Marketization of Television Broadcasting: A Comparative Analysis of China and Czech Republic in the 1990s

After a brief critical evaluation of this framework, presented in Hallin and Mancini’s Comparing media systems (2004), the paper will introduce an alternative framework focusing on actors, conflicts and change which should be more suited to compare the processes of marketization of the television broadcasting in China and the Czech Republic. In the next part, the paper will explain and justify the logic behind selecting these two particular cases. In the final part, the paper will explore the two different logics behind Chinese and Czech marketization of their television broadcasting and then use the actor-based framework introduced in the first part in order to analyze and compare two cases of foreign investors trying to enter the broadcasting markets in both countries, explaining reasons for Rupert Murdoch’s failure in China and Ronald Lauder’s remarkable success despite an initial setback in the Czech Republic.