The International Scope of Television. Communications and International Boundaries

Although, television has now diffused to most parts of the world, there is wide variation in the number of television sets per 1 .000 inhabitants from one location to another. In the United States. Canada. Europe. Australia, and Japan, television ownership is nearly universal. In Latin America and in the less developed countries of eastern and southern Europe, television ownership is common but not universal.

In Third World countries, television is much less common, in part because of the high costs associated with purchasing television sets and in part because broadcast facilities are lacking or limited. In fact, the less developed countries, with 75 percent of the world's population, operate only 14 percent of the world's television receivers. Where broadcast facilities are available, television ownership remains confined to the wealthy. Not only can they afford television sets, but they also have more leisure time to watch television.

Control of broadcasting also varies throughout the world. The American model, in which television stations and broadcasting equipment are owned privately and Financed by commercial advertising, is unusual. In other parts of the world, government plays a more significant role in the ownership of television stations and in determining programming.

In much of Europe and Japan, government-owned corporations like the British Broadcasting Corporation operate television stations. In other areas of the world, the government owns and operates television stations directly. Critics of American television complain that the relative lack of government control lowers the quality of programming, with not enough attention paid to news and public-affairs programming.

Much of the television programming available to viewers in less developed countries are Western-produced. The television-program market in less developed countries is dominated by Japan, Britain, and the United States, with the Japanese dominating in eastern and southern Asia, the British in parts of Africa, and the Americans in Latin America. Although some countries have enacted requirements that a minimum percentage of broadcasts originate locally, international communications generally remain under the control of the highly developed economies of the world.

Communications and International Boundaries.Governments have frequently regarded control of communications as critical to achievement or maintenance ofpower. In the United States and other democracies, constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press are cherishedhallmarks of the democratic process. In those countries inwhich democratic rights have been abused or suspended,removal of democracy has often been accompanied bygovernment-sponsored censorship or other control of themass media. In many cases, the governments have fulfilled their gatekeeper function by broadcasting propaganda, or deliberate distortion of facts to further theircauses or to damage opposing causes.

In general, cutting off public access to information broadcast through the communications media is much more difficult than imposing restrictions on transportation or trade. Radio and television broadcasts can be received across international boundaries despite the efforts of some governments to suppress them. Thus, people on both sides of the Berlin Wall that separated West Germany and East Germany could watch television programs produced and transmitted on the other side. Citizens of Jordan. Syria, and other neighboring countries have access to Israeli television programs, although they are advised by their governments not to watch them.

Many radio and television stations have been established for the sole purpose of broadcasting information across international boundaries. In some cases, such cross-boundary broadcasting is undertaken for explicitly political purposes. Radio Free Europe broadcast programs about Western democracies into Communist Eastern Europe during the cold war period. In other cases, "pirate" radio and television stations undertake unauthorized broadcasting in order to circumvent a particular country's broadcasting regulations but without an explicitly political agenda.

For many years, radio stations broadcasting in English were found on the Mexican side of the boundary between Mexico and the United States. These stations, whose location in Mexico excused them from American communications control law. Broadcast programs in English to audiences over large areas of the southwestern United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, pirate radio stations began to broadcast from ships in international waters off the coasts of England. France, and other Western European countries.