2 - Why Digital TV?

Summary

During the past few decades the broadcasting industry has undergone a period of unparalleled changes. In Europe, where public stations once dominated the television landscape, governments have either privatized or forced public broadcasters to operate under commercial standards of profitability and ratings (Noam, 1991; Siune and Hultén, 1998). In the United States, where public stations have historically played a minor role, the changes have been no less dramatic. Gradually, programming obligations, ownership restrictions, and other regulations concerning the operation and renewal of terrestrial TV licenses were either relaxed or scrapped altogether. This wave of changes has been typically described as deregulation, a process whereby governments have progressively yielded control of the broadcasting industry to market forces (e.g., Mosco and Schiller, 2001; McChesney, 2003). The argument is that these changes have reduced the scope of government control over who offers what kind of services using which technologies in the television sector. There is certainly no shortage of examples to support this argument. Whether one looks at historical trends in the regulation of market entry and exit, funding, or programming over the past two decades, it is clear that the locus of industry control has shifted from the state to the private sector. This shift ran parallel to new macroeconomic policies adopted in response to the economic slowdown of the early 1970s.