC for the provision of access

channels. Out of this came the sector’s umbrella membership organisation, the

National Federation of Local Cable Programmers (NFLCP) which has since

been renamed the Alliance for Community Media. In 1970 two cable

franchises were awarded for the city of Manhattan with two public access

channels and two government channels written into the contract at the last

minute. One company provided a studio with a camera, a playback deck and a

director free of charge. The Alternative Media Centre made videos that

documented neighbourhood characters and opinions from their location in

Bleeker Street, Greenwich Village. As so few people had cable television in

the 1970s, the videos were screened in shop-fronts, apartment lobbies and

from the back of Stoney’s station wagon (Linder, 1999). At the same time,

other radical video groups began to appear. In 1971 two Manhattan access

channels were screening five or six hours of content a day.

Community media made its way on to cable television systems beyond

Manhattan through these early efforts. Thousands of local channels are now

devoted to public access (which exists on 16.5% of all cable television

systems), educational access (12.9%) and government access (10.7%) – a triad

known as PEG. Low power television provides some communities with

programming and, since 2000, non-profit and educational institutions can also

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apply for low power radio licences, both of which are discussed below. But

cable access television is the quintessential American platform of community

media. It is a medium that is seen by some as controversial and profane, by

others as ordinary and superfluous, and by the cable companies as an

imposition. Those working in cable access defend it vigorously on the

grounds of pluralist democracy, free expression as well as community and

individual development. It makes for difficult television terrain, and yet is a

uniquely American cultural phenomenon. Although other countries have since

instituted similar models to public access television (Berlin’s Offener Kanal is

strikingly similar to the US access prototype), public access is in many

respects a showcase of a non-profit pluralist domain that is saturated with

American political principles.

To be clear from the start: no one believes that the original ideal of public

access has been fully realised, including its most devoted supporters

(Aufderheide, 2000). The program schedules of public access television are

enough evidence that radical democratic talk is not all that congregates within

the access space. Religious and spiritual groups dominate many channels

(although not all). Tapes are not previewed prior to screening, as this is

considered adverse to the free speech intent, resulting in a hotchpotch of

programs with varying production values. Programs with quirky titles such as

“The Purple Hamster Show” can be seen scheduled alongside “The Jesus

Show” and “Atheist Alliance Presents” on San Francisco’s public access

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channel, CityVisions9. Zane Blaney, the station manager, admits that much of

it is “niche” viewing, but that “hotspots” of television attracting a significant

number of viewers are also to be found. George Stoney recently commented

on the problematic content of access television and called for a

reconsideration of its first come, first served structure:

As early as 1972, when Red Burns and I worked with

Nicholas Johnson, the lone “green” member of the FCC, to

craft the language for the provision of access in cable

franchises, the concept of ‘first come, first served’ was

fundamental to ensuring that all users would be treated

equally… Now, almost three decades later, we have a

wealth of experience to help us reconsider the challenges

and shortcomings in implementing this concept (Stoney,

2001: 29).

Public access television remains fundamentally centred around the idea of

access and it is unlikely to give up its founding philosophy. But the

difficulties that the stations have faced over the years, not least the question of

whether anyone is watching, have caused some of its initial structures to be

questioned as Stoney now believes they must be. Access television is now

rethinking its values and purpose.

The radical beginnings of access television in North America have not

disappeared, however. Paper Tiger, for instance, started with a series on New

9 CityVisions, April 2001 program schedule.

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York’s Manhattan Neighbourhood Network (MNN) in 1981 on which media

theorists and critics (the first being Herb Schiller) discussed excerpts from

media publications. Its programs – many deliberately rough-edged with hand-

drawn graphic cards and visible booms – now number around 400. They

include programs on the anti-globalisation protest movement, the Zapatistas

and union issues, and get distributed from their offices in Soho to the activist

community world-wide through alternative media networks (Halleck, 2001).

The Deep Dish network, conceived by Paper Tiger, collates and distributes

social change television to access stations wishing to screen their series (who

have a satellite dish) throughout the United States. With other cooperatives

and groups such as Free Speech TV, the Committee for Labour Access (CLA)

and Not Channel Zero, and Downtown Community Television, alternative

media is alive and definitely kicking on public access television. Paper Tiger

continues to screen on MNN and even receives grants from the station in

order to continue producing (Tara, 2001). Radical media did not disappear

from public access; it was simply joined by the less radical, the religious, the

local, the extreme right and interested individuals.

The democratic nature of radical media can be studied in its own right

(Chapter Two). That is a different task to understanding the forum of public

access television as a created space, for all its diversity, problems and battles.

As the authors discussed in this chapter point out, access television’s

progressive potential has been marred by a lack of resources, ‘by the bias of

localism and by a lack of ties to larger spheres of discussion and debate’

(Stein, 2001a). Alternative/radical media has since carved out its own identity

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separate from access television and has moved beyond the local to become a

masterful promoter of itself and its global community. All of this activity

largely exists outside of the structure of access that is being considered here,

although the fact of an available distribution platform has been important for

its endurance. However, efforts are growing to improve the image of access

television and to reconstruct it as a site for community building, for the

renewal of civil society. It is these aspects, rather than the claims to radical

democracy, that I am concerned with. In order to get to the heart of these

issues, the policy and legal aspects of access television first need to be

outlined, in particular the institutional dilemmas and their relationship to the

philosophical underpinnings of access.

Cable Franchise Agreements and the Problem of Property

Rights

In terms of policy, the history and current position of community television in

the United States is inextricable from, and subservient to, that of the cable

television industry. It is a contractual relationship that has created significant

tensions, resulting in over three decades of legal sagas. Cable television had a

humble start. It was first used as a subscriber service to relay broadcast signals

into homes with inadequate over-the-air transmission as early as 1948.

Antennas were assembled by local technicians (one in an old bus on a hill) in

order to receive and amplify broadcast signals which were then piped via

cables into homes (Streeter, 1986). As Streeter points out, cable television

emerged not because of a straightforward technical need (radio frequency

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repeaters could have been set-up by networks), but because there was no

economic incentive or obligation for the networks to serve small communities.

These limited remote area systems, originally known in America as

community antenna television (CATV), grew from 70 in number to over 800

in the decade of 1952–1962 (Engelman, 1990). With such expansion, as well

as improvements in cable technology (which gave it the potential for more

channels than free-to-air television), the cable industry began to look towards

providing programming beyond basic retransmission. The National

Association of Broadcasters became concerned that this new technology, with

its local and somewhat hobbyist character, had the capacity to infringe upon

their mass market. They were right to be concerned.

The relationship between community television advocates and the cable

industry was one of cooperation and mutual benefit during the 1960s, when

the cable industry was seeking to gain the favour of the government and

regulator. In 1968 the first US public access channel began operation in Dale

City, Virginia. It was run by the Junior Chamber of Commerce along with a

council of community representatives, cablecasting for two years without

advertising. The FCC saw a public interest attraction in such enterprises and

in 1969 (leading up to the 1972 cable rules) required large cable systems to

originate their own programming and to experiment with community access

(Stein, 2001b). As a result, the cable industry made no attempt to curb the

efforts of the Alternative Media Centre when it was formed in 1971. But the

discourse of localism, as well as technocratic claims that depicted cable

technology as a social cure-all, had set in motion a national cable policy that

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was to ultimately work against both visions. One result was policy that

‘focused a great deal of attention on local broadcast outlets, while

simultaneously blocking consideration of the national character of the

broadcast system’ (Streeter, 1986). The model of cable television that

developed, whereby cable franchises are administered through local

authorities, meant that access television was to develop as a diverse, uneven

and tenuous phenomenon lacking a national policy commitment.

The FCC’s first major intervention into the cable industry came in 1966 when

it banned signal importation into the nation’s 100 largest markets. This freeze,

which favoured the networks, remained until 1972, during which time the

Commission conducted a review of cable television towards the consideration

of its first comprehensive plan for the industry. Over that time policy rhetoric

and lobbying efforts transformed “community access television” into the more

impressive-sounding “cable” technology. This important discursive shift was

pushed by a progressive libertarian agenda from the Rand Corporation, the

American Civil Liberties Union, the electronic industry, city governments and

eventually the FCC itself. For Brenda Maddox, writing in 1974, this faith was

religious: ‘it begins with something that was once despised – a crude

makeshift way of bringing television to remote areas – and sees it transformed

over the opposition of powerful enemies into the cure for the ills of modern

urban American society’ (Maddox in Streeter, 1986: 97). The 1972 FCC cable

Report and Order exposed the Commission’s change of heart towards cable,

allowing and encouraging the industry to expand for the benefit of the public.

One of the consequences of the report, apart from asserting their own capacity

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to regulate the cable industry, was that it gave local governments the ability to

negotiate franchise agreements with the companies. In addition, for the only

time in U.S. history, access television became a federal policy goal, with cable

systems in the top 100 markets required to reserve three separate channels for

public, educational and government (PEG) access. In 1976 this was revised to

services with 3500 subscribers or more, with cable providers being allowed to

combine PEG onto one channel where there was inadequate demand or

channel capacity. But the Supreme Court invalidated the public access

requirement once and for all in 1979 when Midwest Video Corporation

successfully argued that the requirements infringed on their editorial

prerogatives and overstepped the FCC’s authority. The ruling, however, left

the First Amendment issue unresolved and did not prevent congressionally or

municipally mandated access (Stein, 2001b).

In 1977 a federal appeals court ruling permitted Home Box Office (HBO) to

bid for programming (Calabrese & Wasko, 1992). That decision, along with

the possibility of cheap networking via satellite technology, led to the

transformation of cable into the multi-billion dollar industry that it is today.

The supposed public forum of access television continued to be written into

municipal franchise agreements, with the number of stations numbering over

2000 by the 1990s. As cable companies competed for franchises, communities

lobbied their city governments for channel capacity, facilities and, in many

cases, a percentage of the subscriber revenue. In one example of the power of

municipal government control, twenty four access channels were negotiated in

the city of Dallas-Fort Worth (Linder, 1999: 9). Bunnie Riedell of the

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Alliance for Community Media believes that franchise arrangements have

proven to be beneficial for access television as it has produced a diverse

model that cannot be easily eradicated (Riedell, 2001). Riedell’s view reflects

the liberal idea that political interference – the arbitrary whims of politicians –

can be transcended by recourse to the law. The flip side to this arrangement is

that, policy-wise, access television is now less of a defined public forum than

a potential legal battleground.

The FCC’s requirements relating to public access channels and its operating

rules could not be enforced after the Midwest case. However, the rules are

indicative of the model of public access that has been constructed through

local authorities ever since. The operating rules specified that access was to be

first-come, first-served and non-discriminatory; without advertising, lottery

information or indecent matter; and that records must be kept of individuals

and groups who have requested access time (Fuller, 1994: 20). As indicated

by these rules, access television was to be implemented first and foremost on

the basis of speech rights. Linda K. Fuller writes that, ‘philosophically, the

concept of public access has its roots in John Stuart Mill’s social libertarian

theory; politically, in First Amendment guarantees of free speech; legally in

FCC and Supreme Court mandates for localism and viewer rights’ (1994: 4).

The outcomes of free speech rulings are closely followed by the sector as they

define how far “first-come-first-served” policies can be altered. As the

primary justification for access television, it would seem logical that the

liberal rights framework would provide its security, but this has been far from

the case. Laura Stein has detailed in her work on the legal history of public

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access how the relationship of access to First Amendment rights remains

unspecified (2001b). Moreover, public access channels have not been

recognised legally as public forums and remain vulnerable to constitutional

challenges by the cable companies themselves. These challenges to the

legitimacy of public access have themselves relied upon First Amendment

rights, asserting that public access television is an infringement on the cable

companies ability to control its own resource.

In 1984 Congress developed a national policy for cable television, which

codified the ability of the franchising authority to require PEG channels,

facilitates and equipment. The Act forbade cable operators from exercising

editorial control over the channels but stipulated that they could not be found

liable as a result of access content. It also placed limits on the amount of

intervention available to franchise authorities and capped the franchise fee at

5% of subscriber revenue. The Act did not prevent the establishment of

monopolies at the local level, thereby effectively protecting industry despite

being couched in the language of deregulation (Streeter, 1996). Some lower

court decisions upheld the implied (but not explicit) status of PEG channels as

public forums. For instance, a case involving the Ku Klux Klan and Kansas

City found that neither the government nor the cable operator had a right to

censor content. In other cases, however, it was found that the government had

no compelling interest in mandating public access (Stein, 2001b). In 1992 a

new move by Congress undermined the public forum status of public access

channels to an even greater degree. The Cable Television Consumer

Protection Act made cable operators liable for obscene programming on

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access channels, effectively restoring the cable operator’s editorial control –

and hence their property rights – over the channels. The Alliance for

Community Media challenged the indecency rules on the basis that the

channels were public forums in which programmers had First Amendment

rights. They were unsuccessful. The FCC asserted that the cable operators

rights were being restored rather than those of access programmers being

taken away.

That public access violates First Amendment rights of the cable operator

demonstrates how the liberal rights framework has had highly contested,

contradictory outcomes for access television. Calabrese and Wasco have

written that the cable television structure, in which government-sanctioned

cable monopolies have a greater claim to First Amendment rights than other

parties, has dealt ‘an argument for the public protection of private censorship’

(1992: 140). That public power has been used ‘to establish a private

monopoly by way of an exclusive cable franchise’ is an example of why First

Amendment rights can only be understood through property rights – whether a

space can be considered a public forum or private property. As Stein outlines,

there is no consensus amongst judges as to how access challenges should be

dealt with in terms of its claim to public forum status and the competing

property claims of cable companies. Public access has been seen by some as

analogous to the granting of public easements on private property – a bargain

with local government ‘to provide a right of access to the cable system in

exchange for the use of public rights-of-way’ (Stein, 2001b: 20). But for

others, access channels are deemed to be unconstitutional infringements of the

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private property of the cable operator. As Streeter writes, ‘in the popular

imagination free speech still stands for dissent, for alternatives, for debate.

But practically speaking, free speech functions to structure industry relations

and insulate them from political accountability’ (1996: 193).

Stein concludes that only an empowering, rather than a defensive, approach to

speech rights will protect public access television. She bases this within

participatory democratic theory that sees the state as playing a positive role in

providing forums for democratic speech and asserts that there is ample

precedent in both ‘law and policy to support the legitimacy of government

action that safeguards democratic speech’ (Stein, 2001b: 34). However, as

Patricia Aufderheide has argued, without nationally legislated public cable

channel capacity, judicial battles fought at the whim of the cable industry are

likely to persist (2000). As one legal brief recently summarised ‘the good

news is that the First Amendment is alive and well, and the bad news is that it

is usually difficult (or impossible) to predict how the First Amendment will be

applied to specific situations’ (Horwood & Driver, 2002: 4). Expecting courts

to unanimously embrace an empowering speech regime seems a distant hope

under a dominant American public philosophy that equates liberalism

foremost with property rights but disguises the implicit power relations of

property behind a natural rights framework. These issues will be returned to in

Chapter Six, in relation to the communications commons debates. For now, it

is enough to see that access has been an easily undermined phenomenon in the

US and that no universal conception or dedication to access as a public space

exists.

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Access and First Come, First Served: Reassessing Rights

Recently in Davis (a University town in California), a Republican student

group had invited a controversial speaker who ‘promotes the idea that we

don’t need to do any more apologising for what he calls the “damn slave

thing”’ (Peterson, 2001). Black student campaign groups demanded that the

speaker’s advertisement be pulled from the student newspaper, then attended

the event in order to stage a walkout. Later at Davis Community Television,

the Station Manager, Kari Peterson, discussed with the Programming Manager

who within the community would make an appropriate moderator for their

program with the deliberately ambiguous name of Get the Word Out. Davis

Community Television had decided to produce an episode of Get the Word

Out to debate the topic. The station’s dilemma on that day was how to choose

a host for the program without appearing to take sides; but that was only a

particular instance in what Peterson saw as a bigger issue. This seemingly

routine discussion between two staff was recounted to me in order to highlight

the everyday problems that access television stations confront in terms of the

negotiation and management of free speech. That Davis Community

Television had created a program to allow for such discussion was pushing the

boundaries of access in a profound way. It was a deliberate intervention into

the “first come first served” policy of access in that it chose to showcase

certain issues and encourage access by groups who might not otherwise

participate.

Davis Community Television once followed a strict access mandate, seeing

themselves as ‘completely hands-off, that we provided a soap-box and that

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our job was to facilitate others’ use of the equipment and that my job was to

open the door in the morning’ (Peterson, 2001). Peterson explains, however,

that the people who came through that door were mostly people ‘with a lot of

time on their hands, some fringe element, individuals, people for whom video

is a passion’. In order to encourage others within the community to use the

station, Davis Community Television devised a number of generic programs

that would be run by volunteers and interns at the station with supervision and

training conducted by staff. The idea behind the programs was that people

within the community would be able to speak on issues relevant to them or

their organisation without having to go through the long and difficult process

of training, production and post-production. It was a move away from the

producer-driven ethos that has traditionally characterised community

broadcasting. Peterson explains it as ‘making community speech easier’, but

also as the facilitation of dialogue within the community:

Our mission has evolved to become about serving our

community, much more of a community development

mission. It has to do with strengthening the community by

empowering people of diverse viewpoints to speak, but the

other part of the equation is to ensure that people are hearing

what they have to stay.

Access is an avenue through which Americans engage with and contest ideas

of free speech and pluralism. It is not simply a theoretical principle that is

called on to justify requests for electronic public forums, but the questioning,

creation and trial of American political values on a daily basis. Simply

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“opening the door in the morning” reflects a first-come-first served

philosophy, whereby individuals are not discriminated against but granted

equal rights of access. It negates the idea that some groups should be

privileged over others, even if that might balance out the representation of

different groups within that locality. The fervency with which this policy has

been discussed and implemented in the past through public access television

in the United States, and which continues today in many stations,

demonstrates the working, or active, presence of philosophical ideals within

community broadcasting. As Downing writes:

[T]he First Amendment, the right to free public speech, is

not a settled American achievement, nor is it an arid desert

for professional lawyers. It is a contested area, which has

everything to do with our always fragile, threatened rights to

communicate about toxic waste dumps, policy violence,

City Hall corruption, the scandals of our schools, teen

pregnancy and a whole long list besides. If access TV is not

seen as the best guarantor of what our First Amendment

rights are in contested situations in our localities, then its

purpose is cloudy and its future very obscure (Downing,

1991: 8)

The US tradition of public access was built upon a straightforward

interpretation of the First Amendment as its defining principle. If everyone

has an equal right to produce and distribute their viewpoints through public

access, then the resulting marketplace of ideas will enhance America’s

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pluralist democracy. The normative liberal doctrines were embedded within

this model – it provided a framework based upon rights with only minimal

restrictions imposed in the allocation of resources (time-slots, equipment use).

However, observations and accusations that democracy was difficult to find

within the plethora of “vanity video” style programs that were submitted

began to be voiced in the 1980s. Theorists held that behind these calls was a

reassessment of the notion of free speech itself – that more speech did not

necessarily equate with better speech. It was a challenge to the predominant

contemporary liberal doctrine that the mere provision of access rights would

yield a better system for all (Aufderheide, 2000; Downing, 1991; Stein, 1997).

It is pluralist in that personal alliances are considered a matter of individual

choice, and difference is considered a matter of toleration. Public access, in

this way, has been a defined but thinly managed space of individual

expression with community (as in group) media occurring as a derivative

activity, or by-product.

At a day-to-day level, the free speech principle has been important in

overcoming potential conflicts that could arise in the attempt to prioritise

community interests. Interviews conducted by Higgins with volunteer

producers in the mid-1990s led him to the conclusion that the free speech

dogma was a strategy that ‘allowed individual producers to endure ideological

differences that otherwise might be personally intolerable’ (Higgins, 2002:

13). The value of free speech was that it could work as an accepted rule that

everyone had to follow. Toleration was realised not so much through idealistic

notions of constructive dialogue, but through compliance to a legalistic rights

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policy. In one quote from Higgins’s research, a volunteer insists that he will

not work on any program ‘that’s contrary to Christ’, although he admits that

he did help one such producer to get his car started: ‘…his choke broke down

and I helped him with his starter [laughing]. Crawled right up under it and

helped him with it, but I’m not gonna help him with his program’ ( see also

Higgins, 1999; Higgins, 2002: 13). As this short story indicates, cooperation

and toleration have resulted from the pluralist approach even if only to a

limited degree.

The Alliance for Community Media published a special issue of its quarterly

Community Media Review entitled ‘Rethinking Access Philosophy’ in 2002,

in which notions of “first-come-first served”, free speech and the relationship

of theory to practice are confronted by both scholars and practitioners. This

collection is one of the few texts that unites community media theory with the

concerns and observations of practitioners. It demonstrates plainly that

community broadcasting in the United States not only needs to be seen within

the context of American pluralism, but that it is intimately caught up in the

complex project of advancing community concerns within a liberal,

individualist framework. John Higgins writes in his contribution that ‘the

critiques from within public access, developed in a laboratory of daily

practice, represent positive steps to move beyond simple assumptions of

democracy and power, toward a more integrated view of access within a

complex society framework’ (2002: 12). In this way, access television is

attempting to balance liberal principles with non-market life. Measures such

as those taken by Davis Community Television are efforts to bring civil

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society into view, negotiating the needs of groups without abandoning a

commitment to individual freedom.

American community media theorists have discussed this shift in terms of

competing claims over speech rights. They have not departed from the rights

discourse, so much as redefined its boundaries in relation to the access story.

John Higgins (2002) sees it as a move away from current “one-dimensional”

interpretations of free speech that pursue strictly individual and equal rights

regardless of social context. He sees it as a return to early American

interpretations of free speech, where the emphasis was on individual rights as

a means to wider social freedom and benefit for all. It is also as a move

towards more recent critical interpretations of free speech that highlight issues

around ideas of “truth” and power – factors which are purposefully erased in

liberal theories (such as Rawls’s) in order to assume that the best outcome for

all is met. As with the communitarian critique of liberalism, Higgins’s critical

approach holds that the liberal premise is misleading as individuals cannot be

separated from the society and circumstances in which they live. To do so

risks the entrenchment of inequality, as those with less power and resources

are unlikely to compete fairly with those who have more. As Calabrese and

Wasco have written, the premises of freedom of expression in American

liberal theory go beyond the individual’s freedom of expression, suggesting

the ‘need to balance individual freedom against larger social goals such as

rights of access to the media and a right to hear’ (Calabrese & Wasko, 1992).

