The Mass Media

96 Pages·1972·11.212 MB·English

by  Stuart Hood (auth.)

STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE
In the past quarter of a century European society, and Europe's
relations with the rest of the world, have been radically
transformed.
Some of these changes came in the wake of the Second World
War; others-and in particular the division of Europe
followed as a result of the Cold War. In addition, throughout
the period other forces, and especially technological change,
have been at work to produce a major recasting of the fabric of
European society and Europe's role in the world. Many of these
changes, together with their attendant problems, have tran
scended the political and economic divisions of the continent.
The purpose of this series is to examine some of the major
economic, social and political developments of the past twenty
five years in Europe as a whole- both East and West-con
sidering the problems and opportunities facing Europe and its
citizens today.
STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE
General Editors: RoY PRYCE and CHRISTOPHER THORNE
Published titles
AGRICULTURE HUGH D. CLOUT
s.
RURAL SOCIETIES H. FRANKLIN
YOUTH AND SOCIETY F. G. FRIEDMANN
THE MASS MEDIA STUART HooD
EDUCATION joHN VAIZEY
In preparation
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION T. B. BOTTOMORE
INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURES G. DENTON
ECONOMIC PLANNING D. A. DYKER and
S. K. HOLLAND
THE URBAN EXPLOSION T. H. ELKINS
POPULATION MOVEMENTS T. H. ELKINS
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY R. IRVING
v.
WOMEN IN SOCIETY KLEIN
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY W. PATERSON and
I. CAMPBELL
PATTERNS OF CO-OPERATION AND
INTEGRATION R. PRYCE
THE Q.UEST FOR GROWTH M. SHANKS
THE MASS MEDIA
STUART HOOD
PALGRAVEMACMILLAN
ISBN 978-0-333-12704-9 ISBN 978-1-349-01240-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01240-4
© Stuart Hood 1972
Reprint of the original edition 1972
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted, in any form or by any means1 without permission.
First published 1972 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York Toronto
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
SBN 333 12704 8
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall
not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: The Post-war Scene 7
2 The Structures of Broadcasting 9
Broadcasting in Western Europe. Broadcasting
in Eastern Europe. Conflict and co-operation in
international broadcasting. The future of British
radio.
3 The Problems of the Press 49
The trend towards monopoly and the decline in
readership. France. Germany. The general
trends illustrated. The press of Eastern Europe.
4 The British Press 77
Post-war history. The process of concentration.
5 The Crisis in British Broadcasting 89
6 Conclusion: The Present Debate 92
Bibliography 94
Index 95
1. INTRODUCTION: THE POST-WAR SCENE
The reorganisation of the press and broadcasting in Europe at
the end of the Second World War was an essential part of the
process of reconstruction. Everywhere physical damage had to be
made good; plant destroyed in the fighting, by bombing, by the
casual destruction of war, had to be replaced. The reactivating
of printing presses and distribution systems, the reconstruction of
studios and transmitters, were admittedly small tasks beside the
rebuilding of railway systems, roads and bridges, and clearing of
ports, the repair of inland waterways, the restoration of tele
phonic communications, and all the other physical repairs to
houses, factories, schools, hospitals, that had to be put in hand in
order to allow society to function properly again; but they were
no less important. Where they differed from the other works of
physical restoration was that they involved the setting-up of
organisations and institutions to publish and to broadcast; these
inevitably reflected the economic, social and political changes that
the war had brought in its train. Only the neutrals - Sweden,
Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Eire - and, of the combatants,
Britain, because it had neither been fought over nor occupied,
were exceptions to the rule. But they too were to experience to
the full radical developments in the roles of the mass media and
to see, within their individual communities, not only marked
changes in newspaper reading and in listening habits but far
reaching modifications to social life itself, brought about by the
influence of the new medium, television. In most European
countries it was a case of making a breach with the past and
starting again.
War had produced widespread changes in the control of the
media, in people's reading and listening habits, and in the use of
press and radio. Thus, in France, the division of the country into
an occupied and an unoccupied zone had increased the import
ance of the local as opposed to the Parisian press, with the
result that the combined readership of local papers is now
7
larger than that of the papers published in Paris. In spite of the
shortage of newsprint, readerships rose because of the need to get
information on the course of the war, on rationing and other
administrative details. In Britain, for instance, total sales of
dailies rose from just under 1 million in 1937 to just over 15
million in 194 7. The circulation of evening papers increased
from 2 million to 3! million. Individual papers registered huge
increases; thus the News of the World raised its readership from
4 million to nearly 8 million. A contributory cause of the general
rise in circulations was the reduced size of papers which led
people to buy more than one newspaper; so too was the rise in
wages and decrease in unemployment. Whereas before the war
the working and lower middle classes bought newspapers only on
Sundays, they were now regularly reading daily or evening
papers or both. This meant that in Britain the newspaper-read
ing public had reached its utmost limits of expansion. There
