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Media Opening in Mexico
The evolution of Mexican broadcasting from 1985 to the late 1990s highlights the importance of market forces in prying open a once highly controlled media regime. In radio, dramatic events (such as the 1985 Mexico City earthquake) and format changes on certain talk-radio programs encouraged the emergence of high-quality, independent news programming. The financial success of these programs guaranteed their persistence, and competition for advertising revenues forced other stations to follow their lead. Consequently, from 1985 to 1996 Mexican radio evolved steadily toward independence. In television, commercial competition following the privatization of government-owned channels in 1993 put pressure on the country’s dominant network, Televisa, to introduce a measure of independence in news coverage. The effects of commercial competition were reinforced by economic crisis, which forced Televisa to search out novel strategies to protect its ratings. Attempts to change the network were also propelled by public criticism of Televisa from opposition activists and by the same dramatic events that encouraged opening in print and radio. Each new shock—the Mexico City earthquake, the contested presidential elections of 1988, the tumultuous political events of 1994, and the presidential elections of the same year—highlighted the extent to which Televisa’s oficialista news coverage was out of step with both the changing reality of Mexican politics and the tastes of its audience. In response to these pressures, Televisa’s news coverage became more representative and impartial. But the recent history of Mexico’s broadcast media also highlights the limits of change. For most of the last decade, the evolution of Mexican television did not keep pace with the transformation of Mexican civil society. Televisa’s enduring hegemony constrained market competition in television broadcasting and thus retarded media opening. It was not until 1997, when leadership turnover at Televisa led to more balanced coverage of the main opposition parties, that television began to make a positive contribution to Mexican democratization.
mexican broadcasting In contrast to magazines and newspapers, Mexico’s electronic media have a pervasive scope. Since the 1960s, the multiplication of transmitters and the proliferation of handheld radio sets have made radio signals available to virtually all Mexicans. And over the last two decades, the expansion of television broadcasting has also carried visual signals