Chile

Introduction
Regarding population and geographic extension, Chile is a small country with an estimated of 18 million people living in 291,930 sq. mi., located at the end of the world, in the Southern Cone, surrounded by Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and the Ocean Pacific. However, it has been somehow relatively worldwide known due to the neoclassical policies applied since the mid-1970s, labeled also as neoliberal. Harvey explains neoliberalism as “a theory of political economy practices proposing that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within and institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, unencumbered markets, and free trade. The role of the state is
to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (Harvey, 2007).

Thus, some authors argue that Chile has been the first neoliberal experiment worldwide while it was ruled by a military dictatorship since 1973 and until March, 1990 (Klein, 2007; McChesney, 1999; Paley, 2001; Valdés, 1989). As Valdés points out, neoclassical theory not only was applied with radicalism in Chile, but became also “the founding philosophy of a new society” (Valdés, 1989: 35). Actually, Chile has been a warm laboratory for the most liberal economic trends since the 1950s, when the so-called Klein-Saks mission was hired by the Chilean government to analyze the national economy and suggest adjustments. Its report settled the roots of the neoliberal project that comes later (Narbona, 2014).

Within this frame, the Chilean economic model is “characterized by an export-driven open economy, private and foreign investments, regulation by the market, an independent Bank Central, and protection of private property” (Paley, 2001).
In fact, traditional public goods, as health, education, and retirement funds, have been privatized. Under this umbrella of broad social and economic shifts, the military dictatorship radically transformed the characteristics of the Chilean media system, as well, and particularly the broadcasting industry, its financial scheme, and the purposes of it.

So, what are the features of the Chilean broadcasting? What are the political and economic foundations of the current state of the television system in Chile? What kind of modernization –if any- characterizes the television industry in Chile? How is it connected to broader economic and political changes? In short, how has been possible that a sate and university-based broadcasting turned into a heavily commercialized one? In fact, what today’s “commercialized television industry” does it actually mean? And what are the milestones of this
process?

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical review of the transformations occurred in the television media system in Chile after the post-dictatorship; that is, since 1990 until today.
This is a key step in order to better understand the current status of the Chilean television industry. Particularly, the paper outlines the crucial political changes in the period, regarding the democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to uninterrupted democratic governments. Certainly, this epochal shift played a role in the reorganization of the media field. The solidification of a centered-market economy in the last 25 years is also at the core of the cultural field’s adjustments, including the media. Instead of a nostalgic account, the paper’s goal is to better understand the nature and extent of the radical changes in the Chilean television industry.

The article focuses on television and not radio. Despite that internationally there are several examples in which broadcasting regulation includes both television and radio –such the United Kingdom, Australia, Nordic countries, Spain, France, and the United States, for instance-, the Chilean experience diverges from it and radio was born as a commercial enterprise in the early 20th Century, while television adopted a public service regulatory
frame.

Drawing on an archival material, official documentation, and a literature review of secondary sources, this article attempts to provide a comprehensive picture of the historical roots of the current affairs within the television industry in Chile. Despite it is a small market –or maybe because of that-, the paper sheds light into a broader phenomenon, as the global trends of trans nationalization in the media industry, and to what extent they are also articulating local specificities, strongly entangled by historical, cultural, and also regional particlarities. In other words, the purpose is to identify in Williams’ frame (Williams, 1977) what features are dominant, what are the residual traces of the former state of things, what would correspond to emergent characteristics, and to what extent they are mutually affected in the cultural landscape of a television system located at the periphery of the global markets but traversed by them, anyway.