The Problems of the Press

Abstract

The history of broadcasting in Europe since the Second World War has been concerned with the functioning and growth of monopolies more or less controlled by the state or government, more or less independent of them, but in the last resort answerable to the source of political power. The history of the press in the same period, on the other hand, has been that of a slow and relentless move towards concentration with relatively little governmental interference — concentration due to a variety of factors among which are steadily rising production costs and a declining revenue from sales in spite of repeated rises in the price of newspapers and magazines and the general growth in population. The result has been that the press has become increasingly dependent on advertising not merely for its income but for its very existence; it has had to fight ruthlessly to increase circulations in order to increase the volume of advertising and, with it, advertising rates — this in the face of competition for revenue with commercial television, which has gradually spread to most countries as the broadcasting organisations, faced with the same rising costs as the press, have found themselves increasingly unable to make ends meet out of licence revenue alone.