ABSTRACT
It is easy to portray the rich diversity of the existing pattern of national broadcasting regulation in Europe’s major member states as perverse and anachronistic. National regulators, with widely divergent aims and rules, predominate in an internationalising industry (Kuhn 1997:275). Distinct broadcasting and telecommunications regulators persist in a converging communications sector. And as digital technology stands poised to offer huge increases in the number of channels and consumer choice, the dominant regulatory paradigm is one apparently designed for a period of spectrum scarcity and limited competition. Critics of the status quo have a strong argument. Broadcasting remains one of the most tightly regulated industries in Western Europe. No country has plans to roll back broadcasting regulation to a point where it resembles that applied either to newspapers or telephony. And whilst politicians everywhere have high hopes of the economic growth that may flow from the audio-visual sector, regulation is more commonly designed (if not always implemented) with cultural and political, rather than economic, concerns paramount.