Laura Stein’s discussion on the legal grounds of public access is similar,

taking participatory democratic theory as a means to understand the full role

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of public access and that ‘speech rights must be interpreted in light of the real

conditions affecting democratic speech’ (Stein, 2001b: 33).

These critiques are not a departure from liberalism, or the access commitment

to speech rights, but more of a departure from a particular market-oriented

individualism that has emerged out of liberalism in recent decades. As other

writers have also asserted, the stylised contrast between liberalism and

communitarianism was less defined in classical liberal theory than it is in the

dominant liberal position of current American politics. Although the

Enlightenment thinkers, in particular John Locke and John Stuart Mill were

captured by ideas of reason and empiricism – a rationalism that was important

in overcoming previously justified hierarchies and oppression – they did not

abandon moral traditionalism. Natural laws were central to their position and

liberal rights were advocated as a means to cultivation of unquestionable

human virtues. Despite their secularism they were not moral relativists and

remained dedicated to ideas of truth (Spragens, 1995). The point is that the

corrective notions of access do not depart from liberal philosophy, but only

dispute the modern-day American manifestation of it. Individual rights remain

central to understanding access television, however, the end result – the

ultimate social goal – requires intervention in terms of channel capacity and

direction in the creation of more watchable channels. ‘Contemporary

liberalism’, writes Spragens, is

…vastly more secular and arguably more materialistic than

earlier liberalism. It is much more agonistic regarding what

constitutes the good life and human virtue. And, to make a

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point which is particularly pertinent to the concerns of

communitarianism, it has transformed and radicalised the

whole conception of political individualism (Spragens,

1995: 43).

For the defenders of access television, it is important to be mindful of the

“good life”. If anything, the problematic aspects of public access television

tell of the fragmentation that results from a “hands off” approach to

community. Where critics of access were sceptical of its relevance to

democratic process, it supporters responded that, yes, ‘civic life is a cultural

process that must be nurtured’ (Aufderheide, 2000). If public access is left to

its own devices – or to the whims of the cable companies – then new thought

needs to be given to American values and public philosophy. And with it new

practices of civil society support and communication. As Walzer has written

on the topic of American pluralism: ‘Most often, when individual men and

women insist on “being themselves”, they are in fact defending a self they

share with others’ (Walzer, 1995b: 146).

Access and the Civil Society Debate

In this way the critique of access policy displays another angle of the liberal-

communitarian divide. At Boston Neighbourhood Network (BNN) the concern

was that community groups, and not just individuals, required assistance to

participate in public access television. With stretched resources many groups

would not be able to find volunteers or staff with the time to learn television

production, to the exclusion of many associations in the community who

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could potentially make use of the resource (interview with Curtis Henderson).

It was a matter of encouraging and facilitating media use by community

groups out of a belief that the work of such groups was vital to the

community. The solution for BNN was a channel called BNNLive, which is

run as an “automatic studio”, requiring only two station volunteers and a fixed

set that could be made available to groups within the community. Panel-style

discussions can be broadcast without the groups needing to produce programs

themselves. The move towards programs such as Get the Word Out and those

on BNNLive suggests that some access stations see themselves as playing a

part in the support and revival of civil society, placing a strong emphasis on

the importance of associations. A look at the program schedule for BNNLive

over a one week period shows programs called the Citywide Parent’s Council,

MA Association of Women Lawyers, The Greek Program, Arthritis Answers,

Small Business Today and a program Lets Talk About It (by Citizens for

Participation in Political Action). The program format may be basic, but it

works for groups needing to get information out to their communities.

Furthermore, the station is aware that with such associations on side, it is

unlikely that the city will renege on BNN in future contracts. And it is not just

Boston that is taking such steps. Manhattan Neighbourhood Network has also

turned one of their channels into what they call a “curated” channel with

programs (not necessarily live) relevant to the Manhattan community.

The encouragement of associations is premised on the idea that speech rights

and what Sandel calls America’s general “public philosophy” is ill equipped

to deal with ‘the erosion of community’ (Sandel, 1996: 3). The idea that ‘if

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the locality is to take access television as a serious matter, as a communication

lifeline, then it cannot be simply left to its groups to find their way to the

door’ (Downing, 1991: 8) is a call for renewed civic engagement. The

restructuring of access to provide for the participation of associations and the

deliberation of community concerns is therefore underpinned by the idea that

civil society can contribute to the good life in a way that will not be realised

through strict adherence to a neutral rights policy. Although the connection is

not made between access television and the civil society debate in the

literature10, the parallel exists. What is the point of considering civil society

arguments in the light of community radio and television? It is certainly the

case that to ignore the role of community media within civil society – its

potential and realised status as a means to information distribution for a

myriad of civil society organisations – is to underestimate its importance (as

argued in Chapter Two). It is also the case that there is a movement within

some access stations to reaffirm its centrality to civil society groups and to

expand these networks. There is, therefore, an undeniably deliberate

engagement with notions of civil society extension and renewal. Seeing access

television only in terms of an uncomplicated, minimalist notion of speech

rights denies this role.

The civil society debate – one of the central themes of this thesis – has had a

particular treatment in America. It has been expressed as an insecurity

towards America’s future – in particular the country’s moral and social

10 I do, however, acknowledge an engaging discussion of the civil society debate with Rob McCausland of BNN in May 2001.

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outlook. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone has come to epitomise this

approach, although Putnam is far from alone in his views. Alan Wolfe

observed that the unprecedented media and popular attention that Putnam’s

work attracted makes it ‘impossible to argue that interest in the idea of civil

society was somehow manufactured or ungenuine. Clearly the idea and the

national mood worked in tandem’ (1998: 18). Putnam’s own account of the

“national mood” is salient:

In 1992 three quarters of the U.S. workforce said that “the

breakdown of community” and “selfishness” were “serious”

or “extremely serious” problems in America. In 1996 only 8

percent of all Americans said that ‘the honesty and integrity

of the average American’ were improving, as compared with

50 percent of us who thought we were becoming less

trustworthy. Those of us who said that people had become

less civil over the preceding ten years outnumbered those

who thought people had become more civil, 80 percent to 12

percent. In several surveys in 1999 two-thirds of Americans

said that America’s civic life had weakened in recent years,

that social and moral values were higher when they were

growing up, and that our society was focused more on the

individual than the community. More than 80 percent said

that there should be more emphasis on community, even if

that put more demands on individuals (Putnam, 2000: 25).

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The methodology behind such figures, as well as Putnam’s broader

observations on the drop in voluntarism and group membership have been

challenged on many counts (See Sullivan, 1999; Galston & Levine, 1998).

But although trust may be difficult to measure, and other forms of civic

engagement may exist that are not identified in Bowling Alone, Putnam does

pick up on a mood worthy of consideration. The civil society debate is centred

around an idea of a perceived decline in moral values to assert that Americans

have been ‘pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the

last third of the century’ (Putnam, 2000). That participation in politics (voter

turnout and party membership), in the institutions of civil society (its

associations and clubs), as well as informal ties (social gatherings such as

picnics and bowling), has sunk is said to have consequences for both

democracy and the general happiness of citizens. Exactly how this conclusion

is reached is difficult to discern in much of the civil society debate, except that

failed social policy is seen to be part of it, with poverty, crime, family

breakdown and drug addiction symptomatic of political and social collapse.

Others assert that voluntary activity is a necessary politicising experience that

raises participation in formal political processes. But it is not simply that

community organisations are viewed as one answer to social policy concerns

(a theme discussed in greater detail in Chapter Five), but that values such as

trust, loyalty and altruism are being threatened.

It is possibly the reluctance within American thought to depart from an

individualist framework that has led to such reliance upon morality as a means

to social advancement. If individual selfishness weakens pluralism to the point

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where people become ‘religious and cultural freeloaders, their lives enhanced

by a community they do not actively support and by an identity they need not

themselves cultivate’ (Walzer, 1995b), then what can be done? European-style

associationalism does not necessarily provide an easy answer, as rights are

subordinated to association membership made compulsory by the state. It is,

therefore, no surprise that much of the civil society debate has become a

lament for the decline in the moral responsibility of individuals. Those that

have sought to answer the problem have looked to the realm of civil society as

a possible means to strengthen social bonds with only minimal state

involvement. Their basis for making this claim is that interaction with others

creates trust and responsibility which will manifest itself in the wider political

community to the benefit of all. The ultimate responsibility for social

improvement is placed on individuals’ personal qualities, with an

acknowledgment that the formation of these values is built through social

relations.

One of the problems with this type of moralism is that it can paint an

unrealistic portrait of what exists in the cultural sphere. Not only is Putnam

suspicious of the media, seeing it as destructive of community (Chapter Two),

but also much of the civil society debate ignores the types of affiliation and

activity that are not “desirable” in the cultural realm of middle-class America.

As access stations demonstrate, so long as the free speech imperative remains,

then the speech that is likely to result is unpredictable. Television channels on

which teenagers freely swear whilst play-acting WWF wrestling can hardly be

said to be promoting middle-class notions of good community. The sector’s

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virulent fight against indecency restrictions has demonstrated that this is not

likely to go away – and nor should it. Access television is in one respect a

rude awakening to the fact that to understand and support civil society

requires looking at the world, good and bad, face on.

Jean L. Cohen’s criticism of Putnam’s work addresses the issue of moralism.

Cohen argues that Putnam’s conception of civil society and the notion of

moral decline ‘undermines democracy instead of making it work, threatens

personal liberty instead of enhancing it, and blocks social justice and

solidarity instead of furthering them’ (1999). The singular focus on voluntary

associations as moral incubators is misguided on two counts: firstly, for

ignoring the importance of political institutions and legal rights guarantees,

and secondly, it overlooks the genesis of ideas and policy that occur through

deliberation in civil society. The first point is important as it highlights the

fact that rights protect and encourage freedom of association, diversity,

expression and so on – an important aspect of pluralism that supports

America’s culture of voluntarism as much as its individualism (this point is

also made by Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). The second point is that

Putnam must rely upon moral notions of trust and reciprocity in lieu of an

adequate conception of deliberation and information exchange in civil society.

Cohen is dissatisfied with the conclusion drawn by Putnam and others that

horizontally structured rather than vertically structured associations create

“good” social capital, thereby increasing political responsibility. She points

out that this method is flawed as ‘we are never really told why only horizontal

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as distinct from vertical associative networks produce social capital’ (1999:

62). Cohen continues:

I suspect that the issue is handled this way because the most

obvious argument cannot be made without considerably

complicating the theoretical framework: namely, that

perhaps what develops interactive abilities and democratic

competence within an association is participation as an equal

in the exchange of opinions and in collective deliberations

over associational affairs – that is, voice in the association's

internal public sphere. Hierarchical, authoritarian

associations such as the Mafia can easily generate skill in

strategic action; the Catholic Church can generate loyalty.

But I suspect that only associations with internal publics

structured by the relevant norms of discourse can develop

the communicative competence and interactive abilities

important to democracy (Cohen, 1999: 63).

So although she does not dispute that civil association can have moral effects

such as the fostering of toleration and trust, she asserts that the focus needs to

be on deliberation and the democratic qualities of groups. For, ‘if all the

myriad associations of civil society were structured like the Mafia, I doubt

that either democratic competence or even liberal tolerance among citizens

would be widespread’ (63). Moreover, she questions the assumption in civil

society discourse that trust between individuals within groups must

necessarily lead to trust in wider society. For instance, there is no reason to

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assume that participation in a choral society will translate into political

engagement or the desire to create a good society. There is nothing to lead us

to the conclusion that intragroup trust will ever be anything other than

particularistic without the influence of other factors. Cohen therefore

maintains that it is what she calls voice rather than values such as loyalty, trust

and virtue that are important in civil society. Such a focus on voice and

deliberation requires an understanding of the public within civil society

discussions. Without this, the civil society debate descends into talk of moral

decline that has little to do with democratisation. Cohen’s argument has much

in common with that of Stein and Higgins in that it is public space for

deliberation that is seen as essential to the vitality and strength of civil society

and thus access television.

Access television is therefore devoted to the sometimes contradictory

principles of individual rights and community building, promoting local

issues, concerns, groups and personalities but refusing to sit in judgement of

what should be considered right and wrong within that pluralist, sometimes

fragmented, realm. When the moral role is necessarily abandoned (but the

community engagement role acknowledged), all that can be said about access

stations is that they are distributors of information and network builders. Their

claim to community building comes not through the promotion of values or

the selection of communities that are deemed “good” for society, but through

their provision of a channel through which communities can potentially reach

out to their members or others beyond their immediate group.

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New Developments: LPFM, LPTV and Digital Broadcasting

Beyond cable television, there have been some interesting developments for

community broadcasting in the United States in recent years. Most significant

has been the emergence of low power radio stations. According to the

Prometheus Radio Project, in the early 1960s thousands of local non-profit

radio stations were broadcasting in the US. Changes to broadcasting policy in

1978, which eliminated 10 watt radio licences and cleared the way for

commercial licences, reversed this situation making community licences

virtually impossible to get. Even the community radio umbrella organisation,

the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) was, until

recently, largely composed of public broadcasting (PBS) radio stations run by

community boards. In many instances these stations have proved vulnerable to

corporate interests at the board level. A more radical community radio

movement surfaced with Free Radio stations – micropower radio stations that

broadcasted without licences who were bound by a strong ethic of media

ownership democratisation.

It was partly the threat posed by the pirate radio broadcasters that caused the

FCC’s Chairman Kennard to begin a rulemaking inquiry into non-profit low

power radio (LPFM) licences in 1998 (although apparently he was also

inspired by Zane Ibrahim of Bush Radio in South Africa during a visit to the

station (Pierson, 2003)). Although the LPFM licence did eventuate, it attracted

substantial resistance from both the commercial and public broadcasters who

claimed that the LPFM signals would interfere with their existing signals ( for

more technical information on interference see Prometheus Radio Project,

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2000a). This resistance was taken to Congress where a Bill was passed that

effectively limited the number and power of LPFM stations, and precluded the

possibility for higher powered transmitters in urban areas. The Radio

Broadcasting Act 2000 prevented former pirate broadcasters from applying

for licences (this was later found to contravene First Amendment rights).

However, the Act did not entirely restrict this new, and encouraging,

community broadcasting development. The current President of the NFCB –

whose membership now also includes LPFM stations – reported at the World

Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC) conference in 2003, that

commercial radio licensees have reached the limits of audience tolerance for

profit-raising strategies such as advertising and play-lists. As a result,

audiences for non-profit stations are on the rise.

Low power television stations (LPTV) were created in 1982 as a means to

enhance diversity and to encourage local programming. These licences were

created with “secondary spectrum priority” to ensure that they would not

interfere with existing or new full-service stations. There are some 2200

licensed LPTV stations in approximately 1000 communities. They are

recognised by the FCC as providing ‘a wide variety of programs to ethnic,

racial and interest communities with the larger area’, as well as local news,

weather and public affairs programming (Federal Communications

Commission, 1999). The stations are not necessarily community stations,

many supplying retransmitted signals from the networks or used within

schools for educational purposes. However, according to the FCC, LPTV

services have significantly increased the diversity of broadcasting ownership.

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They therefore represent access to broadcast spectrum rather than community

broadcasting per se.

As LPTV stations could easily be displaced (due to their secondary status),

their ability to raise necessary capital has always been difficult. Now, with the

introduction of digital television, the prospect of LPTV stations being pushed

out of the picture has become a reality. In order for full-power stations to

complete the transition from analog to digital, the FCC has provided them

with a second channel for the conversion period. In assigning digital

television channels, the FCC maintained the secondary status of LPTV and

were ‘compelled to establish [digital television] allotments that will displace a

number of LPTV stations’. The Community Broadcasters Protection Act

sought to rectify this situation by providing LPTV with Class A, or primary,

status. However, according to the criteria, LPTV stations can’t win Class A

status if their signals overlap with the digital-coverage areas planned by

existing full-power broadcasters. The number of aspiring low power television

licensees far exceeds the number of licences available. In 2000, 1318 full-

power licensees announced that they were planning on transmitting digital

signals to the maximum permitted coverage areas, despite the fact that many

of them were well below the maximum levels in their analog coverage. It is

suggested that ‘by signalling intentions now, the full-power stations hope to

ward off encroachment by LPTV outlets’ (McConnell, Feb 14, 2000).

The ramifications of digital broadcasting in the USA for community

broadcasters parallel the situation in Australia. For radio in the United States,

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digital broadcasting planning blocks new entrants to an even greater degree.

The In-Band-On-Channel (IBOC) plan provides full-power stations with

spectrum around their current channel rather than a new channel allocation for

digital broadcasting. When the simulcast period is over, the stations will be

permitted to occupy the entire bandwidth they have used during the simulcast

period rather than relinquishing their old channel to new broadcasters.

Exposing the real issues behind spectrum planning, Prometheus Radio have

written that this system means that more digital signals will occupy a given

bandwidth (creating more potential for interference) than Kennard’s plans for

LPFM would have. ‘In the digital age, this is akin to elephants blaming mice

for crowding them off the savanna’ (Prometheus Radio Project, 2000b: 2).

Canada

The Canadian experience demonstrates the difficulties that arise when

community broadcasting is not adequately legislated for and the attempt to

rectify lack of policy. Télévision Communautaire des Bois-Francs (TVCBF)

is located in Victoriaville, Quebec. The station began in 1974 as a video

access centre, established independently from the local cable company. Its

board is elected by its membership, which is open to both groups and

individuals within the community. In 1985 the private company Videotron

bought the local cable franchise from the existing operator and contracted

TVCBF to manage all local programming for Victoriaville’s local community

channel. TVCBF now functions as a community access channel, training and

mobilising volunteers and producing local programming. 16,000 people in

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Victoriaville receive television via cable, and ratings have indicated that 20%

of these viewers watch TVCBF on a regular basis, mostly for its local

information programming. The Victoriaville community is committed to the

channel. This has been demonstrated in recent years through the community’s

fight to keep the station community-run.

When I visited in 2001, there was an atmosphere of anxiety at the station.

Prior to 1997, cable companies were required to provide a community channel

and to give 5% of their subscriber revenue to fund community programming.

In 1994 TVCBF discovered that the cable company was not meeting this

obligation. Between 1985 and 1991 Videotron were paying TVCBF $10,000

per annum. In 1991 this figure increased to $15,000, however, it was

discovered that the figure owed should have been closer to $90,000. When

TVCBF took their complaint to the CRTC, Videotron were made to pay the

group not 5% of their revenue, but 9%. As a result, TVCBF’s funding leapt

from $15,000 a year to $150,000 a year between 1992 and 1998. When the

obligation to host community television was removed in 1997, Videotron

decreased their funding of TVCBF to $50,000 ($AUD 64,290) a year, leaving

the group to make up the rest through community fundraising, their Bingo

program (which brings in $30,000 a year) and grants. Videotron’s attempt to

prevent TVCBF from running the channel failed in Victoriaville only due to

community mobilisation and protest. However, Videotron had succeeded in

closing down 10 other community-run channels in the Montreal area,

replacing them with their own content (Voyer, 2001).

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Although cable companies were permitted to discontinue the community

channels, doing so would mean that the companies would have to pay a full

5% of their subscriber revenue to the Canadian production fund. If they

maintained their community channels, then this would be reduced to beween

2% and 3.5%. The community access channels were retained by many as a

result, but became increasingly professionalised and began to disregard the

CRTC’s guidelines. Many reduced, or ceased completely, their access and

training components. A station just outside of Montreal, TVC de

Châteauguay, reported that their access had decreased from 6 hours a day to 3

minutes every 3 weeks. Access consisted only of a segment on a program that

showcases highlights of community programming throughout the region

(Desrochers, 2001). Increased ownership concentration of cable franchises

and cable operators moving towards networked systems and programming is

one possible reason for this, another being the cable companies’ preference for

professional programming.

Canada was considered to be the leader in community television prior to the

1997 changes. Cathy Edwards, documentary maker and former community

television volunteer described it as ‘second to none in the world prior to 1997

in providing a public space on television for individuals and community

groups to express their concerns and to exchange information’ (2001). In

response to the lack of access, a community television advocate, Jan Pachul,

submitted an application for a low power terrestrial television (LPTV) licence

in the area of Toronto. Although LPTV community licences existed at that

time for remote areas of Canada, there was no policy for such licences in

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metropolitan areas. The CRTC rejected the application as it was outside

existing licence conditions. StarRay TV became a pirate television station –

and Jan an embittered adversary of the CRTC (see www.srtv.on.ca). However,

the CRTC did issue a review of community radio and television policy,

encompassing cable television, digital services and low power television and

radio.

The resulting policy, released in October 2002, makes a strong commitment to

both access and localism (CRTC Public Notice 2002-61). Under the new

policy, cable companies still have the ability to run community channels and

receive a reduction in their contributions to the Canadian production fund.

However, they must abide by a number of rules including a minimum of 60%

community programming produced either by the licensee or by members of

the community from the licensed area, which must be given scheduling

priority. Furthermore, the licensees must devote a minimum of 30% of their

programming aired to access programming or 50% where demand exists (free

of charge). Where one or more local non-profit community television

corporations exist in an area – groups such as TVCPF and TVC de

Châteauguay – then 20% of programming aired must be made available for

access programs from such groups. Where there is more than one group then a

minimum of four hours of access must be granted to each group per week.

Consultation with the community via advisory boards and/or feedback from

volunteers is required, and the channels must reflect ‘the mulitcultural and

Aboriginal reality of their communities’. In terms of the financing of the

community channels, cable systems with less than 20,000 subscribers may

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elect to allocate the full 5% of their contribution to the Canadian production

fund to local expression. Only limited sponsorship is permitted, although

advertising is allowed where no other local services (radio or television) exist,

presumably because there is no danger of them infringing on the markets of

existing services. An important addition to the legislation is that where the

cable operator does not provide a community channel, non-profit community

groups may apply for a community programming service licence. This is to be

arranged as a mandatory carriage arrangement where the operator does not

operate a community channel.

In regards to low power television, new rules replace the former remote

licences. Low power television can be established either on a for-profit or

non-profit basis where spectrum exists, but have second class status to full-

power stations, meaning that they can be required to cease operation or

change their assigned channel if they interfere with a regular channel’s signal.

Low power television may broadcast up to 12 minutes of advertising in the

hour, however, it must be local advertising. Low power radio can also be run

on a non-profit or for-profit basis, but the Commission states that ‘the

ownership of multiple low-power radio licences and cross-ownership between

low-power radio and low-power television will generally be discouraged’.

