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    From liberalization to fragmentation: a sociologyof French radio audiences since the 1990s andthe consequences for cultural industries theory

    Herv Glevarec and Michel PinetCNRS, CLERS-IFRESI, UNIVERSITY OFLILLE1, FRANCE

    For the past 30 years, the whole audio-visual media movement has tendedtowards specialization in types of media, hours of consumption and audiences.This segmentation of audiences and media became clear in the US in the 1970s(Hesmondhalgh, 2002) and in France in the 1980s, principally with regard toradio, which diversified as a field and increasingly opened up to privateproviders (Cheval, 1997, 2003; Machill, 1996). The radio space is no longerdominated by a small group of providers, as it was in France for a long periodfollowing the Second World War by certain national stations, Europe 1 andRadio Luxembourg.1 It has been characterized, on the contrary, by contractingaudiences and increasingly specialized targeting. Format is what demon-strates and typifies this transformation in the radio world (Berland, 1993).

    The increasingly tailored format has been the response of choice for pri-vately owned radio stations in seeking to satisfy the two-faced market in theireconomic sector (Balmer, 2005). Privately owned radio stations addressthemselves equally, in fact, to listeners and advertisers, with format and audi-ence as the tools and professional conventions through which they seek toarticulate the two. Radio stations focus in this context on programming in aparticular genre: charts, music and news, rock, rap, etc. (McCourt andRothenbuhler, 2002). The 1980s, and to an even greater extent the 1990s, sawthe establishment of musical formats, first on youth radio stations in France(NRJ the most typical example, Skyrock and Fun Radio) and then on adultradio (Chrie FM, Europe 2 (Virgin Radio), Nostalgie, RTL 2) (Miller, 1992).2This segmentation by format and age was formalized in France by the law of 1August 2000, which established differing quotas for songs in French, thus mod-

    Media, Culture & Society 2008 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhiand Singapore), Vol. 30(2): 215238[ISSN: 0163-4437 DOI: 10.1177/0163443707086862]

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    ifying the earlier law of 1996 (Jeanneney, 1999) according to the proportion of new talent or new productions that stations choose to showcase. The distinc-

    tion between radio stations with a youth audience and those with an adult audi-ence was thus formalized by the legislature. Although, according to the formuladescribed by Richard Peterson, public radio is not a format (1990: 218), thecreation in 1997 by Radio France of a young peoples rock station, Le Mouv,has tended to make the public sector more similar to the private sector.

    In the sociological toolbox, one of the most important sociological theoriesin France focusing on cultural industries is the fields of cultural productiontheory introduced by Pierre Bourdieu. In an article of 1971 entitled TheMarket of Symbolic Goods, Bourdieu proposes a theory of what he calledfieldsof cultural production. He distinguished two such fields, of which oneis of particular interest to the sociology of the cultural industries and themedia (Hesmondhalgh, 2006): a field of small-scale production and a fieldof large-scale production. He described the former as a field of producerswhose intended audience consists of other producers (Bourdieu, 1971: 55)and which tends to be characterized by autonomous determination of its ownrules of behaviour. The field of large-scale production, on the other hand,had the much more heteronymous aim of producing goods targeting a par-ticular fraction of the public, that is a specific statistical category (youth,women, football fans, stamp collectors, etc.) [and] must represent a type of broader social denominator (Bourdieu, 1971: 823). Here, on consideredexamination, a question at once arises as to the possibility of targeting a par-ticular fraction of the public, while simultaneously seeking the broadestpossible social denominator. This dual, and contradictory, aim is, however,precisely the theoretical goal of the field of large-scale production andthereby of the contemporary cultural industries. Bourdieu proposed this the-ory in a period when there were few media and there was a general public(Morin, 1962). The current radio stations landscape requires a much moreprecise theoretical argument.

    We shall seek to demonstrate that Bourdieus description is only valid whenit describes a field consisting of, on the one hand,generalist media and agen-eral public,3 and, on the other hand, atransparent relationship between pro-duction and reception. While the cultural industries indeed target the conquestof as broad a market as possible (Bourdieu, 1971: 55), they do so withinthenceforth definite or defined socio-demographic limits. Finally, and withoutdoubt most importantly, the miraculous homology between production andreception guaranteed by habitusand social interests here fails to take accountnot of cultural capital integrated and naturalized as a taste for cultural goods

    (Bourdieu, 1979: 257; Bourdieu and Darbel, 1969), but of the series of medi-ations, as Antoine Hennion (1981, 1993) calls them, the intermediaries(Hesmondhalgh, 2006) and, more concretely, all the work of co-constructionwhich takes place between the two spaces in a universe of uncertainty(nobody knows) (Caves, 2002). The radio audience is a good example with

    216 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)

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    T A B L E 1

    D i s t r i b u t

    i o n o f l

    i s t e n e r s

    i n t e r m s o f n u m

    b e r o f s t a t

    i o n s

    l i s t e n e

    d t o o v e r

    2 1 d a y s

    w h o

    w h o

    w h o

    l i s t e n e

    d

    w h o

    w h o

    w h o

    w h o

    w

    h o

    w h o

    w h o

    l i s t e n e

    d

    d i d n o

    t

    A v e r a g e

    t o a

    l i s t e n e

    d

    l i s t e n e d

    l i s t e n e

    d

    l i s t e n e

    d

    l i s t e n e

    d

    l i s t e n e

    d

    l i s t e n e

    d

    t o 9

    l i s t e n

    t o

    n u m b e r o f

    P e r c e n t a g e o f

    s i n g

    l e

    t o 2

    t o 3

    t o 4

    t o 5

    t o 6

    t o 7

    t o 8

    s t a t

    i o n s

    a n y

    s t a t i o n s

    l i s t e n e r s :

