Broadcast media hold only partial autonomy from power structures, never full independence.

Evidence

Thus media institutions are seen as neither completely state-controlled nor free and autonomous but inevitably “oriented within” the structures of power that set parameters for their modes of operation. However, he argues, the crucial issue is how to better comprehend “the specific areas of conjuncture and disjuncture” that arise between these different institutions, at particular times, concerning particular genres of programming, and in relation to different types of (more or less contentious) topics. … He is concerned to develop a model of the media that allows us to understand how they can function in different circumstances, with different degrees of relative autonomy from political and economic control, so that the overdeterminations of power nonetheless allow for the possibility of conflict and contradiction. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 763

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Hall’s concept of media as ‘oriented within’ power yet retaining relative autonomy — the core model he develops across these papers.
• XREF: Connects to Hall’s Gramscian notion of hegemony built from earlier chapters, and to the encoding/decoding framework; echoes the base/superstructure critique.