A Research Of The Government Regulation System In Media Industry

The theme of this paper is researching the government regulation system reform in media industry. Government regulation mainly discusses the setting of power rule consisting with the allocation of market resources. Regulation system is mainly used to design and regulate the function orientation of government regulation, the rule for power distribution and the operating mechanism of power under the market economic condition. The thinking of government regulation system directly responds to the reality of rapid industry development in the process of media marketization, the increasing demands of the public expressing their appeals at the public media platform and the concern to the increasingly obvious inadaptability of traditional media control mode to economic development and practical demands of the public. The discussion focuses on the deep-seated system problem in media industry management.Chinese media industry is at a crucial transition period. The market economy is becoming mature gradually and the opening to the outside world is further enlarged. Media industry is facing the unprecedented challenges brought by the rapid development of information technology and the transformation of communication concept. Chinese media experienced the gradual transition from mainly acting as a propaganda tool to performing the industrial function, the gradual formation of integrative industry development trend and demand to integrative regulation from the divided regulation to radio and television industry, telecommunication industry and press and publication industry and the change of new network media substituting for the traditional radio and television media at the dominant position in media industry. Chinese media industry is experiencing the overall transformation from the micro development form to the macro regulation system.Behind the prosperous development of media industry, there are many difficult issues of development:the system change inertia and the traditional media control mode have caused the single media function and the rigid propaganda; the ambiguous function orientation of government regulation and the traditional integration of administration and management have caused the slow market development; the administrative monopoly has twisted the market mechanism and caused the chaotic market order and the low efficiency. The constant conflict between the market demand and the government regulation becomes the main bottleneck restricting the development of media industry. Chinese media industry is running at two tracks:on the one hand, its communication contents are still controlled strictly by the government; on the other hand, its desire for active expansion in the process of market operation is growing gradually. All these conflicts make the focus point to the current media regulation system intensively.Viewed from the macro background of regulation system reform, the current media regulation system reform mainly faces three forces:the system control inertia coming from the traditional political field, the capital expansion power coming from the market field, and the challenge to the traditional regulation concept brought by the technical progress. The competition among the three forces including government, market and technology becomes the deep-seated force driving the regulation system reform in media industry.The regulation reform in Chinese media industry does not start today. Many previous reforms not only acted at the business level such as the specific management operation, but also reached the level of regulation system in part. However, the reform in Chinese media industry has never encountered such restrictive system factors that it faces today. These restrictive system factors mainly include:firstly, the regulation system pattern has the characteristics of many regulation subjects and disperse regulation power allocation horizontally; secondly, the regulation power has the characteristic of low distinction among the function orientations of the regulation subjects at all levels from central to local longitudinally; thirdly, the regulation power allocation is much restricted by the current system. It is hard for the reform in the media field to break the restriction of the original system benefit pattern.The system rigidity becomes a strong force restraining the further promotion of marketization process and causes a series of problems in the current government regulation to media industry. These problems are mainly shown as:firstly, the ambiguous control boundary and the rigid ideological propaganda caused by the system control inertia in the traditional political field; secondly, the "imbalance between the demand" of capital expansion in the market field and the tradition system; thirdly, the challenge to the traditional regulation concept and the regulation dilemma brought by the technical progress.In conclusion, all prominent problems existing in the process of government regulation to media industry are intensively reflected at the hard restriction of system itself. Therefore, the research conclusions of this paper include:in the perspective of technical change, the media regulation must break through the thinking mode of traditional media regulation and take the regulation system adjustment and regulation power allocation into consideration from the view of all-media. It not only needs to take internet into consideration, but also needs to take all media into consideration. In the trend of digitalization, the relationship between the network media and the traditional media is not subversion or substitution, but the overall integration. Only the corresponding relation between the media and the regulated subject is sort out from the view of all-media, can the comprehensive and effective media regulation institution and policy be formulated. Although different countries adopt different methods or strategies in implementing the government regulation to media industry, the following trends are shown overall:the regulation framework transforms from the longitudinally divided industry regulation to horizontally hierarchical regulation; the regulation institution transforms from the separate institutions to integrated institution; it is transformed to relax control over market access, advocate competition and absorb investment. In the future, the government regulation system in Chinese media industry will work hard to adapt to the new trend and speed up the pace of reform to establish a regulation framework adapting to the national conditions as well as the integration trend of media.