Community Radios and Local Power: a profile of legalized community radios in

the northeastern region of São Paulo State, Brazil 1, 2

Gisele Sayeg Nunes Ferreira – Universidade Anhembi Morumbi3

Abstract

This article presents research data obtained from interviews with 22

administrators of RadComs (community radio stations), with the purpose of analyzing
the working standards of legalized community radio stations in the northeastern region
of São Paulo State, Brazil. The goal was to identify what are the relationships between
RadComs and the powers and how these affect the activities of RadComs, discussing
topics such as local participation, citizenship and democracy. The results demonstrate
that, established under the class of “community”, most of the new authorized RadComs,
reproduce models similar to the commercial networks constituted as instruments of
local political, economic and religious powers. In the majority of cases, they are also
business investment opportunities for small local enterprises without the necessary
circumstances or financial structure to participate in commercial tenders.

Key words: community radios, power relationship, democracy, citizenship, local

participation

1
This article presents some information from the Dissertation of a Masters Degree entitled “Community
radio and local power: a case study of legalized radio stations in the northeastern region of Sao Paulo
State”, presented in April 2006 at the University of Sao Paulo (ECA-USP) under the tutorship of Prof. Dr.
Luiz Fernando Santoro.
2
Work presented in IAMCR Paris 2007, in the Community Communications Section
3
Journalist, Master in Sciences of Communication by the Communications and Arts School of the
University of Sao Paulo (ECA-USP), doctorate student of Communications and Semiotics (PUC-SP),
professor of the Radio and TV and Journalism Courses of the Anhembi Morumbi University and the
Laureate International Universities, São Paulo, Brazil. E-mail: gisele.sayeg@gmail.com

1
1. Introduction
In this historical point in time, discourses on the processes of mediated
communication, complicated by technical reason, are heightened. In a more and more
globalized world, where borders are fluid, but at the same time, where fragmentation
and differences increasingly occur, communication and the media act are important
spheres, stimulating discussions on diverse themes including behavior, hegemony,
accumulation of capital, mediation, language, interactivity and power.
Radio is to be found in this multifaceted scenario; a key to important
investigations for us to reflect on discussions about a triad of agendas: means of
communication – citizenship – democracy. For us, the frontiers of this vehicle are
interesting, to glance at community communications, traditionally seen as a point of
resistance in this network marked by power and domination relationships. From its own
nature, community broadcasting allows the community to identify itself and become
recognized; it provides a voice that may offset and balance of the hegemonic argument
of capital. On guaranteeing space for local involvement, RadComs establish themselves
as legitimate instruments to exercise democracy and to guarantee rights. The low-cost of
implantation, production and even of access, aligned with the possibility of reaching a
significative number of listeners, makes radio broadcasting a rich instrument at the
service of community communications.
It is not surprising that the approval, in 1998, of Law number 9612, named the
Community Broadcasting Law, is a milestone in the history of Brazilian radio.
Community radios, as defined by law, are small non-profit making radio stations with a
restricted territorially reach and with content directed towards the community. The law
is the result of more than two decades of demands by the free radio movement of Brazil.
Its implantation outlines the interests of free access, by means of radio broadcasting,
that emerges during the process of re-democratization. More than two thousand radio
stations motivated, by the promise of “democratizing communication to democratize the
society” and to empower citizens have already been authorized in different regions of
the country, definitively changing the configuration of the scope of broadcasting.
However, it is worrying that some radio stations, supported under the pretence of
democracy, of common people and of citizenship, have after legalization, not always
complied, in practice, with these principles. This concern led us to consider the
aspirations of RadComs (established as vehicles to uphold citizenship and interact with
the community in the light of democracy) in the reality in which they dynamically

