|
Spain Radio and Television
Spain was served by four major radio networks in the
late
1980s: Radio Nacional Espanola (RNE), controlled by the
government; Radio Cadena Espanola (RCE), which consisted
of
stations formerly owned by Francoist groups; Cadena de
Ondas
Populares Espanolas (COPE), a network supported by the
Roman
Catholic Church; and Sociedad Espanola de Radiodifusion
(SER),
the largest and most popular at the commercial networks.
The 1975 Geneva Conference restricted the number of
networks
that might operate on the medium wave in each country. In
Spain,
the four major networks plus one Catalan station
broadcasted on
the medium wave as well as on frequency modulation (FM). A
number
of new stations and networks began broadcasting on FM
after the
government redistributed the franchises in 1982. The
quality and
the popularity of this FM programming had increased to
such an
extent, that in the mid-1980s, more Spaniards were
listening to
FM than to medium wave. In 1986 there were approximately
10.8
million radio receivers in the country.
Radio broadcasting was regulated by the General Bureau
for
Radio Broadcasting and Television (Direccion General de
Radiodifusion y Television). In October 1977, the
government
relinquished its monopoly on radio news dissemination and
declared that it would no longer require the country's
nonstate
radio stations to broadcast government news bulletins.
News
coverage became both faster and better after the end of
RNE's
monopoly, as was evidenced dramatically during the
February 1981
coup attempt, when radio correspondents provided vivid and
timely
descriptions of the night's events to a worried
population, in a
manner that neither the slower print media nor state-run
television could match.
Of the various forms of communications media,
television
occupied a unique position in the shaping of Spanish
social
values and institutions. Spaniards received a relatively
small
proportion of their news and information from the print
media,
and they spent more time watching television than the
people of
any other country in Western Europe except Britain. Even
most of
the poorest homes had television sets, which numbered
approximately 10 million in 1986.
Television was controlled by a state monopoly, RadioTelevision Espanola (RTVE), the responsibility for which
was
shuffled from one ministry to another in the 1970s and the
1980s.
Television as well as radio continued to be subject to
intense
government scrutiny and censorship, through the early
years of
the post-Franco era, and the Francoist notion of
television as an
arm of government did not end with Franco's death. As part
of
agreements stemming from the Moncloa Pacts, a governing
body was
established to guarantee RTVE's objectivity
(see Transition to Democracy
, ch. 1). This body, called the Administrative
Council,
was to consist of six members elected by the Congress of
Deputies
in order to ensure that it would reflect the political
composition of the Cortes. This council was less than
vigilant in
its watchdog role, however, and during the late 1970s and
the
1980s there were many cases of political and financial
corruption
as well as mismanagement on the part of RTVE.
Spain had two major television channels: one ultrahigh
frequency (UHF); and the other, very high frequency (VHF).
They
operated under the country's only television network,
Television
Espanola (TVE), which in turn was under the jurisdiction
of the
RTVE. In the 1980s, several autonomous governments
obtained
permission to build television transmission facilities for
broadcasting in their regional languages.
The most noteworthy development regarding television in
the
late 1980s was the passage of a bill in April 1986 which,
when
carried out, will end the state monopoly on television by
allowing three new private television channels to operate
under
the supervision of an independent broadcasting authority.
The
bill included restrictions to prevent private investors
from
gaining a monopoly control of a station, and it also
established
requirements about programming. The bill became law on
April 4,
1987, and observers noted that the introduction of
commercial
television might lead to an improvement in the rather
erratic
programming of Spanish television.
Data as of December 1988
|
