"The purpose of this publication, which has been taken care of by our partner institution IViR of the University of Amsterdam, is to provide an overview of the often disparate information concerning regional audiovisual media in Europe and to serve as a first reference point for those interested in
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exploring their legal and operational dynamics. The introductory part sets the scene for the scope of the report and presents the most recent regulatory achievements at European level. The first part of the report opens with a survey of the current national developments, highlighting those countries where governments have been particularly active in implementing reforms in recent years, touching upon funding systems, advertising and information windows, must-carry mechanisms and frequency allocation. The different national experiences have recently been assessed under the Media Pluralism Monitor promoted by the EU. The results show that none of the countries have fulfilled all of the safeguards considered by the tool. In addition, it points out that despite the availability of legislation on regional media in most countries, only a small number of them seems to have implemented it effectively. A snapshot is provided of regional and local television in Europe from a market perspective, with country by country data on public and private broadcasters from the MAVISE database of the European Audiovisual Observatory, including specific information on language channels, regional windows and studios. The second part of the report explores a selection of national case-studies. The total variety of solutions does not allow for a sensible comparative analysis, so the purpose of this selection is rather to collect the countries that show distinctive or interesting features in their regulatory approaches. The selected countries – Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Switzerland and United Kingdom – present a canvas of possible solutions to the challenges that regional media are facing in the current times of economic crisis and digital convergence. While findability and visibility of regional media within the wide media offer that exists in all European countries is still one of the major obstacles for regional broadcasters to be known and consequently to be consumed, several examples of good practices can be traced while looking at the various national experiences." (Foreword, page 1-2)
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"This collection of writing on community media describes attempts at local media development and case studies of functioning projects. It presents a range of perspectives on grassroots media originating from community groups; research representing participant observation; hands-on community involvem
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ent; service on international boards of directors; content analysis; and ethical inquiries. The book draws on both theoretical and practical examples from Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Ghana, India, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latin America, Native Americans, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, and includes perspectives ranging from cyberdating to ethics and policy-making. Sections include Aboriginal/Indigenous Experiences, Current Case Studies, and Virtual Community Visions. It intends to appeal to a range of academic disciplines, community media groups, and people who work in their local cable television centres in order to provide an alternative voice to mainstream media." (https://www.comminit.com)
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"This book represents one step in explaining international efforts to promote independent media. It attempts to examine the nature and significance of media assistance, discussing the evolution of the field, the focus of various programming approaches, and the possible impact of such efforts. It pre
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sents case studies of media assistance programs in different countries. The book concludes with a set of recommendations for expanding and deepening media assistance for the international community. This book project grew out of a multi-country study that I directed in 2002–2004 to examine media assistance programs funded by the US Agency for International Development. The overall purpose of the study was to assess the nature and effectiveness of USAID programs and make policy and programmatic recommendations for the future. In writing this book I have mostly drawn from the massive information collected during two years of research and analysis. The book is based primarily on three sources of information. First are reviews of literature covering scholarly writings, project and program documents, and articles in popular magazines and newspapers on media assistance. Such reviews were country specific as well as global in nature. Because the academic literature is extremely limited and media assistance is hardly covered in magazines and newspapers except in high-profile cases such as Bosnia and Serbia, reviews largely relied on program documentation. I had the unique advantage of perusing thousands of documents that are not available to the public. Although mostly descriptive and often self-serving, they identified critical gaps in our knowledge and illuminated the challenges and achievements of international media endeavors. Second, my colleagues and I undertook extensive fieldwork in seven countries/regions—Afghanistan, Bosnia, Central America, Indonesia, Russia, Serbia, and Sierra Leone. In each of these cases, research teams conducted extensive discussions with international donor agencies, officials of host countries, project staff and contractors, and local media experts and journalists. Every possible effort was made to interview all those experts and managers who had intimate knowledge of the ongoing media assistance programs. Teams also examined locally available documents and reports and used translators to translate documents into English when necessary. In the absence of hard quantitative data, they largely relied on available documentation, indepth interviews, and their own knowledge of the media scene for their findings and conclusions. Finally, I organized a series of meetings in Washington, D.C., to discuss the findings of the country studies and explore new directions for media assistance programs. Such meetings helped to identify many problems and challenges facing media assistance programs and helped in formulating a set of recommendation for policymakers." (Chapter 1, page 10-11)
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"What follows from the analysis of the surveyed cases is a high level of variety of public television activity on the regional level. This clearly depends on the size and population of different countries, on the central and local administrative organization, on the level of linguistic homogeneity a
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nd from a series of historical, political and cultural factors. For this reason is difficult to talk of variable models of public regional television. In reality, however, there is an important factor of comparison, which allows us to subdivide the surveyed cases in two large categories how we did in the first step report: the statute of regional television centres in terms of independence or organic dependence on the national television companies. In Bosnia, Denmark, Greece, Netherland, Portugal, Russia and Serbia there are public regional television centres independent from national television companies. In Albania, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland and Slovenia there are regional centres, which constitute an organic and integrated part of the national television companies. Where regional public televisions are independent in some cases they broadcast only to the regional population as in Denmark, Portugal, Netherland, Finland, Russia, in other cases they broadcast at national level as in Belgium and Greece. Where regional public televisions are local branch of national companies in some case they produce only for regional transmissions as in Albania and Finland, in other cases they produce also for national public television channels as in Czech Republic and Sweden. In the case of Portugal, regional television centres are independent companies, owned in part by national public television, and they produce programs also for the international public channel to reach the “diaspora” of regional population. A second factor of comparison concerns the relationship between the regional television centres and the regional political, cultural, and social context. In some cases the relationship is important as in Bosnia, Portugal, Belgium, Russia, Serbia in other are not evident as in Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland. A third factor of comparison concern the extension of regional broadcasting activities. In some cases the regional activity is limited to some daily news broadcasted in a window inside the national programs as in Finland and Ireland, in other cases it concern a more or less wide range of programs of various genres as in Netherlands, Denmark, Russia, Portugal. In correspondence to that dimension there are differences of the economic resources at disposal of each regional television." (Introduction, page 2-3)
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"Recoge las experiencias más importantes habidas en las últimas décadas en América Latina, especialmente con estudios de caso de Cuba, Perú, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Argentina y Brazil. Los autores estudian las relaciones de los medios con la política, sus implicaciones, la prens
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a alternativa etc." (Álvarez/Martínez Riaza: Historia de la prensa hispanoamericana. Madrid 1992)
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