2
interrelate and receive expression, that is, to verify how the power relations may weaken
these ambitions in the legal framework process and to understand, beyond the law, how
these relationship are exerted in the day-to-day running of community radio stations.
Our objective was to identify what are the power relations and how they are organized
in the dynamics of legalized RadComs to, subsequently, look for answers to questions
that, thus far nine years after the law was passed, cause controversy and discussion: how
are legal community radio stations defined? Do they follow the legal requirements?
How are concepts, such as “citizenship” and “community” understood by administrators
responsible for community radio stations? What is the effective participation of the
community in the programming and in the management processes of RadComs? Does
the programming of these radio stations favor diversity and “oxygenate” the system,
compared to the programming of the larger networks? Without intending to exhaust the
subject, our goal was to add to the debate using information collected from the day by
day life the radios by means of semi-directed quanti-qualitative research, carry out with
22 administrators of legalized RadComs in the northeastern region of São Paulo State,
in the second semester of 2004.
The obtained data led us to affirm that, even intimately linked to the
communities in which they operate, a significative number of new legalized radio
stations in the northeastern region of São Paulo State, are restricted to being commercial
investments of small entrepreneurs. Without the circumstances or financial structure to
fulfill the requirements necessary to obtain a commercial radio, these small local
businessmen choose to work in the border lands called community radios with less
bureaucracy and smaller investments involved in the implantation process. For this they
count on the support of the political leadership, in particular, members of the federal
government, to assist in the legal process within the Ministry of Communications. This
“alternative” creates some problems, as, at the same time as being mere reproducers of
the unilateral broadcasting model of large vehicles of communication, some community
radio stations are tightly subjected to the doctrines of local powers.
In respect to initiatives in the theoretical field, research investigating this
historical moment, important in the dynamics of radio in the country, is scarce, as few
works concentrate on the analysis of the running of legalized community radios stations,
those that have already attained definitive licenses. An important initiative, in respect to
this, was taken by the Regional Council of Community Radios of Rio Grande do Sul

3
 4
State, Brazil (Conrad/RS), which developed a research that also tried to evaluate the
concepts and the content of these radio stations.
Due to the wide-ranging and repeated questions among those who work with this
topic, the Conrad/RS questionnaire was used to support the design of the research that
we performed in the interior of São Paulo State. We also used a series of open
interviews with administrators of the sector, as well as an interview with the then
Secretary of Electronic Communication Services of the Ministry of Communications,
Elifas C. Gurgel do Amaral, who made the number of permits and ongoing applications
available to us and discussed the perspectives for community and commercial radios.

2. Interference in communication: brief profile of the analyzed RadComs

Most definitive and temporary permits granted in São Paulo State were only
released very recently, between 1999 and 2000, and more intensely in 2003, after a
group in the Ministry of Communications was created to exclusively analyze and speed
up applications, which clearly shows that community broadcasting, regularized by law
in 1998, has become more “visible” in communities in the interior of the country only in
the last four to five years. Nine years after its creation, not only the necessary
adjustment, but also its vices have become more apparent. The Ministry itself5,
responsible for granting RadCom licenses, confirms that it has received numerous
allegations of irregularities committed by legalized community radios: from the
beginning of 2002 to September 2004 the official organ registered 562 allegations with
194 resulting in investigations. However, the Ministry has not carried out and does not
have knowledge of research or studies about the running or even the problems faced by
these radio stations.
Although São Paulo was the pioneer in pirate transmissions and the origin of a
significant number of requests for licenses, at the end of 2004 the city had still not been
contemplated for any permit 6. Hence, we chose the region of São José do Rio Preto,

4
The research, developed by the General Secretary of the Counsel, Dagmar Carvalho, was presented in
the X plenary of FNDC (Sao Paulo, September 2003), in whose site it is available as Thesis nº 4
(http://www.fndc.org.br, accessed on October 21, 2004). Still ongoing, on January 13, 2006, the research
was broadened and directed towards licensed radio stations. The intention of the general secretary of
Conrad/RS, Dagmar Camargo is to visit, in person, the 31 RadComs that responded the questionnaire by
e-mail.
5
Information obtained by interview conceded by the then secretary, Gurgel do Amaral
6
Only in December 2006, the Ministry of Communications opened inscriptions for entities interested in
operating RadComs in the city of Sao Paulo to present their applications. However, in June of 2007 the
question had still not been solved. The Ministry continues to analyze the documents presented. The

