Maybe you've heard that the federal government is requiring all television transmissions to be carried on a digital signal by 2009. Of course this requires anyone who wants to continue to receive television signals to mess with upgrade equipment (if it works at all) or buy a new TV(what a boon to TV manufacturers). However, it doesn't seem that the public is overly upset about it. Maybe that's because we the people have not really considered the implication of this technological shift.
Granted, I have not studied up on the actual cold facts concerning the conversion, but I have learned not to trust those in charge of commissions such as the FCC which has been trying whole-heartedly to deprive us of any semblence of media diversity by changing the rules to allow megaconglomerates to buy up whatever they want. It's bad enough that the overwhelming majority of media worldwide is now controlled by five huge transnationals, but it now seems they are going to deprive us of recourse to arguments about the public airwaves.
Most Americans are unaware that, as it currently stands, television is broadcast over public airwaves and that means it belongs to us. Networks are responsible under the law to provide programming in the public interest. So what happens when it goes digital? One must assume that digital signals require transmission through satellites. Who owns those satellites? Care to guess?
A cynical person might conclude that the digitizing of television is a subtle (or not-so-subtle) coup over public control of network programming.
11/20/2007
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