New Business Models for the Media: The Spanish Case

Since the settlement of democracy in Spain in 1976, two fundamental stages in the development of the mass media can be distinguished (Arrese, Artero and Herrero, 2009). The first stage, from 1976 to 1989, can be identified as the stage of ‘normative/legal development’. This enabled a shift from censorship to freedom of expression; from a state-run media system to a system in which private-run media have increasing importance; and from a centralised media and communication policy to a decentralised one, mainly on account of the influence of the European Union (EU). This period ended in 1989 with the granting of the first three licences to commercial television channels. The second stage, from 1989 to 2000, signalled the managerial development of the media sector. It was characterised by the formation of big media and multimedia groups and the creation of an information hyper-sector, in the midst of the spectacular development of information technologies and the liberalisation of telecommunication markets, which became highly globalised.