Abstract:

The author analyses a lastly changing Central Eastern European country from the aspect of the transition of media and advertising market in its social, political and economic context. Respecting the exact chronology of events the paper leads through the different historical steps describing the relation of direct command and direct dependence between media and the communist central party prevailing until 1987/88. Thus, the main aim is not to condemn, but to explain the reasons for its success; leading to its decline, through the processus of economic and political erosion. The transition from the so-called command-model to the so-called market-model is described via the creation of the conditions and framework for the change of economic and wider social regime, including mass communication and mass media; a new "Hungarian model"? The second part places this new "Hungarian model" in the political context and considers the proof of the problematic use of market as a regulatory mechanism, the proof also that the market mechanism are far from being perfect in the media, either, as one of the basic reasons for the breaking-out of the so-called "media war" in 1992. The third part of the paper analyses the situation of the main advertising media, the expanding of the advertising agencies, their clients, as well as the media and market research institutes in Hungary. Thus, placing the new democracy in the range and limits of press freedom, the "media war", the creation of the advertising chain, the author leads to a detailed description of a genuine young advertising market and the different media-players on this market. Even if in 1993 only three years after the start of the transition process in Hungary, theory and practice do not necessarily match in media-politics, severe disagreements cannot be overshadowed by a general acceptance of the market as the "adequate regulatory mechanism in the field of media and advertising in Hungary.