would be increments because of population growth, but there
were no longer any large social groups which had to be per
suaded to become readers. From now on newspapers would be
fighting to increase sales at the expense of others. The trend to
wards concentration of ownership was inevitable.
Where broadcasting was concerned, there had in most countries
been - for much the same reasons as the rise in newspaper
readership - a rise in the number of radio sets. Two notable
exceptions were Poland, where the Germans had made it a
capital offence for a Pole to own a set, with the result that the
number of sets was halved by the end of the war, and Germany
itself, where there was a difference of 1 million fewer sets be
tween 1939 and 1945 - a consequence of war damage of one
kind or another. In Britain, on the other hand, the number rose
from nearly 9 million in 1939 to close on 10 million in 1945.
France, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Denmark (a rise of 250,000)
all demonstrate the same trend which also affected the neutrals
like Sweden and Switzerland. In the Soviet Union, astonish
ingly, in spite of the physical destruction, the evacuation of
factories and the immense strain on the economy, the number of
sets doubled. Even more important than the growth in the
number of sets was the conviction - because of the use of radio
in war-time propaganda and as a means of addressing the home
audiences - that radio had great persuasive powers. This belief
8
was widely accepted by governments and was later applied to
television, a medium which was still at a development stage in
most countries-Britain was the only country in Europe to have a
television service before the war, although the Soviet Union
began transmitting from Moscow in 1939. The BBC resumed
transmission in June 1946; but it was not until the 1950s that
the majority of European countries were able to devote the
money or resources to setting up networks.
2. THE STRUCTURES OF BROADCASTING
Broadcasting in Western Europe
The cost of developing first radio and then television, and the
degree to which that cost was met by government subsidies in
various countries, was one of the reasons for the extension of
government control over the media in the post-war era. Whereas
before the war broadcasting had frequently been wholly or in
large part in the hands of private companies, after the war mon
opolies were established almost universally with a greater or lesser
degree of state control, which might be direct or indirect. This
was to be expected in Eastern Europe, where the new Socialist
governments proceeded to administer broadcasting on the same
centralised lines as the rest of the community, the exception being
Yugoslavia where a federal system with considerable local
independence was evolved. What was remarkable was that in
Western Europe, where there was no ideological objection to
private ownership or to profit, as was demonstrated by the fact
that the press was allowed to continue on its pre-war basis, the
trend towards control of broadcasting should have been almost
universal.
Thus in France, where before the war private stations (later
closed by the Germans) had been allowed to operate alongside
state stations operated by the Postal and Telegraph Authority,
the system was replaced in March 1946 by a 'state monopoly of
development and control' of both radio and television. French
broadcasting was thus securely tied to the Government and
directly controlled by the Ministry of Information. This was not
as is often believed - a Gaullist development. There was a short
9
period of relative freedom under the Fourth Republic, but in
1956, when significantly the number of television sets reached
the 250,000 mark and television became an important com
munication medium, the Socialist Prime Minister, Guy Mollet,
placed news programmes in a special category which was sub
ject to the close surveillance of the Ministry of Information. De
Gaulle was studiously kept off the air. The dissatisfaction
generally felt with the way broadcasting was controlled was ex
pressed in two ways. Between 194 7 and 1958 no fewer than
fourteen bills were put forward in the Assembly referring to the
affairs of RTF (Radiodiffusion Television francsaise);
none of them was even discussed, far less voted on. Meanwhile
RTF lost half its listeners to the peripheral stations, which lay
outside French territory but broadcast in French to France and
were relatively free in their reporting of news and political
matters. They were (and are) Radio Monte Carlo in the
Principality of Monaco, set up during the war by Goebbels to
broadcast to North Africa; Radio des Vallees in Andorra;
Europe No. 1 in the Saar, a territory which at the time the
station started in 1952 was semi-autonomous and had not yet
been reunited with Germany; and Radio Luxembourg. All these
stations are commercial. In all of them except Radio Luxem
bourg, where the majority of the Administrative Council must
be Luxembourg citizens, the French Government established
control through SOFIRAD (Societe Financiere de Radio
diffusion), a finance company owned by the French Government.
The move to extend control to the peripheral stations, which was
accomplished in 1962, was part of that tightening of state
domination of the media of radio and television under the Fifth
Republic which led Maurice Faure, the M.R.P. deputy, to
assert that the Government had raised broadcasting abuses to
the rank of an institution.
Discontent was widespread. There were frequent protests by
RTF staff and by the French press at the suppression of news
and opinion unfavourable to the Government; by politicians, at
the exclusion from the air of those among them who were not
Gaullists, and at the monopoly the General himself used to
address the French people as and when he pleased. The dis
content became stronger in 1962 during the Algerian crisis when
television and radio journalists protested against the ban placed
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