Better Served or Better Hidden? Digital Radio and Television Services for Three Minorities in the Nordic Countries: A Preliminary Assessment TOM MORING In January 1998, a new digital radio service was Or will they? At this point, the digital radio re- launched for Finnish speakers in Sweden. This ceivers available on the market are too expensive to event constituted a milestone on the way to a brave, allow an audience to be created for the new digital new era. The new media technology paves the way services. When the national digital television pro- towards a new mediascape that will also give small jects are carried out, there will certainly be an inter- minorities a full radio service and increased televi- est in creating a multitude of new services that will sion services in their own language. As the distribu- bring more fragmentation to the markets. This in- tion capacity grows, the only limit left seems to be creased competition may negatively affect the inter- in resources for content production. est in minority services, both within the minority This new development holds promise for minor- group itself and among those who have had occa- ities that during the last decades have been margi- sional contact with the minority cultures through nalized by the introduction of new commercial their visibility on established public service chan- broadcasts. Services in minority languages have not nels. benefited from the new, market-driven media. Thus, the minorities are faced with the problem of defend- ing and developing their relative position in a new, Two Radio Stations, One TV-Channel competitive situation in which profiled stations and This article presents the background of three digital channels, not single programs, compete for different broadcasting projects aimed at increasing the audience segments. amount of radio and television services for the three Such recent opportunities for developing new largest language minorities living in Finland, Nor- and separate services for minorities are well suited way and Sweden. The minorities studied are the in- to the needs of the companies responsible for public digenous Sámi population that lives in the northern service programming. With stiffening competition parts of all three countries, the Swedish speakers in for the attention of the majority audience, public Finland (the Finnish Swedes), and the Finnish service radio and TV operators increasingly feel that speakers in Sweden (the Swedish Finns). These mi- minority programs are a burden, because audience norities are all considered to be “national minori- ratings go down when programs in minority lan- ties”, historically rooted in their respective coun- guages are being broadcast. tries. The new technology now promises additional By law, regulations or state agreements, these broadcasting capacity, and a possibility for separate three minorities have been provided with their own minority services. Digital radio, digital television, broadcasting services in their own languages. There and Internet will save the day for those language mi- is considerable variation between the levels of serv- norities that have fought an uneven battle against ice. Best equipped are the Swedish speakers in Fin- majority rule and dominance in the media. land, who have access to two radio stations and tele- vision programs amounting to half a television Swedish School of Social Science, University of channel. The situation for the Sámi population is Helsinki, P.O. Box 16, FIN-00014 Helsinki worse. Though radio programs are broadcast in Nor- 17 way and Sweden, only in Finland does this minority national trends. Following this argument, simple have access to its own radio station. The Sámi Ra- comparisons between quantified measures say little dio offers quite limited service in the smaller of the about the current or potential strength of any given different Sámi languages. minority culture. The supply of radio and television programs is The point of departure of this article is the spec- now in the process of entering the digital era. The trum of forces formed by conceptualizations of a digital radio station for the Finnish speakers in Swe- public sphere, on the one hand, and minority self- den has already started. In Norway, Sweden and representation and cultural activation, on the other. Finland, a joint digital audio broadcasting service The minorities discussed here all have a long tradi- for the Sámi population is planned as a co-operation tion as their foundation. They are guaranteed spe- between the public service companies of the three cific cultural rights, and this is supposed to include countries. The time schedule for this plan is still not them in the public sphere of the nation states in fixed. According to plans, the new service should be which they live. When it comes to broadcasting, the on the air in the year 2000. In Finland, a new digital key to this inclusion has been public service radio prime time television service for Swedish speakers and television. is planned to start within the next few years. This Public service radio and television have tradi- service would double the amount of programs tionally had the twofold goal of diversification (ser- broadcast in Finland for a Swedish audience. ving each) and integration (serving all).This goal All three projects are developed with the support has been easier to reach in a situation where the of license financed public service broadcasting com- public service companies have a factual monopoly panies. In these three minority groups, the com- in broadcasting. Deregulation and new competition panies find small but active target groups. If the have forced the public service companies all over minorities become early users, this would add legiti- Europe to rethink their strategies. Now, in many macy to the investments of the public service cases, these companies find a new challenge in companiesin the difficult intermediate phase when keeping the contact with a broad audience alive. the new digital services are built up. For approxi- Thus, it has become more and more difficult to in- mately 15 years, the companies will have to run the clude minority services on radio stations and televi- new digital radio stations and TV channels along- sion channels that are designed to attract large audi- side the old analogue ones, in spite of the higher ences. costs of maintaining two broadcasting systems. In At the same time, media competition has also all Nordic countries, the public service companies implied a challenge to the producers of minority count on having to carry on with double systems programs on radio and television to defend the posi- well into the 21st century. The old analogue systems tion of these programs within their core audience. are calculated to be obsolete by about 2010 There is a demand that minority-only radio stations (Brandrud 1997, 74). and television channels should be profiled in order to perform better within the new competitive media milieu. From the point of view of public service Methodology and Data strategies, however, this development creates a The histories of all three minorities discussed are stronger tension between the two sub-goals of serv- long. Though the process of assimilation has been ing every individual and serving all. continuous, none of these three minorities has cea- New digital techniques now offer more distribu- sed to exist. The long survival of these three lan- tion capacity for radio and television broadcasts. guage minorities renders credibility to Cormack’s These techniques may help to solve the problem of (1998, 36-43) conclusion that the absolute number diversity by providing the capacity to serve ex- of a minority population is not crucial. tremely narrow audiences. However, a media milieu Cormack disputes Abram de Swaan’s (1991) formed in this way may fail to attract broad audi- claim that a minority population must exceed one ences to a common public sphere, as is required by million people in order to support a language fully. the other ideal. Indeed, the new techniques will Instead, he indicates that six other factors may affect most likely lead to an increased fragmentation of the the status of the minority population; the level of audiences for all electronic media. This may or may activity, leadership and organization, political cul- not result in the marginalization of minorities that ture of the state, the relation between region and earlier have been relatively well integrated. Will state, the symbolic status of the language, and inter- new minority services on separate stations and 18 channels vitalize the minorities and serve as a tool 3. Audience research depicting use of minority me- for their active participation globally, regionally and dia in different segments of the minority popula- locally? Or will this separation ultimately lead to an tion exclusion of the minorities from a public discourse in which they have formerly participated? The article is based on a secondary analysis of avail- The basic problem can be formulated as a ten- able data. The audience behavior of Swedish speak- sion between two basic principles of human rights, ers in Finland and Finnish speakers in Sweden is that is the right to communicate and the right to be rather well researched. For practical reasons (sys- understood (Husband 1998, 4). The right to com- tems of census statistics, problems of definition), re- municate is based on communicative freedoms, and search concerning the media behavior of the Sámi an infrastructure that enables communication within and the census data describing both Finnish speak- society. The right to be understood is defined as a ers in Sweden and Sámi are, however, difficult to duty for all to seek comprehension of the other (this obtain. The data has been supplemented by inter- principle has been derived from the African Charter views. on Human and People’s Rights, it is here cited from Husband 1998, 5).