New Television, Old Politics: The Transition to Digital TV in the United States and Britain.(Book Review)

New Television, Old Polities: The Transition to Digital TV in the United States and Britain, Hernan Galperin, New York, N.Y., Cambridge University Press, 2004, 311 pages.

Hernan Galperin uses comparative case studies of the transition to digital television in the United States and Britain to address a variety of theoretical questions regarding the relative impact of political factors versus markets and technological change on regulatory regimes. The book is organized into four parts. The first part introduces the topic and provides background on digital TV. The second and third parts focus on the digital transitions in the United States and Britain, respectively. The fourth part contains summaries and conclusions.

In Chapter One, Galperin argues that three factors were the impetus for the transition to digital TV in both countries: the steady decline of the domestic consumer electronics industry, "the international diffusion of the information revolution agenda, and the spectrum shortage created by the rapid growth of mobile telephony and other wireless telecommunications services." (1) Nevertheless, the strategies chosen to make the transition and the outcomes of these strategies differed markedly.

According to Galperin, three nation-specific factors produced variance in strategies and outcomes across the two countries: the organization of the state (cabinet-led parliamentary v. presidential government), the normative orientation of media policy, and the legacy of the analog TV regime. (2)

The British transition included greater efforts to foster competition in broadcasting than the U.S., partly because Britain started its transition with a lower level of competition. The dominance of the national public broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation ("BBC"), was an important differentiating factor, but Galperin argues also that a major impetus for British strategy was the threat posed by the rapid success of pay TV services delivered via satellites controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his allies.

Despite its dominance, however, the BBC did not always get its way. Galperin attributes this to the British government's ability to resist capture by …