The new policy does take into account the problems experienced by

community television groups in Quebec. Groups around the Montreal area

will be able to resume broadcasting their programs, as will other groups

throughout the country. TVC de Châteauguay will get four hours per week, as

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they will share the access time with other groups in their area (Desrochers,

private correspondence). The legislation still gives priority to the private cable

operator, in that where they chose to run the community channel themselves

they may do so, as long as they provide the access quota and associated

requirements. Only where the cable operator chooses not to run the station can

groups such as TVCBF apply for an independent licence. Some opportunities

exist for sponsorship, and the cable operator is required to spend money

derived from sponsorship on the channel. However, the CRTC, not wishing to

deprive the Canadian production fund of the 5% of cable subscriber revenue

have stipulated that only smaller licensees can elect to put that money towards

the community channel. The independent community groups cannot apply to

the Canadian production fund. Furthermore, there is no requirement that the

cable operator provide a portion of their revenue to the maintenance of these

groups. The financial position of groups therefore remains tenuous. Finally, as

there is no requirement that the community channel be carried on satellite, the

community content is lost to a potentially large audience. In Montreal, the

Videotron technicians have recently been on strike, causing as many as 15%

of their customers to move to satellite (André Desrochers: private

correspondence). Although the Canadian legislation is forward thinking for its

multi-platform approach (cable, digital cable and low power radio and

television), as with most other places, satellite remains the sticking point.

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The Next Step?

The policy history of community media in North America is a more complex

dance than simply “one step forward, two steps back”. The battles for access

have been fought on different fronts without a federally mandated community

broadcasting set-aside. It is not only a history of conflicting political agendas,

but also of the unresolved position of community broadcasting principles

within the wider broadcasting framework. At the time of writing, in the USA

the FCC was undergoing a review of the last remaining ownership rules

designed to limit the size of media corporations’ control of the airwaves. As a

result, access is becoming an increasingly relevant concept. In this chapter it

has been shown how community broadcasting requires a more complex

investigation into access than speech-rights theory provides. Once community

broadcasting’s role within civil society is understood, more productive models

arise. Chapter Six looks at new articulations of access that seek to move

beyond the idea of access to an otherwise controlled space and towards an

“information commons”. The concept of community building, introduced in

this chapter, will be further discussed in Chapter Five. First, however, some

other policy values that have shaped community broadcasting require

attention, namely those of quality and non-commercialism.

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Chapter Four: Europe

Disruptions to the Public Service

The era in which radical and not-so-radical independent

stations [in France] challenged the state’s monopoly on

radio broadcasting ran from March 1977 through summer

1985… An exquisite touch was when one rebel station

(known in the movement as “the pirate’s pirate”), actually

succeeded in broadcasting for 4 months from right inside the

very headquarters where the jamming signals were emitted,

operated by a technician totally disillusioned with his work

as a jammer.

– John Downing

Community television in Europe emerged out of, and in response to, a

broadcasting environment characterised by public service broadcasting

monopolies. Although the policy and institutional structures of individual

nations differed significantly during the monopoly era, broadcasting on the

whole was essentially closed to competition after the initial experiments of the

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1920s. Nations allocated broadcasting spectrum to semi-public institutions,

giving them exclusive permission to broadcast. These broadcasters were not

necessarily single institutions or “national” in their reach: Belgium and

Switzerland both had separate broadcasters for different language groups.

Britain allocated spectrum to commercial consortia in addition to its national

service, whilst the Netherlands licensed broadcasters according to the “pillars”

of ideological associations that structured civil society. German broadcasting

was (and remains) organised at the state, rather than federal, level. Despite

these differences, it is generally the case that as European viewers and

listeners tuned in to a limited number of channels, TV’s mass media found a

mass audience for four decades.

Eli Noam writes that the success of these institutions, with their politically and

culturally influential programming, made the public service broadcasting

structure seem ‘the natural order of things, as if exclusivity over a major form

of information provision in open societies were not highly unusual’ (1991: 4).

When change eventually arrived in the 1970s and 80s, the strength of this

belief surfaced, with defenders of the status quo in government and

intellectual arenas appearing in force. Public service broadcasting was

therefore the measure by which other forms of broadcasting would be

compared. Community broadcasting, as a result of this climate, would be

judged on the basis of quality, under the threat of privatisation. European

community broadcasting therefore needs to be seen within a different context

to community media in North America. Non-commercial television and radio

in countries without a dominating public broadcaster (USA, Canada and, to

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some extent, Australia) have a different set of issues from countries where it

has arisen ‘from criticism of a monopolistic public service system that was

considered out of touch’ (Kleinsteuber & Sonnenberg, 1990: 97).

At the heart of the tensions surrounding the decentralisation of broadcasting

discussed here – piracy, the cable experiments, and the establishment of

community broadcasting – is the ongoing theme of the relationship between

civil society and the state. The complex question of whether community

broadcasters are made stronger through state assistance or best left to their

own devices is the fundamental difference between the European and North

American models. Where the US tradition sees civil society as necessarily

separate from the state, and potentially distorted by state involvement, the

European tradition sees civil society as dependent upon, and made stronger,

through the state’s assistance. In the final section of this chapter, I shall

discuss some of these issues in relation to the changing structures of civil

society in Europe.

Others who have attempted to draw conclusions on the state of European

broadcasting have written of the problem of generalisation. This is certainly

an issue in respect to community broadcasting where vast differences are

found within countries as well as between them. The examples in this chapter

are therefore simply illustrations of themes and are not meant to represent the

continent as a whole. However, international developments since the

emergence of community broadcasting have meant that stations throughout

Europe have faced a common set of issues, even where models have varied

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greatly. The decentralisation of broadcasting in Europe was the result of a

number of concurrent forces of which pressures by citizen groups for

participation was just one ( see Blumler, 1992b; Harrison & Woods, 2001;

Hoffman-Reim, 1992)). The opposition political parties in countries where

state control was most stringent (such as France and Italy) sought

representation in the media. Economic interests advocated decentralisation in

order to enter the broadcast market. Within the public broadcasting

corporations themselves, staff had been seeking greater freedom from

centralised control. And, at the same time, the electronic sector was being

promoted as an area of national economic development in many countries,

leading to high-tech policy and the rollout of cable infrastructure.

Therefore, common issues facing the early community media sector

throughout Europe can be identified. In their introduction to the only

comprehensive volume on European community media, Jankowski, Prehn and

Stappers wrote in 1992:

Many general trends in media developments seem

impervious to national borders: satellite television and the

impact of foreign programming on national and local

culture, commercialisation of radio and television

programming at all levels of the media system, and the

tension between desire for community involvement in

programming and a trend toward more professional

production standards. These and other similarities are

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strikingly evident among local radio and television stations

across Europe (Jankowski, Prehn, & Sappers, 1992: 1).

Beyond changes in media, Europe itself was transforming. New levels of

secularisation, the arrival of new immigrant communities, the formation of the

European Community (formerly the EEC), and an emerging post-communist

era for the East set a dramatic backdrop for the arrival of small-scale media.

The various European models of community broadcasting that emerged have

been surveyed in Jankowski et al (1992) and elsewhere ( for instance

Jankowski, 2002; Kleinsteuber & Sonnenberg, 1990; Vittet-Philippe &

Crookes, 1986). This chapter builds upon this research to consider the broader

tensions that shaped community broadcasting in Europe and to consider the

new force now confronting the sector.

Sailing the Airwaves: Community Broadcasting’s

Pirate Beginnings

The initial disruptions to public broadcasting’s privileged status came from

the sea – signals beamed into countries from unlicensed stations located on

ships off the coast of Scandanavia. In 1958 the first commercially-run “pirate”

radio station, Radio Mercur, transmitted into Switzerland and Denmark,

setting a trend which later spread to the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain

(Noam, 1991). The ship from which Radio Mercur (1958–62) beamed its

signal to the mainland, and that had earned them an alleged turnover of 6

million kroner, was shut down by the authorities only to be sold to a new

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pirate, Radio Syd (1962–6), which broadcast into Sweden. Although

sometimes a lucrative means to a “fast buck”, pirate stations were also leaky

boats for investors. Laws were passed in Sweden, Belgium and Denmark from

1962 onwards to outlaw the stations, some with strict penalties including the

seizure of assets (Eijk, 1992). Although the Netherlands did not create anti-

piracy laws until 1974, the stations were still clandestine enterprises wherever

they existed, defying national borders and operating with ambiguous

ownership structures and an overall disregard for copyright and wavelength

agreements (Chapman, 1992).

The stations gave audiences what was absent from public service broadcasting

at that time, namely, American-style popular entertainment. But the pirates

were seen as a legal problem rather than an indication of audience

dissatisfaction with existing media. Political parties and licensed broadcasters

raised concerns about the potential for the pirates to interfere with emergency

signals. They also warned that the stations were likely to encourage listeners

to get involved in fascism, communism or recreational drug use.

Although the commercial pirates seem far removed from community media,

as Prehn writes, ‘their anti-establishment attitude and programming formats

were, to an extent, a pre-echo of many community stations of the 1970s and

80s’ (Prehn, 1992: 250). Both were a movement “from below”, and a

challenge to the established order. But where the commercial pirates did not

possess the moral legitimacy required to gain legal status, the same could not

be said for the second wave of pirates – this time established out of non-

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commercial motives (Noam, 1991). In Italy, where the monopoly broadcaster

was under tight political control, clandestine left-wing local stations run by

trade unions and social movement groups began to appear, known as “radio

libres”. In the town of Biella near Turin, cable pirate Telle-Biella distributed

programs to 100 subscribers, informing them of alternatives to the political

status quo (Noam, 1991). In France, the French Ecology Party began

broadcasting via radio transmitters, starting a similar wave to that of Italy

(Downing, 2001). In both countries, local stations were recognised by law

within a relatively short period of time (although in Italy commercial interests

quickly overtook many of the community stations due to an absence of

regulatory guidelines). Whether commercial or community, the pirate stations

were a challenge to the control of the airwaves by top-down public

institutions/corporations. Dissatisfaction from the viewing public, the

initiatives of hobbyists and political frustration from under-represented

groups, meant that aspiring broadcasters would go to great lengths to break

into a controlled technical space. That some secured audiences large enough

to attract advertising revenue is an indication of the public’s desire for an

alternative.

This pre-history of European community broadcasting makes an easily

romanticised story – pirate broadcasters sailing – and selling – the airwaves

from the ocean. But piracy is an activity that does not just belong to an

idealised past. Where constraints on broadcasting exist, people will find a

means to transmission. And where piracy is found today, its rivals are no

longer associated exclusively with public broadcasting, but strike also from

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the commercial sector out of a need to protect their markets. Piracy is a tactic

of the weak (Couldry, 2000; de Certeau, 1984), an intervention by those who

seek to find gaps in the strategic spaces of regulated broadcast spectrum. It

exists outside of the defined spaces of community broadcasting, and yet it

often works through the same networks and movements. In some countries,

the pirates made it clear that it was no longer acceptable for arguments of

spectrum scarcity to be maintained – at least where signals did not interfere

with those bands set aside for legal broadcast use (for instance Sweden. See

Hedman, 1992). Community broadcasters continue to use that same tactic but

through more legal routes. In the early 1990s, a community television

campaigner in the UK found a loophole in the UK’s broadcasting legislation

and requested that the regulator find available spectrum for text-based

services, which were available without a licence. In this way, Dave Rushton

discovered how much spectrum, and where, was not in use – information he

used in his campaign for local television (Rushton, 2001). In terms of use of

electronic space, piracy and community broadcasting both work on a similar

principle. Where community broadcasting seeks a delineated commons – a

campsite for anyone to make use of – piracy pitches itself where it can, with

little regard for who controls that space or who happened to be there first.

This history also demonstrates how community and commercial media came

to be “in the same boat”, as it were, during the transitional period of the

1970s. As both were seen as a threat to the status quo, interesting alliances

formed between the two not yet recognised sectors. Coming up against the

powerful public service advocates, this did not always work to the advantage

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of the community sector in terms of the way community broadcasting was

perceived. A look at the initial experiments in community television (which

preceded community radio in most countries) demonstrates the changing

relationship of community broadcasting to both the public and private sector.

A Blurred Vision: The European Community

Television Experiments

The literature on the early community broadcasting trials yields two recurrent

themes: decentralisation, in terms of the breakdown of the monopoly systems,

and amateurism, as a threat to existing standards. Neither of these issues can

be dealt with without reference to the changing position of public service

broadcasting in terms of its assumed “rightful” control of broadcasting and

notions of aesthetic quality. With the European community television trials

taking place within systems which were, at that time, dominated by public

service broadcasting, the predominant values were those which were

perpetuated by the incumbents. When the first European community

broadcasting trials took place in the 1970s, North American cable community

television had already been established. It was looked to as a model but was

recognised as operating in very different circumstances. In 1978 Peter Lewis

warned that it was important to take into account what alternative media ‘was

an alternative to’. Localism was a feature of North American broadcasting and

viewers were ‘accustomed to seeing low-budget local programs’. He further

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pointed out that ‘there is no long tradition, at least in the USA, of public

service programming, or of public service local radio in either country’

(Lewis, 1978: 10). Community broadcasting, from the start, sat uneasily

between the private and public sectors – it was non-commercial but still far

from the established public institution model; it was supported by industry but

only to the extent that it would open the way for mass commercial media.

Furthermore, the community producers were reliant upon the commercial

cable providers in order to fulfil their ideals of participatory media, while the

cable companies saw local television as a means to win government favour.

The community television experiments were described at the time as the

‘alliance of the mercenaries and the missionaries’ (Lewis, 1978: 16).

The first round of non-commercial community television experiments began

in England (1972), followed by the Netherlands (1974), Denmark (1974),

French-speaking Belgium (1976), and Sweden (1979), with Germany (1984)

to follow. The degree of private involvement in the experiments differed

across nations but the tension between community television and the potential

privatisation of broadcasting was common throughout. In the UK, the

privately owned company, Greenwich Cablevision, successfully lobbied the

Minister of Posts and Telecommunications to allow local origination on its

cable system, which until then had been restricted to relaying existing

broadcast services. Along with five other licensees, the experiments were

awarded on the condition that they would exist without public money, that

they would provide local, community-oriented programming and maintain a

high degree of quality. Advertising, sponsorship and the screening of films

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were all prohibited (Lewis, 1978). In the 1970s the cable companies were

expecting the Conservative government to develop legislation that would

permit Pay TV services. Providing community television channels was

described by one Cable Television Association member as a means to ‘set a

precedent – the first time that someone other than the broadcasters was

entrusted with communicating with people in their homes’ (R. M. Denny in

Lewis, 1978: 17). Richard Dunn of the Swindon Viewpoint station also

believed that ‘part of the agenda was pay television, that whilst the

community television experiments were experiments in community television,

perhaps the government might sympathetically look on pay television in the

future if companies like EMI were successful in providing community

television services’ (Richard Dunn interviewed by Tony Dowmunt,

1990/1994).

Another commercial interest was the electronic hardware industry, which was

looking to expand its market by promoting the idea of video production to

ordinary people. The Sony Portapak – a heavy, non-broadcast quality video

camera that was developed out of the US military budget – was put to use in

the cable community television trials (Garnham, 1990/1980). It is now an

infamous relic of those first cable programs, outdone by countless generations

of video cameras. At the time it was an important tool for community

broadcasters, as it was relatively affordable and easy to use. Swindon

Viewpoint saw it as their goal to enable local people ‘to borrow equipment,

light weight port-a-packs (sic), the old Sony port-a-packs, which people could

borrow free to learn how to use television cameras and recording equipment

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to make their own programs, to edit themselves’ (Richard Dunn interviewed

by Tony Dowmunt, 1990/1994).

Such alliances found their harshest critics to be working within media studies.

In particular, the British school of critical cultural studies read community

media with suspicion due to the involvement of private interests. This is an

academic tradition firmly grounded in Marxism but with a concern for culture

as well as economics, in particular the nexus of the two. The legacy of

Marxism within this strand of cultural studies manifested as a concern and

belief in “progressive” tendencies (and their opposite), the primacy of

production over consumption and an emphasis on ownership and control (see

Hartley, 2003; Turner, 1996). Although, on the surface, these features would

seem supportive of the community broadcasting project, commentary

remained strongly divided between the leftist advocates and the leftist critics.

For the latter, community broadcasting was too weak to be revolutionary; it

did not presume the primacy of the state (or public service media) as the

vehicle through which change must occur, and it was opportunistic in its

financial structures.

In his article The Myths of Video, Nicholas Garnham sees the Portapak as

being unsuitable for Europe, which, in his opinion, should be above the US-

style “technical fix” (1990/1980: 64). Garnham criticised the amateurish

quality of community video and video art, seeing film as the superior format

for broadcasting. For him, community participation is a myth that has been

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promoted by industry to sell Portapaks to ‘video freaks’ (68) and to open up

the cable market. He wrote:

The claim for community video still, however, retains a

lingering and dangerous propaganda force in the field of

cable television. The major economic interests behind the

manufacturer of electronic hardware are also involved in a

concerted, long-term push to develop cable as a means of

breaking the public control of broadcasting. The aim is to

gain access to certain specialised and profitable segments of

the audience to the detriment of that European tradition

whereby broadcasting has a duty to serve the whole

community (Garnham, 1990/1980: 68).

Graham Murdock also wrote of the hidden commercial agenda in the

community television experiments:

From the point of view of the companies involved, then, the

present cable experiments fulfil two principal functions.

Firstly, they act as public relations exercises aimed at

establishing the present operators as capable of running a

domestic television station responsibly, and persuading the

government to allow cable to proceed on a commercial

basis. Secondly, they provide convenient opportunities for

electronics manufacturers to develop and test “hardware”

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facilities. They are, in fact, one component in these

companies’ overall “Research and Development” programs

(Murdock in Bibby, Denford, & Cross, 1979).

Elsewhere, the community broadcasting experiments received substantial

government investment but were still viewed as a step towards the entry of

private interests into broadcasting. In Denmark, pressure for community

broadcasting came from citizens’ groups (Petersen, Prehn, & Svendsen, 1992)

with the first local cable television experiments beginning in 1973 with a four-

year duration. In 1981, due to a lack of evidence concerning the first trial, a

new experiment was initiated. Despite the fact that the experiments were

subsidised and advertising was prohibited, a significant amount of money was

invested from the private sector into local television beyond state funding.

Even in Denmark, with its history of state-assisted associationalism, private

interests pursued community broadcasting in anticipation of liberalisation.

Where the government contributed 1.6 million Euros for the duration of the

second-round experiments, it was estimated that a total of 23 million Euros

were spent on local TV in 1985 alone (Jauert & Prehn, 2002). By 1986, 108

radio and 42 television licences had been granted with some local programs

out-rating those of the national broadcaster Danmarks Radio (at the time the

only other broadcaster). Again there were indications that community

broadcasting was not what had been expected. Although it was concluded that

the first round of Danish experiments had not been broad enough for a

decision on local cable broadcasting to be made, the report on the experiments

did find that programming had not met political expectations. The content that

resulted was “soft” rather than focused on local political agendas. From the

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start, ‘the political centre had one idea while the program-producing periphery

predominantly had a different one’ (Jauert & Prehn, 2002: 4).

The sale of portapaks, the rolling out of cable, R&D exercises to test

commercial enterprises, and a means to win favour with government through

community assistance were motives that academic commentators felt a need

to expose. Commercial investment was seen as an underhanded business that

negated any moral grounds that the community stations made claim to. What

is striking about this critique is that an arrangement that allowed for

unprecedented community involvement in broadcasting was seen as outright

privatisation when it could just as easily have been viewed as a

“publicisation” (in Hirst’s term) of private interests.

It is unlikely that these judgements would hold today, where the political

climate favours “partnerships” between business and community (largely in

spite of the persistence of critical Marxism and neo-Marxism within cultural

studies). That commercial interests can help assist community participation

and access to equipment, or that community broadcasting provides R& D for

the commercial sector is no longer seen to be covert and improper. The UK

experiments floundered after 1979 when the returned Labour government

made it clear that Pay TV was not likely to eventuate in the near future. Two

stations survived for a time beyond this date: Swindon Viewpoint, which was

granted money from the lottery fund and Channel 40 in Milton Keynes, which

was funded by the Post Office. These stations eventually closed down and it is

only recently that the UK government have begun developing legislation for

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permanent community broadcasting services (see Chapter 5). This time, local

commercial television has preceded community television, with over 60 local

television licences awarded by 2001 – a definite sign that times have changed.

In the other countries that undertook community television experiments,

permanent frameworks for both television and radio have since been

developed, although not without significant hurdles and delays. Ed Hollander

contends that community broadcasting policy did not result from the

experiments but from continued campaigning by groups after the experimental

period was over (with the exception of Neighbourhood Radio in Sweden). He

writes that the cautiousness of European governments can be attributed to

their ‘concern for possible commercialisation of cable communication

facilities. Allowing use of the cable by any non-public broadcasting

organisation might create a precedent, it was thought, for other, less idealistic

uses of the cable’ (Hollander, 1992: 13). In the follow-up edition to The

People’s Voice (Jankowski et al., 1992), titled Community Media in the

Information Age (Jankowski, 2002), Jankowski is much more optimistic. He

writes that in Western Europe, ‘local and regional stations have achieved

legitimation in national media policies; restrictions on modes of transmission

have been lifted; stable financing has – in a number of select countries – been

attained; training has expanded’ (4). With the threat of decentralisation now a

reality, the caution and fear over the introduction of community media seems

to have finally passed.

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Values

During the community television experiments, Peter Lewis posed a challenge

to the dominant values in European broadcasting. He observed that despite

expectations, a large amount of the community content produced in the UK

was not news or investigatory documentary. However, ‘underlying even the

nostalgia of a local history program, or the angling demonstration or the

coverage of a church fete, is a challenge to the notion of impartiality’.

Community radio and television challenge the dominant value of impartiality

in reporting, a phenomenon ‘with which the professionals in broadcasting will

have to come to terms. It is not that the monasteries of broadcasting face

dissolution; only that the monks within them must realise that people outside

can learn to read and write and that not all manuscripts have to be

illuminated’ (Lewis, 1978: 74).

