The Political Economy of Digital Television

Early last month, the US Senate quietly moved the United States one step closer to final approval of a three-billion dollar subsidy package aimed squarely at the aging television sets of an American public allegedly hungry for high-resolution spectacle and ever more compelling escapism.

Setting an April 7th, 2009 deadline, the Senate adopted legislation that would force an end to analog broadcast television and complete the transition to digital-only signals. The EU and other Western countries are expected to follow suit with similar plans to interfere with a supposedly ‘free’ market and legislate the switch to digital -- ostensibly in the name of sharper images and theatre-quality sound for consumers. US legislators claim the subsidy, which would be used to halve the price of digital receivers, is necessary to ensure lower-income ‘archaic’ Americans are not left with darkened TV screens once this deadline passes and digital becomes the new government-imposed standard.

But why governments would force the adoption of a specific, non-essential technology which requires a massive transfer of public funds to the bottom lines of private industry ($3 billion is over two-times the amount the US government plans to spend on vaccines to protect 20 million Americans from a possible bird flu pandemic), is a question which begs for further investigation.

Outwardly, politicians are justifying the move by September 11th invocations, as the shift to digital broadcasting will briefly return the analog airwaves to the public domain and free-up “much needed” space for emergency first-responders to communicate more effectively with each other, and the public, in case of another terrorist attack.

Delve even deeper, however, between the lines, and you’ll find a classic, multi-faceted example of the irrational logic of financial capital –- a ready-made illustration which includes the current corporate push for greater copyright and intellectual property rights, the financing of a criminal and genocidal war in Iraq, and a case study in the continued privatisation of the commons. The reality behind the subsidy and the legislating of technological change is actually two-fold.

Today, movies and television shows are easily recorded digitally and shared across the internet for free, and the world’s major media conglomerates intend to put a stop to this ‘piracy’ through the implementation of various digital rights management technologies, chiefly, a system of ‘broadcast flags’. These ‘flags’ will be attached to every digital broadcast and would communicate with all future digital equipment, effectively eliminating an individual’s freedom to record, share, or re-transmit the program or film in any way.

Secondly, forcing private cable companies out of the analog spectrum will, for the first time in over 50 years, return this precious resource to public hands. Unfortunately for the public, since it was initially given away by government’s corporate cronies, the growth of the internet and value-added cell phone services has made this bandwidth worth its ethereal weight in gold.

Under the guise of creating a newly-improved emergency broadcast system, the US government actually intends to re-privatise the spectrum, this time selling it for billions of dollars to cell phone and internet service providers. The funds raised through this auction are already explicitly earmarked to partially compensate for Bush’s staggering budgetary deficit –- a deficit created largely by the mounting costs of the war in Iraq.

So, as financial capital’s long history of curbing individual freedom and enclosing the commons for private gain repeats itself, Iraqi women and children will continue to be murdered a world away -– ironically, events that will never be relayed to the American public in digital picture or sound.

Absent from the debate, alternatively, is the willingness for a truly democratic and publicly-controlled broadcast spectrum that would help foster an open, inclusive, dynamic civil society -- a society with open-access to unbiased news and election coverage, not-for-profit educational programming for children and adults, and a vehicle of expression for voiceless minorities.

Jeff Robson, 25, is a graduate of the University of Guelph's International Development program.