4
located in the northeast of the state for this research: this city has several community
radios with definitive licenses, many of which have been working legally for more than
four years (which has given us a more precise notion of the real performance and to
better identify the problems). These RadComs are located in small municipalities with
high human development indexes (HDI) that registered, in contraposition, numerous
tenders for commercial radio stations over recent years. Consequently, the region offers
good conditions to analyze the functioning of legalized community radio stations, as
well as to observe and to compare applications for commercial radio stations.
São José do Rio Preto is a city that covers an area of 25,476 km2 with 1.299,589
inhabitants (census of 2000), 10.92% of whom live in rural areas. According to
information from the Ministry of Communications7, in October 2004 of the 2,197
authorized community radio stations that were functioning in the country, 288 were
located in São Paulo State, and 34 of them were distributed in the region of São José do
Rio Preto, that is, 1.55% of the national total. Only 3.5% of the population of the state
of São Paulo live in the northeastern region, but 12% of licensed RadComs in the state
are located in this area, most of which are located in small municipalities: 19 RadComs
in towns with up to 10 thousand inhabitants; 10 RadComs functioning in towns with
between 10 to 20 thousand inhabitants and 5 RadComs in towns of more than 20
thousands inhabitants8. In most of these towns, the community radio is the only radio
station, which places it in the center of the life of the community, as the most important
means of day-to-day communication9.
In the interviews, we tried to talk to the individuals directly responsible for
making each RadCom viable, those responsible for the installation and the content, who
answered questions grouped in six topics: 1) Conceptual questions with the objective of
determining the ideas of radio station managers on community communications, the
opinions of administrators in respect to Law 9612/98 which controls the activity, and

impasse, according to the specialists and leaders of the Community Radio Movement, resides in the
indication of only one channel (198) for community radio stations in the capital city.
7
see http://www.mc.gv.br/rc/autorizacao/rtpEntidadesAutorizadas300804.pdf.
8
Data of Anatel show that, in 2006, 2734 community radio stations legally operate in Brazil. Source:
www.anatel.gov.br. The Ministry of Communications affirms the existence of 354 authorized RadComs
in Sao Paulo State. Source www.mc.gov.br – last accessed in June 2007
9
In such communities we saw that local newspapers almost always have weekly or fortnightly editions.
In some communities, newspapers circulate only once per month. Normally TV stations transmit
information and the day-to-day life of the large cities (where their studios and offices are located), with
limits to reproduce only isolated events from small towns. Thus, as in many other places around the
country, the radio is, as a rule of thumb, the only source of local information and services for the
population; the only instrument in which listeners can find topics of their interest, where they can more
closely exert mediating relationships.

5
also the opinions regarding the similarities and differences to commercial radio stations;
2) internal records of radio stations, involving secret information (addresses, phone
numbers, etc.), which are not publicized to prevent identification of the radio station
(each radio station is identified by a number); 3) Historical data, which attempts to track
the development of the implantation of the radio station and its relationship with the
community; 4) The programming which aims to collect information on the content
broadcast by authorized RadComs; 5) Sustentation, a section on information about
attaining recourses to maintain the radio station as well as the main problems and how
they are solved and 6) Legal situation, identifying information in respect to the
administrators and the management technique adopted by the RadComs.
In spite of verifying, at the end of 2004, the existence of 34 authorized RadComs
functioning in the northeastern region, we decided to restrict the number of interviews
to 21 radio stations, basically, for two reasons: due to the significant percentage (62% of
the total, a representative number of the segment) and to avoid the possibility of
identifying the radio stations and the interviewees (which would be inevitable if we
interviewed administrators from all the radio stations).
Hence, we selected 21 radio stations from different points of the region in
question, interviewing a total of 22 administrators of RadComs. One of the radio
stations was sold at the beginning of 2005 and so we though it apt to interview both
administrators (old and current) of the radio station10. A small amount of information on
the interviewees gives us a good idea of the universe under analysis 11.
 Radio 1 A – We interviewed the first president of the entity, who had applied for
and attained authorization. The radio station was sold for 45 thousand Brazilian
real at the start of 2005 to administrators who here we denominate as Radio 1 B.
This payment was only in respect to the right to control the radio station. The
president of Radio 1 A became an expert and today has a company that assists in
the setting up of community and commercial radio stations. Over five years he
has attained licenses for an educative TV and another RadCom, under the name

10
It is important to emphasize that the law on Community Broadcasting in Brazil prohibits any form of
negotiation or commercialization of licensed community radio stations, with a penalty, for those that do,
of annulment of the license to operate.
11
Aiming at preserving the identity of participants and their radios, we described all involved as men
although some women were also interviewed. It is interesting that only three women took part in the
interviews, responding the questionnaire, and in all three cases, the interview was closely observed by a
man, who gave the final word. In the visits that we made to the radio stations, we also found few women
presenting programs: only on Radio 10, Radio 13, Radio 14 and Radio 16.