The value judgements made on the basis of quality that dominated the

literature written for the European community broadcasting experiments have

remained a feature of academic and policy discussions ever since. These have

already been mentioned in relation to Australia in Chapter One. So familiar is

this critique that it is rarely questioned or debated. Participation in

broadcasting by ordinary citizens is equated with amateurism, and amateurism

is treated apprehensively within the broadcasting arena – television in

particular. Community broadcasters and their programs are judged in terms of

transmission quality, journalistic standards, and artistic/technical merit, all of

which have the capacity to impede or enhance the viewing or listening

experience. However, these standards are also related to assumptions and

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expectations about the control of broadcasting, including who will make best

use of the airwaves, aesthetically and morally. In the European context,

quality was the advantage of the public service broadcasters whilst

amateurism and commercialism were in many respects the antithesis of it.

This notion of quality in public service broadcasting has been thoroughly

contested and with it the justifications upon which public service broadcasting

rests ( for instance Hartley, 1999; Hawkins, 1999; Keane, 1991). With the

position of the public broadcasters shifting – their once unquestioned

command of cultural space having now been challenged – the status of

community television in respect to notions of quality also deserves revisiting.

Gay Hawkins writes of the discourse of value that has supported public

service television in the past (‘the institutional and discursive processes that

work to rank, distinguish, and attribute status to certain cultural forms and

practices and the audiences that recognise and enjoy these’ (1999: 176)).

Quality is not deployed in respect to one cultural or taste-group’s

appreciation, but as a totalising value that implies an intrinsic good, or

aesthetic superiority. The public service broadcasters are held to produce the

best television, a value that works to disguise the cultural interests that are in

fact being served. By universalising concepts of what good television is, the

interests that are being met are also universalised. As a result, difference is

excluded. Televisual forms and practices outside of this (community

television for instance) are also seen ‘as fundamentally “other” and inferior’

(178).

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The literature on the European community television experiments centred on

the discussion of whether community-made programs were good enough for

distribution to the general public. In belittling community content, television

production was elevated to a talent beyond the learning ability of most people:

With very few exceptions, the majority of program makers

show very little understanding of the video medium. This

may not seem surprising: after all, most have never used

video equipment before, and have little knowledge of the

standard conventions of television production. But even

those volunteers who continue to make programs are not

encouraged to give much thought to the medium they are

using. Most have the same attitude as the typical home

movie-maker’ (Bibby et al., 1979: 28).

It is fair to say that a lack of production quality will discourage audiences

from viewing. But this was not the case across the continent. For instance, the

stations in Denmark that survived the experimental period displayed a high

level of professionalism and developed a distinct station profile (Petersen et

al., 1992). Since the experimental period, it has been a common issue within

stations to improve the technical standards of programming, although this is

constantly in tension with the principle of access and freedom of expression.

This is the case even in the “purest” of community television stations, Berlin’s

Offener Kanal. The cable television station survives entirely on money

derived from the TV licence fee (1 million Deutschmarks in 2001) and runs

with a strict ethic of access (videos are not previewed prior to broadcast so as

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not to imply judgement of content). However, in recent time, the station has

begun to address its scheduling, sought to upgrade its equipment and revised

its training programs in order to create more “watchable” television (see also

Salto below) (Linke: 2001). But beyond the obvious issues of technical

standards, community broadcasting is recognised as the territory of niche

interests, of localism and amateurism. All of these characteristics sit in stark

contrast to the traditional notion of quality in public service broadcasting and

its unifying notion of the public.

The rethinking of public service broadcasting came through an acceptance of

the popular media as an important site of cultural learning. The cultural

advantage that public service broadcasting maintained for so long had rested

upon their independence from private interests, in that commercial interests

would not be able to jeopardise their ability to convey objectivity and ‘truth’.

Commercial media, despite its ability to attract audiences, was seen as less

suitable, less informative, and to some extent tasteless. The pleasure gained

through viewing commercial media was therefore cast as a lesser value than

the information one gained through watching or listening to the public service

broadcasters. The notion that the ‘sublimation of pleasure’ was necessary in

order to gain moral superiority began to be challenged (Hawkins, 1999: 177).

Public service broadcasting came to be seen as the “disciplining” of the tastes

of the popular class in order to claim a privileged status in the public sphere –

what Hartley has called ‘democracy as defeat’ (Hartley, 1999: 119).

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Apart from the theoretical considerations, Blumler identifies some of the

‘chinks in the armour of public service television’ in terms of its place in

national political orders. The relationships of state–society–citizenry were

changing, including the weakening of allegiances to party politics,

secularisation and/or depillarisation as well as ‘an overall ethos of

consumerist hedonism’ that was suffusing throughout Europe (1992a: 15).

This meant that the services offered began to appear ‘old fashioned and their

traditional clients appear a declining constituency’. Furthermore, the public

service broadcasters met with criticism from those with “alternative” views

about the role of the broadcasters, demanding more public accountability and

diversity and attacking the complicity of the broadcasters with dominant

political forces. As a result, the appeal of the liberal – utopian vision of

infinite communication channels grew.

This did not so much signify the death of the public service broadcasters, so

much as a loss of the principles upon which it once rested. In many respects,

these values precluded the variety of roles that public service broadcasting

performs, including multicultural services (such as Australia’s SBS) and the

nurturing of new talent (Triple J radio). Liz Jacka has written of the need for

public service broadcasting ‘to be looked at each site where it exists and in the

context of the particular media ecology within which it exists. Positions which

give it an automatically privileged position with respect to quality, democracy

and citizenship can no longer be sustained’ (2001: p12).

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The commercial media have their supporters who have justified their status as

rightful occupants of the cultural sphere against the dominant European

values. The concern that community broadcasting paves the way for

commercial interests is no longer plausible due to the now decentralised

European broadcasting environment. Regulatory distinctions have been

developed in many First World countries that distinguish for-profit from non-

profit local media, making the association even less relevant. But where the

value assumptions of both the public and commercial sectors have been

rethought, the position of community broadcasting within this decentralised

broadcasting framework remains unexplored.

Quality and Community Broadcasting

Little work has been done into audience reception of community media, in

terms of how viewers engage with its content. Some textual analysis of

community programming has shown that community content does not

necessarily conform to the formats of more professional programming (in

terms of Indigenous media this was first explored by Michaels, 1986).

Rodriguez’s textual reading of the video Wild Fields is an example of one

author’s response to the pace and imagery of community media (Rodriguez,

2002). Due to this lack of existing research, it is difficult to make qualified

conclusions about alternative values perceived in relation to community

broadcasting. The anthropological methods of evaluation outlined by Peter

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Lewis and developed by Lewis, Tacchi and Slater, provide a valuable starting

point for more research in this area (see Lewis, 2002).

One recent study commissioned by Denmark’s Ministry of Culture, does,

however, provide some valuable insights into notions of quality in community

broadcasting. The study, conducted by Per Jauert and Ole Prehn, focused

upon changes in the funding arrangement for local television in Denmark.

Following the experimental period, local radio and television became a

permanent feature of Danish broadcasting in 1985 and 1987 respectively.

Advertising was permitted by 1988, and a support fund was set up whereby

funds levied off profit-making stations would provide support to local radio

where it was needed. It became apparent that the stations were developing into

for-profit and non-profit sectors, but that ‘legislation was basically organised

according to non-commercial principles’ (Jauert & Prehn, 2002: 6), for

instance a ban on networking and limited transmission areas. In 1994 a

decision was made to create new licence categories, resulting in 82

commercial and 174 non-commercial local radio licensees and 23 commercial

and 30 non-commercial television licensees11. A new system of state subsidy

for the non-commercial stations was developed, in part derived from the

public’s contribution to the TV licence fee (previously reserved for the

national broadcaster Danmarks Radio) and a tax on the now networked

commercial local television stations. The non-profit television sector received

a total of 6.7 million Euros in subsidy in 2001, distributed according to the

11 As licensees share frequencies, this does not represent community channels so much as “program actors” that often share channels with commercial providers (Jauert & Prehn, 2002: 7)

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amount of broadcasting time each station was producing. As ‘quantity became

the chief concern rather than quality’ (6), this system was changed to an

application process based on a merit system for priority programs. In late

2001 the subsidy was reduced to 5.3 million Euros per annum for the 2002–

2006 period (despite a large increase in the number of licensees), partly due to

the tax on the networked local stations being lifted. For Jauert and Prehn the

reduction was a ‘political signal that the non-commercial stations have the

lowest priority in media policy’ (11). With the shift to a “beauty contest”

funding model, one of the main focuses of the study was to assess the quality

of community programs. Recognising the disputed nature of quality in the

broadcasting context, Jauert and Prehn used interview and focus group

research to assess the extent to which quality was considered a dominant

value for both viewers and producers. They found that:

The participants emphasise the nearness and thoroughness

of the broadcasts and in particular the special, lingering

tempo as some of the most prominent qualities of many of

the local broadcasts. The slow tempo also gives people the

opportunity to finish speaking, which for several participants

is almost a relief compared to the fifteen-second democracy

of ‘the big media’ news programs. The ‘amateurish charm’

exists and is appreciated, that is, the broadcasts are not

judged primarily based on their technical or journalistic

correctness, but rather on their ability to evoke or express

participation and nearness (Jauert & Prehn, 2002: 25).

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The focus groups condemned community television programming when it

attempted to imitate a genre that they were ‘unable to fulfil’ (25). Community

television that sought to replicate the content of commercial and public

service broadcasting was simply second-rate rather than an appeal to the

viewer’s own sense of community identification. It was therefore shown that

community television viewers do not tolerate poor quality, or that they should.

Rather, the Denmark study demonstrates how different sets of values are at

work alongside the dominant and assumed values around quality.

What Jauert and Prehn identify as ‘proximity, relevance and a sense of

participation and sincerity’ (2002: 26) that are associated with community

broadcasting are values that have remained secondary compared to the values

of quality that have traditionally defined public service broadcasting.

However, these values are significant as they demonstrate that audiences

engage with community media in a different way to either the commercial or

public service broadcasters. This identification is tied to the viewers’ own

sense of familiarity with their local community or a community of interest as

well as to an awareness of how the material is produced. It is an insight into

someone’s viewpoint, the story of an ordinary participant. In other words, it is

not judged in the same way that qualified and professional renditions would

be, but on its own terms.

One of the consequences of the changing role of public service broadcasting

has been a new conception of the public interest. New values of diversity,

multiple viewpoints and participation through new technologies are being

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coopted into the function of public service broadcasting. For the community

sector, such values have always been present. Steve Buckley, of the

Community Media Association in the UK, has written in response to the

BBC’s new localisation and interactive efforts that, ‘in the fast moving, free-

thinking world of the Internet, community media is an idea coming of age and

the BBC wants to be part of it’ (Buckley, 2000). How the public interest is

managed in the absence of a unified notion of the public is discussed in

Chapter Six. One possible consequence is that new forms of partnership could

be formed between the public and community sectors, beyond the calls

(typical of Europe) for a portion of the TV licence fee where it exists. For

Australia, changing notions of public service broadcasting could yield new

solutions to local media production based on cross sector partnerships – new

links in the areas of training, spectrum sharing or even content provision. The

proposals for a National Indigenous Broadcasting Service (NIBS) are also

interesting in this context. What is at the moment essentially a local and

dispersed production and power base in the Indigenous media sector has the

potential to create an entirely new form of public service broadcasting –

decentralised in its structure, but signifying the Indigenous “nation” within

Australia’s mediascape (see Hartley & McKee, 2000). I will return to the

Australian issues in the concluding chapter. For now it is necessary to look at

the broader issues related to civil society and the state.

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Civil Society

The broadcasting system of the Netherlands has throughout its history had

more involvement by civil society associations than any other. It stands as a

unique example of associationalism in broadcasting, where civil society has

been privileged over market and government agencies in radio and television.

This model was the result of the once “pillarised” society of the Netherlands

and it can only be viewed as having occurred within that history. But despite

the particular social structure from which it arose, broadcasting in the

Netherlands displays problems for associationalism as a guiding institutional

arrangement. This public system, based upon community, ideology and

voluntary association, was ultimately to be challenged in the same way that

other European public broadcasters were in the 1970s. Amsterdam’s cable

community broadcaster, Salto, is the product of public dissatisfaction and

alienation from organised civil society. It therefore demonstrates the

transformation and fragmentation of civil society, and of broadcasting’s

contribution to this shift.

The four “pillars” of Catholicism, Protestantism, socialism and liberalism that

dominated the social landscape in the Netherlands during the Twentieth

Century meant that the country was largely organised through non-profit

associations (or corporations). Each pillar ran its own schools, unions, clubs

and media, producing approximately 15% of Dutch GNP in the 1980s, a

greater output than that of the central and local governments combined

(James, 1982: 34). In 1967, a new Broadcasting Act opened the way for

groups other than the four pillars to broadcast. With sufficient members,

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groups were allocated time-slots based on a sliding scale, so that the larger the

group, the greater the number of hours per week that group would be granted.

Furthermore, groups were required by the Act to prove that they contributed

to the diversity of broadcasting, thereby ensuring that existing broadcasters

were not duplicated, or their interests threatened (Noam, 1991).

McQuail writes about how the model of diversity that was employed in the

Netherlands broadcasting system reflected historical differences based on

religious and political affiliation. It differed from other public broadcasting

systems in that it made no claim to represent a unified national community.

As he writes, ‘the idea does mainly relate to an “external” and exclusive

diversity in which different “voices” and outlooks have their own separate

channels, rather than to the more commonly encountered “internal” diversity,

according to which all tastes are catered for by channels serving large,

heterogenous audiences’ (1992: 101). In this way, broadcasting in the

Netherlands was seen either as exceptionally pluralistic or as enshrined

segregation (Noam, 1991).

However, piracy – both commercial and non-commercial – was an indication

that the broadcasting system based upon the four pillars had begun to lose

relevance. Amsterdam’s community broadcaster, Salto, originated out of

pirate radio and television. When cable television was first introduced to

Amsterdam in 1978, anarchist groups such as the squatter movement began

“hacking” into the cable system and broadcasting their experimental

programming and pornography at night. Despite a broadcasting structure

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designed according to the pillars of civil society and based upon affiliation

and membership, groups such as the squatter movement sought out their own

means to production and representation. When a legal framework was

developed for community broadcasting, Salto was awarded the licence and the

anarchist groups became regular programmers (for instance Staats tv-

Rabotnik). The community broadcasting law in the Netherlands stipulates

only one licence within a designated area, with the licensee able to broadcast

on any platform and across a number of channels (the exact number is

negotiated politically). Beginning with one radio and one television station in

1984, Salto now has three television channels and six radio channels, four of

which have both cable and terrestrial transmission frequencies. One of the

television channels is devoted to AT5, a local news channel originally owned

by a private publisher. When the owner found the station to be unprofitable,

the City bought the channel and “gave” it to Salto, so as ‘not to be seen as

having municipal/state broadcasting’ (van der Shaft, 2001), reflecting the

nation’s long-standing scepticism towards state control.

Within discussions around associative democracy some theoretical

considerations have been raised regarding the European “corporatist” style of

governance. The primary concern is that civil society involvement in the

provision of public services can exclude groups outside of the nominated

associations from any significant participation. The applicability of these

concerns to broadcasting is that it raises the important issue of how organised

forms of civil society should be regulated to participate in the broadcasting

landscape as well as the potential exclusions that result from such forms of

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participation. As Mansbridge points out, how power is distributed within civil

society is a major concern: ‘in today’s polity, the most powerful organised

interests look no more like the textbook’s citizen-initiated concerns than

General Motors looks like a ma and pa store’ (1995: 134). The “ma and pa”

scale civil society groups excluded from corporatist models include the

“weaker” or more transient groups such as single-issue alliances, the networks

of new social movements that defy formal organisation, groups concerned

with local issues, or issues of culture and identity.

Salto itself is now attempting to develop a more open structure, whereby

individuals can broadcast programs and not just legal entities such as

incorporated associations/foundations as was formerly the case. According to

Station Manager Erik van der Schaft, Salto’s original board of 60 people

caused ‘paralysis in terms of governance’, with ‘everybody having their say

about god knows what’. This unworkable model – a mixture of access and

corporatism – has recently been dismantled, with the board now reduced to

less than 15 and policy development delegated to the Station Manager.

Individuals not aligned with an association can now submit programming

proposals, which are only broadcast when they are deemed technically

suitable for broadcast by the station. According to van der Schaft, the changes

have been implemented in order to attract more creative programming:

Before, the truly creative people were scared away by all the

bureaucracy and the ones who were left behind were the

ones who knew their way around our social and welfare

system: people who know how to get subsidies and know

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how to work the system to their advantage. I feel we’ve lost

a lot of talent that way and now we’re trying to bring them

in. Especially younger people – why try to get them to set up

a foundation when they can just make programs? It’s a bit

more difficult for us in terms of trying to get the money they

owe us and what have you, but I feel that is a risk we have to

take (van der Schaft, 2001).

The Salto example indicates the breakdown of the corporatist model,

particularly its relevance for younger people living in Amsterdam. A

community station reliant upon such a structure risks irrelevance for the

proportion of the population who do not wish – or know how – to ‘work the

system to their advantage’, as van der Schaft puts it. Rather than seeing such a

change as the demise of civil society, Salto has sought to adapt to this change

and to find new means to include programmers who exist outside of the

formal group structures. The desire to attract better programming is also a

concern, taking into consideration that in the context of Salto this means

increased innovation and difference rather than high quality. But even behind

this motivation is the sense that, without change, new spaces, ideas and

alliances within civil society will be alienated. Being “community”, for van

der Schaft, does not have to mean being old-fashioned, corporatist or

bureaucratic.

Europe, in this chapter, has been used to signify the changing values that

surround community broadcasting yet which have not been translated,

updated and applied to the workings of community broadcasting. Where

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public service and commercial broadcasting have received such attention, the

valorisation of quality and the pre-eminence of the singular cultural voice

have been called into question. The cultural ladder presented in Chapter One

(cultural policy and PSB on top, community on the bottom and the market

somewhere in between) is being restacked. The final chapters concentrate on

where community is finding itself within the new structure.

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Chapter Five: Third World and Third Way

Rebuilding Community Media

Until recently, the Ballymun Media Centre (County Dublin, Ireland) was

located in a flat on the second floor of a grey tower block practically

indistinguishable from others around it. All had graffitied walls, dark

stairwells and lifts containing the sorts of waste that the word “litter” just

doesn’t describe. Now the community media group is housed within a new

and impressive community building, a curving glass-fronted space containing

offices, sound studios, theatre, dance hall, a dark room and bar.

Looking out across Ballymun, the community centre stands as a new approach

to development, surrounded still by the tower blocks of an older “project”

awaiting demolition.

Many miles away is the city of Bamako in Mali. In 1993 Alfonso Gumucio

Dagron visited Bamako to research a media group funded by Food and

Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the United Nations Development

Program (UNDP). He writes that, ‘In a country often so dry and austere, the

garden in the middle of the CESPA building in Bamako looks like an oasis.

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Somehow it symbolises the very perspective of the project, which aims to

create many oases of participatory communication in the remote, rural

communities of Mali’ (2001: 115).

Ballymun and Bamako are both examples of community media within

programs intended to improve the lives of local residents. These two “oases”

signify the attempt to rebuild and improve localities through community

media. Where Bamako sits within a long and controversial history of

communications development, Ballymun represents a new interest in, or

deployment of, community within local government strategies of

neighbourhood development. However, the Ballymun media centre predates

the City’s current neighbourhood regeneration attempts. This chapter seeks to

understand the use of community media for development purposes, in

particular the assumption that the establishment of community media will lead

to positive social change and how existing community media fits within such

claims. It looks at the promotion of community as a legitimate partner for

government and development agencies, and of media and technology as

empowering tools for localities. These themes have already been touched

upon via Davis Community Television in Chapter Two and the motives

behind Europe’s community television trials. The implications and increasing

relevance of community media for social change now requires a closer look.

This is part of a new approach to development, what Anthony Giddens in

Beyond Left and Right, calls ‘an alternative development’ (1994: 152). A

revision of development, for Giddens, must involve a move beyond welfare

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approaches that act as modernity’s insurance against external risk, to

strategies that see risk and uncertainty as manufactured and that can be

confronted through an organised, yet reflexive, strategy. It is an attempt to

move away from dependency and stagnation, and towards self-development

for the prevention of poverty and social exclusion. In Australia these themes

have been articulated most compellingly in relation to Indigenous issues, in

particular by Noel Pearson who has set out to build reciprocal rather than

dependent relationships for the Cape York community (Pearson, 2000).

Giddens suggests that an alternative development is not simply a transfer of

resources from North to South (convincing rich countries to give to the poor

and then restructuring political systems to align with those of the North). An

alternative development must be ‘a challenge to modernity rather than an

attempt to generalise it successfully everywhere’ (1994: 158). This might

involve, for both the North and the South, attention to the initiatives of most

economically deprived groups: indigenous social movements, or local “self-

help” organisations for example. Development should not be seen as

imposition upon the South, a “solution” imposed from above, but a worldwide

concern:

An alternative development: isn't that just what we see

emerging – or struggling to emerge – within the more

developed societies also? And isn't such an alternative

development at the same time the only way in which it

would be remotely possible for the reconstruction of welfare

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in the North to be compatible with increasing prosperity in

the South? What is at issue here is the coming into being of

a post-scarcity society – a process still perhaps led by those

in the wealthier countries, but worldwide in its implications

(Giddens, 1994: 163).

Giddens sees a correlation between welfare and development within his

rethinking of both. Although the two approaches are applied to vastly

different social situations, the emphasis that Giddens places upon locally led

change means that welfare and development share a common principle. As

policy strategies, these newly conceived programs are both directed at the

alleviation of scarcity through an improvement in the life values of self-

reliance and responsibility.

The communications policies that are designed for social improvement in the

North and the South (or First and Third World as I prefer to call it12) are also

related, although generally not discussed within the same study. Participatory

communication (Third World) projects are generally defined by their high-

level of community involvement and organisation and are considered

successful when they have been “appropriated” by the community (Dagron,

2001). Although the term “participatory communication” refers to a field

wider than community media (health communication, education projects etc),

12 Although the terms First and Third World are problematic (as discussed in this chapter), the use of North and South reinforces geographic notions of exclusion, and seems absurd to an Australian with a reasonable standard of living and freedom. Instead, I prefer to use First and Third World, only to suggest the struggle for empowerment. I further agree with Melkote and Steeves, that ‘a Third World exists within the so-called First World and vice versa’ (Melkote & Steeves, 2001: 28). In fact, this definition supports my attempt to find correlations between both development and neighbourhood development policies.