    s t a t

    i o n

    s t a t

    i o n s

    s t a t i o n s

    s t a t

    i o n s

    s t a t

    i o n s s t a

    t i o n s s t a t

    i o n s

    s t a t

    i o n s

    a n d m o r e

    s t a t

    i o n

    l i s t e n e

    d t o

    F r a n c e

    0 . 4

    2 . 3

    9 . 0

    1 3 . 5

    1 4 . 9

    1 3 . 6

    1 2 . 8

    9 . 1

    2 4 . 5

    6 . 7

    C u l

    t u r e

    F r a n c e

    0 . 7

    4 . 8

    8 . 8

    1 4 . 9

    1 5 . 5

    1 4 . 5

    1 1 . 2

    9 . 6

    2 0 . 1

    6 . 4

    M u s

    i q u e

    M F M

    1 . 3

    5 . 8

    9 . 9

    1 2 . 1

    1 3 . 1

    1 1 . 8

    1 2 . 4

    9 . 4

    2 4 . 3

    6 . 5

    R M C

    1 . 4

    6 . 7

    1 0 . 2

    1 2 . 0

    1 2 . 8

    1 2 . 0

    1 2 . 3

    9 . 1

    2 3 . 5

    6 . 4

    E u r o p e

    2

    1 . 5

    4 . 8

    8 . 9

    1 3 . 2

    1 4 . 7

    1 4 . 3

    1 2 . 3

    1 0 . 8

    1 9 . 6

    6 . 3

    F r a n c e

    I n f o

    1 . 7

    6 . 1

    1 0 . 9

    1 4 . 1

    1 5 . 2

    1 3 . 0

    1 1 . 7

    9 . 5

    1 7 . 8

    6 . 0

    R F M

    2 . 0

    6 . 6

    1 1 . 3

    1 1 . 5

    1 4 . 9

    1 2 . 9

    1 1 . 6

    1 0 . 0

    1 9 . 3

    6 . 2

    F u n r a

    d i o

    2 . 1

    6 . 0

    1 1 . 6

    1 4 . 6

    1 4 . 2

    1 3 . 7

    1 1 . 1

    9 . 1

    1 7 . 6

    6 . 0

    R T L 2

    2 . 2

    5 . 5

    9 . 9

    1 2 . 0

    1 2 . 8

    1 3 . 5

    1 2 . 7

    1 0 . 4

    2 1 . 0

    6 . 3

    S k y r o c

    k

    2 . 2

    7 . 3

    1 1 . 9

    1 3 . 6

    1 4 . 4

    1 3 . 5

    1 0 . 3

    9 . 6

    1 7 . 3

    6 . 0

    C h r i e

    F M

    2 . 7

    6 . 1

    1 0 . 5

    1 2 . 4

    1 4 . 8

    1 4 . 2

    1 1 . 6

    9 . 9

    1 7 . 8

    6 . 1

    N R J

    2 . 7

    8 . 2

    1 3 . 5

    1 4 . 8

    1 5 . 3

    1 2 . 8

    1 0 . 2

    8 . 3

    1 4 . 1

    5 . 6

    E u r o p e

    1

    3 . 0

    8 . 2

    1 1 . 4

    1 4 . 5

    1 3 . 7

    1 2 . 6

    1 0 . 4

    8 . 8

    1 7 . 5

    5 . 9

    N o s

    t a l g i e

    3 . 3

    7 . 6

    1 1 . 0

    1 3 . 8

    1 5 . 0

    1 3 . 6

    1 0 . 9

    8 . 9

    1 6 . 0

    5 . 8

    F r a n c e

    I n t e r

    3 . 7

    7 . 8

    1 3 . 7

    1 5 . 0

    1 3 . 9

    1 1 . 9

    9 . 8

    8 . 2

    1 6 . 1

    5 . 7

    F r a n c e

    B l e u

    4 . 6

    8 . 8

    1 3 . 2

    1 3 . 1

    1 3 . 7

    1 2 . 5

    1 1 . 0

    8 . 3

    1 5 . 0

    5 . 6

    o t h e r r a

    d i o s

    5 . 2

    1 0 . 1

    1 4 . 8

    1 5 . 6

    1 4 . 8

    1 1 . 6

    9 . 3

    7 . 3

    1 1 . 3

    5 . 2

    ( l o c a l

    )

    S u d R a d

    i o

    5 . 7

    7 . 2

    1 2 . 2

    1 0 . 1

    1 2 . 4

    1 3 . 2

    1 2 . 9

    7 . 0

    1 9 . 4

    6 . 0

    R T L

    7 . 0

    1 0 . 9

    1 3 . 7

    1 3 . 8

    1 3 . 0

    1 0 . 8

    9 . 5

    7 . 6

    1 3 . 9

    5 . 3

    R a d

    i o a s

    1 3 . 3

    1 5 . 9

    1 6 . 9

    1 4 . 7

    1 2 . 2

    9 . 0

    6 . 6

    4 . 7

    6 . 8

    4 . 2

    a w

    h o l e

    T V a s a w

    h o l e

    1 2 . 7

    1 5 . 3

    1 6 . 2

    1 4 . 0

    1 1 . 7

    8 . 6

    6 . 2

    4 . 5

    6 . 5

    4 . 4

    4 . 1

    S o u r c e : M d i a m

    t r i e

    R a d

    i o P a n e l

    2 0 0 0 2

    0 0 1 / C l e r s

    - I f r e s i ; S a m p

    l e : a g e

    d 1 1 y e a r s a n

    d o v e r .

    B a s e :

    L i s t e n e r s .

    F i g u r e s

    i n b o l d r e p r e s e n t

    h i g h e s

    t v a l u e s

    i n e a c h c o

    l u m n ;

    f i g u r e s u n

    d e r l

    i n e d r e p r e s e n

    t h i g h e s t v a

    l u e s

    i n e a c h

    l i n e

    ( m o d a l v a

    l u e ) .

    218 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)

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    (radio content); as far as audiences are concerned, publics are relativelyimpermeable to each other.

    Historically, listeners to a single radio station (exclusive listeners) are anever-decreasing category. In the history of radio, just after the Second WorldWar the exclusive audiences of public stations (owned by Radiodiffusion-tlvision franaise) and private stations, such as Radio Luxembourg andEurope 1, were significant groups in comparison to other, mixed, audiencesreporting a division of their listening between different types of station (IFOP-ETMAR, 1964). Just as long ago, the centre of gravity of the radio audi-ence was weighted towards the private stations, with these having both thelargest exclusive audience and more of the other type of listener than the pub-lic channels. In short, the private (peripheral) national stations have been his-torically the dominant stations in terms of reported number of listeners,listening time, exclusivity and share of audience in relation to the public sta-tions (CESP, 1964).

    Impermeable publics and Balkanization of audiences

    The spatial representation of radio audiences resembles the Olympic logo: apattern of overlapping circles. Taken one by one, the circles of radio audi-ences all intersect, although not a single listener thereby exists who is com-mon to all of them. There is thus, given the multiplicity of possible radiorelationships, no possible truly accurate and readable graphic representationof radio audiences. The table showing listenersduplication (Table 2) permitsan approximation to the organization of the radio audience, that is, an approx-imation to the true audiences.5 The data on listener share are a preliminaryindicator of the relative autonomy of each radio stations audiences.

    The largest audience grouping, consisting of listeners to three (or more)radio stations is that formed by listeners to the three youth music stations, FunRadio, NRJ and Skyrock. We include in this group all those Panel participantswho describe themselves as listeners to each of these three stations (whichdoes not mean they may not also listen to other stations). Measuring in thisway the shared audience of each of the possible groupings of three stationsincluded in the Panel Survey, we find that this grouping, with 6.4 percent of the population, comes top. The largest shared audience grouping consisting of listeners to two (or more) radio stations consists of listeners to NRJ andNostalgie, representing 13.5 percent of the population, or about 6,851,129individuals who have had some contact with these two stations during the 21

    days. The smallest shared audience grouping is of listeners shared by MFMand France Culture,6 a popular French varietiesstation and a cultural station,representing 1.4 percent of the population aged 11 and over, or 716,310 indi-viduals. This preliminary representation of the size of audiences which areshared (by two radio stations) indicates that even the largest of these double

    Glevarec & Pinet,From liberalization to fragmentation 219

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    220 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)