6
 of a frontman. Based on the reasons that stimulated the creation of community
radio stations, we define Radio 1 A as preponderantly for commercial reasons12.
 Radio 1 B – The new president of the entity is a business man who “bought” the
radio station in partnership with the vice mayor of the town. We clearly perceive
the convergence of two reasons: business and political to similar extents.
 Radio 2 – the interviewed president of the entity is a radio professional and has
the ex-mayor and one town counselor as partners. The reasons that led to the
creation of the radio station are predominantly centered on commerce.
 Radio 3 – The interviewed administrator is the art director of the entity which
was originally founded by a priest and is established in a property provided by
the Catholic Church, categorizing its purpose as essentially religious since its
foundation.
 Radio 4 – The art director was interviewed, who is also the nephew of the
president of the entity (who no longer lives in the community) and son of the
vice-president. Although he is not part of the directorate, he makes all the
decisions about the radio station which is established in a property of the family.
Thus, the motivation is chiefly related to business.
 Radio 5 – The treasurer of the radio station, located in the premises of the
Catholic Church, was interviewed. The priest who founded the radio station is
the ex-president of the community entity and today is town mayor and continues
with two programs on the radio. In spite of the political post of the founder, we
stress the reason for the creation of this RadCom was mainly religious.
 Radio 6 – The president of this radio station is a radio professional and the
owner of vehicles with loudspeakers used for advertising purposes. The radio
station is established on his propriety, which clearly identifies the motivation as
chiefly for commerce.
 Radio 7 – One of the directors of the entity was interviewed together with the
ex-president, the current town mayor and another director (who, in reality, were
the individuals that answered most of the questions). The latter two together
with a third director founded a company that is the owner of the equipment and
the building leased by the RadCom. It is clear that the motivation is mainly
political.

12
NUNES FERREIRA, 2006: 136-150.

7
 Radio 8 – The person interviewed (designated by the current president) was the
administrator of the entity and is today the town mayor. The interview took
place in the City Office with some information being included later at his
request. We observed that the motivation was predominantly political.
 Radio 9 – The president was interviewed but the radio station had not started
broadcasting yet. He is a business manager, has lived in the town for seven years
and has a monthly newspaper printing three thousands copies in each edition,
which has the same name of the radio station, which led us to conclude, among
other reasons, that the motivation is mainly for profit.
 Radio 10 – The president, who is also a local government official, was
interviewed. The current town mayor was also present for a short time but did
not answer any questions. According to the history of the radio station, its
objective is principally centered on the community.
 Radio 11 – The interview involved the secretary and the director of the entity,
who is responsible for the radio station, is an electronics technician and has a
music equipment rental company. Thus, the intention is mainly for business
purposes.
 Radio 12 - The interviewee is the second treasurer who is also contracted as the
manager of the radio station, with participation of the vice-president. This radio
station is set up in a building rented from the Catholic Church, which was
responsible by the application to the Ministry of Communications. The church
also founded the radio and acquired all the equipment. Similar to radio stations 3
and 5, the composition in the directorate, including volunteers and hired staff, is
based on the catholic community of the town, which demonstrates a
preponderant religious objective.
 Radio 13 – This interview was carried out together with Radio 14. The
administrators are brothers who founded radio stations in neighboring towns
with the support of their respective spouses and the families (who are part of the
directorate). In spite of some historical differences, the two RadComs have
commercial objectives.
 Radio 14 – Interview with radio 13. The mother of the administrators is the
president of one of the two community entities, therefore characterizing the
objectives as predominantly business.

8
  Radio 15 - The art director was interviewed at the suggestion of the current
president, who is his cousin. This radio has family involvement with the former
town mayor. The interviewee does not belong to the directorate. In this case, the
objective is predominantly political.
 Radio 16 – The president was interviewed with his brother who is director. Both
are radio professionals who have a music equipment rental company and
vehicles with loudspeakers used for advertising purposes. Thus, the motivation
is commercial.
 Radio 17- The president of the radio station was interviewed assisted by the
manager. The RadCom was created and controlled by the president’s brother
who lives 700 km away. The goal is predominantly for profit.
 Radio 18 - The president, who is electronics technician in regional commercial
radio stations, was interviewed. The RadCom was created in partnership with a
radio professional (who works in regional commercial radio stations), thus
demonstrating the business objective.
 Radio 19 – The radio station president, who is responsible for the entity, was
interviewed. Its goal is predominantly communitarian.
 Radio 20 – The interview was performed with the former president and founder
of the entity, which is today controlled by a relative (a type of frontman and
employee of the radio station). In spite of being the person really responsible for
the RadCom, he left the directorate to set up a company that has already won
four tenders for commercial radio stations and is waiting for the result of a fifth.
 Radio 21 – The hired art director was interviewed. He does not belong to the
directorate, but alternates between administrator and manager of the radio
station as well as producing programs. He is a member of the Baptist Church
that was responsible for founding the radio station and the purchase of the
equipment with the help of the religious community in the town. The goal is
chiefly religious.