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there is a body of community media theory that situates itself within this

discipline. The World Association of Community Radio Stations (AMARC)

also deploys participatory development notions within its descriptions of

community broadcasting. Participatory communication projects are often

small-scale, seeing specific bottom-up solutions as being more effective than

general macro policies. Furthermore, they are seen to provide a means for

networking within the community and between communities, rather than

simply from communicator to receiver. Their uniqueness in this respect means

that participatory media projects often rely upon and generate innovative

relationships between the community and relevant NGOs, development

organisations and other institutions. Servaes emphasises a level of

responsiveness within participatory communications:

With this shift in focus, one is no longer attempting to create

a need for the information disseminated, but instead,

information is disseminated from which there is a need.

Experts and development workers respond rather than

dictate, they choose what is relevant to the context in which

they are working. The emphasis is on information exchange

rather than persuasion, as was the case in the diffusion

model (Servaes, 1996: 16).

Spending more time in the field, maintaining continued contact and keeping

promises (Servaes, 1996: 16), are also characteristics of Third Way

neighbourhood development approaches in the UK that seek to “connect”

with communities. Both are examples of interventions by government or other

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institutions to alleviate issues of scarcity and/or social unrest. In a number of

instances neighbourhood development media (Ballymun) and community-

based development media programs in the Third World (Bamako) work to put

into practice the reflexive, or generative, policies that Giddens’ is endorsing.

For community media this shift has proved important. It is not that the

justifications for community media based upon social change are new, but that

a favourable policy climate has emerged through which to implement projects

based upon these principles. This climate has emerged out of efforts to deal

with the disparities produced by the globalisation of capital and the

Information Age. Theoretically, the justifications for community media that

look to postmodernity, networks and new social movements are also closely

associated with this policy shift. Out of it comes a new set of questions for

community media. Firstly, are the approaches and achievements of Third

World participatory communications applicable to industrialised countries?

The rhetoric of both Third World and Third Way promotes “connecting” or

“partnering” with community, raising questions of how the local is implicated

within global agendas. Are such policy approaches constructive for the

communities they claim to reach? Or, on the other hand, do deliberate

attempts to dissociate the local from national and global development agendas

ultimately risk irrelevance? As one of the intentions of this thesis is to locate

community media within intellectual and policy traditions, I will first look at

development issues in general before moving on to their implementation in

respect to community broadcasting.

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Participatory Communications Development in the Third

World

In Making Waves, Alfonso Gumucio Dagron has gathered anecdotal stories

and facts in order to portray some of the contributions that grassroots

participatory communications projects have made. They are therefore

“snapshots” of groups from South America, Asia and Africa, taken at a

specific moment in time but containing brief histories of the project’s rise, and

sometimes their fall. Of Moutse Community Radio Station (MCRS) in South

Africa, he tells of how the station, originally established and run by local

women, became a generalist station, hence losing its original community’s

focus. ‘As with many stations in South Africa, the dynamic hits its lowest ebb

and then rebuilds’, he writes (2001: 252). The impermanency of the projects –

their tendency to be based upon temporal and cultural moments and their

changing motives and outcomes due to financial and organisational

constraints – stand out in the report. Dagron sees the diversity of the

experiences and their flux as part of the nature of participatory media. ‘We are

learning from the virtues and mistakes of these experiences by placing them in

a puzzle’, he writes. ‘Not because at the end of this process there is the

complete model for all circumstances, but because from the multiple

experiences we may draw some pieces for a new puzzle’ (2001: 33, emphasis

in the original).

CESPA in Mali was inspired by similar FAO projects that had been

successfully run in Peru and Mexico. The goal of the CESPA was to train,

mobilise and organise the local population in the use of video in order to

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‘facilitate the development of new techniques for agriculture, and for

improving community management capability and increased participation’

(Dagron, 2001: 116). Eighty percent of Mali’s population live in rural areas,

which extends over the Sahara and the Sahel. The country’s reliance on

seasonal rains, and constant battles with natural disasters, makes it one of the

most difficult places to live. CESPA attempted to alleviate problems of food

production through the creation of “pedagogic packages” that worked with

local knowledge and perception as well as information from specialists to

create videos about agricultural concerns. In its first decade, CESPA had

completed 22 such packages (designed for different ethnic groups within

Mali), as well as 116 motivational videos, 23 cultural programs, 20

institutional videos as well as theatre sketches and “newsmagazines” for

television. In 1993, CESPA became an independent company, generating its

own income. Dagron points out that CESPA has been viewed as the most

successful participatory communication project in West Africa and the

financial independence of the project is generally considered one indication of

its success. However, since this point, the video training aspects of the project

have been removed – the ‘process became less important than the product’

(119). For Dagron, community participation in development communications

projects outweighs economic gain. The measures of success are local,

culturally specific, yet based upon an idea of social change.

These themes run throughout new approaches to participatory communication

in the Third World that seek to break away from top-down governance, once

the model for development. It signifies that development theory is now deep

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in the process of coming to terms with its own past. Having undergone the

scrutiny (the almost therapy-like experience) of the postmodernist gaze it is

now painfully aware of its past failures and influences. Escobar writes of ‘the

inability of development to bring lasting improvement in the social condition

of much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, on the one hand, and on the

other, the epistemological crisis that seems to affect the field’ (2000: 165).

The development project has failed in its objective of overcoming scarcity at

large (generally it has advanced the debt crisis, poverty and ecological

destruction) and lost the intellectual and political arguments it once relied

upon to justify its existence. However, the development industry continues to

operate, and even its harshest critics do not wish to stop the resources that it

manages to lever. Finding new methods and approaches to social change, in

the hope of redirecting resources towards more fruitful projects, has become

the goal of much writing in the field today.

A story by development worker Bella Mody demonstrates the problematic

area of communications development. In the early seventies, Mody worked

for an organisation with the unnerving name of the NASA-India Satellite

Instructional TV Experiment (SITE). Recounting the story of her experience

with SITE’s Kheda Communication Project, Mody tells of how the group

assumed that ‘knowledge served as power under all conditions’ (Mody, 2000:

190), an assumption with devastating consequences. The agency had decided

to confront the legal and human rights violations being committed by

landowners with the complicity of local government. With a considerable tone

of irony, Mody writes, ‘All that was needed to dismantle caste, class and

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gender abuse was the harsh glare of investigative documentaries and drama on

local TV’ (190). The documentary crew first created and broadcast programs

exposing the lack of infrastructure in the area in order to motivate local

government towards greater efficiency. They then moved on to ‘more serious

problems of exploitation, such as family agribusinesses not paying their

labour the legal minimum wage’ (190), incorporating interview material

gathered in local villages.

As the daily coverage continued, daily labourers could not

believe the government agency was standing up for them

against the local economic power structure, but neither

could the economic powers. The federal government

agency, full of physicists, TV producers, social scientists,

was dabbling in rural development (Mody, 2000: 190).

The consequence of this “dabbling” was that huts owned by interviewees were

burnt down by paramilitary gangs commissioned by the farmers. The police,

having also been paid off by the farmers, never arrived. Not only did the

Kheda Communication Project discover that ‘communication through

technology alone was impossible’ (191), but they also learnt the disastrous

implications of ‘context-free research’ and ‘ungrounded theory’ (194).

Since Mody’s personal collision with the failings of communication

development, academics and institutions have begun to look towards

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participation as a means to fulfil a new (agenda-less) development agenda.

The demise and rethinking of communications development is recounted in

detail by writers such as Servaes, Escobar, Melkote, Steeves, White and

Wilkins (including Escobar, 1995; Melkote & Steeves, 2001; Servaes, 1996,

1999; Wilkins, 2000b). I will focus only on the shift to grassroots media

projects as one solution to the development problem. But first it is necessary

to briefly review the tradition out of which participatory communications

development has emerged.

The Epistemological Crisis of Development Communications

Early development communications was founded upon the sender–receiver

communication model that suggested the media could “effect” or guide

people’s thinking directly. In the late 1950s when communications

development began to be practised, this theoretical paradigm was already

being discredited. Research such as that of Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955)

asserted that “intervening variables” (a person’s predisposition for example)

could modify the effectiveness or meaning of a message. Despite this,

research commissioned by agencies such as UNESCO continued to employ

the media effects model, possibly out of a belief that people living within

traditional societies were more easily influenced than those in industrial

societies. David Lerner’s 1958 book famously suggested that the media could

act as a hypodermic needle, injecting sensibilities into traditional peoples that

would encourage modernisation. In later studies (for instance Rogers, 1962)

the effects model was replaced by a more technology-centred model that

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endorsed the setting-up of communications infrastructure in non-industrialised

countries as a means towards the diffusion of innovations.

The notion of modernisation was central to both the effects and innovation

approaches. Modernisation promoted an idea of “progress” that was firmly

grounded in the Enlightenment concepts of science, reason and individualism.

In Harvey’s words, the Enlightenment project ‘took it as axiomatic that there

was only one possible answer to any question’ (1990: 27) – a universalism

that guided the drive towards a particular type of political order. In

development, this manifested in the promotion of technology and

infrastructure as well as political pressure upon Third World governments to

implement macro-policies that would lead them either towards capitalist

economic systems, or, in some instances, the modernism of Soviet-style

statism. Industrialisation and urbanisation were seen as the goals of

development, best implemented through Western methods of production and

labour and centrally controlled by bankers and economists. The so-called

“problems” of the Third World were viewed as internal rather than the

product of international economic arrangements and power (Melkote &

Steeves, 2001).

Escobar (1995) quotes a paragraph from the United Nations Department of

Social Affairs, written in 1951:

There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is

impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient

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philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions

have to disintegrate; bonds of cast, creed and race have to

burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up

with progress have to have their expectations of a

comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are

willing to pay the full price of economic progress (Escobar,

1995: 4).

Discourses such as these became dominant in international institutions but

also within the social imaginary – the daily discourse that continued to

classify and characterise places now named “Third World”. Notions of

poverty, deprivation, illiteracy and helplessness were problematised within

this category, perpetuating the powerlessness of these geographic and cultural

spaces. As a result, subordination was provoked through discourse that

proclaimed to alleviate it. Some scholars, in particular the South American

dependency theorists (or “dependistas”) of the late 1960s and 70s, began to

confront development by pointing out that the problems at stake were in fact

caused by global capital flows and power. Dependency theory addressed the

problematic nature of Western power structures that were being deployed

through development programs. However, in terms of communication, it

reinforced the linear model of communication: ‘source-transmitter-channel-

receiver-destination’ (Servaes, 1999: 46). Although an important shift in

understanding development, dependency theory still, essentially, saw

communications as something that was imposed upon the receiver, framing it

as an issue of imperialism.

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The participatory communication approach arose out the dialogical pedagogy

of Paulo Friere, as well as the UNESCO debates of the 1970s, which

culminated in the McBride report (see Chapter Two). These approaches

supply the principles upon which participation has been implemented. The

more detailed and specific concerns with grass-roots media and local

specificity is mostly discussed in terms of the postmodernist revision of

development, or “postdevelopment” as it has been called (Wilkins, 2000a).

The works of Escobar and Huesca, in particular, look to conceptions of power

and discourse as being the necessary theoretical framework from which new

approaches to development must emerge. Wilkins writes that

‘reconceptualising the field in terms of power demands that we consider

development communication as an intervention created and justified through

institutional discourse operating in a global system’ (2000a: 207). For

Escobar, development is a colonising discourse in the same stroke as Said’s

Orientalism. Drawing also on Foucault, Escobar writes that the

problematisation of poverty ‘brought into existence new discourses and

practises that shaped the reality to which they referred. That the essential trait

of the Third World was its poverty and that the solution was economic growth

and development became self-evident, necessary and universal truths’ (1995:

24). Escobar looks at the deployment of discourse around women, peasants

and the environment in development contexts, arriving at the conclusion that

development as a whole is a highly problematic construct. Intimately tied to

our political structures and idea of the “social”, development has been a

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highly successful apparatus for ‘producing knowledge about, and the exercise

of power over, the Third World’ (Escobar, 1995: 9).

Postdevelopment arises out of this attempt to make visible the colonising

discourses and actions of development. It maintains the idea that intervention

is possible, and that something must be changed. However, it chooses to

replace the concept of development with the less problematic “social change”.

Some discourses of participatory communication maintain that it is the

process rather than the product that is important. However, it is difficult see

any difference between participatory communications development that

establishes community media stations and the broader field of community

media without the idea of some kind of “project”, or social goal, within its

definition. Escobar contends that

We may understand postdevelopment as opening the

possibility of reducing the role of development as a central

organising principle of social life in Asia, Africa, and Latin

America, as a heuristic device for seeing local realities in

Asia, Africa, and Latin America differently, and finally as a

way to strive for other potential principles for thinking about

and reconstituting the world. If we imagine postdevelopment

in these ways, then we have to admit that postdevelopment

already exists in what we have called here (place-based)

practices of difference (Escobar, 2000: 168).

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Perhaps it is the case that the true goal of postdevelopment (media) theory is

community media itself (a “place-based practice of difference”), entirely run

by the community according to their own system and imperatives. Where

participatory communication departs from community media (and perhaps

also from postdevelopment) is when the claim to bringing about social change

is not generated from within the group but by outside planners. I will return to

the implications of “planning” in the second part of this chapter.

Considering participatory media as a means for communities and individuals

to alter power relationships through grassroots activity is one way to deal with

the fact that the project of development is ‘riddled with cultural and historical

biases’ (Melkote, 2000: 39). Relinquishing the idea of “development” (but not

necessarily the resources that development institutions lever) avoids endorsing

imperialistic, paternalistic, modernising projects whilst retaining the idea that

something can be done. By framing it as one of empowerment instead of

development, the emphasis on participation directs the debate towards the “on

the ground” usefulness of community-based media as a means to social

change. It is an approach that focuses upon local specificity and self-

management and, as a result, is less concerned with the broader notion of civil

society or whether it should be constructed in places where it is currently

absent.

The possible contradiction within the postdevelopment approach lies here. A

reading of grass-roots media as the only means to embrace and elevate local

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culture without implicating it within modernist development agendas reaches

a dead-end when it attempts to see such media as drivers of large-scale social

change. David Harvey’s neo-Marxist critique on postmodernity makes the

point that by ‘acknowledging the authenticity of other voices’, postmodernism

ghettoises those voices, seeing them only in terms of their own logic and

specificity. It therefore cannot successfully engage in the realities of the

political economy (Harvey, 1990: 118). Postdevelopment does attempt to

seek social change nonetheless, and in this way it steps back from its own

postmodern stance. At a theoretical level, postdevelopment is confusing due

to its reliance upon local specificity – an apparent resistance to accepting any

kind of macro view – whilst still maintaining an idea of social change. In a

more practical sense, it is questionable whether projects that are so intensely

local and immediate can stimulate social change in terms of global inequality.

This is an issue that confronts community media everywhere and one that I

will return to. But first it is necessary to take the macro view and to look at the

problem of civil society in the Third World.

Civil Society in the Third World

Before examining First World development media, it is worth asking where

the similarities between First and Third World development end. The

community media projects mentioned so far have relied upon development

institutions for their survival. However, postdevelopment communications

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advocates the establishment of community media projects as a means to

lasting change. The question remains as to whether community media could

last in Third World settings without development assistance and frameworks.

If not, will community result in social change, or will it simply mean the

continuation of development assistance? This possibly undermines, even

makes redundant, the effort to achieve social change through community

media. By focusing only on local development, postdevelopment writers risk

ignoring the larger structures that community organisations rely upon for

survival.

If civil society and its associations are not pre-political (in the way that

community is), but rather the product of a particular stage in capitalist

democracy, it follows that a state’s political structure will determine the

presence or absence of civil society. Blaney and Pasha question the notion that

civil society is an appropriate prescription for Third World development.

Their argument is that discussions of civil society and its new-found

popularity suggest a false ‘universality of human experience’ (1993: 3). In

reality it is a structure that is ‘captured in the stabilisation of a system of

rights, constituting human beings as individuals, both as citizens in relation to

the state and as legal persons in the economy and the sphere of free

association’ (4-5). Ignoring this, overlooks the difficulties faced by the Third

World in attempting the long-term stabilisation of civil society.

For community media, this raises two issues. Firstly, whether community

media requires an existing and mature civil society, and secondly, whether the

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prescription of community media as a solution ignores fundamental political

issues. Do the difficulties encountered by community media in the

industrialised world (such as funding and management issues) become

insurmountable in places where there is no support-bed or framework for civil

society? Or is it the case that community media in the Third World can only

be understood outside of theoretical conceptions of civil society and the

liberal democratic state? Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has been

attempting to repair the enormous inequities brought about by the country’s

history of enforced discrimination. Civil society played a crucial role within

that transition, both in popular resistance to apartheid and in the transition to

democracy (Horwitz, 2001; Klug, 1995). Community media has come into

existence as a part of the democratisation process. However, economic and

cultural legacies of the apartheid era remain, displaying the difficulties that

community media projects face in their attempt to expand civil society within

a transitional democracy.

South Africa developed a framework for community radio within its 1993

Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) Act. Under the Act, community

radio stations are required to be non-profit entities, must serve a particular

community, encourage community participation and may be funded by

sponsorship or advertising. It was intended from the start that four-year

licences would be made available to community radio stations. However,

delays caused by problems in the IBA’s own internal structure meant that the

stations had to exist on 12 month interim licences until hearings could be held.

Apart from the predictable problems that licensing delays have caused (time-

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consuming annual renewal processes and an inability to develop long-term

plans (see also Dagron, 2001: 251)), many stations suffer from a serious lack

of resources and volunteers.

Jo Tacchi’s (2002) research into the relatively new community radio sector in

South Africa highlights the social difficulties faced by the stations. Mabalane

Mfundisi of South Africa’s National Community Radio Forum (NCRF) states

that community radio is sometimes seen as ‘exploitation of the poor, by the

poor’(Mfundisi in Tacchi, 2002: 72), highlighting the lack of a voluntarist

culture in communities with high unemployment and a history of political and

economic subjugation. For Pheladi Gwangwa, community apathy towards the

running of the stations has to do with the fact that ‘people still need to be

schooled into the working of democracy’ (Gwangwa in Tacchi, 2002: 72).

Tacchi comments that ‘simply understanding what community radio is and

can be for communities, and how they can be managed transparently, is

recognised as an issue by people on all sides of the community radio debate in

South Africa’ (72). What is apparent in the South African example is that the

absence of a strong civil society complicates the establishment of community

radio. On the one hand the lack of volunteerism – a cultural phenomenon

taken for granted in other countries – inhibits the internal running of the

stations. Furthermore, as the external environment – the local economy and

infrastructure – remain characterised by scarcity, the structures that could

provide ongoing funding and assistance cannot be relied upon.

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Others write of the seemingly insurmountable rift between the need for state-

building in Third World politics and the transition to democracy that requires

a level of individual liberty (see Monshipouri, 1997). State legitimacy is

required to foster stability and manage economic inequalities, ethnicity,

religious conflict and external influences. However, a strong, interventionist

state can run counter to the expansion of civil society and participation. These

factors put into question the ability of community media organisations to

become part of the permanent political setting.

Generalisations such as these can only be taken so far. The Mali CESPA

project demonstrates that significant improvement can be achieved through

development projects and that they are capable of achieving a degree of

economic independence. Stations will still be capable of playing a part in the

empowerment of the individuals and communities involved. In this way, the

citizens’ media approach that emphasises the impact upon people’s lives and

ability to express themselves is still appropriate to these examples. And,

arguably, community media plays a more significant role for viewers in places

where state-controlled media is the only alternative. But the point to be made

is that the claim to stimulating broader social change and overcoming scarcity

through community mobilisation requires complex examination, taking into

account the micro and the macro. Although the development project

ultimately aims to make itself unnecessary, community media as a driver for

social change may not have the ability to foster social change in the absence

of the “project”. Development communications will replace community media

in the absence of broader political change.

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Development in the First World: Ireland and the

United Kingdom

Taking these ideas into the First World highlights some of the difficulties in

neighbourhood development and Third Way programs. Many of the same

themes are present: modernisation is also being revised within the planning

agencies of much of the industrialised world. For instance, the high-rise

council housing of the old Ballymun have become a symbol of a failed top-

down approach to social problems. Although governments constructed the

tower blocks in order to resolve real problems faced by economically

disenfranchised communities (such as sanitation, the provision of hot water

and heating) it is now apparent that these public housing projects created as

many difficulties as they attempted to resolve. They became isolated areas of

poverty, attracting crime and drug use.

In 1987 the residents of Ballymun first campaigned to have their housing

issues addressed. In response, the Dublin Council spent 57 million Irish

pounds in the mid-1990s, refurbishing 150 of the flats. The project did not

address the needs of the 5000 homes situated over Ballymun’s two square

miles, nor did it resolve the structural deterioration of the buildings

themselves (McGlinchey, 2002). The current redevelopment has emerged out

of Dublin City’s Strategic Plan, a 12-year framework for change that targets

Ballymun for development due to its low employment and education rates. In

July 2002, the first of the tower blocks were demolished, and residents began

relocating into the new low-rise dwellings. But this second approach to urban

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renewal is more than simply an ‘ediface complex’ (Shearer cited in Graham,

1999: 17). Ballymun signifies a new approach to urban development, where

social and technological spaces are seen to be as important as the physical

structure in which they stand. The regenerated Ballymun will be an e-town,

with computing and Internet connection available to all residents.

Furthermore, consultation with communities is also said to be vital to the

fulfilment of the Strategic Plan (http://www.dublin.ie/background.asp).

A Community Forum has been established in Dublin in order to discuss

community concerns and filter ideas from civil society through to

government. A subsection of this Forum is the Community Media Forum.

Although the campaign to establish a community television channel in the

Dublin area has worked through this forum, the national campaign for

community television is much older and involved many more individuals and

groups around the country. In March 2001, Ireland established its first

legislative commitment to community television by allowing for community

channels for cable or MMDS distribution. These services are expected to be

self-funded and to represent local interests. Community channels are created

through “community content contracts” awarded by the Irish Radio and

Television Commission (IRTC) (to become the Broadcasting Commission of

Ireland (BCI)). Applicants must be representative of the community and

programs must address the interests of the community. Although there is no

non-profit stipulation, the channel must ensure that no monetary reward

beyond covering costs is involved.

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The country’s community media umbrella organisation, the Community

Media Network (CMN) has expressed dissatisfaction with a number of

aspects of the new legislation (Community Media Network, 2000).