    a n d

    l i s t e n e r s t o

    N R J

    N o s

    t a l g i e

    F u n

    R a d

    i o

    S k y r o c

    k E u r o p e

    2

    C h r i e

    F M

    R T L

    R T L 2

    F r a n c e

    I n t e r

    F r a n c e

    I n f o

    E u r o p e

    1

    R F M

    R M C

    M F

    M

    3 3

    . 1

    1 3 . 5

    1 3 . 0

    1 0 . 9

    1 0 . 6

    1 0 . 3

    1 0 . 0

    9 . 4

    9 . 3

    5 . 3

    8 . 0

    7 . 0

    7 . 9

    2 . 7

    4 . 1

    5 . 9

    2 . 7

    3 1 . 7

    N R J

    2 8

    . 7

    8 . 2

    6 . 4

    7 . 7

    9 . 4

    9 . 4

    9 . 7

    6 . 9

    6 . 8

    8 . 6

    8 . 1

    7 . 3

    4 . 0

    4 . 6

    5 . 7

    2 . 9

    2 7 . 5

    N o s

    t a l g i e

    2 2

    . 3

    8 . 8

    7 . 3

    6 . 8

    6 . 1

    5 . 7

    5 . 5

    5 . 6

    5 . 9

    5 . 2

    4 . 7

    3 . 1

    2 . 9

    4 . 7

    2 . 3

    2 1 . 1

    F u n r a

    d i o

    1 9

    . 0

    6 . 2

    7 . 2

    5 . 1

    4 . 6

    6 . 3

    2 . 9

    4 . 7

    4 . 9

    3 . 8

    1 . 7

    2 . 8

    3 . 0

    1 . 8

    1 8 . 1

    S k y r o c

    k

    2 0

    . 9

    6 . 8

    6 . 0

    6 . 4

    7 . 5

    4 . 7

    8 . 4

    7 . 4

    5 . 3

    3 . 0

    2 . 7

    3 . 3

    3 . 3

    1 9 . 7

    E u r o p e

    2

    2 1

    . 9

    5 . 7

    7 . 2

    6 . 9

    4 . 5

    6 . 1

    7 . 5

    5 . 5

    2 . 5

    3 . 2

    3 . 7

    2 . 8

    2 0 . 8

    C h r i e

    F M

    2 4

    . 3

    7 . 5

    5 . 1

    6 . 7

    7 . 5

    6 . 9

    5 . 7

    3 . 7

    3 . 8

    3 . 5

    3 . 1

    2 3 . 2

    F r a n c e

    B l e u

    2 8

    . 8

    7 . 8

    6 . 5

    8 . 0

    1 0 . 4

    7 . 1

    3 . 5

    6 . 1

    3 . 8

    3 . 7

    2 7 . 7

    R T L

    1 8

    . 8

    3 . 9

    6 . 3

    5 . 4

    5 . 7

    1 . 9

    3 . 6

    3 . 2

    2 . 2

    1 8 . 0

    R T L 2

    2 2

    . 1

    1 0 . 5

    8 . 0

    4 . 6

    7 . 2

    3 . 3

    3 . 3

    5 . 5

    2 0 . 6

    F r a n c e

    I n t e r

    2 4

    . 9

    9 . 0

    5 . 6

    7 . 0

    3 . 8

    3 . 6

    5 . 5

    2 3 . 3

    F r a n c e

    I n f o

    2 4

    . 0

    5 . 2

    4 . 5

    4 . 5

    2 . 8

    5 . 7

    2 2 . 8

    E u r o p e

    1

    1 7

    . 7

    2 . 3

    2 . 9

    3 . 5

    2 . 1

    1 6 . 9

    R F M

    1 1

    . 7

    1 . 8

    1 . 5

    4 . 1

    1 0 . 7

    F r a n c e

    M u s

    i q u e

    1 1

    . 4

    1 . 7

    1 . 7

    1 0 . 9

    R M C

    1 1

    . 3

    1 . 4

    1 0 . 8

    M F M

    1 0

    . 0

    9 . 2

    F r a n c e

    C u l

    t u r e

    9 5

    . 3

    T V a s a w

    h o l e

    % l i

    s t e n e r s

    t o

    F r a n c e

    B l e u e

    F r a n c e

    M u s

    i q u e

    F r a n c e

    C u l

    t u r e

    T V a s a

    w h o l e

    T A B L E 2

    A u d i e n c e s

    l i s t e n i n g

    t o t w o r a d

    i o s t a t

    i o n s o v e r

    2 1 d a y s

    S o u r c e : M d i a m

    t r i e R a d

    i o P a n e l

    2 0 0 0 - 2

    0 0 1 / C l e r s

    - I f r e s

    i ; S a m p

    l e : a g e

    d 1 1 y e a r s a n

    d o v e r . B

    a s e : w

    h o l e p o p u

    l a t i o n .

    R e a

    d i n g n o

    t e : 1 3 . 5

    % o f

    t h e p o p u

    l a t i o n

    l i s t e n e

    d t o N o s

    t a l g i e a n

    d N R J , o r

    t o t a l o f l i s t e n e r s

    t o N R J a n

    d N o s

    t a l g i e r e p r e s e n t s

    1 3 . 5

    % o f

    t h e p o p u

    l a t i o n . T

    h e s e m a y

    b e l i s t e n -

    e r s o n

    l y t o t h e s e

    t w o s t a t

    i o n s o r a l s o

    t o o t

    h e r s t a t

    i o n s .

    H i g h e s t

    ( > 9 % ) p e r c e n t a g e

    f i g u r e s o f

    l i s t e n e r s

    d u p l i c a t e d

    f o r

    t w o r a

    d i o s t a t

    i o n s a r e

    i n b o l d

    .

    N o t e : % o f

    l i s t e n e r s

    t o a s i n g

    l e s t a t

    i o n =

    1 3 % ; % o f

    l i s t e n e r s

    t o p r e c i s e

    l y 2 s t a t

    i o n s =

    1 5 . 9 % ; % o f

    l i s t e n e r s

    t o p r e c i s e

    l y 3 s t a t

    i o n s =

    1 6 . 9

    % ; % o f

    l i s t e n e r s

    t o p r e c i s e

    l y 4 s t a -

    t i o n s =

    1 4 . 7

    % ; % o f

    l i s t e n e r s

    t o 5 o r m o r e s t a t

    i o n s

    + 3 9 . 3 %

    .

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    audiences is small compared to the whole population, and given theprofusion and accessibility of radio stations in France. On the one hand, the

    average individual listens to 4.2 radio stations; on the other hand, the largestdouble audience represents only 13.5 percent of the population. We see,therefore, in comparison to exclusive listeners to one station, a significantBalkanization of shared audiences.

    From the point of view of listening time, a radio station may be characterizedas the principal or secondary7 station listened to (audience calculated on theusual basis of at least one contact over 21 days). On the basis of division of lis-tening time between different stations, all the generalist or musical stations(including RTL 2, Europe 2 (Virgin Radio) and RFM) are principalstations fortheir listeners. Only three stations are secondaryand thus exceptions to the ruleof specificity of listening: France Culture, France Musique and RMC. Thesemay be described as centrifugal stations for their listeners. Each of the othersmay be characterized as a principal station since their listeners (on the whole)devote their longest listening time to these. In other words, the audiences of national radio stations, with the exception of the three stations mentioned, are,although shared with other stations, specific audiences. This evidence of thecentrifugal, or centripetal, force of various radio audiences in France is also afurther measure of segmentation; in fact, listeners to the majority of radiostations devote the majority of their listening time to that station.

    Radio stations and their elective listeners

    Different degrees of intensity or exclusivity of contact with a radio stationmay be posited. Strong loyalty to a radio station may be measured by theexclusivity of its presence for a listener or by the major proportion of timedevoted to it in comparison with other stations. In order to test the contractionof audience exclusivity, we constructed two progressive indicators for meas-uring cumulative audience: a preferred station indicator for stations to whicha listener devotes the most listening time and an exclusive station indicatorfor those which are the only station listened to. In other words, preferencelistenersof a station are those who devote the majority of their listening timeto that station. For some, it may even be the only station they listened to overthe 21-day period.

    The larger a stations audience is, the greater the likelihood that it willinclude a core of consistent and exclusive preference listeners. RTL remains theradio station with by far the most exclusive preference listeners. Radio audi-

    ences may thus be seen to be concentric, since the exclusive preference audi-ence groupings are proportional to the number of overall audience groupingsover 21 days (an average of 2 in 10 and 3 in 100 listeners respectively). Thus,each radio station does not have on the one hand polygamousand on the otherhand specific listeners, since the smallradio stations have almost no exclusive

    Glevarec & Pinet,From liberalization to fragmentation 221

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    listeners. The best graphic representation of a radio stations listeners is a seriesof concentric circles where the size of the innermost circle (the core of exclu-sive listeners) is proportional to its circumference (all its other listeners).

