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Communication,
Commerce and Power
The Political Economy of America and the
Direct Broadcast Satellite, 1960-2000
Edward A. Comor
Assistant Professor
School ofI nternational Service
American University
Washington, DC
First published in Great Britain 1998 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-26237-3 ISBN 978-1-349-26235-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-26235-9
First published in the United States of America 1998 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21071-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Comor, Edward A., 1962-
Communication, commerce, and power: the political economy of
America and the direct broadcast satellite, 1960-2000 I Edward A.
Comor.
p. em. - (International political economy series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21071-7
I. Direct broadcast satellite television-United States-History.
2. Television broadcasting-Government policy-United States-
-History. 3. Direct broadcast satellite television-History.
4. Television broadcasting-Government policy-History. I. Title.
IL Series.
HE9721.U5C646 1998
384.55'45'0973~c21 97-18332
CIP
©Edward A. Comor 1998
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 978-0-333-68823-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98
Contents
Preface vii
Ust of Acronyms x
1 ThnRODUCTION 1
1.1 DBS, the United States, and the Information
Economy 3
1.2 Chapter Previews 9
Notes 13
2 CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON US FOREIGN
COMMUNICATION POLICY 17
2.1 The Cultural Imperialism Paradigm 17
2.2 Culture as the Object of Inquiry 21
2.3 Culture and Critical International Political
Economy 23
2.4 Mediators of the International Political Economy 29
2.5 Conclusions 37
Notes 38
3 TELESATELLITE POLICY AND DBS, 1962-1984 41
3.1 Formative Telesatellite Developments 42
3.2 The Opportunity and Threat of Telesatellite
Technology 52
3.3 Toward 'Open Skies' and the Political
Feasibility of DBS 55
3.4 The Rise and Fall of Domestic DBS: 1980-1984 60
3.5 Conclusions 63
Notes 66
4 FOREIGN COMMUNICATION POLICY AND
DBS: 1962-1984 75
4.1 US Propaganda Broadcasting 76
4.2 The Free Flow of Information and
International Law 79
4.3 US Responses to the Free Flow Imbroglio 87
v
vi Contents
4.4 DBS, UNESCO and the NWICO 91
4.5 Conclusions 96
Notes 99
5 DBS AND 1HE STRUCTURE OF US POLICY
MAKING 107
5.1 Policy Agents and the Fragmented Character
of US Policy 108
5.2 The US Policy Process and WARC-79 113
5.3 Shifting Demands and Structural Reforms 117
5.4 Conclusions 123
Notes 124
6 EXPORTING LffiERALIZATION AND 1HE
ASCENDANCY OF TRADE 131
6.1 The Failure of Free Flow 133
6.2 The Emergence of Free Trade 137
6.3 Free Trade and International Institutions 144
6.4 Conclusions 149
Notes 152
7 CAPITAL, TECHNOLOGY AND 1HE UNITED
STATES IN AN 'OPEN MARKET' REGIME 161
7.1 DBS in an 'Open Market' 164
7.2 DBS, Digitalization and HDTV 170
7.3 DBS and Global Markets 178
7.4 Conclusions 185
Notes 187
8 CONCLUSION: COMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND
AMERICAN HEGEMONY 193
8.1 Assessing Cultural Imperialism 196
8.2 The Internationalizing State and US Hegemony 199
8.3 Hegemony, Culture and Mediators of the
International Political Economy 204
8.4 DBS and the Twenty-first Century 207
Notes 211
Bibliography 213
Index 245
Preface
Talk about globalization in the international political economy -
particularly discussions focusing on communication technology devel-
opments - all too often convey the dawning of seamless human
interactions linked in a complex web of commercial relations. This
certainly is the view held by most American state officials at the end of
the twentieth century. From the official Cold War policy of 'contain-
ment', the United States has turned to the awkward unofficial term
'enlargement' - enlargement of institutions friendly to open markets,
liberal democracy and corporate-friendly transnational technologies.
In the updated version of the old General Motors claim that 'what's
good for GM is good for America', today 'what is good for America
is deemed to be what is good for Boeing's exports, for Microsoft's
penetration of the world's computer operating systems and for Holly-
wood's screenings in cinemas across the globe'.1 Indeed, communica-
tions and information commodity activities together constitute the
largest and fastest-growing sector of the world economy.2
What all this really means and precisely how 'enlargement' is taking
place remain remarkably under-assessed. This book is a contribution
to understanding this. In the following pages I argue that people make
history, and technologies, organizations, institutions and international
regimes are the vehicles and mediators of its construction. I also argue
that in the next century, the position of the United States in the
international political economy in large part will be determined by
human agents whose interests are directly shaped by past ways of
organizing and thinking. Nevertheless, because people are capable of
changing these ways of organizing and thinking - capable of changing
the structures of everyday life - the world of tomorrow is far from
being altogether mapped out. The fact that technologies, organiza-
tions, institutions and regimes require human intervention, both at the
time of their creation and as a condition of their perpetuation, gives
cause, I believe, for guarded optimism.
