Savage deregulation in Thailand: expanding Hallin and Mancini’s European model

In "Comparing Media Systems" (2004) by Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini, one of the regulatory hurdles they place on the path to modernization of media systems in Southern European countries is a set of circumstances that allowed for a 'savage deregulation' of the commercial media sector, in which governments 'introduced commercial broadcasting in an uncontrolled way, without imposing significant public-service obligations' and which led to a 'deluge' of commercial broadcasters. This article argues, however, that Hallin and Mancini's description of savage deregulation is inaccurate and obscures the root causes of deregulation in that region. The authors' description of the 'deluge' of broadcasters that occurred in Italy and Greece (their key examples) equates the two histories, when savage deregulation in fact took quite distinct forms in each case, the results of which have important present-day ramifications for the cultural and human rights characteristics of the media environment in the two countries as well as in countries with similar histories, such as Thailand.