The Re/Sonar meeting organized by the Faculty of Communication and Humanities of Universidad Diego Portales was held from January 19th to 26th of this year. It brought together 16 subject matter experts from Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Colombia, among them the #RegulaciónConvergente co-researcher Javier García.
Here is his presentation at the event:
Chile has around 500 community radio concessions, and they occurred in two stages. They were granted at an initial stage with the 1994 law, and then at a second stage starting in 2010.
The truth is that a large portion of community radio stations come from the first period. In other words, there has been growth, but less than 40% of current radio stations emerged from the new law.
There was a disappearance of minimum-coverage radio stations that did not meet the requirement because they were companies. And then, sure enough, another issue is that the lack of definition has turned this into a sort of jumble. Within community radio stations, there is a mixture of social collectives.
There is a very large percentage that is difficult to determine, but in any case higher than 20%, of religious radio stations or concessionaires that are churches. And in many of these cases, these stations have proselytizing purposes.
This is not a criticism because the pioneers of community radio in Latin America were religious entities. But in this case, we are referring, sometimes, to small evangelical churches that have used community radio as a form of proselytism. In that case, the issue is that there is a denaturation of the figure of community media, and this phenomenon has happened throughout Latin America.
There is recognition, but when it comes to materializing it, there are deficiencies. One of them is that institutions don’t know how to differentiate community radio stations from those that are not community. So, they end up being used as an access way.
Those unable to procure a commercial radio station use this channel. Or, if someone is unable to get, let’s say a church, since there is no religious radio figure, they use this figure. Looking at the graph (image on the following page), one might say that Chile has very good numbers. But, of course, we cannot compare a community radio concession of 5 or 20 watts with the concessions of commercial radio stations, of 200, 500 or 10,000 watts. This is the first alert we need to give.
We can see that there has not been an increase in the number of concessions. It has remained steady since the 2010 law. In other words, more commercial radio than community radio concessions continue to be granted.
Considering that there is no public radio in Chile, this is a very significant aspect because community radio has contributed a lot of pluralism. But it has done so through local radio, a very precarious radio, a radio that does not have those resources. Therefore, it cannot compete with other broadcasters, it cannot have the same programing, and it cannot have the same news bulletins.
And despite this, some of these radio stations obtain good ratings because they offer contents that the rest of the stations do not, because they talk about local things. The contribution of community media to local communication in Chile has been relevant, but founded on a very evident precariousness. And I have to say that, until now, there have been no changes in radio broadcasting, but there have been in television. What happened in television?
The scenario was even worse because there are very few community television stations. There are five community television concessions. Tenders were not held until 2018.
Then, in 2020, tenders were held and nobody applied. So we gave this alert and proposed something regarding television. Community television regulations are different from radio broadcasting and better than radio broadcasting.
They are allowed to have advertising, and their coverage is not limited. So what happened? They have a different agency. Television is not regulated by a government body but rather the National Television Council (CNTV).
In 2018, the Council had a president that made community media a priority, and that is why concessions were granted. When this president left, there were no more concessions for community television. Well, I have to give you the good news that the CNTV announced eight new concessions just a week ago. It is still a marginal number, but the good news is the partnership work of the Association of Community Channels.
Being able to show these shortcomings helped the agency to take the work seriously and say “Hey, this isn’t working. Let’s get together with the Association, let’s see what we can improve, let’s support the processes.”
There hasn’t been a regulatory change, or in the tenders. What has improved is the support of the regulator. The National Television Council started to hold meetings with this association, and thanks to this, processes were supported and concessions were improved. That is important.
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Javier García is a doctor of law and academic at Universidad de Las Américas, as well as a member of the Observatory of the Right to Communication (ODC) and researcher of the Latin American Observatory of Regulation, Media and Convergence (OBSERVACOM). He specializes in regulation and legislation of community media.
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Original text at RE/SONAR Meeting Report, , March 2024
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