Page 86 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

4 Foreign Communication

Policy and DBS:

1962-1984

State support for DBS research, including the active participation of
NASA and the Department of Defense in the Applications Technol-
ogy Satellite (ATS) experiments, coupled with ongoing government
support for USIA and CIA propaganda activities, generated a degree
of mistrust among officials of foreign states toward the American
stated disinterest in DBS. By the mid-1970s, direct broadcasting was
seen by many LDCs both to be a boon and a threat to their develop-
ment aspirations. A DBS system could be applied in the manner of the
ATS educational television trial, yet it could also be used for North-
em-defmed commercial or political ends. The latter appeared more
likely given the large-scale costs involved in establishing a DBS sys-
tem. These costs also inhibited any one LDC from pursuing DBS
developments without foreign assistance. 1
The international debate concerning direct broadcasting began in
the late 1960s and, importantly, involved broader questions than DBS
alone. The more pressing contextual issue concerned LDC-based
challenges to the legality of free flow of information applications.
Long before any US-based entity planned to implement a commercial
DBS system, LDCs- mostly through UN-based agencies- refuted
American arguments that transnational transmissions conducted
without the prior consent of receiving countries constituted a 'right'
under existing principles of international law. While American propa-
ganda activities for the most part were tolerated by US public and
private sector interests - indicating at least some domestic acceptance
of the use of cultural power by the American state - no serious plan to
implement a USIA or a CIA direct broadcasting service emerged.
Beyond LDCs' stated distrust of publicly known US private or public
sector plans involving direct broadcast technologies (or lack thereof),
during the 1970s the DBS conflict emerged to become a front-line
issue in a more significant North-South conflict.
The technological potential of US interests to develop and apply
direct broadcasting was used mostly by Third World officials as a

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