Page 88 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Foreign Communication Policy and DBS: 1962-1984 77

foreign relations and the general absence of a professional civil service
able to counter-balance his political agenda in agencies such as the
USIA. These apprehensions were reaffirmed under the Nixon admin-
istration when USIA Director James Keogh placed restrictions on the
VoA's coverage of Congressional Watergate hearings. But despite
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such instances, the American state has engaged in and apparently will
continue to be involved in propaganda activities. Why then, given the
potential economic efficiencies and cultural-power capacities asso-
ciated with DBS, were direct broadcasting technologies never devel-
oped or applied by the USIA or other agencies?
In 1958, with a forty-person staff and a $3-million budget, an
International Television Service (lTV) was created in the USIA. Dur-
ing the early years of Comsat, USIA officials anticipated that an
international television broadcasting service using telesatellites even-
tually would become an established part of American propaganda
operations. With world-wide distribution ambitions in mind, lTV
began to develop appropriate in-house production facilities. In the
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1960s, as anticipated, lTV production and distribution activities
became increasingly important components of USIA overseas broad-
casting. This boom was directly associated with the more general US
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foreign policy commitment to the 'modernization' of LDCs. Accord-
ing to Robert Elder, television was widely recognized as an efficient
means for mass education, able 'to bring societies from tribalism to a
sense of unity.' This association, in tum, stimulated a 'government-
wide consideration of new uses of television in international commu-
nication.'8 By 1966, 2,082 foreign-owned television stations located in
ninety-four countries broadcast some USIA programing. 9
In the late 1960s, the CIA-funded (and to some extent directed)
Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) East European
and Soviet-targeted shortwave services raised the idea of developing
and using DBS technologies. In early 1967, John Rich:udson Jr of the
National Committee for a Free Europe (then the front organization
financing RFE and RL) told a Congressional subcommittee that
direct broadcasting constituted a positive development. Given that a
DBS signal would be extremely difficult to block, and that the only
way to stop a direct broadcast transmission would be to destroy the
satellite in orbit, Richardson believed that Soviet Union officials
would have no choice but to accept both direct broadcasting and its
implications regarding the free flow of information. Whether Soviet
officials resisted DBS transmissions or accepted them, Richardson
thought the general result would be that 'their own publics would