Page 119 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

108 Communication, Commerce and Power

Whatever changes the media experience in the years ahead, there
would appear to be a clear need for long-range consideration of
an international communications role for the United States which
takes into account the predictable development of the new
communications technology [DBS]. Somewhere in the upper
reaches of the US government ... an attempt might be made to
anticipate some of the problems which these technological changes
may bring. 5

5.1 POLICY AGENTS AND THE FRAGMENTED
CHARACTER OF US POLICY

The structural conditions necessary for the formulation of a policy
involving DBS-related cultural-power applications have been absent.
Foreign opposition to US DBS applications have had little direct
effect on the thinking and policies of American state officials. Instead,
in a bureaucratic environment that is structurally antagonistic to
sustained policy efforts, public or private sector direct broadcasting
developments had remarkably little chance of being successful in the
United States.
Richard N. Gardner, the Assistant Secretary of State for Interna-
tional Organization Affairs during the period in which Comsat was
conceived, told a Congressional hearing in 1969 that he had experi-
enced great frustration in his attempts to link America's early tele-
satellite development policies with the general goal of what he called
the strengthening of 'common values in our shrinking world.' In his
efforts to promote this, Gardner explained that 'I could not get the
responsible leaders of the US government sufficiently concerned with
this dimension' to any degree approaching their overwhelming
interest in the 'short-term political advantages' of telesatellite devel-
opments.6
As discussed in Chapter 4, telesatellite communications involving
television broadcasts transmitted direct to homes across nation-state
borders involve not only a broad range of issues and institutions but
also a number of questions concerning the uses of outer space, trans-
border information flows, and related issues involving national sover-
eignty. Moreover, international institutions specifically mandated to
deal with these - such as the ITU and the UN - have remained
underdeveloped in the scope of their policies and enforcement