Regional broadcasting in Great Scorria

Page last edited 2,179 days ago
From Nara Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Unlike many countries of the so-called "developed world", Great Scorria's commitment to regional broadcasting is low. Limited population (particularly outside of Kimberly) and a low audiovisual tax have helped diminish the importance of regional media even further, despite efforts of pressure made by the federal government. This has lead to the so-called "Kimberlian bias" in the media sector in general.

However, in the past, this was not the case. When radio and later television arrived, they all operated under a federated system sun at an arms-length from the federal government's Great Scorria Broadcasting Corporation. The development of technologies - first for radio, then for television - have led to the connection of the entire country's telecommunications lines to broadcast the same signal nationwide, instead of concentrating on state services. In the second half of the 80s, local groups pressured against the radio and television monopolies (Radio Great Scorria also operated a commercial division and Television Great Scorria had a complete monopoly) by setting up illegal radio stations, and later, television stations. As commercial broadcasting was legalized, these stations were shut down by the government unless they were allocated FM radio of UHF television licenses.

History[edit | edit source]

Radio[edit | edit source]

As with most countries, radio started off as a federal system. Individual cities had individual stations yet they were all owned by the GSBS (later GSBC). In 1955, the National Program was created to emulate what the NBS was doing, whilst the former regional stations were given the umbrella name of Local Network.

As the decades went on, the way radio was managed changed and switched to a predominantly national outlook. By the time Radio Great Scorria was founded in 1980, little airtime was allocated to the regional services - as they had been succumbed to two new commercial networks under RGS control: Magic and Kimberly Network. These networks ran entirely on FM transmitters. At the same time, a group of radio enthusiasts in Kimberly managed to set up a station to compete against this "flawed monopoly": Radio Free Kimberly. Its first broadcast was on July 25, 1980 on an unoccupied FM frequency, 101.2 (now used by an indigenous radio station) and broadcast for a few hours a night, but not every evening. The station had a musical library of over six hundred tracks, consisting primarily of rock and punk music, and invited upcoming underground musicians to play live. The station's opening and closing tune was a brief excerpt of a Sex Pistols song: the last twenty seconds of No Feelings.

RFK's success led to the creation of influencers. Barely two months have passed and the style was emulated in Neptune by Triton FM, also broadcasting on unused frequencies and its staff consisted largely of members of the State University of Neptune, even though its studios weren't near the campus.

Not all stations were awarded to live a life of debauchery. Some stations managed to promote the national languages, especially Naenian, whose place on national broadcasting was still reduced. About five radio stations were set up to promote the common goal of broadcasting Naenian-language programming to some regions of the country, to some extent that RGS cried fowl and had to revise its charter in order to include Naenian programming on its nationwide network.

Television[edit | edit source]

When television arrived to Great Scorria, the GSBC's television service was a federal system. Seven television stations were built, one in every state capital, in accordance with the law, and started broadcasting between 1971 and 1974. These stations were:

  • KITV-1 Kimberly
  • NPTV-3 Neptune
  • BKTV-5 Bikini
  • AJTV-2 Ajoe
  • SYTV-4 Senya
  • KWTV-1 Kawuro
  • PRTV-3 Pearl

By the end of the decade, the six mainland television stations were now linked, and Pearl did not get linked until satellite links were established in 1982, when TV2 launched.

Hot on the heels of the first illegal radio stations were their television counterparts. Unlike radio, the premise was to reclaim the representation television had in the states during the GSBC-era federal system. Like on radio, Kimberly was the first to experiment using unused frequencies and limited power transmitters in order to broadcast these stations. Naturally, RFK did an expansion to television in November of the same year, by launching Television Free Kimberly on frequencies now occupied by Three. Unlike RFK, TFK's programming was far more limited and consisted of live jam sessions that were also relayed on RFK. It later added a news bulletin. Television Free Kimberly considered itself as being "Great Scorria's second television channel", beating TV2 by a year and a half.