AIM

Alternative International Media

Type	Publicly funded public service broadcaster
Industry	Mass Media
Predecessor	Plangainer Broadcasting Group (PBG)
Founded	June 12th, 1941
Headquarters	Media City Park, Orley, Plangainer
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Westley Conrad (Chairman of Operations) David Rineland (Director)
Revenue	$4.121 billion (2021)
Operating income	$216 million (2021)
Net income	$311 million (2021)
Total assets	$2.91 billion (2021)
Owner	Public owned
Number of employees	2,379 (2022)

Alternative International Media (AIM), formerly known as Plangainer Broadcasting Group is a non-profit public broadcaster of Plangainer, originally starting as a radio broadcasting service in 1941 before expanding into television in 1966, currently providing multi-station television broadcasting and radio technologies including online and stream services. It is currently the largest broadcaster in Plangainer, serving all regions including the Autonomous Republic of Banau and operating with an international broadcasting channel, employing over 2,300 staff in total, most of whom operate within the AIM Television division. Its headquarters are located at the Media City Park in Orley.

The original broadcast station was founded on June 12th, 1941 which began broadcasting their first ever radio program, "Radio Rondy". In 1963, the program's name became AIM's official title after receiving approval from the Ministry of Communications & Information Technologies which later instated the Radio and Television Commission of Plangainer to manage licensing and the legal rights of media broadcasting stations in the country. The company has been under the control of several different private owners throughout its history, but always maintained ownership of both the radio and television stations. As part of a wider internal reorganization effort, in 1967 the two separate divisions were then merged into one single entity, making way for the creation of the current organization.

AIM is a full member of the International Broadcasting Alliance (IBA).

History

The early arrival of broadcasting and radio transmission technology in the early 1940s established the foundations of telecommunications in Plangainer. In the mid-twentieth century, independent broadcasting stations were prominent throughout the southeastern prompts of Plangainer as well as the capital city of Orley. Prior to the installation of the CBCC, a major portion of operating costs for these local stations were funded by private businesses such as newspaper organizations or large corporations with ties to specific political parties that allowed stations to freely air content supporting their agendas, causing a prominent censorship and bias trend within Plangainerian media outlets. In response to the oversaturation of available waveband frequencies available at the time, the CBCC was founded in 1969 to oversee and enforce new broadcast regulation policies intended to limit the amount of radio broadcasts that can be held at FM and AM wavebands while also creating clear rules and imposing state-enforced guidelines on blacklisted frequency ranges of which all local broadcasting stations are not permitted on using.

In the late 1970s, the CBCC granted AIM an independent broadcasting license as an established public service and media provider, and a television broadcasting permit in 1973, making them the first station licensed to operate on both FM and VHF bands simultaneously, granting partial independency from commercial interests until being classified as the public radio and television organization by the government in 1977. By end of the 1980s, AIM began operating on a budget funded by taxpayers under the Ministry of Media and Public Affairs' oversight after losing its original corporate financial makeup, and upon passage of the Foundations of Public Broadcasting and Radio Act (FPBRA) in 1998, the broadcaster was since banned from commercial advertising, finalizing their change in funding model.

In the twenty-first century, AIM received high praise for their transparency policy as part of the 1998 act which forbids the government from enforcing political bias and influence, the policy also including the publication of budget and internal operation documents for each year's expenses and expenditures alongside their yearly auditing reports.

In 2012, AIM was hit with a legal action lawsuit filed by the Independent Media Group, TV12 and several other local broadcasting companies that had accused AIM of anti-competitive practices in the form of market domination over broadcast frequencies within Plangainer by creating a monopoly of television broadcasts at the national level, citing this practice to be unfair competition towards private broadcasting stations who were subsequently unable to compete or establish their own channels due to the monopolizing effects of AIM, the legal action was dropped after the High Court of Orley dismissed the case.

In 2018, AIM switched from VHF to UHF band television transmissions in accordance with the 2017 CBCC regulations which were imposed upon all license holders for television and radio broadcasting across both bands.

In 2021, AIM joined the International Broadcasting Alliance as a full member.