Page 99 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

88 Communication, Commerce and Power

reaffirmed this strategy. 56 Significantly, however, this study
concluded that a free flow policy promoted through diplomacy and
legal argument alone would not yield desired results. The report states
that,

At the present time, attention to the international communications
implications of direct satellite broadcasting appears to be limited
to consideration of the immediate political/legal question of an
international convention regulating such activity ....
The US lead in the development of telecommunications
technology, and the role that US communications systems and
products play in the international transfer of information
constitute foreign resources of great significance. Recognition of
this advantage might be the starting point for the consideration of a
comprehensive, or an incremental US Government policy on
international mass communications. 57

By the end of the 1970s, public officials concerned with America's
capacity to shape future international telecommunications develop-
ments apparently had come to recognize that general US power
resources should be applied in efforts either to resist free flow restric-
tions or to promote desired reforms. However, a coordinated and
comprehensive method of putting such resources to use - including
cultural-power applications - was not readily available. Perhaps not
coincidentally, American officials at this time began to consider DBS
to be an important technology in terms of its potential economic
implications, despite the ongoing absence of more than marginal
domestic private sector interest. In the Senate DBS study, for ex-
ample, t~e general absence of domestic DBS activities in relation to
emerging development plans overseas (namely, in Japan and Western
Europe) became an issue of some concern. According to the report,
'the current lack of private commercial interest in the United States in
the technology persists,' and as such 'Congress might consider
whether or not to follow the recent advice of the National
Academy of Sciences and authorize NASA to resume its own devel-
opment program in this potentially important medium.' 58 The Senate
report goes on to recommend that public sector support should be
pursued through the development of domestic direct broadcasting
educational and health-care services - areas in which domestic
private sector resistance to direct state involvement would be relat-
ively low. 59