European television: politics and broadcasting in the European Community

The paper takes the European media revolution as its starting point and traces the history of the European Community´s (EC´s) first major legislation on audiovisual internationalization and deregulation-the `television without frontiers´ directive on broadcasting. Specifically, the aims of the EC´s audiovisual policy are characterized as tenuously resolving two conflicting models of broadcast regulation-the trusteeship model and the marketplace model. An evaluation of the `television without frontiers´ directive on broadcasting highlights the politics of compromise at play in the EC´s regulation of its audiovisual sector