3. Conclusions: some research data.

Dedicated to the task of reflecting whether the principles contained in the law
are a guarantee that RadComs really offer a path to citizenship and to strengthening
democracy, this research tried to study power relationships and their interactions. For

9
this, we tried to evaluate the role of the citizen in the programming and administration
processes as well as to trace the vision of these administrators about concepts closely
related to RadComs, including democracy, community and citizenship.

The concept of community for the interviewees is intimately linked to the

municipality, the town where the radio station broadcasts. Thus, community radio, for
most administrators, is a radio centered on the interests of the community and
municipality (Radios 4, 8, 9, 11, 15, 17, 18, 20 & 21), with its main objectives being to
provide a service (Radios 1A, 2, 5, 7, 10, 16 & 19) and assistance to this community
(Radio 13 & 14). According to the opinion of 59% of the interviewees, the service
rendered and the opening for the community are the main aspects that determine if a
radio station is communitarian or not. Again, it is necessary to remember that most radio
stations are to be found in small provincial towns, which seems to be an important
factor when defining the term community.

This notion of community used by RadComs, although it is distinct, has

profound similarities to its legal definition. Both define the concept from geographical
criteria: on one hand the law determines a community as inhabitants in a one-kilometer
radius and so here there is severe distortion, as the law itself allows the use of a
transmitter of 25 watts, that, fatally, covers a much larger area; and on the other hand,
radio stations see the municipality as the criterion on which to define the area of
transmission.

In any way, the research showed us that in none of the cases – either from the
legal aspect or from the viewpoint of administrators –, the sense of belonging, of
cultural identification or interests, of a harmony among individuals that emerged from a
prior understanding and not from a future consensus, was considered. On ignoring the
constituent basis of the community, which certainly can not be defined only from
geographical criteria, the law seems to ignore that the construction of community
participation is sustained by these feelings.

Half of the interviewees believe that if, on one hand, the law, in a certain way,
represents an improvement, by allowing communities throughout the country to have
their own communication channel, on the other, it is essential that “adjustments” and
“corrections” that allow not only the installation of radio stations, but also their survival

10
are encouraged. Legislation should be only “the starting point” for wide-ranging
discussions (Radio 3) that must be continued by society, with the aim of demanding
governmental promises to change points that today strangle RadComs, by restricting
their work with contradictory limits and demands:

It [legislation] does not make it clear [which are] the limits between what
is possible and what is not. At the same time that it permits something, in
the future it prohibits. [The law on community broadcasting] is a law of
‘cannots’. (…) You cannot have financial support; you cannot focus on
your community as a whole [due to the limits in power]. (…) The rural
communities do not receive the same information as the urban community.
Inhabitants in the rural community can not participate in the entity as an
associate member, as director, because the law also prohibits this. He must
live within the urban community. The law is clear about this (Radio 20).

We also tried to report similarities and differences in respect to commercial

radios. In relation to the differences, 82% of the community radio administrators affirm
that they abridge the form of presenting advertisements: commercial radios - normal
advertisements and on RadComs - cultural support. The similarities for 77% of the
interviewees are found in the level of music and programming.

In respect to this, we found that the Internet is a precious instrument in setting up

programming for 81% of the community radios. From internet, administrators download
not only music, but entire programs. News information transmitted by the majority of
the researched radio stations is not produced internally, on the contrary, it is freely
available from radio news agencies such as Radio 2 (from São Paulo) or the Centre of
Radio Journalism (from Curitiba). Only six radio stations (29%) transmit news
programs, as well as news flashes, with an employee or team employed for this purpose.
Music programs are no different: They are produced, in part, from three or four sites
that offer a list of the most played songs in Brazil and from around the world (an
exception is Radio 21 that plays only gospel music).

If RadComs were created as a counterpoint to the popular programming of the

large radio networks and to offer information centered in their area of transmission, are
they fulfilling their role if they broadcast the same homogenous music and news

11
programs? The response of the administrators is positive: firstly because RadComs,
according to them, need to transmit what the people want, as, without an audience there
is no reason for them to exist and additionally, because in many radio stations, the
programming is accomplished with active participation of the listeners that, apart from
asking for specific songs, frequently suggest programs and express their opinions of the
work of broadcasters.

