Page 187 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Capital, Technology and the US in an 'Open Market' 177

HDTV with existing computer monitors, the alliance is committed to
a standard that uses a process called 'progressive scanning.' In addi-
tion, the US HDTV receivers will be 'smart sets,' in the sense that they
will automatically interpret an incoming signal to be either NTSC or
the new standard and thus able to display either transmission. 55
Although this example of the HDTV policy process illustrates the
overarching influence of status quo corporate interests in US decision-
making, and the time delays involved in developing any kind of
private sector consensus before undertaking such major initiatives, it
is important to note that the positive outlook now held by US inter-
ests in relation to developments in digital technology has directly
involved the structural conditions through which US communication
policy activities take place. Whereas they were publicly promoted as
the positive outcome of 'letting the free market decide,' alternatively it
can be argued that the historical anti-competitive activities of cable
television operators through their control over US programing con-
stituted an essential pre-condition preventing Japanese corporate
interests (such as Sony) from dominating American HDTV develop-
ments. Arguably, had early DBS systems been allowed to compete,
US HDTV would be undergoing a much different history. Given the
underdevelopment of compression technologies in the 1980s, US DBS
operators could well have provided HDTV-type services (as many had
planned) and might have developed a far larger market for special
events than now exist in order to stimulate sales. Japanese-based
corporations might well have subsidized a fledgling HDTV (NTSC-
compatible) US monitor market in order to establish a de facto
standard. Given these developments, the FCC's wait-and-see policy,
largely a result of the structural inability of the American state to lead
such a development (itself publicly justified by a general faith in
'market forces'), could have produced disastrous consequences for
many US-based TNCs now hoping to use a digital HDTV standard
to reclaim a large portion of the home electronics market. Instead,
through the launch of DirecTV, the United States has taken advan-
tage of its late start and is now home to the first fully digitalized high-
power DBS system. 56
Through digitalization, the new HDTV standard, free trade, DBS
and the Telecommunications Act, a number of corporations are posit-
ioning themselves to implement virtually seamless national and poten-
tially international communications and information service
infrastructures. Large-scale corporations (like Citicorp, as discussed
earlier), seeking the one-stop services offered by prospective winners