The Crisis of Public Local Digital Terrestrial Television in Spain: The case of Catalonia

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4185/10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-934-292-313

Keywords:

communication policy, mass media, DTT, local television, public television, Catalonia

Abstract

The article describes and analyses the state of public local digital terrestrial television (L-DTT) in Catalonia just after the analogue switch-off in April 2010. The results show that only 12 of the 37 anticipated public television channels were broadcasting, and only five more were expected to do so in the medium term. These data indicate that public local television was experiencing a crisis in the context of the digital switchover process: while some digital programmes were finding it hard to get off the ground due to severe limitations, other historical analogue stations were disappearing. The article is grounded on qualitative research based on in-depth interviews with representatives of the 37 aforementioned channels. The objectives of the paper are: to describe the L-DTT model and its roll-out status in Catalonia as at May 2010; to provide interpretative elements to explain the crisis identified; and to provide insights for the formulation of hypotheses about the state of the sector in the rest of Spain. The results suggest that the problems of public L-DTT stem from the digital roll-out policies of the Government of Spain and the Government of Catalonia, neither of which – especially the first – seems to have taken into account the pre-existing analogue reality. In this respect, the Catalan case offers signs and evidence that can be extrapolated to the situation in Spain as a whole.

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Author Biographies

Josep Àngel Guimerá i Orts, Autonomous University of Barcelona

He holds a degree and a doctorate in Journalism, both of which were awarded by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 1998 and 2006, respectively. His teaching career began at the UAB in the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences and has since continued in the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising I, where he is currently a junior lecturer.

His lines of research include mass communication structure and policies, with a special focus on national and regional DTT roll-out policies and local television. In 2007, his doctorial thesis La televisió local a Catalunya: gestació, naixement i transformacions (1976-2006) (Local Television in Catalonia: Gestation, birth and development (1976-2006)) was awarded the prize for audiovisual communication research by the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC).

He is a member of the International Studies Group for Television (GEIT), which is recognised by the Government of Catalonia, and of the Communication Institute at the UAB (InCom-UAB). As a member of InCom-UAB, he was the technical secretary (2000-2003) and then the coordinator (2003-2008) of the Local Communication Observatory (LCO). He is currently a researcher for this observatory and for the Communication Policies Observatory (CPO), also within InCom-UAB. As an author, he has taken part in every edition of the Informe de la comunicació a Catalunya (Report on communication in Catalonia, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009), for which he was the editorial secretary (2000 and 2003) and a coeditor (2005 and 2007).

Since 2003, he has been a member of various research groups working on RD&I projects funded by the Government of Spain. He has led research projects on local television funded by the Government of Catalonia and CAC. In addition, he has taken part in CPO research projects funded by the Government of Catalonia. He is a member of StruCtura, a communication structure and policies group.

Federica Alborch-Gil, Autonomous University of Barcelona

She holds a degree in Journalism, which was awarded by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 2007. She is currently a doctoral student in Communication and Journalism, specialising in communication policies, at the same university.

She is a member of StruCtura, a communication structure and policies group. As a research assistant, she has taken part in the RD&I project “Transformations of the radio and television systems in Spain within the context of digitalization (1997-2010)” led by Montse Bonet, a lecturer at the UAB. She has also worked as a research fellow for the Local Communication Observatory (LCO) within the Communication Institute at the UAB (InCom-UAB).

References

Badillo, A. (2005) [En línea]: “La desregulación invisible: el caso de la televisión local por ondas en España”, en EPTIC, 7(1), enero –abril, recuperado el 5 de junio de 2010, de https://seer.ufs.br/index.php/eptic/article/view/346/527

Consell de l’Audiovisual de Cataluña (CAC) (2009): Diagnòstic de la televisió digital terrestre local a Cataluña (setembre – octubre 2009). Barcelona: CAC

Corominas, M. (2009): Televisió local a Cataluña. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Fernández Alonso, I. et al. (2007): “Políticas de Implantación de la TDT local en España (2005-2006): los casos de las Comunidades Autónomas de Islas Baleares, Madrid, Región de Murcia, Comunidad Valenciana, Galicia, Cataluña y Aragón”. En Observatorio (OBS*) Journal, 1, Lisboa, OberCom, pp. 205 – 224.

Guimerà i Orts, J. À. (2006): “Local television in Catalonia: a model undergoing an extensive transformation”. En Quaderns del CAC, número 26, Barcelona, CAC, pp. 139 – 147. Recuperado el 5 de junio de 2010 en http://www.cac.cat/pfw_files/cma/recerca/quaderns_cac/Q26_EN_Guim_ra.pdf

Guimerà i Orts, J. À. et al. (2009): La comunicació local a Cataluña. Informe 2008. Bellaterra: Institut de la Comunicació (InCom) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).

Guimerà i Orts, J. À., Sanmartín, J. y Alborch, F. (2008): La TDT local pública a Cataluña. Segona fase. Bellaterra: Institut de la Comunicació (InCom) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). [Texto mecanografiado]

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OCL (Observatori de la Comunicació Local) (2005): “La comunicació local”. En VV.AA.: Informe de la comunicació a Cataluña 2003-2004 (Eds., M. Corominas; M. de Moragas y J. À. Guimerà). Bellaterra, Castelló de la Plana, Barcelona, València; Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I; Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Universitat de València. Servei de Publicacions, pàg. 211-230.

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Published

2011-04-01

How to Cite

Guimerá i Orts, Josep Àngel, and Federica Alborch-Gil. 2011. “The Crisis of Public Local Digital Terrestrial Television in Spain: The case of Catalonia”. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, no. 66 (April):293-314. https://doi.org/10.4185/10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-934-292-313.

Issue

No. 66 (2011)

Section

Miscellaneous

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Josep Àngel Guimerà i Orts, Federica Alborch-Gil

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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