Page 89 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

78 Communication, Commerce and Power

distrust them more than they did before.' 10 Two years later, however,
it became apparent that the development of DBS for American state
broadcasting services would not proceed. In a Congressional hearing,
the recently replaced VoA Director Leonard H. Marks resisted the
urgings of legislators to prognosticate on future US direct broadcast
applications while, during the same period, the VoA publicly called
DBS technologically not feasible for at least another decade. This
11
latter point, however, was an assertion that contradicted both the
Congressional testimony of private sector engineers and NASA pre-
sentations on the ATS project (scheduled to be launched in just five
years). 12 Again, in 1970, USIA officials stated that they had little
interest in DBS because of ongoing 'technological' and 'economic'
barriers. 13
It is doubtful that these officials were being altogether truthful.
Leonard Marks, for instance, as a member of the Comsat board of
directors prior to his posting at the USIA in 1965, had direct knowl-
edge of the role that political will played in the development or
derailment of new telesatellite technologies. The seeming irrational-
14
ity of not pursuing DBS applications became more apparent over the
course of the 1970s when, increasingly, a premium was placed on the
economic efficiency and centralized management of state broadcasting
services. Whereas the VoA's news operations had always been located
in Washington, DC, in 1975 the RFE and RL newsrooms were con-
solidated into offices located in Munich in order to reduce costs and
coordinate activities better. 15 More generally, according to the 1973
report by the Presidential Commission on International Radio
Broadcasting, titled The Right to Know, the short-term costs asso-
ciated with effective propaganda activities were seen to be minimal in
relation to the potential savings that cultural-power applications
could provide in terms of potentially unnecessary Cold War military
expenditures. 16
In sum, the refusal of US propaganda agencies to pursue DBS
during these formative years demonstrated their unwillingness to
interfere with established private sector telecommunications and
mass-media interests. Given the (at best) tentative support for state
broadcasting activities from the State Department and Congress,
direct broadcasting represented a potential domestic political
minefield which USIA and CIA officials seem to have thought
best to avoid - at least until the Soviet Union initiated such
broadcasts. 17