Reviews

Abstract

REVIEWS KATZ, Elihu and WEDELL, George (with PILSWORTH, M and SHINAR, D.) (1978). Broadcasting in the Third World: Promise and Performance.London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., pp.305 £7.95 hb.This fascinating work has been widely described in the press as showing that television has failed to make a breakthrough in the developing countries. In fact it offers a more subtle analysis of its survey of the media in 91 such countries, with particular study of their growth in 11 particular emergent nations. Any work by two such distinguished authors should command attention, and this one repays it.The book is divided into four sections: Promise, Process, Performance and Prospect. In the first, the turbulent history of the introduction of radio and television to the third world is discussed, and reference is made to some of the embarrassing and even chaotic incidents of the 1960's. As the authors mildly remark, "broadcasting policy and, specifically, the introduction of television were not initially the result of a well-thoughtthrough development plans". Indeed not. That period was an era of hope and promise, in our country as well as in the developing world. Many governments did not even conceive of broadcasting as playing a part in a general 'development plan'. Should they have done so? As noted in the same section of the book, there are at least two other major policies in which broadcasting has been seen as playing an important role: the 'integrative' function, uniting a new nation and expressing national policy even to remote areas, and the cultural function, supporting the maintenance of traditional customs or standards. These three objectives may well contain "elements of contradiction", and in any case the glamour of new media and the relative abundance of funds to purchase equipment encouraged urgent and expansive spending.