    What, then, is the degree of loyalty to the radio station to which a pref-erence listener devotes most listening time over three weeks? Or, to quan-

    tify the question, how much of his listening time does a listener devote tohis station of first preference? In order to reply to these questions, we addedto the preferred station indicator (cumulative listening to station by listen-ers for whom this represents the largest part of their listening time) theamount of time devoted to listening to the station. The position occupied by

    222 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)

    TABLE 3From cumulative audiences to exclusive listening over 21 days

    Listeners Preference listeners Exclusive(quarter-hour (radio station listeners (singleand over) listened most) radio station)

    percentage listening percentage listening percentage listeningof listeners time of listeners time of listeners time

    Chrie FM 21.9 10h36 4.5 33h23 0.6 31h54Europe 1 24.1 17h36 8.0 40h21 0.7 43h50Europe 2 20.9 8h18 2.9 34h09 0.3 32h02France 10.0 4h12 0.4 31h26 [0,04] [15h13]

    CultureFrance Info 24.9 8h24 4.8 21h14 0.4 18h49France Inter 22.1 20h24 8.5 43h17 0.8 48h12France 11.7 6h30 1.0 30h24 [0,1] [9h05]

    MusiqueFun Radio 22.3 8h42 4.5 26h37 0.5 33h40MFM 11.3 7h42 1.3 38h30 0.2 54h13Nostalgie 28.7 11h18 5.9 34h02 0.9 32h12NRJ 33.1 11h30 8.9 28h16 0.9 29h39France 24.3 12h42 5.3 41h48 1.1 50h06

    BleuRFM 17.7 9h30 2.9 35h16 0.4 39h49RMC 11.4 7h24 1.4 33h50 0.2 40h08RTL 28.8 22h42 11.2 47h30 2.0 56h51RTL 2 18.8 8h24 3.3 27h13 0.4 21h21Skyrock 19.0 8h48 4.4 25h29 0.4 21h10Sud Radio 3.3 12h 0.7 39h57 0.2 54h27Source: Mdiamtrie Radio Panel 2000-2001/Clers-Ifresi; Sample: aged 11 years and over.Base: whole population for cumulative audiences and Base: respective listener group for listening times. Numbersof panellists

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    the station preferred by each listener is thus evaluated against the listeningtime it clocks up.

    Table 4, which is very striking, indicates that the preference audience of eachradio station devotes to the station between 60.5 percent and 75.2 percent of itslistening time. In other words, the preference audience of any radio station isextremely elective in its radio listening habits.8 There is a polarization of pref-erence audiences. The proportion of listening time again shows a positive cor-relation between the size of preference audiences and the proportion of timedevoted to the station. This analysis must be viewed in the context of the size of this preference audience. RTL is again the only radio station to accumulate highnumbers and considerable centripetal force from its listeners (28.8%, 11.2%,2.0%, cumulative, preference, exclusive). France Info shows a significant gapbetween its cumulative audience (24.9%) and its preference audience (4.8%).

    To sum up the results of this preliminary analysis of the structuration of reported contacts with one or more radio stations:

    (1) Listeners listen to an average of 4.2 radio stations over 21 days; this israther on the lower than the higher side given the profusion of radio pro-vision. The concept of transversal audiences is thus a limited one. Theaudiences for each radio station are multi-polar. The largest tripleaudience (in the strict sense and in the sense of three or more stations)

    Glevarec & Pinet,From liberalization to fragmentation 223

    TABLE 4Preference listeners and proportion of listening time

    Preference listeners Devote X% of theirOut of 100 (station achieved highest whole listening timeindividuals number of quarter-hours) to station of preference

    RTL 11.2 75.2France Bleu 5.3 74.7Sud Radio 0.7 73.7France Inter 8.5 72.7Skyrock 4.4 70.4NRJ 8.9 69.5Europe 1 8.0 69.1

    Nostalgie 5.9 69.0Fun Radio 4.5 69.0RFM 2.9 68.0Chrie FM 4.5 67.8Europe 2 2.9 67.6RMC 1.4 66.7MFM 1.3 66.6RTL 2 3.3 66.1France Culture 0.4 65.8France Info 4.8 64.3France Musique 1.0 60.5Source : Mdiamtrie Radio Panel 2000-2001/Clers-Ifresi; Sample: aged 11 years and over. Base: wholepopulation.

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    represents 6.4 percent (the stations in question being NRJ, Fun Radio andSkyrock). The most significant two-station audience represents 13.5

    percent (NRJ and Nostalgie).(2) Each radio stations listeners with the exception of France Culture, FranceMusique and RFM are both sharedand specific, that is to say, althoughshared, they are never dominated by another station in terms of listeningtime. Thus, contrary to preconceived notions, the ever-changing music sta-tions, supposedly consumed without any real investment, are in fact cho-senby their listeners, and the culturedstations (France Culture and FranceMusique), whose listeners supposedly have a particularly strong investmentin them, turn out to be secondary stations for those listeners. Each radiostation, however, has within its cumulative audience a preference audience(those for whom it comes first in their listening) and an exclusive audience(those who listen only to that station). As a general rule, these are propor-tional to the stations whole audience.

    (3) A stations preference audience is an extremely elective audience. Weshould also emphasize here one point that goes against the initial finding:if everyone listens to the radio in the same way, there is no reason why theyshould be particularly elective in their listening habits. However this elec-tive quality does appear to characterize the connection people have withradio stations.

    (4) In numerical terms, everything points to an emphasis on particularradiostation audiences(which range from 10% if we exclude Sud Radio to33.1% of the stations cumulative audience), rather than onoverall radioaudiences (which range from 1.4%, the smallest double audience, to13.5%, the largest). On the one hand, the audiences particular to each radiostation are breaking up (for example, over 21 days no station attracted morethan 50% of the survey participants), on the other, audiences are multi-polar. The data drawn from what participants say show on the one hand lis-teners who are very attached to one radio station and on the other regularlisteners to several stations. The radio space resembles neither a Russiandoll (an audience always included in another larger audience), nor thegeography of the Balkans (each radio station maintaining its exclusivityfrom the others), but a sort of Olympic logo, structured by two poles themusical and the generalist at its farthest points, and in which each circle(each station) has within it a smaller circle of exclusive listeners.

    Dominant profile as opposed to general public: from radio duopoly to

    a bipolar world

    An argument for a segmentation of the listener population into more or lesshomogeneous, and quite separate, groups, within which listeners would sharecommon listening habits and a comparable degree of attachment to the same

    224 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)

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    radio stations, would require the establishment of a criterion of resemblancesufficiently loose to group together listeners who share significant sections of

    their listening universe without being strongly different about stations they donot listen to. Hierarchical classification methods offer the possibility of suchgroupings, taking into account the overall listening habits of each individual, andtaking all radio stations together. We have chosen to compare the panellists interms of the vector of their listening time, i.e.the percentage of their listeningtime that they devote to each station. The classification also includes, as illustra-tive variables, multiple sociographic descriptors (age, socio-professional cate-gory, sex ), as well as two variables synthesized from the panellists report onradio listening: the number of stations listened to and the preferred station (theone they listened to the most over the survey period). This variable, which ishighly typical, is the one used in order to designate synthetically the classifica-tion branches on the dendrogram which represents graphically the whole of thisanalysis. That is why we added to our tree labels repeating for each class thedominant values of the preferred radiovariable. The label NRJ-Funon one of the branches, for example, means that the panellists included in this class are dis-tinguished by the fact that, much more often than average, they place one orother (or both) of these stations first in their personal cluster of stations.

    The classification into six classes accounted for almost 40 percent of pro-file variability a highly satisfactory rate. This rate rises to over half (53%)if we adopt a division into eight classes. The first lesson we can draw fromFigure 1 concerns the principal profiles it reveals. The left-hand side of thegraphic, with Class 1 (58%), suggests the existence of adominant mode of radio listening, structured by youth behaviours centred on music radio sta-tions, implying more-frequent-than-average zapping, with excursions intolocal or news radio also forming part of overall radio listening. Do listenersin this class constitute an audience? It is difficult, at this level, to be defi-nite, since intra-class inertia within Class 1 remains high.

