Technology, Television, and Competition: The Politics of Digital TV

Description

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the advanced industrial countries considered replacing the existing analog television infrastructure with a new digital one. A key common feature to the debates over digital TV (DTV) in the United States, Western Europe and Japan was the eventual victory of the ideas of digitalism (the superiority of everything digital over everything analog) and of digital convergence (the merging of computing, telecommunications, and broadcasting infrastructures made possible by digitalization) in public debates over standards. Jeffrey Hart's book shows how nationalism and regionalism combined with digitalism to produce three different and incompatible DTV standards in the three regions, an outcome which has led to missed opportunities in developing the new technologies. Hart's book contributes to our understanding of relations between business and government, and of competition between the world's great economic powers.

Jeffrey Hart is Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. His publications include Rival Capitalists (with Joan Edelmann Spero, 1992), Interdependence in the Post Multilateral Era (1985), and The New International Economic Order (1983).

'... the book is an excellent review of what has been a ground breaking period for the industry ...' Multimedia Communications '... the discussion of the broader meaning of the case of digitalization for the present and future of the political economy is well developed and contributes to our understanding.' Journal of Common Market Studies '... the book is an excellent review of what has been a ground breaking period for the industry as it moved into the digital age.' The IEE 'Technology, Television and Competition is well written and has clear historical value.' Journalism Studies 'It has a dry, academic writing style, with jargon and data that go beyond basic textbook (or newspaper-based) understanding of the core issues. One hopes that the information collected here can inform future volumes that are more accessible to non expert readers.' Megan Mullen, Department of Communication, University of Wisconsin