Movies

Argentina recently passed a media bill that will play a vital role in transforming the media ownership providing an allowance for democracy.  The senate has already approved the bill, which could open the airwaves to the community with a 44 to 24 vote. The passage of the bill has been fought by the Media in an attempt to preserve their control over news and information. The passage of this bill was met with celebrations outside of congress, where thousands of government supporters, union representatives, human right groups and artist converged as it gave room to democracy of the media.

Domestic Market Share of the Media Ownership
Today, a third of the licenses are of commercial groups, a third for government and a third for non-governmental organizations. Therefore, the bill has created a distinction between the freedom of press and the freedom for private media ownership.

According to Fox  Waisbord (2002), the media fragmentation of ownership began in 1980 when the military came to power. Before that, in 1976 the government was unwilling to privatize the television station. Because of distrust of the private media, the military preferred to spread the control of television and radio among the branches of the armed forces. They controlled the media they restricted the report of sensitive government information. Moreover, the military carried out in-human acts to the journalist who could not adhere to their rules. This included silencing them as and carrying out assassinations. Trigona (2009) points out that 12 journalist were assassinated and over 30,000 disappeared. However, the Menem government finally agreed to privatize the stations in 1983, with only minor reforms taking place.

Since 990.the expansion of the media gadgets ownership such as radios and television in the households has continued to rise, as there was an existence of 35 million video cassettes recorders and two-million satellite television subscribers, auctioned the television stations that had been nationalized earlier in 1970. This suggests a media landscape, which is substantially different from the years of early 1980s.

This growth has continued to the late 1990s as it is estimated that there are more than 15 million subscribers in the region. The two media behemoth resulted from the presence of the larger companies consuming the smaller companies in areas where cable development was originally fragmented in numerous companies. These two major media behemoths include the Clarin group and CEI group dominated most of the markets. The entry of United States trade agreement paved way in Argentina in 1994.

There is a new law in the Argentinas government that is regulating the broadcast and cable television as well as other media services. The law has established a new regulatory authority for broadcasting in Argentina, the Federal Authority of audiovisual communication services (AFSCA) to replace the existing broadcast regulator.

The key provision of this law include
To divide the radio spectrums for broadcasting services into two third for the government services according to the ratio of 111 with the non-governmental and the commercial providers of radio and televisions.

To regulate a single entity of network radio and television stations. The effect is that large commercial media groups will have to sell radios and broadcast television licenses to comply with this limitation.

To regulate the production of radio and broadcast content to a 70 percent and 60 percent respectively. Cable television networks must have a channel produced by them but cannot have more than one.

To demand of the cable television networks to include channels of the coverage area of services. This plays a very vital role in promotion of local tourism, local musicians, and local culture.

To create a registry for foreign channels and impose a law that shall require these channels to have rights over the production of Argentinas films.

To limit the percentage of foreign ownership in local radio and television broadcast to 30 percent as long as non-Argentina based ownership does not result in direct or indirect control of the company.

To allow only the two existing telephone companies to offers the so-called triple play of phone cable television and internet services.

Convergence of the Media
Convergence of the media in Argentina has been brought about by forming a number of communities grouping. Coalitions have been formed of more than 300 groups, which include unions, community media organizations, and human rights groups. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner played a critical role of presenting the bill to change the dictatorship law on March 18th 2009. Many journalists actors and media figures have supported the presidents initiative called audiovisual communication services (SCA), which states that the airwaves belong to the community as they are patrimony of humanity and should be administered by the state with democratic criteria.

The SCA law calls for several fundamentals changes to media legistration. The most important aspect of the law mandated that 33 of airwaves to be reserved for non profit groups. This could ensure that community associations, non-profit, and pro universities have guaranteed access to broadcast licenses.

Communities, media and grassroots organizations will have to compete with all non-profit entities in order to win the spaces opened by the law. This term opens the door for private associations, funded by co-operations and church groups to compete with community media groups. The other criticism of the law includes lack of registration for funding for community media and guarantees for indigenous representation in local media.

Outside of congress, the convergence of the media can be clearly seen by the community media groups from national network alternative media broadcast live video and radio programming , they have hang a banner that reads  Even though we are not inside the law, we exist.

Film in Argentina
According to The Canadian trade commissioner service (2010), there are quite a numbers of film viewers who have continued to increase. Despite the increase of viewers, a high percentage of the population prefers movies produced in the United States. 49  of the films in Argentina were produced in United States, 24  by Argentina, 9  by France and 3 by Spain and only 2 were Canadian. Concerning viewing 82  preferred American movies, and 9  would choose Argentine movies.

In the movies shown in the movie theatre, 24  are Argentine and 76  are foreign. This is also seen outside the movie houses only 18  of movies are Argentine and 82 foreign while on Television 8 are Argentine and 92 are foreign.

Exhibition of Argentina Movies
The media in Argentina produces literacy program in the way that teaches how knowledge and social identities are produces in a variety of sites. Media education is based on how questions can be deconstructed to understand between knowledge, representation, values and identities. It hold the principle of making students cultural producers who can read different media text ad create them. This is why this media education is termed as cultural producers.

The national ministry of education has created an education program that coordinates various initiatives between the media and the school across the country. This program has its media industries as it main partners. All the initiatives count on the participation of television channels, radio stations, photographic companies newspapers and cinema.

However, one cannot work with media education without the media, and it is therefore necessary to involve the media in the debates and the projects. The media in cooperation with the ministry of education discusses media and educational issues with the industry.  In this way, the media has become directly interested in what education has to say.

Export of Argentinas Movies
Most Argentinas films have been co- produced with a number of countries such as Spanish, French as well as other international multinational films. A number of new regulations have extended subsidies for local production to co- production companies, thus creating new opportunities for foreign companies.