    On the other side of the graphic we note a striking triple singularity: lis-tener profiles as a whole are significantly structured by one of the old Frenchperipheralstations (Europe 1 or RTL) or, a further striking singularity withinthe first, by the cluster of the three main public service stations (excludingFrance Info and the Radio France local network), that is France Inter, FranceCulture and France Musique, whose nature as isolates clearly characterizesthe branch on the extreme right-hand side of the graphic. This branch con-sists of listeners who move essentially between public service stations, assuggested by the fact that it converges with the rest of the panellists only inthe final stage of the algorithm. This does not mean that they are the only ones

    listening to these public service stations, but only that a section of the radioaudience is strongly characterized by an often exclusive rotation betweenthese stations. Age is also one of the dimensions most characteristic of Classes 4/6, 5/6 and 6/6. In these classes, and particularly in the public serv-ice class, the audience is often much older than average.

    Glevarec & Pinet,From liberalization to fragmentation 225

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    226 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)

    1 A

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    1 C

    1 D

    Y o u n g a u d i e n c e m o d e l : m u s i c r a d i o s a n d h a r d z a p p i n g

    P u b l i c R a d i o ( F r a n c e I n f o e x c l u d e d )

    O t h e r r a d i o s

    N o n l i s t e n e r s

    N R J ( F u n )

    S K Y / F u n

    F r a n c e B l e u e

    F r a n c e I n f o

    R M C / S u d R a d i o

    N o s t a l g i e

    C h r i e F M

    M F M

    R F M

    N o s t a l g i e C h r i e F M

    R F M - M F M

    E u r o p e 1

    R T L

    R T L 2 E u r o p e 2

    6 c

    l a s s e s

    8 c

    l a s s e s

    9 c

    l a s s e s

    3 4 %

    1 0 %

    4 4 %

    6 %

    6 %

    5 8 %

    8 %

    8 %

    1 0 %

    1 0 %

    1 0 %

    4 %

    4 %

    4 %

    8 %

    8 %

    8 %

    1 0 %

    1 0 %

    1 0 %

    1 0 %

    1 0 %

    1 0 %

    1 B

    F I G U R E

    1

    H i e r a r c

    h i c a

    l c l a s s

    i f i c a t

    i o n

    o f t h e

    l i s t e n e r p o p u

    l a t i o n t

    h r o u g h

    t h e

    v e c

    t o r o f

    t h e i r

    r a d i o

    l i s t e n i n g

    t i m e

    S o u r c e : M d i a m

    t r i e R a d

    i o P a n e l

    2 0 0 0 1

    / C l e r s

    - I f r e s i ; s a m p

    l e a g e d

    1 1 y e a r s a n

    d o v e r .

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    In light of this dimension of age, we cannot fail to be struck by theopposition between a zappingbehaviour in youth and music radio listening,

    and a much more loyal behaviour in those grouped around the old monop-oly stations (both public and private), which still owes much to the chasmbetween the old radio landscape (prior to the liberalization of FM) and thenew landscape resulting from that liberalization. There is no doubt that asection of those listeners socialized to radio at the time of the publicradio/peripheral duopoly has continued to function in accordance with thesame schemas. Can we speak, for listeners to the music stations, who repre-sent more than half the French population, of a general public? If there is ageneral public, this is not in the logical sense of agroup, but in the sense of a strong listener-profile identity. Do these categories of listeners present asociographic homogeneity permitting us to characterize their listening prac-tice as that of a single public? The answers to this question vary consider-ably, depending on which class we look at, as shown by examination of thetest values of the illustrative modalities in this analysis.

    Heterogeneity and age structure of generalist radio stations

    The most typical class is Class 6, which includes the three principal publicservice radio stations. The higher test-values that characterize it are linked toa fairly even a very advanced age profile, together with a superior socialand cultural status. This quasi isolate of public service radio consists of older, rather highbrow listeners, characterized also by the fact that they listenvery little to youth radio, as well as to RTL or Europe 1.

    This weak crossover to the other generalist stations is also characteristic of Classes 4 and 5, each of which is centred on a generalist station (Europe 1 andRTL). Class 5, centred on RTL, is the most hegemonic of all, in the sensethat it consists almost exclusively of listeners who placea common stationfirst in their listening habits (96.6% of the prefer RTL category within Class5), but also groups almost all RTLs preference listeners (92.0% of individu-als in Class 5 come under this heading). While younger age categories arealso under-represented, it is the more middle-aged group (pre-retirementand early-retired) than in Class 6 which best characterizes it. However, themost striking difference from the public service class relates to educationallevels (secondary and higher education are less in evidence here), as well asto the social category that is over-represented here: non-manual workers.Class 4, centred on Europe 1 (but in less hegemonic fashion that the RTL

    group) appears finally to be the closest to the public service isolate, becauseof the link to both advanced age and superior social categories. Closer exam-ination of these characteristics reveals that Europe 1 tends to be the radio sta-tion of the economic elite (active or retired managers, probably privatesector) while the public servicestations tend to be the stations of the knowledge

    Glevarec & Pinet,From liberalization to fragmentation 227

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    elite. The other socio-demographic markers also confirm the greatercloseness of this class, dominated by Europe 1, to the public service stations

    rather than to RTL. This is very clearly the case in terms of social position(senior managers/members of the liberal professions constitute, after age-related categories, one of the most over-represented categories, while manualworkers are significantly fewer); it is less markedly the case with level of edu-cation (where the primary level is nonetheless slightly over-represented).

    Each of these three classes (4, 5 and 6) encompasses a single generalist sta-tion (except for Class 6, which we have called the public service class,encompassinga bunchof public stations, France Inter, France Musique andFrance Culture), and each of these audiences differs clearly from the others,in the sense that these stations are strictly mutually exclusive in defining theclass (each of them comes very near the top in the negative test values of theother two). At the level of audience radio profiles, the three principal Frenchgeneralist stations are thus strikingly mutually exclusive, but the socio-demo-graphic profile of their audiences is very close in one essential dimension,that of age. To sum up, in the area of generalist radio, there is a striking exclu-sivity of different profiles within an otherwise fairly similar population of older listeners; in other words, there are three distinct generalist publics. Inthe area of music radio, the landscape is quite different.

    Dominant radio listening profile

    Class 1 groups 58 percent of the population; more heterogenous than those sofar studied, it occupies a more central position, and is thus closer to the aver-age in the radio space, but the fact that it exists as a class at all at this level of division into 6 classes, and that it converges with the three generalist stationsonly in the three last stages of the grouping algorithm (first with Europe 1,then with RTL, then with France Inter/public service radio) is enough to sus-tain the notion that it represents an average radio listening profile.This class is not characterized by such dominant, or in particular suchhegemonic, radio listening habits as Classes 4, 5 and 6. In terms of listeningvector, it contrasts not just one buta groupingof radio stations which aresignificantly more present (these are in four groups: first NRJ the domi-nant station, with a test value of +29; then Fun and Skyrock, with around +22;next are France Info, Europe 2, RTL 2, France Bleue, with +15 to +18; andfinally RMC and Sud Radio, with around +7) with others which are signifi-cantly under mentioned (the maximum differential being, unsurprisingly,

    that with the three generalist stations). These listening tendencies are con-firmed by the preferred station indicator, within the most significant illus-trative modalities, overlapping principally with the modalities encompassingthe younger population, as shown in Table 5 (which shows only modalities of Test-value higher than +8 or lower than8).9

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    T A B L E

    5

    D o m

    i n a n

    t p r o f

    i l e o f

    F r e n c

    h r a

    d i o

    l i s t e n e r s

    C l a s s

    1 -

    M o s

    t s i g n

    i f i c a n t m o d a l

    i t i e s

    C h a r a c t e r

    i s t i c

    % o

    f m o d a l

    i t y

    % o

    f m o d a l

    i t y

    % o

    f c l a s s

    V a r

    i a b l e n a m e

    m o d a l

    i t i e s

    T e s t - v a l u e

    i n c l a s s

    i n p o p u

    l a t i o n

    i n m o d a l

    i t y

    O v e r a l l w e i g h

    t

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    N R J

    + 2 9

    . 9

    1 5 . 5

    8 . 9

    9 7 . 5

    8 8 7

    O c c u p a t

    i o n

    S t u d e n

    t

    + 2 4

    . 9

    2 0 . 0

    1 3 . 0

    8 6 . 1

    1 2 9 8

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    F u n r a

    d i o

    + 2 2

    . 8

    8 . 1

    4 . 5

    9 9 . 8

    4 5 0

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    S k y r o c

    k

    + 2 2

    . 1

    7 . 8

    4 . 4

    9 9 . 2

    4 3 8

    A g e

    1 5 1

    9 y . - o .

