European Mass Media: Deregulation, Commodification and Neo-Television

Here are a number of articles to think through some of the more specific issues on the paradigm shift in European Broadcasting during the 1980s and 1990s and the consequent shift toward deregulation and privatization. The Ginsborg and Hibberd articles are specifically on the 'Italian case'. The articles by Umberto Eco and Raymond Williams are two theoretical and critical reflections on the aesthetic repercussions of liberalization on both programs and audiences. Relate these readings to our screening of Maurizio Nichetti's The Icicle Thief (Ladri di Saponette).

Humphreys, "The 'New Media' and Broadcasting Deregulation in Western Europe"

Williams, "Public Service and the Deregulation of European Broadcasting"

Paul Ginsborg, "The Making of a Television Empire"
from Ginsborg's Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power, Patrimony (Verso, 2005)

Matthew Hibberd, "Conflicts of Interest and Media Pluralism in Italian Broadcasting"

from Bull & Rhodes, Italy: A Contested Polity (Routledge, 2009)

Umberto Eco, "A Guide to the Neo-Television of the 1980s"

Raymond Williams, "Programming: Distribution and Flow"

from Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (Routledge, 1990)

This just in:

From this week's The Economist, an article on Italy with an eloquent title if there ever was one: "The Man Who Screwed an Entire Country". Find the editorial here.

Please note that The Economist is the most respected European business weekly whose stance on economic policy can only be characterized as fanatically pro-business and pro-capitalism --in short the magazine is regarded as predominantly very conservative.

I point this out primarily to underline how basic thinking on the role, function and values of the mass media --particularly of the press-- manages to cross ideological lines. This puts the so-called Italian anomaly into perspective as an issue which is ultimately a populist and bipartisan one and not tied to specific ideological perspectives.