Cultural quotas in broadcasting I: a model

Abstract

This paper develops a Hotelling location model in which two radio stations choose combinations of local and international content to play, given consumers with preferences distributed over those combinations. Station revenue derives from sales of advertising time, the demand for which depends negatively on the price and positively on the station’s market share and consumers get disutility from advertising and from a less-than-ideal broadcast mix of local and international content. In this setting we show that the laissez-faire solution involves less than (socially optimal) maximal differentiation.