Ole Prehn

Symposium: Radio broadcasting in Scandinavia—Part II

Radio stations were organized in Europe during the 1920s as state‐regulated public service institutions. Contrary to the model in the U.S., radio thus was embedded in the cultural and political spheres and accordingly kept outside of the market forces, although some countries allowed limited advertising. Radios role as a national service faced increasing legitimation problems, and in most Western European countries, local radio was introduced as a divergence measure to balance political and cultural convergence of national radio. Generally, local radio activities were initially an attempt to revitalize a vivid public sphere. This article describes the development in the Scandinavian countries, where local radio developed in different ways with a rather strong commercial component that filled the “commercial deficit”; resulting from public service policies and a rather fragile component of noncommercial community stations. Although the structural development in many ways showed a different pattern than ex...

Local Television and Local News

The question addressed in this article is whether there there is anything local and alternative about local television news in Denmark. Many stations claim local news to be of particular importance for their profile and the primary legitimation of local television. This article presents findings from a content analysis of programming for a week period in 1996 and, as such, is meant to contribute to an understanding of local programming content and flow. Regarding the general programming profile, both stations examined seem to have the usual characteristics of Danish local television: most of the programs are of foreign origin, and only about 10% of the total output is locally produced. This study suggests that little programming is of local origin and what there is follows traditional formulas of national broadcasting. From a media-politics point of view, then, it is questionable whether public resources should be allocated to local television news, given the limited amount of alternativeness, quality, and audience attraction