Communities are only defined by geographic localism, excluding

communities of interest. There is no ongoing funding arrangement for these

services. Most crucially, there are no requirements for access or participation,

meaning that the community’s involvement could potentially be restricted to

viewing, depending on the contractor. The Community Media Forum is

attempting to resolve these issues within their own group’s proposal for the

contract. They envisage that neighbourhood media groups such as Ballymun’s

will produce material from their locality and send it to the station for

broadcast. The establishment and survival of a number of community media

facilities and training centres is therefore central to the station’s objectives.

According to the CMN’s manager, Margaret Gillan, the community television

channel has gained momentum in policy circles over recent years as it is seen

to fulfil the Government’s mandate of “partnership”:

Setting up a website can be used as an excuse to avoid real

participation, and the National Development Plan is

supposed to be big on participation. You set up an

“interactive” website but who can access it? The whole

process is an offshoot of partnership and partnership is the

government’s format for progress ever since the 90s (Gillan,

2002).

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This rebirth of community media is not exclusive to Ireland. The United

Kingdom is also in the process of establishing permanent community

broadcasting licences for the first time in its history. The policy rationale

behind the new licence category (known as “access radio” with non-profit

local television still under review) is not unlike Dublin’s. It seems that

participation in the form of community broadcasting is now experiencing a

much more favourable policy climate in the UK and Ireland than ever before.

The neighbourhood development approach to community broadcasting can

also be seen in Huddersfield, a small town in West Yorkshire. Beaumont

Street Studios, established in 1985, was initially a response to social problems

within the local black community. In its early days the centre offered only

sound recording studios and training, but has now diversified into multimedia,

as well as radio and video training and production. Although not a community

broadcaster (the access radio licence was still only a proposal when I visited

the UK in 2001), Beaumont Street Studios has run a number of short-term

radio broadcasts under the Restricted Service Licence (RSL) scheme. The

Studio is also involved in providing the New Deal for Musicians, a New

Labour strategy to bring unemployed people back into the labour market. For

this they provide a training and mentoring program, designed towards

supportive, work-focused learning. In March 2001, the New Deal for

Musicians had been running for only a year but had managed to train numbers

in the hundreds.

A lot of our work at the moment is grant-funded work at an

access level. So it’s working with people who are long term

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unemployed or kids that didn’t go to school. The sort of

projects where people’s basic levels of literacy and

numeracy tend to be very low and their motivation tends to

be very low. And it’s using the media that we have to

interest people in understanding their situation better and

developing self-confidence and developing skills that will

take them forward. So it’s not so much about training people

up for jobs in the industry so much as training people up for

a job (Jeni Vine, 2001).

Beaumont Street Studios have no core funding and their annual income varies

from year to year depending on what funding is available. According to the

groups Training Manager, Jeni Vine, in the year 1999/2000 the annual income

was around half a million pounds. ‘That’s running a whole range of programs,

some of those are commissions, some of them are working on European

funded projects, some of them are training, some of them are commercial’

(Vine, 2001). The commercial operations include sound studio hire and short-

courses for businesses. But the majority of funding comes from grant-based

projects, including the New Deal for Musicians.

Jeni Vine has taken her experience with community media into research. Her

study, which compared three different community media training projects in

England, deliberately implicates itself within current UK policy objectives.

For Vine, community media fits within social policy that looks beyond short-

term solutions to social and economic exclusion. In her opinion ‘that is what

community media has always sought to do and can now find a platform for’

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(Vine, 2001). Vine sees the need for ‘a rationale for community media that

includes not only the potential individual gains for trainees but also the gains

for the local community’ (Vine, 2001: 3). Central to her thesis is the argument

that learning through creative production is a more profound, empowering and

ultimately productive way to learn than experience gained through traditional

education. This point is similar to the UK government’s Creative Industry

Task Force Report:

Engaging learners in doing creative work, such as design, music

and media production, and writing rather than transcribing,

provides not only a more fulfilling, accessible and intuitive

experience of the basic ICT technical skills, it also encourages and

requires the development of creative thinking, one of the most

important drivers of the knowledge-based economy (Department

of Culture, 2000).

The Community Media Association in the UK has also been making the most

of the Blair government’s community rhetoric. The organisation’s General

Manager, Steve Buckley, commented that:

The government has majored on social inclusion, reform of

life-long learning, community access to communication

information technologies, local democracy, e-government

etc. All these things tie in with new agendas within the

community media sector. And we’ve been able to argue

fairly successfully that community media reaches lots of

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themes and topics that the government wants to reach and

that have been reflected in statements of ministerial support

for community media at a high level (Buckley: 2001).

In March 1999 Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer) allocated 252

million pounds to support community-based Learning Centres. This was

matched with 250 million pounds from the New Opportunities Fund (money

levied from lottery profits). Combined, the funds were intended to support the

development of 700 Learning Centres, only some of which would be

Community Media Centres (CMCs) – providing facilities equipped with

radio, television and web content production technology. The CMA, at the

time, described this development as ‘possibly the most important opportunity

ever for getting financial resources into Community Media

development’(Community Media Association, 2000). Steve Buckley

estimates that since then 10-20 million pounds in capital funds has come into

the community media sector as a result of the 40-50 funding proposals which

have been made to the ICT Learning Centre by community media groups. The

CMA has also made two successful bids into the scheme for flagship projects

in Sheffield and East London, totalling 850,000 pounds. The Sheffield project

will consist of a major Community Media Centre located in the National

Centre for Popular Music (NCPM) as part of the NCPM’s redevelopment. It

will have 4 radio studios, 2 training areas, a production suite and a mobile

unit. In London the funds will go towards a new centre in Tower Hamlets as

well as a mobile unit (Steve Buckley, private correspondence, 2002).

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The justifications for community media in the UK, based upon neighbourhood

development and social regeneration, could stem from a history in which

broadcast spectrum for community use has never been granted. Knowledge

and motivation were also identified as key benefits of community

broadcasting in Peter Lewis’s 1978 study of Britain’s early community cable

television experiments. The cable experiment did not succeed, marred by

‘changes of governments and lack of policy’ (Lewis, 1978: 71) leaving

community media groups without a platform for broadcast. As a result, they

have persisted as audio and video training centres with production outcomes

but no ongoing means to distribution (see Chapter Four). Their funding has

been predominantly grant-based, either from government or philanthropic

funds. Reliance upon grant funding places pressure upon community

organisations to justify their projects in terms of measurable social outcomes

and to focus their efforts upon target groups in the majority of cases.

Although community media has always been justified on the grounds of its

ability to provide training, these new discourses display aspirations of

knowledge-economy growth and a concern for globalisation. Whereas

previous approaches to community media focused upon their capacity to

affirm local identity, new approaches seek to build localities, seeing the local

in the context of global flows of capital. This approach accepts the contention

that globalisation has made economic and cultural forces less inhibited by

nation state borders. One ramification of this is that cities and regions become

more significant, as they are capable of attracting industry and tourism

through lifestyle appeal as well as economic incentives. In recognition of this,

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city councils and local and regional governments are increasingly looking to

enhance their sense of place. With a dual agenda of social/neighbourhood

regeneration and competitiveness within the global economy these policy

approaches have a specific focus on local culture rather than the nation as a

whole. The mobilisation and coordination of funding bodies, arts, heritage and

tourism agencies as well as private and third sector groups is central to this

trend. In disenfrachised areas, the goal is to encourage a more ‘active and

reflexive citizenry’ capable of taking advantage of the opportunities of the

new economy (Latham, 2001).

The United Kingdom’s New Labour government, in its attempt at Third Way

politics, sees social capital as a means to prosperity. Communications

technology, with its capacity to extend knowledge economy growth, is also of

central importance and is succinctly summarised by Giddens: ‘In the new

information economy, human (and social) capital becomes central to

economic success. The cultivation of these forms of capital demands

extensive social investment – in education, communications and

infrastructure’ (Giddens, 2000). The inclusion of communications into local

development policies becomes an issue of local agency. Stephen Graham

summarises the three different aims driving the push towards information

technology within local policy:

• The “global positioning” approach, where telematics are

used to attract inward investment into cities

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• The “endogenous” development approach where

telematics are used to try and “reconnect” the economic,

social and cultural fragments that increasingly

characterise contemporary civic cities; and

• The delivery of public services via telematics and the

etablishment of new channels of city–citizen

communication (Graham, 1999: 17).

With its focus upon social capital, as well as content production and training,

community media is a logical fit within the second of these objectives. It ‘may

help underpin the development of a “virtuous circle” where improved social

cohesion is linked with a renaissance of urbanism, local economic

development and civic culture’ (Graham, 1999: 19).

Some correlations between Third World and Third Way can thus be seen. In

both participatory development in the Third World and neighbourhood

development, the assumption is that “connecting” with communities will

bring forth new approaches to improving local conditions. Both see this as

crucial in order to get beyond the failed modernisation solutions of the past.

Globalisation is accepted as a phenomenon that requires correction - it will

lead to greater disempowerment of those outside of the economic networks

unless strategies are put in place to counteract such forces. These strategies

are implemented at a local level – social change is seen as having to come

from within communities rather than from outside. Finally, both rely upon a

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relationship, between an agency and the community and are therefore working

at the intersection of civil society and the state and/or economy.

Implicit within this, is the idea that it is necessary to foster civil society

(although in coordination with the state). John Keane writes that:

The language of civil society can also be used for the

purposes of calculating political strategies of achieving a

predefined or assumed political good. In contrast to

empirical-analytic-interpretive approaches, which are

concerned with such intellectual tasks as naming,

categorising, observing, theorising, comparing and

understanding a complex reality of institutionally structured

action, strategic usages of the distinction between civil

society and the state have an eye for defining what must or

must not be done so as to reach a given political goal. The

term “civil society” is bound up with efforts to calculate the

tactical means of achieving or preserving certain ends

(Keane, 1991: 41).

As has been outlined in this chapter, both neighbourhood development and

Third World development rely upon the idea that civil society is a means to

achieve a positive political end. The final section of this chapter looks at the

difficulties involved in that proposition in relation to community media.

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Localisation

Communications development and neighbourhood development both base

policy within a sense of place. Within these programs the local is valorised as

the site from which legitimate change must occur. In order to separate itself

from the modernist past, these projects maintain that direct connection with

the community concerned is necessary. Power is redistributed to the local

level.

Giddens writes that ‘contrary to what is sometimes assumed, globalisation

creates favourable conditions for the renewal of communities. This is because

globalisation has a “push-down” effect, promoting the local devolution of

power and bottom-up community activism’ (2000: 62). As with the

participatory development approach to community media, neighbourhood

development acknowledges the inequalities that globalisation produces.

However, it seeks relevance within this system rather than recognition of

cultural relevance for its own sake. It seeks inclusion within the knowledge

economy through education and skills transfer. In participatory development,

the emphasis upon local place and culture is intended to avoid generalising

perceived community needs. Programs based upon uniformity, in some

critiques, are seen as imperialising (although this is problematic too as it casts

the local community as powerless against any influence). Blaney and Pasha

even warn that endorsing civil society and proclaiming its significance within

a global system could be another mask for supporting a global culture. In

other treatments uniform approaches ultimately fail due to a kind of self-

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blinkered misdirection (as in Mody’s example). Participatory communications

is wary of globalisation due to the history of development.

Where some criticise Third Way approaches to globalisation as being

economically deterministic and (perhaps contradictorily) supportive of liberal

capitalism (Callinicos, 2001), others turn to community media as a means to

resist the capitalist forces of globalisation. Huesca (2001) and Escobar (2000)

look to new social movement theory as a means to resolve issues of place and

globalisation in development theory. New social movements have arisen out

of the context of globalisation and signify a challenge to the power structures

enforced by the rise of global capital. This “globalisation from below” utilises

technology and networks to coordinate resistance and to stimulate social

change.

New social movements are generally understood to be small,

decentralised, and democratic in their structure; cyclical and

diffuse in their temporal arrangement; and action driven

toward identity construction in their orientation. In the most

general sense, new social movements have been defined as

heterogenous groups forming outside formal institutions and

operating in discontinuous cycles to forge collective

meanings and identities that direct action (Huesca, 2001:

421).

Escobar asks whether it is possible to launch a defence of place as the starting

point for social action within a world increasingly characterised by

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globalisation. The two contradictory phenomena of global communication

networks and the assertion of place within the global context can, combined,

allow the concerns of the powerless to be expressed. By asserting the

importance of place in terms of development – a continuing focus on local

projects – development will work to build coalitions between places through

communities’ use of communications technology. Seeing community media

and development projects in terms of globalisation is important in order to see

beyond the immediate groups and to account for networks and transnational

communities. It takes community media out of its immediate broadcast reach

and, in this way, acknowledges the role it plays in influencing and

maintaining social movements across the globe – elevating ‘local knowledges

into different constellations of knowledge and power through enabling

networks’ (Escobar, 2000: 171).

It is what some have called “grounding” the conflation of unanchored

knowledge and power in globalisation theory (Graham & Marvin, 2001; Slack

& Williams, 2000). Whereas popular conceptions of the ramifications of

information communication technologies emphasise “flows” over “places”

(such as Castells, 1996), they found that only through understanding of the

lived reality of local experience can the nature and potential for participation

in the information economy be seen (see also Coates, 2000).

But to see globalisation as the primary justification for community media or

development media projects risks ignoring the local for its own sake, outside

of the global context. It should be remembered that community media

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predates current concerns of globalisation. Local uses that do not intend to

elevate people into the knowledge economy (as the Third Way rhetoric

suggests) or that do not connect affiliated resistance groups (as

postdevelopment suggests) should not be disregarded. If skills and networks

are the criteria for funding community media projects then other uses –

identity, entertainment – may miss out. Furthermore, if training programs

focused upon specific groups take priority then other financial needs, such as

infrastructure and station management, may not be met.

Beyond Development Communications and Towards

Community Broadcasting

Jan Servaes warns that participation is not appropriate to all situations, nor is

it mapped-out according to a stringent policy design: ‘It is not an innovative

formula that “experts” diffuse to the masses. It is a process that unfolds in

each unique situation. To prescribe how that unfolding should occur is not

only counterproductive, it is often the antithesis of genuine participation’

(Servaes, 1996: 23). Participatory communications has come to terms with the

limitations of community-based change. There are no fast results and no

outcomes that can be predefined. These observations go back to the problem

of attempting to define communities as knowable and measurable entities.

David Harvey writes that concepts such as “community” can

… disguise radical differences in meaning because the

processes of community production themselves diverge

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remarkably according to group capacities and interest. Yet

the treatment of communities as if they are comparable (by,

say, a planning agency) has material implications to which

the social practises of people who live in them have to

respond (Harvey, 1990: 204).

In the policy context, a rhetoric that sees community as a project to be

constructed may work to entrench false notions of community, rather than

support existing civil society. The theoretical progression that participative

development communications has undergone is instructive in this instance.

What is at stake is the way in which communities are packaged and treated

within policy approaches that seek to overcome scarcity.

Margarat Gillan, of the CMN in Ireland expressed dissatisfaction with Dublin

City’s Community Forum. Referring to their website, she pointed out the

claim that without the Forum ‘the community does not have a platform from

which to air their views’:

‘There are lots of platforms! …The community workers co-

op is one of them, for example. People created platforms but

little notice is taken of them, that is the problem. This is the

one the Government likes, and this is the one they’ve

decided we’re going to have’ (Gillan, 2002).

The Community Forum, for Gillan, is fraught with problems, mostly to do

with the way the Forum has been structured by the City. By comparison, the

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Community Media Forum, whilst a member body of the City Community

Forum, has an independent existence. Since it is driven by the groups

involved, it can continue separately if so needed. Gillan sees its achievements,

particularly its part in the campaign for community television, as being

indicative of this. Where government strategies seek to shape civil society, or

require them through “partnerships” to comply with government settings, they

risk ostracising the community. In a true partnership, Gillan points out, one

partner does not have the upper hand. Furthermore, she sees the campaign for

community television as a complex struggle, involving many groups over a

long period of time – a history which is easily overlooked when the City’s

efforts are seen as the only interface.

Apart from the danger of missing actual community needs as a result of

bureaucratic organisation or preconceived objectives, the danger of relying

upon community or civil society for legitimacy in policy making is that it can

lead to a kind of “moralism”. Alex Callinicos (2001) in his bluntly titled book

Against the Third Way, points out that the Blair government’s reliance on the

notion of community has often manifested as a conservative championing of

family values. The ‘internally complex character’ (55) of community is

overlooked in practice, replaced by a ‘moral authoritarianism’. The zero

tolerance policing of the Blair government is given as an example. By

defending tough policing in order to protect communities, Callinicos points

out that the liberal conception of individual rights and liberty is betrayed for a

‘sum of all liberties’. It is a strange critique coming from a Marxist, but

Callinicos has a point. Community, or group rights, can be dangerous when

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coupled with a sense of moralism and righteousness. In terms of civil society,

there is the real danger that only the parts of civil society that comply with the

views of government will find assistance or validation. Although this has

always been the case, where the rhetoric does not match the reality then the

more radical and reactionary groups become entrenched outsiders. Once again

referring to participatory communications, Servaes writes that it cannot be ‘a

strategy to make target audiences “feel” more involved and, therefore, more

acquiescent to manipulative agendas. It is not a means to an end but legitimate

in its own right’ (1996: 23). This insight applies to all practices that seek to

create social change through the mobilisation of community. However,

despite the fact that the complexity of civil society groups problematises

attempts at “partnership”, this is often what civil society groups seek and

desire. Civil society relies upon both government and other agencies and

networks for its survival and it is only in relation to such structures that it

finds its role. Therefore, there are no answers to be found by abandoning

attempts to connect groups and institutions.

The South Down Under

How does this relate to Australia’s community broadcasting sector? That is a

question that has been asked but not fully answered. With organisations such

as AMARC relying upon development justifications and funding – neither of

which are directly accessible for Australia – there is some reason for Australia

to feel left out of the global community broadcasting movement. This chapter

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has attempted to move beyond that stale-mate by exploring the neighbourhood

development approaches that are occurring in community media but also by

highlighting the problems of development more generally. When seen in this

light, it becomes apparent that:

• community media as it exists in Australia avoids many of the

difficulties inherent in development programs. When the problematic

and imperialising aspects of development thinking are removed, local

media initiatives remain a key opportunity for change. I have argued

that the distinction between this goal and the “postdevelopment”

approach are in fact closely related.

• the Australian community broadcasting sector is implicated within the

“social change” mission to some extent – even where that is simply the

existing and continuing effort to strengthen civil society and

communications opportunities at the grassroots level.

In other words, community broadcasting in Australia needs to be seen not so

much as a response to globalisation (on the whole it is not), but as one

existing infrastructure that offers some solutions to policy dilemmas, some of

which involve globalisation issues.

There is a trend within Australia at the moment to promote community

building with a view to social and economic advancement (Latham, 2001;

Pearson, 2001; Tanner, 1999). Although this chapter has been critical of Third

Way politics to some extent, my intention has only been to add to the debate

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rather than to discount this approach. In earlier chapters I have discussed

community broadcasting stations as nodes in civil society networks. This

recognition is relevant to the types of policy solutions offered by Third Way

thinking. The way in which these networks intersect with the ambitions of

local and national government requires some further research. It also needs to

be recognised that the types of “brokering” between communities and local

government discussed in Botsman and Latham’s The Enabling State (2001)

have existed in the community broadcasting sector for some time. The

proposal by Access 31 to utilise their State Government’s satellite resources is

one example of this. Such solutions – in this case to the issue of local

television – reflect the dispersal of power and control that the Third Way

emulates.

But as I have outlined in this chapter, care needs to be taken in promoting the

use of civil society for economic gain. Mark Lyons, writing on Australian

civil society, makes a similar argument in relation to the social capital (as the

means to economic capital) argument. Although charitable non-profit

organisations may represent a for-profit organisation in terms of efficiency

and the level of service, civil society organisations (as defined in Chapter

Two) are established to serve members. He writes:

…a well-run civil society organisation involves its members

in its decision making processes; it is participatory and

discursive. In so far as it provides a service, it is far from

efficient and is committed to encouraging its “customers”,

who are its members, to develop their own capacities for

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self-help and to have a voice… For managers and governers,

and perhaps for government policy makers, these two

perspectives require some rather delicate balancing (Lyons,

2001: 211–212).

And, as was demonstrated by Paul Keating’s preference for a “family”

channel (with moralistic overtones) during the sixth channel inquiry,

“community building” can sometimes be understood as something very

different to access.

In summary, although the postmodern within postdevelopment makes it

acquiescent to the specificity of community and can frustrate its attempt to

justify itself within the terms of social change, the problems of not complying

with the local are twofold. Postdevelopment doesn’t deny the existence of

civil society so much as imply an inherent acceptance of its diversity. In this

respect, postdevelopment affirms civil society, but does not see it as being

capable of universality. The very nature of civil society means that it cannot

be promoted or rolled-out. It is inherently characterised by place and culture.

The next chapter takes a look at new policy approaches to communication that

similarly promote an “unfinished” model of democracy and social change.

Dagron’s puzzle that cannot find completion but only supply a few pieces for

a new puzzle seems to be an appropriate metaphor to lead off from.

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Chapter Six: New Policies, New

Technologies

Trespassing and Access

I was once told that outside of his home in the town of Liffey, Tasmania, a

prominent Australian Senator has placed a sign that reads ‘Trespassers are

Welcome’. Senator Brown (who I have seen being removed from property

during a peaceful protest) acknowledges through the presence of his sign the

way in which property can restrict freedom whilst at the same time

undermining that principle. By allowing access the sign makes lack of

movement in other spaces visible.

The act of seeking access cannot help but sound like a challenge or a demand

– it is the opposite of exclusion and alienation, and yet it is also a recognition

that these dynamics exist. Access has been requested in many places at

numerous times (in the women's movement, in overcoming racially

designated borders) but it is not a unifying political goal in itself. Seeking

access is not so much the attempt to institute a fundamentally different

regime, but a process of reform that occurs on multiple fronts within a

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complex system. Access is the process of identifying the spaces where power

is used to block freedom and seeking to shift it.

As discussed in Chapter Two, Streeter has shown that access television is

subservient to a system organised around the principles of contemporary

liberalism in that it appeals for access to something owned by someone else

(Streeter, 1996). But community broadcasting also suggests an alternative

regime through the act of demanding a space and using it differently to the

general governance of the airwaves. The difficulty of community broadcasting

comes not from its ambitions to change wider patterns of ownership and

control, but that it is made to exist within overall policy arrangements that are

antithetical to its design. The policy question about how to accommodate

community broadcasting – how to provide access – has generally presupposed

its subservience, or accommodation, within that system. An alternative policy

regime is difficult to imagine.