    + 2 1

    . 7

    1 2 . 3

    7 . 6

    9 0 . 6

    7 5 6

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    F r a n c e

    B l e u

    + 2 1

    . 6

    9 . 1

    5 . 3

    9 5 . 9

    5 2 8

    A g e

    1 1 1

    4

    + 2 0

    . 9

    1 0 . 0

    6 . 0

    9 2 . 9

    6 0 2

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    F r a n c e

    I n f o

    + 1 7

    . 9

    7 . 9

    4 . 8

    9 1 . 9

    4 8 2

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    R T L 2

    + 1 7

    . 4

    5 . 7

    3 . 3

    9 7 . 1

    3 2 9

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    E u r o p e

    2

    + 1 6

    . 4

    5 . 0

    2 . 9

    9 7 . 4

    2 8 7

    A g e

    2 0 2

    4

    + 1 4

    . 3

    1 0 . 5

    7 . 3

    8 0 . 1

    7 3 1

    O c c u p a t

    i o n

    O t h e r n o n w o r k i n g

    + 9 . 7

    1 8 . 5

    1 5 . 4

    6 7 . 0

    1 5 4 1

    L e v e l o f e d u c a

    t i o n

    S e c o n d a r y

    l e v e l

    + 9 . 6

    4 1 . 2

    3 7 . 0

    6 2 . 0

    3 6 9 9

    A g e

    2 5 2

    9

    + 8 . 3

    8 . 5

    6 . 7

    7 1 . 1

    6 6 5

    A g e

    7 5 a n

    d o v e r

    8 . 0

    3 . 6

    5 . 2

    3 8 . 7

    5 1 7

    A g e

    4 5 4

    9

    8 . 4

    5 . 0

    6 . 9

    4 0 . 3

    6 9 2

    O c c u p a t

    i o n

    M a n a g e r s /

    8 . 5

    4 . 9

    6 . 9

    4 0 . 0

    6 8 6

    L i b e r a l

    P r o f s .

    A g e

    7 0 7

    4

    8 . 6

    3 . 9

    5 . 6

    3 8 . 3

    5 6 4

    A g e

    6 5 6

    9

    9 . 2

    5 . 5

    7 . 7

    3 9 . 9

    7 6 9

    A g e

    5 0 5

    4

    1 0

    . 5

    6 . 1

    8 . 8

    3 9 . 0

    8 8 0

    O c c u p a t

    i o n a

    l c a t e g o r y

    R e t

    i r e d p e o p

    l e

    1 7

    . 0

    1 4 . 6

    2 0 . 8

    3 9 . 3

    2 0 7 5

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    R F M

    1 9

    . 0

    0 . 3

    2 . 9

    5 . 0

    2 9 3

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    C h r i e

    F M

    2 2

    . 6

    0 . 6

    4 . 5

    6 . 8

    4 4 9

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    N o s

    t a l g i e

    2 6

    . 0

    0 . 7

    5 . 9

    7 . 0

    5 8 7

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    F r a n c e

    I n t e r

    3 2

    . 4

    0 . 9

    8 . 5

    6 . 1

    8 4 5

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    E u r o p e

    1

    3 3

    . 1

    0 . 6

    8 . 0

    4 . 0

    7 9 4

    M o s

    t l i s t e n e

    d t o r a

    d i o

    R T L

    3 8

    . 4

    1 . 1

    1 1 . 2

    5 . 4

    1 1 1 6

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    If, as shown by the values for percentage of class in the modality, thepreference listeners of the radio stations included here are all or nearly all

    indeed members of Class 1 (for example, 97.5% of listeners who place NRJfirst belong to Class 1, and this percentage goes no lower than 92%, even forthe very specifically oriented France Info), the reciprocity is far from com-plete (unlike in Classes 4 and 6). The members of Class 1 share their pre-ferred station listening between the different stations on the list, so that thestation with strongest representation in this class (NRJ) is the firststation foronly 15.5 percent of its members. This means that there is a circulationbetween at least some of the stations, with some resemblance between at leasta section of the scores.

    Age and the social status modality student/pupil, which is closely corre-lated with youth, are essentially what structures membership of this class both positively, in relation to the positive test values, and negatively, betweenleft and right of Figure 1; this is really a youth listening model as opposedto an older listening model. We shall note that the median categories (3045years) do not contribute significantly to the structure of the class. This is alsothe case for the socio-professional variables, and while managers/membersof liberal professions are significantly under-represented here, there is cer-tainly a considerable age effect (membership of this professional category tra-ditionally increases with age); the same applies to level of secondaryeducation, which is noticeably higher in the first age brackets. Thus, age, asin Classes 4, 5 and 6, is an essential component and faces no significant chal-lenge from other sociographic attributes.

    To sum up: Class 1 is thus a broad group, mainly centred on music radiostations (Fun Radio and Skyrock for the very young; NRJ, Europe 2 (VirginRadio), RTL 2 for the young and middle aged). Their listening vectorbrings those members of Class 1 who are older and less centred on music sta-tions (for example those who prefer the France Bleue network) quite close tothe young music radio listeners a sign that they are much less often com-pletely different from these in their listening habits than they are from the lis-teners to the three generalist networks. It is rather as if the youthmusic radiomodel, at least when viewed as a staging post manifested among older lis-teners through the practice of station zapping, were tending to generalize toa section of the age categories which still comprises the preference clienteleof the old generalist stations.

    Finally, the central position occupied by Classes 2 and 3, between the gen-eralist stations on the right and the music radio model on the left, reflectsquite well the recognizable profile of the panellists who come into that class.

    Class 2 (10% of the population) consists essentially of the preference listen-ers to two stations, Nostalgie and Chrie FM. In terms of listening vectorsthese two stations obtain test values in this Class which are in contrast tothose of all the other stations (+66.4 for the first, +58.4 for the second). Thiscontrast is somewhat greater in relation to the generalist stations (with test

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    values of under10) than in relation to the youth music stations (test valuesof around8), indicating a nonetheless somewhat greater proximity in prac-

    tice to the dominant model of Class 1. Through the significance of theirmusical content, these stations in fact come close to the music radio model,but, as confirmed by the size of the middle age categories in the structure of this class, their target listeners are of an age somewhere between the ageingaudience of the big generalist stations and the audience of the youth musicstations in Class 1. Typically, it is people in their 40s, and mostly of working-class origins, who form the core of Class 2. This is also the only class char-acterized by a notable gender difference (test value of +5.1 for women).

    Class 3 (4% of the population) reproduces a similar model, but one notchdown in relation to age (listeners in their 30s dominate here, with test valuesof around +4), and one notch up in terms of social position (in the signifi-cantly over-represented categories, non-manual workers are joined here bythose in the intermediate professions, rather than by manual workers as inClass 2), around the two other radio stations with strong musical content:MFM and in particular RFM. These two stations are characterized, here too,by test values which are in contrast to those of all the other stations (listen-ing vectors of +58.4 and +73.1).

