In the various embodiments of the present invention, a method of floor control in a PTX communications system comprises transmitting a floor control message via a floor control channel (905) wherein the floor control message consists of media designation fields (1003) for any possible requested media type. The media types preferred for the given requested PTX session are designated by populating the corresponding media type designators (1003) within the floor control message.The Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP) may be used for the floor control messaging channel and is independent from the requested media streams (217) which are typically Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) media streams. Support may be provided for older mobiles that do not support each type of RTP media stream, but will still receive and interpret the RTCP floor control messaging, which in the embodiments of the present invention, is common for all media types.