It is important to remember that most RadComs do not have the resources or

sufficient structure to purchase CDs or maintain a news team. Consequently, they
download songs from the internet and, to comply with the minimum legal requirements
of news programming, transmit information from national and state levels that they
receive free of charge from news agencies.

In spite of the apparent discrepancy, most researched radio stations guarantee

that they put on the air all the information regarding to the community in which they
operate. This is not only due to legal requirements, but also because administrators
understand that this is the best way to guarantee audiences, that is, all interviewees have
an accurate idea of what the community wants to be transmitted on local radio stations
and that this is what makes them different to commercial radios.

On the other hand, this research clearly shows the diversity of the programming
transmitted by community radio stations, as opposed to the segmented content we
observe in large commercial radio stations. Only two RadComs opted for segmentation:
Radio 20, which only broadcasts country music and Radio 21, gospel music (which, in
its turn, does not stop it being a counterpoint to commercial radios). All the other radios
have a range of styles and music programming that we rarely find on the large
networks: from traditional country music, which is popular of the interior of São Paulo
State, to hip hop, religious music and more traditional Popular Brazilian Music.

Also in respect to the religious programs we observed the same diversity. In

spite of finding four radio stations with close links to churches (three radio stations
linked to the Catholic Church and one to evangelical churches), we identified an open
space without discrimination on the other radios. With or without financial
collaboration, the radio stations are used for all types of religious manifestations.

12
 In relation to local participation in the programming of the studied radio stations,
taking the five levels of participation as described by Peruzzo13 as our basis, we
concluded that local participation can not be summarized as just being a passive
audience or simply receiving the content of programs. In all the cases analyzed, we saw
the contribution of listeners through requests for music, messages and public services.
In six of the assessed radios stations, collaborators and employees took part in at least
the third level; making decisions related to the production of the content. In four of
these stations, the participation of collaborators even involved the fourth level, that is,
the planning of actions. However, on no radio stations, citizens could participate in all
five levels, which includes effective participation in the management processes.

The management and planning processes of community radio stations are

strongly centralized. In most cases, the power of decision is the responsibility of one or
two people, generally the founder or the president of the community entity. We can take
as an example the Community Council, an organ set up by law, which has the objective
of accompanying and checking the programming of radio stations (that is, there are
powers conferred in the organ to interfere in programming decisions). According to
62% of the interviewees, the council is set up only to meet legal requirements, in a way
that does not allow the intervention of its members in the running of the radio stations.
As the Community Council has this goal, it closes the door to effective participation of
the community in decisions related to RadComs.

The confirmation that this power of centralized decision, which discards any
possibility of community participation at the highest levels, made us look for the
reasons that had led administrators to found radio stations, and from then on, to disclose
the relationships of power both in the institution and created by the institution. The
research showed that 12 (57%) community radio administrators, in setting up the radio
station, were essentially motivated by commercial reasons, that is, they are small local

13
Marino Uteras Peruzzo highlights five different levels of participation of individuals in popular
communication vehicles, with the variation being established from the more or less democratically
developed criteria: 1) mere receptors of content, not going beyond the role of passive audience; 2)
participates in messages through requests without, however, any intervention in the production of the
program; 3) participates in the production and transmission of the content, with elaboration and edition of
programs and messages; 4) participates in the planning of the community vehicle, involved in the
different steps of the process, including the definition of a plan of action, the formats of presented
programs, and discussions on the principles of the radio station; 5) finally, full participation in the
management, which “includes participation in the administration process and control of the vehicle or
creation of communication as a whole, also required here is exercising complete power”. (1998: 144-145)

13
businessmen who believe that profit and social ascension can be attained from a radio
station. Four administrators have religious ideals – radio stations that were created by
religious leaderships or were born from the aspiration of a specific religious
communities; another three RadComs have political intentions, that is, they were set up
according to basic political ideals: to gain and maintain power with the RadCom being
an instrument of propaganda to publicize ideas that may persuade the listener/elector.
Only two administrators effectively justify communitarian purposes: the desire to
develop a service that benefits the community.

