Page 195 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Capital, Technology and the US in an 'Open Market' 185

globalized search for the cultural 'lowest common denominator.' 79
However, in the long-term, because compression technologies also
compel narrowcasting developments, increased transnational competi-
tion will provide advertisers with significantly lower rates and will
stimulate, on an international scale, the funneling of advertising dol-
lars toward much more targeted marketing. 80
Direct broadcasting activities increasingly will involve the coordina-
tion of a broad range of information-based interests, especially tele-
phone, cable television, financial services and computer companies.
As discussed, this is because digital DBS now constitutes the best
means through which transnational customers can be reached and
offered a range of integrated information services. DBS provides
information commodity capitalists with an immediate and largely
unmediated transnational reach. In light of the competitive pressures
released by new technologies, free trade, and the Telecommunications
Act, DBS, with complementary terrestrial infrastructures, now pro-
vides a select number of corporations with the capacity to establish
full-service global information infrastructures. News Corporation
International, Hughes Communications, British Telecom, AT&T
and others, appear well positioned to take advantage of re-regulation.
Their quest is to construct and dominate the media used by virtually
all participants in the emerging information economy.

7.4 CONCLUSIONS

More so than even the AT&T divestiture, the US Telecommunications
Act both reflects and modifies larger post-Fordist historical forces.
The development of what AI Gore now calls a Global Information
Infrastructure is the primary goal shaping these and related informa-
tion economy developments. Beyond a model for 'freeing up' the
private sector in efforts to construct the Gil, the Telecommunications
Act and other US initiatives will fuel its construction not despite its
probable oligopolistic outcomes but more probably because of them.
In the words of TCI's Senior Vice President of Communications
Policy and Planning, Robert Thomson, 'the race to market ... began
on February 8 when the telecommunications bill was passed.' 81
In relation to the concerns of this book, among other things these
developments underline how the cultural imperialism paradigm
remains ill-equipped to articulate the complex character of inter-
corporate activities and their relationship to the American state. As