Page 182 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite
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172          Communication,  Commerce and Power

           reception units, the emerging PRC 'middle class' may well turn away
           from these state-controlled systems and, in effect, will become increas-
           ingly discriminating consumers. In the words of Dennis Brownlee, an
           executive with United States Satellite Broadcasting (USSB) - another
           North American  DBS  broadcaster - DBS  investors  are  banking on
           the belief that 'people want  . . .  and will pay for programming that is
           more personally meaningful . .3 8
             Simon Murray, a former Managing Director of Star TV, has asked
           'What can governments do anyway? If people want to put up dishes,
           what can  the  government do to stop them?.J Senior US Commerce
                                                  9
           Department  official  Jean  Pruitt  also  recognizes  this.  According  to
           Pruitt,  the  significance  of DBS  directly  involves  its  impact  on  re-
           casting  the  regulatory  capacities  of even  the  most  totalitarian  of
           nation states:

             As  a  distributor of a good or service,  the thing you most want is
             local  support.  As  soon  as  you've  got  some  people  using  your
             product  or making  money  off your  product  you  are  almost  free
             [sic]  .... The  thing  about  DBS  [receivers] ... is  they  are
             ubiquitous .... No  one  really  knows  you're  doing  it  [receiving
             transmissions] until after the fact. 40

             The  Star  TV  acquisition  can  best  be  understood  in  terms  of the
           European and North American activities of News Corp. in relation to
           more general digital technology developments. News Corp. subsidiary
           News  Datacom  owns  the  VideoCrypt  signal  encryption  (or  'scram-
           bling')  technology.  Through  its  adoption  by  the  dominant  direct
           broadcasting  system  in  Europe  - Astra - and  the  first  high-power
           North American system- DirecTV- VideoCrypt is  on the verge  of
           becoming the de facto global DBS encryption standard. More signific-
           antly,  News  Corp.  continues  to  upgrade  both  Star  TV  and  its
           European DBS interests (most notably BSkyB) to accommodate com-
           pressed  digitalized  signals  utilizing  the  upgraded  version  of Video-
           Crypt already used by DirecTV. These investments will  substantially
           increase  the  quantity  and  quality  of Asian  and  European  transmis-
           sions  and  will  enable  News  Corp.  to  service  transnational  markets
           with its  international publishing,  television and film  holdings, down-
           loaded  from  its  satellites  to  consumers  using  smaller  and  smaller
           reception dishes. In the PRC alone, following its equipment upgrade,
           News Corp. anticipates that Star TV video services will be watched by
           185 million Chinese households by 2003. In sum, through DBS, News
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