Perhaps the most important and recently most neglected institution
shaping this future is the nation state. As Leo Panitch writes, 'states
have become the authors of a regime that defines and guarantees,
through treaties with constitutional effect, the global and domestic
rights of capital'. 3 In this book, the history of US policy in relation to
one of the most significant technologies of the so-called information
vii
viii Preface
economy - the Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) - is assessed and
contextualized. Originally, the decision to focus on DBS and its
relationship to the American state was based on my interest in explor-
ing cultural imperialism and the role it plays in more general political-
economic processes. But over time, primary sources - mostly US
government documents and interviews with American state
personnel-compelled me to pursue a somewhat more concentrated
analysis. These also led me to consider some more complex theoretical
issues, particularly those of concern to 'critical' or Gramscian students
of international political economy. Rather than finding an American
state working in imperialistic harmony with private sector mass
media, telecommunications and more general information economy
interests (all perpetuating a US-centered world order based on consent
rather than coercion), innumerable inter-corporate and intra-state
tensions and conflicts generated a still more pressing question: What
is the precise role of the American state in the process of cultural
imperialism? Predictably, this opened the door to other questions
involving American hegemonic capacities in relation to the ascend-
ancy of communication and information activities in the international
political economy.
The direct broadcast satellite, as arguably the most powerful, far-
reaching and culturally intrusive of all new communication technolo-
gies, remained the logical analytical staging post from which to
explore such issues. At this juncture in history - one in which the
vagaries of ~pitalism have become almost universally accepted - a
concerted effort to understand how the 'common sense' of open
markets, free trade and neo-liberal development policies have been
constructed and are being maintained constitutes, I believe, an essen-
tial step in efforts to redress the potential narrowing of the human
imagination. This book aims to inspire more work of this type - work
that recognizes the importance of understanding the complex
dynamics underlying 'what we know' to be a fundamental concern
of the critical social scientist.
What follows is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation com-
pleted for the Department of Political Science at York University in
Toronto. During these years, Martin Hewson, David Leyton-Brown,
Steve Patten, J. Magnus Ryner, Timothy J. Sinclair, Anne Stretch,
Graham Todd and Reg Whitaker all made significant personal and
professional contributions. Financial support from Canada's Social
Science and Humanities Research Council and the Ontario Graduate
Scholarship Programme were essential to its completion. While at
Preface ix
York, and during my subsequent tenure at the School of International
Service, American University, many others have provided ideas and
encouragement. Among these are Henry Comor, Robert W. Cox, Ken
Donow, Elizabeth Hagg, Beth Haverkamp-Powers, Sara Fletcher
Luther, Ted Magder, James Mittelman, Vincent Mosco, Hamid Mow-
lana, Mustapba Pasha, Dino Rosati, James N. Rosenau, Christopher
Rossi, Rohan Samarajiva, Harry Trebing, Paul Wapner, and Macmil-
lan IPE series editor Timothy M. Shaw. Thank you one and all.
Thanks also to research assistants Kristen Comeaux, Cynthia Dow-
dell, Peter Haney, Alan Kronstadt, Rachel Kuennen, Allison Levine
and Kathleen Lewis-Workman.
I am compelled to convey heartfelt thanks to Leo Panitch for his
drive, critical contributions, and the tremendous faith he had in his
student. I also must thank Ian Parker for his years of friendship,
support, and willingness to introduce me to the pleasure and pain of
critical thinking. Their scholarly work and political principles are
sources of continuing_ inspiration.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the role played by friends, old
and new. Against the constraints of common sense, I have little doubt
that my guarded optimism bas something to do with their passion,
understanding and unflagging generosity.
Edward Comor
Washington, DC
June 1997
NOTES
Martin Walker, 'Foreign Policy Goes to Market', Manchester Guardian
Weekly (12 January 1997) p. 6.
2 Robert W. McChemey, 'The Global Struggle for Democratic Commu-
nication', in Monthly Review, 48(3) (July-August 1996) 5.
3 Leo Panitch, 'Globalization, States, and Left Strategies', in Social Justice,
23(1-2) (1996) 80.