And yet, in broader policy trends, a new conception of access is being

imagined, if not pursued. What in the past has been a politically ambiguous

word (more of a political process and a tool than a system of governance),

“access” has come to describe a new type of politics. Writes Jeremy Rifkin,

‘access has become the ticket to advancement and personal fulfilment and as

powerful as the democratic vision was to earlier generations. It is a highly

charged word, full of political significance’ (2000: 15). Lessig writes that in

the digital age, ‘the central question becomes not whether governments or the

market should control a resource, but whether a resource should be controlled

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at all’ (2001: 14), suggesting that we need to relearn the benefits of protecting

resources from private and public control. What has emerged policy-wise is “a

new public interest”, based on an alternative regime where access is no longer

about gaining access to a controlled territory, but where that territory is freely

accessible to begin with. Inspired by the rise of the Internet, the new public

interest argues that open and accessible communications platforms are the

most guaranteed pathway to the development of new ideas – and for the

reinvigoration of political life. Although that moment may not last, it has

brought a new significance to notions of access. It needs to be asked how the

new public interest and its vision of democracy relates to the old idea of

community broadcasting and the public interest. Whether new notions of

access, raised in part by new technologies, are necessary in the context of

community broadcasting is the concern of this chapter.

The Internet

Although each chapter so far has centred on a geographical region, the

territory that this chapter will begin with is the virtual one of the Internet. The

networks of the Internet, it is often asserted, are the pathways to a more lively

and powerful civil society. Pippa Norris writes that ‘the characteristics of the

Internet to shrink costs, maximise speed, broaden reach, and eradicate

distance provide transnational advocacy networks with an effective tool for

mobilisation, organisation and expression that can potentially maximise their

leverage in the global arena’ (2001: 172). The Internet is central to discussions

of new media not only because of its pervasiveness but also because of the

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significant hopes and anxieties it has attracted. Furthermore, current debates

concerning communication policy innovation rely heavily upon the Internet

for their evidence.

Many were quick to promote the possibilities of new technologies, in

particular the Internet. Not only had advances in communications technology

made the world smaller, readers were told, they had also brought a sci-fi

utopian future to the present. But now some of those who think about the

Internet have changed their minds. Where Barr wrote that ‘the Internet

represents a radical departure in terms of the ownership and control of

electronic media’ (2000: 123), Lessig asserts a year later that existing interests

will ‘protect themselves from the competitive threat the Internet represents.

The old, in other words, is bending the Net to protect itself against the new’

(Lessig, 2001: 16). The concern now is that if “the future” is here, then it is

beginning to look a lot like the recent past. At stake in the new public interest

is the survival of the Internet “commons” – its accessible and open

architecture. This conceptual framework will be extended to explore the

issues involved with community media’s transition to a convergent media

environment in the final part of this chapter.

Community media and the Internet

What exactly is community within the vast, decentred and global terrain of

Internet content? Does the Internet’s potential for participation at the edges

(with no apparent centre of control) mean that it is the perfect domain for

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community expression? Its facilitation of communication in real time, the

formal and informal congregation of users according to their interests, the

end-to-end technical design – all of this makes it the technological platform

with a seemingly natural affinity for the spaces, groups and networks of civil

society. Early impressions of the Internet expressed this sentiment. For

instance, Rheingold’s discovery of the virtual community:

Millions of people on every continent also participate in the

computer-mediated social groups known as virtual

communities, and this population is growing fast. Finding

WELL [Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link] was like discovering

a cozy little world that had been flourishing without me,

hidden within the walls of my house; an entire cast of

characters welcomed me to the troupe with great merriment

as soon as I found the secret door (Rheingold, 1994: 1–2).

However, discussions of community formations on the Net complicate, rather

than clarify, attempts to locate community media activity. These early

discussions of the Internet expressed its potential as a realm immune from

control, as if the Internet were the perfect public sphere where people could

organise into communities without the restrictions of time and space that have

encumbered traditional communities (Poster, 1997). This depiction of the

Internet, as well as its swift growth and apparent ability to defy regulation or

control, inspired a wave of cyberdemocracy – a belief that the technology

would increase society’s democratic potential. The accessible and

participatory nature of the Internet was seen to make it an ideal democratic

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space wherein people could communicate freely and participate in forums

built for collective decision-making. Nicholas Negroponte wrote in 1995 that

‘the access, the mobility, and the ability to effect change are what will make

the future so different to the present’, and that digital information would be an

“empowering” force beyond people’s expectations (1995: 231).

The excitement expressed by the early Internet participants at the possibilities

for a new democratic space is understandable. If their elation is to be

criticised, it is how easily they made grand sweeping statements out of their

experiences in what was essentially a closed community of techno-literate

libertarians. The particular voluntarist and utopianist history that has been

instilled into discourses of the Internet is just one history. In fact, the Internet

as it is known today is the result of collaborations between public and private

research institutions, corporations, publicly-minded individuals as well as

organised and informal groups. To look only at the radical elements of the

Internet is to deny the complicated and contradictory relationship between

commercial and non-commercial relationships involved (see Goggin, 2000).

The Internet was not the product of uncorrupted ‘hippy artisanship’ (Barbrook

& Cameron, 1995) but of a combined effort from private industry,

government and civil society groups and individual pioneers. Those that warn

of ‘certain economic, political, and legislative trends that threaten to convert

the Internet into yet another commercial medium, stripped of its unique

potential for facilitating progressive political debate and transformation’ (Ford

& Gil, 2001: 201) often ignore this history. Much cyberdemocratic discourse

also ignores the vast body of literature that warned against technological

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determinism. Writes Nicholas Garnham: ‘In spite of the assaults of critical

theorists, romantics, and postmodernists and growing popular suspicion,

science and technology, and the technologically determined view of progress

linked to it, retains high prestige and currency, perhaps particularly in relation

to information and communication technology, at both popular and elite level’

(2000: 66). The task of positioning how we understand the Internet within

existing political theory is still far from completion.

It is no longer possible to rely upon these cyberdemocratic discourses in

attempting to define the role that the Internet will play in the advancement of

civil society. Cyberdemocracy has finally become outdated with the

recognition that participatory appearance of the Internet was just one possible

path of development. The ability for the Internet to be shaped through market

forces or the state’s design was, and is, entirely feasible. Discussions of

commercialisation on the one hand and surveillance and privacy – such as the

FBI’s Carnivore software – reflected a new sweep of concerns. Lessig’s

(Lessig, 1999) mantra that “Code is Law”, which discussed how the Net’s

architecture could be altered to accommodate regulation, became the new, less

optimistic, depiction of the Internet. Conveniently summarising his entire

book in one paragraph, Lessig writes:

Nature doesn’t determine cyberspace. Code does. Code is

not constant. It changes. It is changing now in a way that

will make cyberspace more regulable. It could change in a

way that makes cyberspace less regulable. How it changes

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depends on the code writers. How code writers change it

could depend on us (Lessig, 1999: 109).

Code sent a warning through academic and policy circles that a different,

commercialised Internet might be just around the corner. But even though the

early beliefs about the Internet were to be dampened by the likes of Lessig, it

can be said that the ethos of free information exchange within early

cyberdemocracy claims must have attracted media activists and communities

in need of an accessible platform. Although it was falsely deterministic, this

promise was in some ways a self-fulfilling prophesy, fuelling interest in the

Net and expanding its user base. Such interest in the democratic uses of the

Net led to some astoundingly effective innovations by groups that were

otherwise considered to be without media power. Most famous of these was

the experience of the Zapatista movement in Mexico, an Indigenous army that

utilised global information networks in 1994 to express their demands directly

without having to use state controlled media channels. As Ford and Gil

describe it, ‘the Zapatistas inspired a flourishing, widespread, and varied

network of radical media communication that afforded them the opportunity

to communicate with civil society. As a result, civil society was motivated and

able to respond directly to the requests of the EZLN [Zapatista National

Liberation Army] for citizen participation in their project’ (Castells, 1996;

Ford & Gil, 2001: 219). What the Zapatistas described as a five hundred-year

struggle received global attention for the first time, due to Internet.

Pippa Norris writes reservedly that, although it is unlikely that we can expect

total political transformation, the ‘restructured opportunities for information

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and communication available via digital politics will potentially have positive

consequences for civic society, altering the balance of relevant resources and

slightly levelling the playing field’ (2001: 23). Using a sample from the

Yearbook of International Organisations, Norris concludes that about a

quarter of all civil society associations have an online presence

(approximately 12,400 groups world-wide). And this is excluding social

movement networks or other unregistered types of community groups. The

number and diversity of groups on the Net, from the International Potato

Centre to the Nordic Youth Committee, is testament to its use as a civil

society forum. Invoking another commons, Norris sees the Internet as ‘a

virtual Hyde Park Corner where a plurality of multiple actors can and do find

opportunities to network, organise and express their viewpoints’ (2001: 190).

Norris’s work is a useful survey of the current status of civil society’s use of

the Internet and at the content level. But she does not attempt to identify the

possibilities for an extension of this activity or draw conclusions from her

findings as to the use of media throughout civil society.

So what is community media on the Internet? Without the mechanisms of

governance – licensing, regulation, incorporation – that clearly define

community broadcasting as belonging within third sector, it is difficult to

identify exactly what can be considered community media. Communities who

utilise the Internet negotiate their own terms and boundaries more often than

not. Resources and enthusiasm determine their presence on the Net but their

activity is not enshrined by application to a bureaucratic authority. It is

possible, however, to gauge some qualities: that which is not directly

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associated with either government or private sector interests, that involves

voluntarism and group interest. Furthermore, community media groups see the

media as central to their objectives or charter.

The Internet and the New Public Interest

The rise of the Internet has had broad political consequences for all sectors of

the media (for a policy-based discussion see Flew, 2002). What this means for

community media is nicely summed up by community web developer,

Gabrielle Kuiper. If there is a future for community media, Kuiper believes,

then it will need to be constructed out of DIY materials. In true

communitarian style, the technologies used will be the equivalent of mud

bricks: ‘anyone can learn how to make mud bricks, build their own houses

and teach other people how to build them’ (Kuiper, 2002). Kuiper works with

the group Catalyst, located in an old ice-cream factory in a suburb of Sydney.

Catalyst assists community groups in achieving an online presence as a low-

cost ISP, through training and the development of free software based on open

source code. By pioneering free software, Catalyst constructs technology that

can be built upon, adapted and repurposed by other groups. This technology is

the hand-made bricks of Kuiper's metaphor for community access. Access

here is something that is free to all, where information can be copied without

permission and where the community creates its own spaces and technologies

rather than being designated by them.

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The technical initiatives of open source and end-to-end design can be credited

with having made the Internet the unusually accessible and participatory

communications platform that it is. End-to-end design is the result of a system

of protocols that allow computers to share data by “packet-switching” –

shifting recognisable packets of data by labelling and routing them to their

destination (see Froomkin, 1997). As a result, there is no reason why a

computer should send a packet through the same route twice, avoiding the

need for a central machine. Writes Lessig, ‘end-to-end says to keep

intelligence in a network at the ends, or in the applications, leaving the

network itself to be relatively simple’ (2001: 34). This system means that

permission is not required in order to participate in the Internet (Leiner et al.,

2000). And as the source code that implements the protocols is visible, anyone

can participate in the construction of new layers of protocols, and so develop

new applications or produce new versions of existing ones. In the case of free

software (meaning software distributed under the GNU Public Licence that

prevents it from being copyrighted) a philosophical idea, or ethic, about

access to technology and how it can be engineered to promote participation is

promoted. That the software cannot become proprietary means that it is kept

in the public domain as a free, common resource. Furthermore, the technology

is collaborative, with a capacity-building potential, and educative in that the

code is visible to be analysed and learnt (Kuiper, 2002).

These characteristics of the Internet's architecture have been written about

extensively. For Lawrence Lessig, the Internet is a commons in which no one

has ‘the exclusive right to choose whether the resource is made available to

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others’ (2001: 20). It is akin to a public park or beach that anyone can access

or a language that anyone can learn without having to seek permission. The

commons is a resource that is held “in common”, and the Internet, due to its

technical architecture is seen as the ultimate example of this. In another

version of the commons philosophy, Graham Meikle (2002: 31) makes a clear

distinction between types of interactivity that allow for a degree of choice in

content (such as video game interactivity) and that which enables people to

‘influence and contribute to the content of the exchange’. In making tiered

distinctions between types of interactivity, Meikle demonstrates how the issue

is more complex than simply that of the conventional binary of participation

and broadcasting. For Meikle conversational forms of interactivity are

“unfinished”. The unfinished nature of this interactivity means that it allows

others to add to existing works and so continue the creative process. As a

result, it is a type of interactivity that leads to the new, bringing about

‘possibilities of a future that, in this case, we don’t back into; one that may not

look like what’s gone before’ ( 33). Such “intercreative” designs are therefore

a catalyst for innovation. As with Lessig, Meikle sees the possibility of a

future rich with new ideas and democratic potential as residing in the

existence of open, rather than closed systems, in the particular end-to-end

technology and in open source software.

Although the commons debate has become popular through discussions of the

Internet, the revival of the commons as a political concept is much broader.

David Bollier writes: ‘The American commons include tangible assets such as

public forests and minerals, intangible wealth such as copyrights and patents,

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critical infrastructure such as the Internet and government research, and

cultural resources such as the broadcast airwaves and public spaces’ (2001: 2).

Within all of these spaces there is a fear that too much private control leading

to the restriction of access will be against the public interest. The narrowband

Internet, with its open and accessible architecture represents a moment in

which the access was taken to a new level, even if that structure does not last.

The debate over media access has flipped from one where an existing regime

of ownership and control is presupposed, to one where openness and freedom

are the “natural”, or primary, foundation. The argument, therefore, becomes

one of protecting the spaces where freedom exists and creating new spaces for

that to occur. Access is not subservient to wider structures, but the starting

point from which other concerns (economic and political) can then be

addressed. The impact of this upon the ideas-world of policy has been

substantial. The threat of losing that narrowband moment has sparked a new

policy push, away from a concern about how to regulate the Internet, to

concerns for how to make sure that it remains free and accessible.

This shift is beginning to be discussed as part of a “new public interest”

(Aufderheide, 2002). As Anthony Smith writes, when we invoke the public

interest, ‘we are, half-consciously, groping for a way of referring to something

highly valued, a telos or collective good normally standing in opposition to, or

above, other legitimate demands and interests’ (1989: 11). The prevailing

understanding of the public interest – the “old”, familiar, public interest – has

negated selfishness and personal gain in favour of a common good that may

require compromise from individuals. McQuail sees it as a ‘matter which

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might affect the public life of society’ – the general welfare – stemming from

first principles, or ‘basic social and political values’ (1996: 69). Because it is

the thinking behind public service broadcasting (and content requirements) in

broadcasting policy, the public interest has, through its insistence on what is

“best for all” come to represent the collective.

The new public interest is something altogether different. It involves

embracing a range of possible publics that may conflict or contradict each

other. There is no claim to what the “good” is, only a striving for it; more

players and more ideas means a greater chance that some kind of progress will

emerge, either in the form of economic advancement or the advancement of

democracy. When partnered with access, the communitarian ideal is

transformed into a more dispersed, random and inconclusive idea of the good

life. This is demonstrated by Meikle in his discussion of the One Nation

Party's somewhat surprisingly participative website:

An open, Version 1.0 media space is one in which everyone

can participate, and that means having to deal with

everyone's ideas, even when they turn out to be ugly,

divisive and cruel. So one thing that the One Nation media

experience shows is that an open media environment might

turn out to be a confronting one for many of us. But that is

still, I think, preferable to a closed, Version 2.0 system built

around choices which all support the same entrenched

positions and interests (Meikle, 2002: 57).

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The difference between this idea of media democracy and the more cautious,

regulated idea of the (old) public interest in broadcasting policy is clear.

Policy approaches that seek to uphold the new public interest are important

for community broadcasting as they admit the existence of multiple publics –

something that has always been a feature of the community broadcasting

rationale.

The new public interest is an insurance against control, a wager on

democracy. But without the participation of civil society within that commons

(the community ideal expressed by Kuiper and Meikle) the new public interest

would be in danger of becoming just another argument for free markets – a

revival of liberal economics and competition policy. The new public interest

has been promoted by US communications advocacy organisations such as

Media Access Project and the Centre for Media Education, as well as by the

computer science and legal academic communities. At times, commercial

players such as ISPs have joined the campaign when it has advanced their

interests. Although it has found most force in the US due to the controversy

over the AOL/Time Warner merger and the consequences for broadband,

similar philosophical arguments have made their way into Australian and

European communications policy discussions. Damien Tambini has spoken of

the new public interest behind the UK's new communications bill, which

brings more players to the market. Furthermore, he sees it as influencing the

role of the public service broadcaster – citing the BBC’s intention to add the

objective to “connect” to the existing trinity “inform, educate and entertain”

(2002). In Australia, the Productivity Commission argued in their Report on

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Broadcasting that innovation in the digital television environment could only

be achieved through competition, transparency and a leaner and smarter

approach to spectrum management (see Chapter One) (Productivity

Commission, 2000).

Aufderheide, picking up on the strange alliances formed within the commons

debate, asserts how ‘it confirmed… the insight of public interest advocates

that commons strategies have benefits that are not organised neatly along

commercial/noncommercial, public/private, consumer/citizen lines’ (2002:

13). The competition aspects of the argument are clear from the AOLTW

story – that smaller ISPs who do not have stakes in the network infrastructure

should still be able to provide services without additional cost to consumers.

The issue involves the implementation of old, anticompetitive business

structures within a domain characterised by access. But those who advocate

the new public interest are concerned not only with competition but also with

the maintenance of the pre-commercial structure and character of the Internet.

The differences between the commons and open access need to be more

clearly defined within the media policy debate. The inclusion of civil society –

in terms of free access for all – as opposed to market-based systems (such as

competitive price-based spectrum auctions), is an integral factor in the

implementation of a true commons. But although the new public interest can

be cynically viewed as a straightforward endorsement of competition policy,

community-based media fits better within this design than with notions of the

public interest being only met through monopoly or oligopoly public service

broadcasters.

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Relationship of Old and New Media

In the late 1990s Gabrielle Kuiper and community television pioneer Matthew

Arnison began working on an automated calender site whereby groups could

post their events onto the Internet without people in a central location having

to key in each entry. The code – adapted by Arnison and known as Active

(www.active.org.au) – was extended to include a space for community news

and opinion that could also be easily posted. As a result, Active became a

forum for community news and debate, with not only events but descriptions,

explanations and journalistic information focused upon Sydney’s activist

community.

Active’s global impact came about through its role in the development of the

Indymedia phenomenon. Prior to the anti-corporate/globalisation rally during

the WTO 1999, Indymedia’s main function was as a physical space for

community-based media in the US. Active had been launched in Sydney in

January of that year, and upon hearing about the upcoming protests decided to

attempt a web broadcast of the event. A site was developed at Catalyst that

involved only the news aspects of the Active template with the additional

capacity of enabling the uploading of images and video onto the site. Matthew

Arnison, in the United States at the time, met with the Seattle Indymedia

Centre and suggested that the Active source code be used by Indymedia for

their coverage of the event. Arnison, at a safe distance back in his lounge-

room in Sydney, worked throughout the night during the protests to keep the

site going ‘while tear gas was floating in to the Indymedia office in Seattle’

(Kuiper, 2002). The infamous Seattle protests attracted the world’s attention,

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and on the weekend of June 18 the site reached 1 million hits. Indymedia

became possibly the most notorious activist site on the web, retaining its

structure as an open forum for news, opinion and events through the

automated posting system. Within six months of the Seattle protests over 30

Indymedia sites were established in cities throughout the United States and

around the world. There are now over 70 in existence, spawned from the

original code, and adapted to fit local languages and aesthetics, including sites

in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Sydney Indymedia have, in the past, had a presence on 2SER community

radio where they have imitated their own web format by encouraging listeners

to send in their own short audio documentaries. The entire program was then

digitised and uploaded back onto Indymedia Sydney. According to Kuiper,

the radio program ‘was a recognition that you get your message across more

effectively if you put it out across different media’, attracting wider audiences

according to their media usage. Such convergence also extends to television.

Activities of video groups such as Actively Radical prompted Catalyst to

invest in video capturing equipment in order to incorporate video

documentaries onto the site.

There is a common assumption that broadcast media is, and has always been,

a “closed” network. Meikle writes that:

Early Net technologies – email, bulletin boards, newsgroups

– produced so much optimism and excitement at least partly

because they were seen to enable participation on a scale,

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and to a degree, not possible with established media. Any of

us could, in theory, take part. An interactive technology was

one in which we could get to them as easily as they could

get to us (Meikle, 2002: 29).

But hasn’t community broadcasting always been a media platform in which

anyone can take part? In the commons of community broadcasting,

participation and broadcasting are not in opposition to each other but made

compatible. It is an open system within which anyone can enter the

conversation, not in a “talk-back” radio style, but as equal producers.

Therefore, using Meikle’s own terminology, community broadcasting is

Version 1.0 media utilising Version 2.0 technology. Although not end-to-end

– apparently the penultimate platform for the stimulation of innovation –

community broadcasting’s access mandate brings it close to this principle,

despite being a broadcast media. The claim that community broadcasting

overcomes the broadcast one-to-many communication structure is not new.

Participation, framed in contrast to the mass media, has always been used as a

justification for community media. But in the restating of the commons

argument this is mostly overlooked. The implication of bringing community

media into the commons debate is that innovation arising out of open

networks is not restricted to the Internet, but possible on any platform where a

commons can be established. Although the commons are not necessarily

restricted to non-profit activity, community broadcasting is one means to

organise a commons within broadcasting to ensure greater access and equity.

A further implication of considering community as relevant to the commons

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debate is that the innovation that takes place across media platforms can be

accounted for and understood.

Community media has a tendency to occupy available space where it can be

found. In Italy, low-power stations have sprung up utilising free spectrum to

broadcast television content as an alternative to stations owned by Berlusconi.

