Public Interest and Television Performance in Croatia

"The paper empirically demonstrates public interest performance of Croatian commercial and public service televisions with national coverage, based on their program broadcast in the chosen weekly samples for the 2005- 2009 period. The criteria for evaluating television program output are defined a) against a theoretical media public interest model and b) against the specific Croatian media public interest model. Specific Croatian definitions of public interest are contained in media policy. Public interest is analyzed according to authors’ theoretical model of media public interest along three dimensions (content, audiences, and social goals) to construct a media public interest matrix. The sources of public interest definitions in Croatian media policy are limited to laws and regulations relevant to television broadcasting. The author proposes a theoretical definition of democratic media performance in the public interest which should include three interrelated dimensions: content – socially useful and diverse, audiences – citizens and special needs or minority audiences, and social goals – inform the citizens for political participation and contribution to democracy. Diversity as a content quality in the public interest is conceptualized additionally in contrasting conceptualizations of pluralist and neo-liberal media policy in terms of openness versus reflective diversity. Content analysis of the program guides included 5769 programs – units of analysis, which were categorized into genres in three larger classes: information programs (socially useful), entertainment, and fiction. The analysis shows the prevalence of ‘socially useful’ genres on public service channels (news, news interviews, current affairs magazines, documentaries, art and education programs), as well as greater genre diversity. The audience preferences (in terms of attention) show a lack of information programs, and an excess of fiction on Croatian national televisions." [Information des Anbieters]