The process of Europeanisation in Central and Eastern Europe presents scholars with an interesting conundrum. Recent cross-national studies have shown that these New Member States (NMS) continue to outperform old ones in terms of transposition of EU Directives and infringement cases. However the situations in these countries, particularly in the media sector, continue to raise alarm in Brussels. The criticism of the Hungarian government’s media policy is most famous, but even in Slovenia, one of the stars of the 2004 accession there have been problems. Norkring closed its digital terrestrial television network and Modern Times Group pulled out of the third most popular national television, both citing failures to ensure fair competition. Dimitrova suggested that EU regulations can become "empty shells" in the domestic context and called for more qualitative research to understand why. This paper aims to contribute to this understanding for the audiovisual media sector through a close examination of media governance in Slovenia. It presents findings from extensive interviews with stakeholders including those in regulatory authorities and government, as well as analysis of secondary data on the market and from administrative records and documentary sources. The evidence elaborated indicates that characteristics typical of polarized pluralist media systems as identified by Hallin and Mancini and related to the small size of the country and its media market contribute to resistance to Europeanization in this sector. The common standards, open markets, and protections for European audiovisual content in EU audiovisual and competition policy appear to face institutional misfit with the norms, practices and ways of doing things in the Slovenian media sector. These seem shaped by the small scale on which market players operate and relationships between political elites and the media.