In the UK, a test was conducted at the June 2002 Community Media Summer

Festival that saw community television distributed to the local neighbourhood

by wireless broadband, using spectrum that is freely available for use within a

100 metre radius. These are only the most recent examples of a history of

community media initiatives that have “routed around” legislative hurdles in

order to be seen or heard. More famously, when independent radio station,

B92 in Belgrade, was suspended in 1999 under the Milosevic regime, the

station persisted by video streaming its programming on the Net. In the

process it gained the attention and support of the international community and

was eventually distributed for rebroadcast in Serbia via sattelite (Meikle,

2002). As has already been mentioned, the group Catalyst was formed by

community television campaigners who were dissatisfied by the activities of

the community television station in Sydney at the time. Indymedia was

developed as a means to coordinate large groups of activists during the Seattle

demonstrations and to allow independent reporting of events by the activist

community. In all examples, new media territory was crossed as a tactic to

survive or make do – in order to persist.

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Innovation within community media is not restricted to the Internet or unique

to its design. In many cases, the groups that utilise the Internet emerge from or

seek partnerships with broadcasters. Kuiper, comparing the content of Sydney

Indymedia with the Indymedia sites of other cities, said that it would have

been a ‘much more effective and useful site if it had made contact with

existing community media when it started off’ (Kuiper, 2002). By restricting

discussions of innovation to the Internet, the processes of information sharing,

collaboration, and flexibility to move between media platforms are not taken

into account.

Beyond Community Media

There is a moment in Meikle's Future Active where boundaries of community

media on the Internet are thrown into doubt. Mathew Arnison is quoted by

Meikle:

I like to think the free software movement is a very strong

activist movement, but somewhat hidden. This is because

the people involved don't really think they are activists, and

other activists don't realise what is going on… For once they

can write software to do what they want, rather than what

they can get paid to write, and they get to join a huge family

of other people sharing the process of writing software

(Arnison in Meikle, 2002: 107).

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Arnison defines participation as activism, even though the people involved are

not aware of it as such. This raises an interesting question about the future of

community media. In the free software movement, media production is not

identified as media activism by many that create it, as the idea of resistance is

less obvious when the technology is open to begin with. The words

“community media” could be substituted for that of “activism” and the point

would still be the same – that participation has become so commonplace on

the Internet that people are not aware that they are changing the traditional

structures of the media. The concerns over property only become an obvious

feature of the free software movement when enclosure becomes an issue

(which is why Meikle and Lessig seek to make people aware that free

software is an important democratic movement). So far I have discussed

access as having changed from “access to” towards access as openness. The

logical extension of this (on a purely intellectual level) is that access is no

longer “access” at all as it has lost its notion of change, resistance and

opposition. We might just as easily say that rather than all participation being

community media (as Arnison hints at) that, in fact, community media itself

would no longer be defined as community media as its “other” would cease to

exist.

In some respects defining community media on the Internet has been a matter

of self-definition – an identity group in itself rather than an institutionally

designated sector – as the boundaries between types of participation are not

enshrined or delineated by the governmental categorising that occurs in the

field of broadcast regulation. As the Internet is increasingly threatened by the

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enclosure strategies of private companies seeking to control the technology,

the nature of community involvement and activism may become more clearly

defined, particularly if commons-style spaces are created in order to ensure

that access remains. In the realm of television and radio, community media

requires adequate definitions in order to make it distinct from commercial and

government broadcasters and to uphold its status as a legitimate sphere of

media activity. I declared in the introduction to this thesis that the primary

exercise here was not to imagine what community broadcasting might look

like in an ideal world (although I have taken some liberties in this chapter to

do just that) but what forces exist that make it what it is. As long as the media

is not an open resource, community media is an important category by which

to ensure that participation exists. However, there is also the possibility that if

access remains a subservient concept within that framework, community

participation will remain a marginal concern of broadcasting policy.

Community and the Network Society

There is also a larger question at stake here and that has to do with the

position and relevance of notions of community access and participation in the

politics of the network society in general. Writes Rifkin:

Inclusion and access, rather than autonomy and ownership,

become the more important tests of one's personal freedom.

Freedom is a measure of one's opportunities to enter into

relationships, forge alliances, and engage in networks of

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shared interest. Being connected makes one free. Autonomy,

once regarded as tautological with personal freedom,

becomes its opposite. To be autonomous in a network world

is to be isolated and disconnected. The right not to be

excluded, the right of access, on the other hand becomes the

baseline for measuring personal freedom. Government's role

in the new scheme of things is to secure every individual's

right of access to the many networks – both in geographic

space and cyberspace – through which human beings

communicate, interact, conduct business, and constitute

change (Rifkin, 2000: 240).

Although the way in which we view community media may change as

technologies become more participative, the notion of community itself

becomes more relevant. In fact, the new economy has coopted community

within its project of network relations. Community is both a means to the

development of fruitful relationships that may extend and enhance networks

and information flows, and that which contributes value to this new social

configuration. As Castells has written, this is a politics where ‘a structural

logic dominated by largely uncontrollable flows within and between networks

creates the conditions for the unpredictability of the consequences of human

action through the reflection of such action in an unseen, unchartered space of

flows’ (1999: 59). Community furnishes this otherwise bleak social vision

with some kind of meaning, albeit a meaning that is made up of a myriad of

different concerns, efforts and tastes. Reaction against the destructuration of

society takes the form of ‘affirming basic cultural, historical, or biological

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identities (real or reconstructed) as fundamental principles of existence. The

society of flows is a society of primary ascription communities, in which

affirmation of the being (ethinic identity, territorial identity, national identity)

becomes the organising principle for a system that in itself becomes a system

for itself’ (Castells, 1999: 59).

Where Castell's work is descriptive (to some deterministic, for instance

Callinicos, 2001), the role of community within the “society of flows” is, for

others, something that must be prescribed and promoted. Rifkin speaks of two

types of access – community and commercial. He wants us to ask what type of

access it is that we seek to institute, asserting that it is the networks of

community that are more valuable, and more lasting, they are ‘the wellspring

of social trust’ and a means to self-fulfillment (2000: 243). Community plays

a vital role in the maintenance of networks and social relations within the

network society, but, more importantly, it makes it worthwhile. As the case of

community television in Australia demonstrates, the issue of access, as well as

the role of community within the new media environment, remains far from

determined.

Access and the Australian Context

As discussed in Chapter One, community broadcasting has struggled to

overcome its position of marginality in an environment where the interests of

the incumbent broadcasters are prioritised on the pretext of market stability.

Television in particular has been considered an arena of controlled quality in

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which the status quo is maintained (favouring the commercial incumbents) in

return for public interest requirements. This quid pro quo rationale, the

presence of two national broadcasters and a fixed approach to spectrum

planning, have made for a broadcasting environment in which access can only

ever be a minor concern. The ‘political, technical, industrial, economic and

social compromises’, as the Productivity Commission stated, ‘have created a

policy framework that is inward looking, anti-competitive and restrictive’

(2000: 5). In such a framework, tradeoffs between economic and cultural

imperatives are favoured over transparency or flexibility. Access, as a

principle, is marginal within such a system, an anomaly that does not fit with

notions of prescriptive regulation over content and production.

The history of community television policy reflects this uncomfortable

relationship. It has coincided with the rise of notions of cultural diversity, in

which national identity has been redefined to account for and support the

existing identities of the various cultural groups. This included policies

directed at particular cultures, for example, the development of multicultural

and Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander policy frameworks and the

establishment of a national broadcaster with an ethnic broadcasting mandate –

SBS television. But where multiculturalism has a defined and easily

identifiable purpose (ethnic/migrant cultures and multilingualism), community

policies are more often defined by what they are not (Hawkins, 1993).

Community has been named in the cultural process as something other than

high culture, as an effort to account for the various groups that were seeking

recognition, funding and cultural rights. In this cultural reorganisation,

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community has been constructed as something that belongs at the fringes of

culture. The inherent untidiness of community when viewed as an object of

policy (where does it end and who is in charge?), its transient nature and its

status as something different to established forms of cultural enterprise

(experimentation, voluntarism) fits uncomfortably with a regulatory

environment of managed difference. In the television context, it is clear that

the preferred means of maintaining Australian cultural standards is through

content requirements rather than through access. Access becomes a

concession to what is left over rather than a positively defined means to

diversity. Where Streeter, writing of the American context, speaks of access

as being complicit in a rationale of bureaucratically supported private

interests, in Australia the more pertinent point is that any claims to access

creating neutrality are outdone by a cultural policy framework of pre-emptive,

bureaucratically achieved, regulated balance.

Australian communications policy requires a clearer conception of what

community access means if an adequate arrangement for the digital

transmission of community television is to be found. This means thinking

beyond the activities of the existing community television stations and

towards community access in general. There are obvious limits to the

comparisons that can be drawn between community broadcasting and the

Internet. The restrictions upon television broadcasting in terms of the limited

number of channels, content and classification requirements, as well as

technical factors, mean that systems whereby anyone can “upload” content

into a commons style arrangement are not (at this point in time)

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comprehensible. Opportunities do exist, however, to provide community

broadcasters with a space in the digital television environment that would

allow for a greater degree of experimentation and technical flexibility than has

been possible with analog technology. The set-aside of a significant amount of

digital spectrum for use by community broadcasters would be one step

towards a more open communications platform.

The point of this chapter is not to speculate on what such an arrangement

might look like, but the principle upon which access is granted. The current

television environment does not provide sufficient justification for the

development of community broadcasting. Proposals for the digital

transmission of community television have so far presumed that content will

remain similar to that of the current trial stations. These suggestions, which

have mostly centred around the carriage of a single standard-definition

community television channel by another broadcaster (either a public service

broadcaster or a commercial broadcaster), do not allow for community

innovation beyond the current achievements of the sector. If anything,

suggestions for the digital transmission of community television presume the

static nature of community broadcasting, restricting and containing it rather

than seeking a means for its advancement in the new digital environment.

The central argument of public interest advocates in the commons debate,

including the AOL merger, was that the government should be regulating to

restrict anti-competitive practices likely to stifle innovation through the

provision of access; not simply the carriage of other commercial enterprises

224

who can compete at auction for access, but free access for anyone – a true

commons. The new public interest is not far removed from that which has

been called upon in the past to support the establishment of community media.

Community media has relied upon diversity, difference, access and

participation as the primary justifications for its existence. Such values have

never fully conformed to a public interest that has sought top-down solutions

in defence of the majority good. As John Keane writes, a ‘theory of civil

society and public life that clings dogmatically to the vision of a unified

public sphere in which “public opinion” and “the public interest” are defined

is a chimera’. For the sake of democracy, ‘it ought to be jettisoned’ (Keane,

1998: 189). Philosophically, the new public interest is not incompatible with

community broadcasting. In some respects it is hardly new at all.

225

Conclusion

Is there a future for community television? The answer to that question, of

course, is “it depends”. This thesis has attempted to clarify what that future is

dependent upon, and to locate community broadcasting within the wider

questions facing communications policy today.

It depends, firstly, upon an adequate conception of the role and use of

community broadcasting. I have argued in this thesis that we need to look to

civil society to understand community broadcasting. This means accepting

ideas of diversity and difference that are grounded in the real networks,

alliances and affiliations that communities choose to form. In Chapter One,

Mark Lyons pointed out that the greatest threat to the civil society in Australia

today is non-recognition. It follows that the first place to begin to find a future

for community television is to recognise it.

Streeter (1996) has asserted that policy alternatives become available when

the deliberate political choices that have shaped broadcasting into its current

political form are uncovered. In Australia's case that system is one of a

stabilised mixture of public and private broadcasters with a regulated and pre-

226

emptive approach to the public interest. Whether this system as a whole is due

to change drastically or not, a clearer conception of the role of community

broadcasting is required if its full potential is to be realised in the digital

television environment. This means asking what it is that community

broadcasting does differently to commercial and public service broadcasters.

In these final pages I will gather together some of those questions and

consolidate the research findings within the Australian context.

Changing Cultures

Broadcasting is not alone in having to deal with cultural, political and

industrial shifts. Nikolas Rose writes that we are now experiencing a

proliferation of ‘forms of politics and types of contestation which cannot be

calibrated in terms of the dichotomies of traditional political thought’ (1999:

2). The activities of civil society have perhaps also expanded, or at least

repositioned, to become the foreground upon which many of our issues,

conflicts, and cultural activities are played out. Communities, and their

relation to the social and political, seem to have exceeded the boundaries,

terms and structures of Australia's cultural policy.

There is a relationship between our social, political and cultural landscapes

and our ability to engage with media at different levels and through multiple

means. Whether there has been a recent proliferation of cultural and political

groups, tastes, identities and issues is debatable. It does appear to be the case,

however, that we are witnessing or recognising this activity more acutely and

227

with greater interest than in the past. It is now a recurrent theme of political

thought that issues of national sovereignty and identity are being challenged

by ‘the globalisation of flows of money, communications, products, persons,

ideas and cultures, and the localisation of local economic regions, world

cities, regional identities, lifestyle sectors and so forth’ (Rose, 1999: 2). This

recognition, if not the activity itself, is tied directly to our information

systems, our access to media and our increasing ability to participate in and

distribute cultural expression.

The history of community television in Australia demonstrates that civic

participation in the broadcasting arena has not been a priority – at least where

economically powerful interests are at stake. Is this justified in a society

dealing with competing and conflicting demands stemming not only from our

differences, but also from the boundaries of our freedom and rights, from

environmental crises, globalised industrial issues and a variety of claims to

identity recognition and support? As O'Regan has stated, cultural diversity in

the community arts context was about ‘recognising, sanctioning and

organising inter-ethnic political identities’ (2001: 5). This approach falls short

of encompassing the broader ideas of community and difference discussed in

this thesis. Community broadcasting is not a solution to society’s problems,

but a participant within the cultural field that derives its significance from the

fact that it emerges from civil society. As a result it is structured to extend the

networks of civil society – and thus the sites for citizen engagement.

Technological change – in particular the introduction of digital media – is

altering civil society through new methods of information exchange, new

228

industry structures and regulatory capabilities. Granting civil society

institutions – including community television – the right to develop and to

begin to interact dynamically with cultural and political spheres in one step

towards accommodating these changes.

Theoretical Directions

Nick Couldry has observed that alternative media has been underrepresented

in media studies, asserting that theory is one arena within which the

marginalisation of community-based media must be addressed. This thesis has

attempted to locate the debates that are relevant to community broadcasting,

including discussions of community, civil society and development (Chapter

Two). Other contributors to the field have discussed community broadcasting

in terms of personal and community empowerment (Rodriguez, 2002) and as

symbolic power (Couldry, 2000; Huesca 2001). These works are important for

constructing notions of community media that move beyond seeing audience

size or ability to affect ownership structures as measurements for success.

However, the area of community broadcasting still requires a great deal of

further research.

I have outlined some of the themes upon which such research could extend

from: its use as a tool for civil society expression; possibilities for social

change at the local level; and financial models beyond anti-commercial

assumptions. The next step might involve empirical evidence on the extent to

which community broadcasting promotes civil society networks; economic

229

models for small scale media working under different conditions (in regional

areas, or conflict situations, for instance); or studies into skills expansion

through community broadcasting involvement. One of the more pressing areas

for further research to emerge out of this study is the development of

alternative technical models, including the possibilities for dynamic spectrum

use and the place of community participation within commons-style set-

asides. The cooperation of the technical and legal communities is vital if this

project’s findings are to generate further outcomes.

Reassessing Quality and Non-Commercialism

Community broadcasting is often seen as an inadequate method of meeting

public interest requirements, particularly when public service broadcasting

attracts greater audiences through the provision of “quality” content. Those

working within the community broadcasting field do not generally hold this

view, reaching for concepts of access and participation to justify their

position. For them, public service broadcasting does not, and cannot by

nature, provide the freedom, skills dissemination and level of participation

that community broadcasting provides. The non-profit motive, shared with

public service broadcasting, is upheld in community broadcasting not for the

sake of maintaining the appearance of unbiased authority but as a symbol that

people are involved in broadcasting for the love of it (Letch, 2001). These

differences, how they have come about and their associated claims to “the

public interest”, are important in distinguishing the need for community

broadcasting.

230

Judging community broadcasting on the basis of the success of the

national/public service broadcaster is not unique to Australia. As discussed in

Chapter Four, when Europe's broadcasting landscape began to change in the

1980s, community campaigners were fighting for access alongside potential

commercial players. The defenders of public broadcasting – who dominated

the intellectual and elite opinion – were not the natural allies of community

broadcasting (for instance Garnham, 1990/1980). Although community

broadcasting advocates promoted their cause on the basis of public rights and

local content, the endorsement of a decentralised and open communication

system was nevertheless a challenge to the cultural status and funding of

public service broadcasting. When cable companies began to support

community content trials (ingratiating themselves to government) it could

only have exacerbated the sentiment that community broadcasting was simply

one more step towards privatisation (Hollander, 1992).

But that was then. Commercial interests have made their way into European

broadcasting through cable and satellite technology as well as over-the-air

transmission. The notion that public service broadcasting should be the sole

(or dominant) provider of content has been dismantled, and with it the idea of

a unified national audience. Mass representation and elitist views of quality

have been replaced with access to niche services and ‘negotiated quality’

(Tambini, 2002).

231

Australian broadcasting has always accepted commercial broadcasting

(although not outright competition). Still, the possibility of a more

competitive and multi-channel television environment means that the motives

behind anti-commercialism should also be up for review. The old assumption

that the community and economic spheres must be kept separate has had more

to do with the threat of community licences providing a backdoor for new

commercial services than the integrity of community broadcasting. Times

have now changed and, in some countries (for instance the UK), local

commercial television licences have been awarded ahead of the drafting of

community licences. Somewhat ironically, anti-commercialism, including

prohibitions on advertising, sponsorship and, in some cases, the screening of

non-local content, have restricted the development of the community sector,

yet not in any way that prevented the arrival of commercial broadcasting and

cablecasting. Allowing community broadcasters to participate equally in the

market does not mean lifting the non-profit requirements or compromising the

community ethic or image – indeed, these are essential to community stations’

success as pointed out by Letch in Chapter One. It simply means revising the

possible pathways towards more financially secure stations.

Developing Community Broadcasting

In the First World, community is deployed in social policy as a means to

stimulate self-management. It is a politics of responsibility, ethics and trust,

which has gained significant support through the revival of the concept of

civil society as well as in Third Way politics. In both movements, community

232

is seen as a solution where top-down policies have failed – a means to build

social capital and to restore altruistic values. As discussed in Chapter Five,

these policies are not without their contradictions and difficulties. However,

micro attention to the possibilities that community broadcasting presents at

the local level has not been undertaken in Australia.

For community broadcasting to play a significant role in the provision of local

media, issues of viability and licensing must be addressed. The main obstacle

to the establishment of regional local television has been the loss of the sixth

channel reservation in regional areas – the significance of which largely

escaped the sector at the time. Although two Victorian townships have been

developing plans for cable community television services (Mildura and

Ballarat), the general lack of cable roll-out in Australia beyond the capital

cities, and no legislative requirement on cable providers to provide

community television, means that cable is not currently a solution. However,

models do exist, such as Access 31’s plan to send their signal via satellite to

local transmitters in regional towns. These possibilities are currently thwarted

by legislation and planning.

Australian community broadcasting stations do not have access to donor

agency funding and, as a result, have been somewhat excluded from the

global community broadcasting movement that often justifies itself through

development arguments. It is these arguments that need to be reassessed. The

First and Third World division is propagated, at least in conceptual terms, by

the community sector if it considers itself a benefactor of these arrangements.

233

In terms of the global community broadcasting movement, demands need to

be framed as empowerment, and the nurturing of local civil society networks

achieved via models that seek to move beyond aid dependency and towards

economic independence. With this shift in understanding, Australian

community broadcasting stations are part of a significant global movement.

Strangely, although community broadcasting and civil society at large have

been instrumental in stimulating movements around environmental awareness,

women’s issues, the media itself – its cultural role, the distribution of

resources and rights governance – has not been seen as something to debate,

promote or advance (outside of the studies field). This thesis has aimed to

include community broadcasting issues within wider information debates.

Renewed Access

Digital television is just one of the fronts upon which such change must occur.

Policy ideas to date have worked on the basis that existing levels of

participation and resources will persist in the digital environment. By creating

models around that assumption they have made it a fact. Australian policy

makers (as well as Canadian) have spent much time and effort developing

complicated models based on carriage arrangements and – through successive

review processes – have moved further away from the simple option of access

delivered by a spectrum set-aside. The Productivity Commission has written

of the need to determine the “opportunity lost” of community broadcasting

spectrum (Foxwell, 2001). In an astounding example of the regulator’s

234

complicity in current economic priorities, the ABA have even suggested that

the government purchase space from cable providers to screen limited

community “windows” (Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2001). The move

towards seeing spectrum in economic terms sits uneasily with the notion of

community which rests upon fundamentally different notions of property and

value. This concern is not just applicable to television, but to broadband cable

technology, digital radio and satellite.

Chapter Two set the groundwork for an idea of access that goes beyond

speech rights. It was shown that where community broadcasting has been

constructed upon that principle it has been left vulnerable to corporate

challenges. The efforts of stations in the United States to define themselves as

civil society facilitators beckons a new conception of access involving the

creation and nurturing of community networks. These newer notions of

community media were extended into Chapter Six, in relation to the commons

debate and the principles upon which communications resources are managed.

I have argued that this rationale opens up possibilities for more constructive

models of community broadcasting. Although the issue of first-come first-

served is not resolved through the commons model, the development

discourse discussed in Chapter Five (but threaded throughout the thesis)

builds a more concise picture of how communities themselves can – and do –

work to maintain relevance within the access structure. The way in which this

might be encouraged through government or industry partnership is the

primary use of new (post)development and Third Way theory. The separate

themes of this thesis – access, the public interest and development – on their

235

own do not provide a way forward for community broadcasting. Together,

they generate possibilities. The diagram introduced at the start of this thesis

illustrates that starting point. Somewhere in the middle – at the intersection of

the different attempts to construct community broadcasting as well as the

various traditions out of which is has emerged – exists a strong rationale for

the future of community broadcasting. Although new technologies may be

interpreted as the beginning of the end of community broadcasting, I have

argued that in fact it is an idea whose time has come.

Further models are required. Community television has developed out of, not

in spite of, cultural assumptions and values. If notions of marginality and

aesthetic lack can be left behind, then new possibilities for community

broadcasting can emerge. When combined with communication, community

can be seen to be a politics without an essence, a politics of difference. As

Wurzer has written on the notion of community, the challenge is to begin to

conceive of community broadcasting as an open-ended possibility, as

‘precisely the conversation where nobody knows what he or she will say

before he or she has said it’ (Wurzer, 1997: 97).

236

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