Two parallel forces, local politics and the globalization of media markets, shaped the development of Latin American media in the 1990s. Under various different circumstances technological changes and the emergence of the global market were the key factors in the development of the media in Latin America. Under other circumstances it was local politics that determined the course of ownership and content. At the cusp of a new century and in the aftermath of substantial political and economic change in the 1980s and 1990s, it is time to take a look at how local politics and media globalization shaped the...

Historically the political elites in Latin America gravitated toward building a model of commercial broadcasting on the surface quite similar to that developed by their neighbors to the north in the United States. This model consisted of privately owned radio and television stations, financed by advertising, operating in competitive markets but with one or more large companies controlling a significant market share. U.S. investment in the region in the early decades of the twentieth century facilitated the adoption of this commercial broadcasting model. Paradoxically, however, the Latin American commercial broadcasting model was in many cases both unregulated and highly controlled....

Of the sweeping changes in the organization and regulation of Argentine industries in the 1990s, those in the communication sector have been among the most dramatic. In less than a decade, Argentine markets have shifted from a situation of limited competition (i.e., terrestrial broadcasting) or no competition (i.e., telecommunications) to an open, fiercely competitive environment. The TV industry is no exception. Until 1990, it was characterized by an oligopolistic structure with tight state control on the number of players. Advertising revenues provided most of the funding for the system, and a nationalist orientation pervaded industry regulation, reflected in national programming...

The mass media reflect and help shape whatever society in which they exist. The Brazilian media, like Brazil itself, are monopolistic and elitist. Although significant changes occurred in the Brazilian media and political system over the last decades, these changes in truth helped preserve rather than alter the larger media and political system. The media do not reflect society passively. The Brazilian media are political actors who intervene in the political order, have an active voice in the electoral process, and take sides, almost like a political party. The media help maintain the status quo because state and media interests...

During the 1990s in Central America, as most of the nations in the region moved out of wars and into an era supposedly marked by a transition to democracy, in broadcasting, large forces were assembling to create a decade for themedia caciques. In this analysis of the consolidation of media power in the region, we will focus on five countries, all of which were touched by wars. In Guatemala, the region’s longestrunning guerrilla war ended in 1996. El Salvador’s bloody civil war came to a close early in 1992, two years after the Contra War concluded in nearby Nicaragua. Although...

After the Second World War public service broadcasting in Europe was associated with the growth of the welfare state. The legal frameworks for public broadcasting stations gave them considerable autonomy in relation to the government. In Latin America, on the other hand, the vast majority of public television channels have been managed directly by governments, and assigned functions of political persuasion with greater or lesser degrees of openness or brutality. In the most blatant cases television was put directly at the service of the reigning political caudillo.

A recent review of public broadcasting stations in Latin America, representing one-fifth of...

Colombian broadcasting is changing rapidly in response to national and international developments. The most obvious change is an increase in the availability of more varied television content, supported by innovations in distribution and production technologies and the formation of new audiences.

At the national level, the changes in broadcasting are the result of the redesign or breakdown of the so-called hybrid Colombian model. In this hybrid, the state controlled the distribution channels and, at times, the content of programming. At the same time, the state also guaranteed relatively harmonious competition within the advertising market, supported national productions, and guaranteed coverage...

A new era dawned for members of the media on 3 July 2000 when they realized Vicente Fox Quesada was truly the country’s president-elect, the first opposition presidential candidate to gain power through an election since the Mexican Revolution. But most could not begin to guess what the outlines of that new reality might look like until many months later.

Fittingly, one of the first casualties of the changes to come in the Fox era was one of Mexico’s oldest newspapers,Excelsior. A month before Fox’s inaugural, the newspaper’s cooperative board, made up of employees, ousted longtime owner Regino Díaz...

In both Mexico and Brazil, television is the medium with the greatest reach, and the one most attractive to advertisers. There are several close parallels between the companies that dominate those respective national markets, including a strong dynastic character in their ownership and control, and an unusual level of both vertical and horizontal integration in their structure. Taken together, these features have constituted something of a ‘‘Latin model’’ of television, but the growth of unaccustomed competition in domesticmarkets as well as the heightened activities of global companies in the region during the 1990s raise the question of how well they...

Analysis of media policy and media politics in Paraguay, a common practice in the country’s cultural and intellectual circles, is not an easy task. During the last eleven years of democratic life, as Paraguay experienced important political advances, the mass media, particularly broadcasting media, have had an important presence. The mass media are important mainly because of their potential to provide spaces for public discussion.

Scholarly analysis on the contemporary mass media is both complicated and challenging. It is complicated because despite important developments in media industries in the recent years, little or almost no academic research has been done...

During the decade of the 1990s, Peru, under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori, entered an era of free market economic development and integration into the global economy. Over this turbulent decade the actions of the Fujimori administration were key to Peruvian history. This administration was closely tied to a specific concept and management style regarding the mass media.

For the two decades before Fujimori came to office, Peru had been ruled by populist and nationalist regimes that produced a series of original and independent-minded policies that drew the country closer to the nonaligned movement and away from either the U.S....

Television in Uruguay is not yet fifty years old. Channel 10 Saeta, the first commercial station, was founded on 7 December 1956, and Channel 4 Montecarlo, the second channel, was created a little over four years later, on 23 April 1961. Channel 12 began broadcasting on 2 May 1962, followed by Channel 5 public television on 19 June 1963 (CIIDU 1986).

At the beginning, television only reached Montevideo, the capital city, and within it, as in other countries, only well-off audiences. After a decade and a half, television expanded to the other main cities in Uruguay, which is 84 percent...

Over the past two decades Venezuela has witnessed radical changes in its political, media, and broadcasting landscape. During this period a country with one of the most solid and stable formal democratic structures in Latin America lived on a political roller coaster. The ride included two attempted military coups d’état, the constitutional impeachment of an elected president who had been reelected to a second term after having been declared politically almost untouchable, and his trial, sentencing, and removal by the Supreme Court after being found guilty of corruption.

An interim government, appointed by Congress as mandated by the Constitution, followed...