This article was downloaded by: [HPPC Popular Communication Society] On: 15 December 2009 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 794247811] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Popular Communication Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t775653693 Digital Television: Options and Decisions in Latin America Raúl Trejo Delarbre a; translated by Margaret Schwartz b a Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la UNAM, b Fordham University, To cite this Article Trejo Delarbre, Raúl and Schwartz, translated by Margaret(2009) 'Digital Television: Options and Decisions in Latin America', Popular Communication, 7: 3, 169 — 178 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/15405700903023434 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15405700903023434 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. 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Popular Communication, 7: 169–178, 2009 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1540-5702 print / 1540-5710 online DOI: 10.1080/15405700903023434 HPPC1540-57021540-5710PopularDigital CommunicationCommunication, Vol. 7, No. 3, May 2009: pp. 1–23 Television: Options and Decisions in Latin America OPTIONSTrejo DELARBRE AND DECISIONS IN LATIN AMERICA Raúl Trejo Delarbre Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la UNAM Translated by Margaret Schwartz, Fordham University The existence of four technological standards for the development of digital television means different options for cultural development in each country. In Latin America, the processes for choosing the model for digital television have been conditioned by corporate and government interests. In some nations there has been information and deliberation about the available technological options. In others, the determination has been left up to governments. In any case, it is not a merely technical decision. The high definition that the U.S. model proposes only takes the quality of the image into account. The European model entails more television channels. Technological convergence has become shorthand for the mediated present and future. We attribute such broad and profound consequences and capacities to the amalgam of information resources that digitalization now makes possible, that often we come to think, in a dazzling reediting of the old technological determinism, that the explosion of convergent devices and networks is enough to make our societies more informed, better educated, and with the capacity to produce their own knowledge. Nevertheless, convergence has different consequences depending on the type of technology at issue. One of its expressions, in which it becomes obvious that there are different social and cultural possibilities depending on the technology that is utilized, is found in digital television. The international discussion, which developed especially starting in the last decade of the 20th century around different technological protocols for developing digital television came late, and has had contradictory consequences in Latin America already at the end of the first decade of the new millennium. The fundamental options for digital television Downloaded By: [HPPC Popular Communication Society] At: 02:31 15 December 2009 have meant different propositions just as much in terms of quantity as in quality when it comes to the television offerings that the countries of this region will receive. At the end of 2008, the discussion remained open in the majority of Latin American nations. Only a half dozen of them have chosen among the different possibilities for digital television. These decisions, and the eco- nomic and social interests that inform them, are sufficient to consider that in the decision about this technological standard the cultural future of each one of these nations, and thus the entire region, is at stake. Correspondence should be addressed to Raúl Trejo Delarbre, Titular Researcher, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la UNAM, Cludad de la Investigación en Humanidades, Circuito Mario de la Cueva, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04510, Mexico, DF. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] 170 TREJO DELARBRE CONVERGENCE, CONTENT, AND INEQUALITY Technological convergence is understood in various ways, especially that which is digitally mediated. Professor Henry Jenkins, of the University of Southern California, holds that conver- gence is “a word that describes technological, industrial, cultural and social changes in the ways media circulate within our culture. Some common ideas referenced by the term include the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, the search for new structures of media financing that fall at the interstices between old and new media and the migratory behavior of media audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kind of entertainment experiences they want. Perhaps most broadly, media convergence refers to a situation in which multiple media systems coexist and where media content flows fluidly across them” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 282). Technological convergence is often associated with the proliferation of content, competi- tion among media, joint participation of telecommunication companies, the availability of various services in one channel, and flexibility of access to these communication resources. It is also identified with users’ abilities to not only receive content but also to interactively react to it. At the heart of these processes is the convergence between digitalization and telecommu- nications which, in turn, constitutes the substrate of the current information society (Trejo Delarbre, 2006, p. 34). This information society, like the technological convergence that makes it possible, is often mythologized both by those who would praise it and those who would dismiss it. There are some, on one end of the spectrum, who believe that technology redeems itself alone in societies and for individuals while others, at the other extreme, suggest that technological innovations are no more than transnational corporations’ consumerist strategies. Among these exaggerations, there exists the reality of the unrestrained advance of technological development, which our societies appropriate in unequal but enthusiastic ways, sometimes with unpredictable practices. The devices and technological uses of convergence, which give form and often meaning to the information society (iPods and cell phones, digital video and photography, electronic books and, above all, the Internet in its various and changing expressions) crop up constantly and astonishingly. In contrast, digital television requires that governments decide which of the various existing modalities for this technology will be the ones that develop in their nations. Downloaded By: [HPPC Popular Communication Society] At: 02:31 15 December 2009 FOUR OPTIONS: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES Digital television entails the compression and propagation of data in binary code. Content thus codified can be transmitted with greater speed, in smaller spaces and with a greatly superior image quality in comparison with the old analogue television. Digital television is transmitted in various ways. By air, its signals travel openly or encoded, in which case they must be decoded in order to be viewed. They also travel via cable or, in other modalities, via Internet or any other network of digital content. Digital television more generally is television transmitted by radio waves. I will refer to the signals transmitted freely and within the electromagnetic spectrum as “open television.” In this article we refer exclusively to the digital television that is disseminated in this manner and which is also called Terrestrial Digital Television (TDT). OPTIONS AND DECISIONS IN LATIN AMERICA 171 The digitalization of television allows for two things. First, it allows for more television signals in comparison with how many it was possible to transmit in the analogue format. The second innovation is the substantial improvement in the definition of the image. In addition, digitalization of frequencies allows, together with the television signals and in very small segments of the bandwidth that a single analogue channel previously occupied, for the dissemination of data transmission services such as Internet and telephone, and/or signals sent from the television set, which permit viewers to interact with the programs they are watching. The U.S. model is called High Definition Television (HDTV) because of its orientation toward high definition and because its impetus was a consortium created in