14_Mass_media

Printed media was the only form of mass communication until the invention of radio in about 1914. The radio became hugely popular between the two World Wars. Nowadays, radio is not used only as a medium and a source of information, but also as a source of entertainment and music news. The radio stations are either public (non-commercial) or commercial. Public stations often focus on broadcasting the news, discussions or interviews with important personalities. Commercial stations broadcast more advertisements and also more hit music. We can choose what station we would listen to according to the orientation of the music they broadcast, some of the stations are orientated on the newest pop songs, others on rock or classical music. In Czech Republic, we have public stations such as Český rozhlas, but also lots of commercial stations like Impuls, Frekvence 1 or Evropa 2. I also can’t forget to mention our regional radio station here in Kladno, Relax Radio.

Listening to the radio is very convenient for example for the drivers who can have fresh information about the traffic situation on our roads and sometimes it’s the only thing they could distract with.

The next medium is television, which is probably the most important and influential mass medium. It started broadcasting in 1920’s and it has soon become the most popular medium because it attracts the viewer with both sound and vision. We have different types of TV stations – the two basic ones are public and commercial. Public stations are served as a public service and they’re paid from the national budget and by viewers who pay monthly the TV license. Commercial stations are sponsored by the companies, which means that broadcasting of these stations is often interrupted by the television comercials. These two kinds of stations can be compared to broadsheets and tabloids in the press - the public stations broadcast more Czech movies, news, discussions and other serious programmes, but the commercial stations focus on entertaining programmes, soap operas, foreign movies, quiz shows and reality shows.

There are also satellite and cable televisions with a wider selection of programmes. These TV channels are often specialized, such as music, sports, news or movie channels and many more.

In the Czech Republic, we have four basic TV channels - two public ones, ČT1 and ČT2, and two commercial channels, Nova and Prima. We’ve got even more channels that broadcast digitally, such as ČT4 Sport, ČT24, Nova Cinema, Prima COOL or TV Barrandov.

Recently, we can consider also the Internet as the new mass medium. The Internet as we know it these days was created in the early 90’s and it spread quickly all around the world. After these years of progress, the Internet has become a real rival of other mass media. It can actually replace all of them - we can now read news on the Internet and also use the latest trends - listen to radio or watch television through the Internet. It’s possible that in the future we won’t need paper press, radio receiver or the TV set anymore - we will be able to find it all on the Internet.