However, this demonstrates a clear distortion of the legal sense. The first
objective, that is, the community character of the vehicle, its structure as an instrument
to allow community access and the aspiration that it is an integral part of the channel to
empowerment, is not present in the legal process. Thus, the dominant economic game,
in this case, makes it obvious that the concept of RadComs does not correspond to the
reality.

Encouraged to a great extent by the passion nourished by the vehicle, this

research shows that, small local businessmen, without resources or sufficient financial
structure to participate in commercial tenders, try to achieve their commercial vocation
by means of community broadcasting. The interviews clearly show that most managers
have already thought about (77%) and some have even tried (32%), to obtain
commercial radio stations, sometimes even before opting for RadComs.

Through research, we discovered that by achieving this goal and surpassing the
difficult legal path, these small businesses establish agreements with professional
politicians. For 18 of the radio stations with definitive licenses (86%) the support of a
politician, in particular federal representatives (76%) or a religious institution were
essential during the legal process. Based in Brasilia, the parliamentary representatives
make their own teams available to follow the applications in the Ministry of
Communications and to solve the intricate bureaucratic procedures. The justification is
simple: apart from being very distance from Brasilia almost always administrators do
not understand the bureaucratic procedures and for this they may be eliminated from the
selection process due to incomplete documentation and not meeting deadlines. Hence,

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with the union of local powers, specifically the economic power, and the wider sphere
of political power, RadComs are legalized 14.

Remembering the danger of generalizations, we suggest that the interest of

parliamentary representatives is, almost always, directly related to electoral gains that
can be achieved by RadComs. The powers that are clearly and decisively seen in the
great broadcasting networks are also present at local community levels. These forces of
power, represented in the community and allied to the broader political force, infiltrate
into the regulations and are thus used for personal benefit. A relationship of force and
power persists in the form of communication that was created to counter this, that is,
RadComs were created as an expression against the powers, to oppose the hegemonic
debate and the concentration of commercial networks.

If, on one hand, research shows that legalized community radio stations have
distortions, as they did not adapt to the scope of their creation, on the other hand, we
know that the question is not only summed up as possible discrepancies. Exactly by
being legalized, discrepancies become more conspicuous, consequently provoking anger
both of the more hard line activists and the owners of large commercial radio stations
who are unhappy at the loss of audience. However, the law, that provides parameters for
us to perceive the many problems that still exist, can also point to ways to redress them.
Good examples are the many proposals that have circulated for years in the National
Congress and the Ministry of Communications that have, as their central point, the
qualification of broadcasters and the sustainability of radio stations (two of the main
requirements of community administrators).

The data obtained demonstrate that, in spite of the different motivations to set up
radio stations, all of them are closely linked to the community where they operate. We
are also aware that, almost always, the administrators repeat programming models due
to lack of resources and due to lack of knowledge (that is, they limit themselves to

14
Lopes (2005 b) developed a survey whose results did not differ, in essence, from those reported in this
research; on the contrary, they are a basis. From the information obtained in the “contest” system
(confidential data from the Ministry of Communications) the researcher evaluated 503 requests for
RadComs authorized in 2003 and 2004, and found that more than 70% were “sponsored” by a career
politician, almost always, a federal representative. According to Lopes, the numbers prove that “the
sponsored applications have 4.41 times higher chances of being approved than those that do not have any
type of “backer”. They also demonstrated the utilization of undemocratic criteria in the process of
authorization and continuity of the practice of political utilization of broadcasting even in the government
of Lula, which is traditionally linked to movements of democratization of communications.

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repeating what they already know). From this, the necessity to qualify administrators of
legalized radio stations and encouragement them to develop new contents becomes
evident.

More than to judge and immediately condemn the possible discrepancies

practiced by RadComs motivated by a series of factors, it is necessary to qualify,
reconsider the design and the use of alternatives and experiences. Moreover, we
consider that an appraisal of the most controversial points in the legislation is urgently
needed: the limitation of cultural support that, as we have seen in this research, seriously
affects the sustainability of RadComs.

In respect to the problems and challenges that legalized RadComs are facing and
to the gaps between the commercial and community ideals as demonstrated by this
research, we consider that they have legitimacy to act and the possibility to become the
voice of historically excluded segments, particularly those in the forgotten and
overlooked regions of the country. This possibility implies a form to challenge the
hegemony of the large media groups. The more channels that are open for the
circulation of voices, the greater the quantity of small vehicles of communication in
direct contact with the community, the greater is the possibility of living the effective
empowerment and achieving democratization not only in word, but, more importantly,
in the society in which we live.

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