    Theoretical considerations on cultural industries theory

    At the beginning of the article, we recalled Bourdieus theory of fields. Thenotion of a field of cultural production (Bourdieu, 1992: 178) attempts toconceptualize two dimensions of the functioning of culture: (1) its internalfunctioning and (2) its functioning in relation to external factors, or the rela-tionship between the spaces of production and reception. The first dimensionrefers to a space of competition for a common, shared good or value, whilethe second describes a transparent socio-economic homology (guaranteedprincipally by the habitus and cultural interests; Bourdieu, 1979: 257)between producers, products and consumers. The second dimension is definedin various ways. It is thus impossible, or no longer possible, to situate the fieldof large-scale productionas dominated by the small-scale field (Bourdieu,1971).Although Bourdieu himself revised it,10 the field of large-scale productionnow functions as a new instance of consecration. Superior categories and so-called popular goods thus no longer function in ignorance of one another(Chan and Goldthorpe, 2007; Glevarec, 2005; Peterson, 1992; Savage, 2006).

    The method of hierarchical classification which we employ clearly demon-

    strates that the present historic moment appears to be structured in terms of two groupings of radio output: youth music stations and generalist stationstargeting an older audience. Consequently everything points to the abandon-ment, in the context both of theory and of radio production practice, of thenotion of a general public for which there is no statistical evidence in

    Glevarec & Pinet,From liberalization to fragmentation 231

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    favour of that of a dominant profile, and similarly of the notion of acommon denominator in favour of that of fragmentation.

    It is certainly legitimate to aim for general laws of fields(Bourdieu, 1984a:113) and thus to assimilate the field of cultural industries to the field of small-scale [sometimes called pure] production(Bourdieu, 1984b: 215). However,if we argue that the audience for cultural industries is a fraction of the generalpublic that each medium or a number of media with the same market haveprecise target groups and explicitly do not target other groups (for example,youth music stations have defined target age-groups and do not target all lis-teners) then field theory as a whole no longer holds. A field is defined, inpoint of fact, by the fact that it is where producers dispute by definition asingle prize or good, so if everyone has their own target, there are no morefields (Bourdieu, 1984a, 1992: 321). The logic of sub-fields representing aseries of isolates consisting of certain producers with certain targets does notseem a sociological better way. A sub-field is, by sociological and logical def-inition, a sub-field of a field (which includes it and which has a defined goal).In order to rediscover any relevance of an analysis in terms of fields, we needto mobilize a model of scales of activity in the cultural industries particular toa space of fragmentation. The concept of the field may again become mean-ingful, for example, in a context of national agreement, such as agreement onstatistical measurement; equally, as soon as heterogeneity appears within anational society, goals begin to vary and disjunctions between spaces of com-petition become more significant than the common field (Hennion andMadel, 1988). Briefly, how can the conceptualization in terms of a fieldstand in the face of fragmentation once producers no longer have a commongoal of reaching the same object, in this case the same listener?

    In the same way, there is no longer a general public what Edgar Morindefined in the 1950s as aiming at a varied public [which] implies [on the onehand] aiming for variety in information and imagination [and on the otherhand] for a common denominator (1962: 37). He was pinpointing the twoaspects of the conception of a general public: that the text of a medium iseither the same in all its outlets or diversified within a single outlet; and thatthe reader is defined by the consumption he shares with other readers (Dayanand Katz, 1996). To sum up, he was thus affirming the existence of generalistmedia and of audiences shared across a number of media. But what is the audi-ence, or public, of all those cultural industries that are not generalist? Are thereonly particular audience fractions or is there a general public?

    There is one historical economic factor which allows us to understand therecourse in his time to notions of a general publicor of a field of large-scale

    production: the limited character of both audio-visual genres and outlets(cinema, television and radio stations) at that time. The diversification of themedia has now brought about two types of radical change in practice: anincrease in individual occasions of contact with the media and a segmentationof individual choices. David Hesmondhalgh writes with regard to television:

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    In the old television system, the urban upper middle class might have been moreinclined to watch Hill Street Blues the most acclaimed US drama series of theearly 1980s than the working class, but the programme was still available for theworking class to watch and sure enough as the series developed, it gained a massaudience. The early 2000s equivalent to Hill Street Bluesis probablyTheSopranos; but this programme is shown only on a specialist premium cable chan-nel. This channel is in principle available to working-class viewers, if they canafford it. But it is generally advertised only in publications targeted at the uppermiddle class. (2002: 246)

    The segmentation of the media, like divorce, is not the a priori cause of a soci-ety tending to break up, but it is certainly revealing of this reality. We showedin this article that field theorys affirmation of a common good becomes prob-lematic when faced with the plurality of different goals reflecting differenttarget audiences.

    Conclusion

    The Mdiamtrie survey data demonstrate that the structuration of the radioaudience universe appears neither as a strict fragmentation by station (althoughexclusive listeners do exist, as we have noted), nor as a horizontal practiceacross all stations. The radio audience is neither a general publicnor an aver-age public, but a series of fragmented and intersecting audiences. It is quitewell represented by an image of the Olympic rings, each with inner concentriccircles: the radio station circles intersect (two, three or more times) withoutbeing strictly one inside another, with shared audiences never forming a gen-eral public; the circles of exclusive listeners are included in the outer circle, just as the fanaudiences are included in the global radio audience.

    Our use of hierarchical classification allows us to demonstrate that there isnonetheless a dominant audience profile (representing two-thirds of the lis-tening population), but this is not hegemonic: while it is a sociological profile(close to the sociological characteristics of the commercial radio category), itis not strictly a station profile (there are multiple duplications). In short, theradio audience is both fragmented by station and structured by a dominant lis-tener profile leaning towards the youth music stations. Here we capture a his-toric moment in the world of French radio, where the two groupings of youthmusic radio stations and generalist stations with an older age profile may beclearly distinguished.

    In terms of theory, our conclusion leads us to abandon as statisticallyunproved in relation to radio practice the concept of a general public in

    favour of that of the dominant profile, and the concept of a commondenominatorin favour of one of fragmentation. An analysis of the radio audi-ence thus constitutes a solid point of departure for a nuanced theory of thecultural industries, for the conceptualization of the cultural industries publicand the more general conceptualization of a field of large-scale production

    Glevarec & Pinet,From liberalization to fragmentation 233

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    T A B L E

    6

    C a t e g o r

    i e s a n

    d f o r m a t o f

    F r e n c

    h n a

    t i o n a l r a

    d i o s t a t

    i o n s

    i n c l u d e d

    i n M d i a m

    t r i e

    P a n e l

    S u r v e y

    L e g a l

    S t a t u s

    D a t e o f

    ( C o n s e

    i l S u p r i e u r

    R a d

    i o s t a t

    i o n s

    E s t a b

    l i s h m e n t

    E c o n o m

    i c S t a t u s

    d e l A u d

    i o v i s u e l

    )

    F o r m a

    t ( C S A )

    T a r g e

    t ( C

    S A )

    C h r i e

    F M

    1 9 8 7

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( F r e n c h a n

    d

    A d u l t

    I n t e r n a t

    i o n a l

    V a r

    i e t y )

    ( 2 5 5 0 y e a r s o l

    d )

    E u r o p e

    1

    1 9 5 5

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    E

    G e n e r a l

    A d u l t

    E u r o p e

    2

    1 9 8 6

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( P o p

    / r o c

    k )

    Y o u n g a d u l t (

    2 5 3

    4 )

