Consolidating the Gospel: The Impact of the 1996 Telecommunications Act on Religious Radio Ownership
Radio ownership rules have been debated since moves toward deregulation began 30 years ago, culminating in the 1996 Telecommunications Act (Telecom Act) which eliminated national ownership limits and fundamentally liberalized local limits. The effects on radio have been controversial, with complaint...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
[2012]
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| In: |
Journal of media and religion
Year: 2012, Volume: 11, Issue: 1, Pages: 11-30 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Radio ownership rules have been debated since moves toward deregulation began 30 years ago, culminating in the 1996 Telecommunications Act (Telecom Act) which eliminated national ownership limits and fundamentally liberalized local limits. The effects on radio have been controversial, with complaints that media concentration has reduced diversity in ownership and programming. This article and an earlier companion study (Ward, 2009) examine one niche format—religious radio—which before the Telecom Act had a long history of local ownership and media access for independent voices. The present study uses published industry directories to reconstruct a year-by-year picture of changes in religious radio ownership for the period 1992-2001, or five years before and after the Telecom Act, and employs transaction-cost economics as a framework for interpreting indications of increasing consolidation. Changes in religious radio may in turn suggest how liberalized rules have affected ownership and media access in other niche formats. |
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| ISSN: | 1534-8415 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of media and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/15348423.2012.655106 |