And Deliver Us from Segmentation

Abstract

With the rapid multiplication of channels, television has all but ceased to function as a shared public space. Except for occasional media events, the nation no longer gathers together. Unlike the replacement of radio by television as radio underwent a similar process of segmentation, there is no new medium in the wings to replace television that is likely to promote national political integration. No less than in the United States, the governments of Europe—once proud of their public broadcasting systems—are bowing to the combined constraints of the new media technology, the new liberal mood, the economic and political burden of public broadcasting, and the seductions of multinational corporations. Thus is mass democracy deprived of its last common meeting ground, and, if theories of technological determinism are applicable, the cohesion of the nation-state itself is in jeopardy. The case of Israeli broadcasting—now in the throes of this paradigm change—is presented in illustration.