    L o c a l e s

    d e R a d

    i o F r a n c e

    1 9 8 0

    p u b l i c s e r v

    i c e

    A d u l

    t

    A d u l t

    F r a n c e

    B l e u

    F r a n c e

    C u l t u r e

    1 9 6 3

    p u b l i c s e r v

    i c e

    S p e c

    i a l i z e d ( c u l

    t u r e

    )

    A d u l t

    F r a n c e

    I n f o

    1 9 8 7

    p u b l i c s e r v

    i c e

    S p e c

    i a l i z e d ( n e w s )

    A d u l t

    F r a n c e

    I n t e r

    1 9 4 7

    p u b l i c s e r v

    i c e

    G e n e r a l

    A d u l t

    F r a n c e

    M u s i q u e

    ( s )

    1 9 6 3

    p u b l i c s e r v

    i c e

    S p e c

    i a l i z e d ( m u s

    i c )

    A d u l t

    F u n r a

    d i o

    1 9 8 5

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( D a n c e ,

    R & B )

    Y o u

    t h ( 1 5 2

    4 )

    M F M

    1 9 8 3

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( F r e n c h

    V a r

    i e t y )

    A d u l t ( 4 0 y e a r s a n

    d + )

    N o s

    t a l g i e

    1 9 8 4

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( G o l

    d s )

    A d u l t ( 3 5 4

    9 )

    N R J

    1 9 8 1

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( H i t s )

    Y o u

    t h ( 1 5 3

    4 )

    R F M

    1 9 8 1

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( F r e n c h a n

    d

    A d u l t ( 3 5 4

    9 )

    I n t e r n a t

    i o n a

    l V a r

    i e t y

    , R o c

    k )

    R M C

    1 9 4 3

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    E

    G e n e r a l

    A d u l t

    R T L

    1 9 3 1

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    E

    G e n e r a l

    A d u l t

    R T L 2

    1 9 9 5

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( P o p

    / r o c

    k )

    Y o u n g a d u l t (

    2 5 3

    4 )

    S k y r o c

    k

    1 9 8 6

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    C o r

    D

    M u s

    i c ( R a p , R

    & B )

    Y o u

    t h ( 1 5

    2 4 )

    S u d R a d

    i o

    1 9 6 6

    p r i v a t e r a

    d i o

    B

    G e n e r a l

    A d u l t

    S o u r c e : w w w . c s a . f r

    A : n o n c o m m e r c i a l

    ( a s s o c i a t

    i v e s

    ) ; B : c o m m e r c i a l , l o c a l o r r e g i o n a l

    t h a t

    d o n o

    t b r o a

    d c a s t a n

    i d e n

    t i f i e d n a

    t i o n a l s c

    h e d u

    l e ;

    C : c o m m e r c i a l ,

    l o c a

    l o r r e g i o n a l

    t h a t

    b r o a

    d c a s t a

    t h e m a t

    i c n e

    t w o r

    k s c

    h e d u

    l e w

    i t h n a

    t i o n a

    l s c o p e ; D : n a t

    i o n a

    l c o m m e r c i a l t h e m a t

    i c ; E : g e n e r a l c o m m e r c i a l

    234 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)

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    designated by the cultural industries. It shows in particular the difficulty of conceptualizing a common goal for all actors in the industries. It introduces a

    theory which is more accurate in terms of fragmentation and of how produc-ers take account of this, a theory capable of taking into account the types of groupings, commonalities and interaction between all the groups of practi-tioners producing very different goods.

    Appendix Mdiamtrie 21-day Panel Survey

    The Mdiamtrie Panel Survey is a survey carried out over three weeks by means of personal listening diaries kept by a representative sample of the French population(Glevarec, 2007). In 2000 and 2001, 9985 individuals completed these auto-adminis-tered journals throughout a period of 23 days. The survey was carried out in twowaves: a first wave from 9 to 29 October 2000 and a second from 15 January to 4February 2001. The data from the two periods were then combined to reflect an aver-age three-week period (Tassi, 2005: 225). The survey participants completed aweekly listening diary (submitted at the end of each week), which divides the day intoquarter-hour periods and into columns corresponding to radio stations. The databaseutilized includes 18 national stations, plus the local (nationalized) Radio France sta-tions combined into a single France Bleue category, and one other stations cate-gory, essentially comprising local radio stations (see Table 6).

    Notes

    We thank Andy Bennett for his helpful reading. This article was translated fromFrench by Jean Morris.

    1. In 1964, out of 100 adults questioned: 12 percent never listened to the radio,9 percent listened only to the public stations and the so-called peripheral stations(Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1), 51 percent listened to ORTF and the peripheralstations, 28 percent listened only to the peripheral stations (CESP Survey, January andJune 1964, which recorded listening on the previous day, divided into quarter-hour

    periods; CESP, 1964).2. See Table 6 in the Appendix for a presentation of French radio stations, mostlynational, by the 20002001 Panel.

    3. The challenge for TF1 [the leading generalist commercial television channel]since the beginning of privatization, says Etienne Mougeotte, Vice-President of TF1and General Manager of the station, thus endorsing Pierre Bourdieu, is to endeavourto be as powerful as possible, to attract the largest possible number of viewers, and atthe same time to be as effective as possible in reaching the targets sought by adver-tisers: housewives under 50, 1524 year-olds, 1534-year-olds, women in general,etc. (Mougeotte, 2003: 110).

    4. Mdiamtrie is an interprofessional company which measures audiences and

    carries out studies of audiovisual and interactive media in France (Mdiamtrie web-site). It is the body of reference, especially in the field of television and radio. For ahistory of Mdiamtrie, see Souchon (1998) and Chaniac (2003).

    5. We should note that the construction of tables of listener share is a sociologicalartefact for all individuals who listen to more than two, three or more radio stations.

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    6. Thisalso means that the smallest shared audienceis not zero: that is, eachstation has listeners who are shared with each of the others. There is no forbiddenpairing.

    7. To say that a radio station is the main station for its audience does not neces-sarily mean that it is the main station for the majority of its listeners, since time spentwith other stations may be spread between several of these, so that no single other sta-tion builds up sufficient listening time to overtake the first. A contrario, the severalsecondary stations are thus very clearly outranked

    8. Unlike, for example, a frequent situation of bi-modal preferences where listen-ing time would be divided between two equally appreciatedradio stations, both withscores between 30 and 40 percent.

    9. We have not included the scores obtained by other stations, a heterogeneousgroup which is purely illustrative, or those for non listeners.

    10. There was in fact a first model, in 1971, which placed the field of large-scaleproduction in a dominated position in relation to the field of small-scale production(Bourdieu, 1971: 114). It was followed by a second model in 1992, which put the twofields at the same level inside a field of power (Bourdieu, 1992: 178). Between theconstruction of the two models, the field of large-scale production (i.e. the culturalindustries) was revised legitimately, even if that is not how it is spoken of as aninstance of consecration, if not of legitimation of the highest order alongside theinstances of reproduction (school and family).

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    Herv Glevarec is a researcher at the Centre National de la RechercheScientifique, Centre Lillois dtudes et de Recherches Sociologique etconomiques, Lille, France. He is the author of France Culture loeuvre(CNRS Editions, 2001) and Libre antenne: La rception de la radio par lesadolescents(Colin/INA, 2005). He currently works on cultural tastes, cultural

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    industry theory and youth leisure. Address: CLERSE IFRESI, 2 rue desCanonniers, 59800 Lille, France. [email: [email protected];

    website: http://www.univ-lille1.fr/clerse/site_clerse/pages/accueil/fiches/ Glevarec.htm]

    Michel Pinet is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,Centre Lillois dtudes et de Recherches Sociologique et conomiques, Lille,France. He currently works on cultural tastes and cultural industry theory, withan emphasis on modelling analysis. Address: CLERSE IFRESI, 2 rue desCanonniers, 59800 Lille, France. [email: [email protected]]

    238 Media, Culture & Society 30(2)