In the late 1980s and 1990s, the advanced industrial countries considered replacing the existing analogue 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 analogue) 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.

After a half-century of glacial creep, television technology has begun to change at the same dizzying pace as computer software. What this will mean--for television, for computers, and for the popular culture where these video media reign supreme--is the subject of this timely book. A noted communications economist, Bruce Owen supplies the essential background: a grasp of the economic history of the television industry and of the effects of technology and government regulation on its organization. He also explores recent developments associated with the growth of the Internet. With this history as a basis, his book allows readers to peer into the future--at the likely effects of television and the Internet on each other, for instance, and at the possibility of a convergence of the TV set, computer, and telephone. The digital world that Owen shows us is one in which communication titans jockey to survive what Joseph Schumpeter called the "gales of creative destruction." While the rest of us simply struggle to follow the new moves, believing that technology will settle the outcome, Owen warns us that this is a game in which Washington regulators and media hyperbole figure as broadly as innovation and investment. His book explains the game as one involving interactions among all the players, including consumers and advertisers, each with a particular goal. And he discusses the economic principles that govern this game and that can serve as powerful predictive tools.

From the often-named 'founding father' of TV studies, this is the much-anticipated third edition of a text, first published in 1974, that has become known as the founding text for television studies. In this new age of reality TV, this book remains remarkably prescient.

By looking at a range of different European Public Television (PTV) broadcasters, this book investigates the challenges that these broadcasters encounter in a competitive digital broadcasting environment and reveals the different policies and strategies that they are adopting in order to remain accountable, competitive and efficient.

As the world of television moves from analog to digital, political and economic forces are being brought to bear on companies as they attempt to deal with changes occurring in their industries. The impetus for the conversion from analog to digital TV comes from many quarters, including the broadcasting industry, the computer industry, governments, consumer electronics manufacturers, content developers, and the Internet. The widespread acceptance of digital technology in both the home and the workplace account for the ready acceptance of the belief that the move to digital television is an appropriate advancement. Not all authors in this volume however are believers. This book is divided into four sections each dealing with one aspect of the transition from analog to digital TV broadcasting. The first section presents the various technologies. It establishes a structure for understanding the technologies currently in use as well as those being developed by the industries involved in the delivery of digital television. Section two presents information about consumer TV viewing and includes examples of innovative, experimental interactive programs. Economics and financial issues are addressed from a variety of perspectives in section three. Section four concludes the book with a look at the international environment and the history of digital TV globally.