DIFFERENT countries, different cultures — in the United States, public broadcasting is owned by the people, and not by the government.
As a matter of fact, the government is prohibited from engaging in the business of broadcasting within US soil, and that is why Voice of America (VOA) could only broadcast abroad.
I really do not know the reason for that, but I surmise that it is based on the legal fiction that the government should not have a bigger voice than the people, backed up perhaps by yet another legal fiction that the people are more powerful than the government.
Things are really different here in our country, however, because over here public broadcasting is owned by the government, and the people, even through non-government organizations (NGOs), could not even engage in the business of broadcasting. In other words, it is very clear that over here, the government has a bigger voice than the people.
Fast forward to the present times, perhaps it is providential and it could even be a blessing in disguise that the technology for public broadcasting has shifted from being frequency based, to being internet-based. What that means in real terms is that the playing field has been levelled, so much so that anyone could now broadcast, and the people could now do what the government could do, broadcasting that is, without the use of expensive transmitters and towers.
Yes, what that also means is that even NGOs could go into the business of broadcasting just like any other small and medium enterprise (SME) or even a multinational corporation (MNC).
Looking at it from another perspective, we could now say that competition has now shifted from having the best infrastructure, to having the best content. As it is now, even the smallest SME could produce better content than the biggest MNC.
As it was before, broadcasting was a separate business from telecommunications, and companies in one business would not normally compete with each other. For the lack of a boundary between one business and the other, it could be said that broadcasting is one way, while telecommunications is two way.
It is very clear, however, that that is no longer the case, because broadcasting companies are now in the business of telecommunications, and vice versa.
In a manner of speaking, it could be said that broadcasting belongs to the realm of information, hence it could also be said that broadcast and telecoms became part of what became known as the convergence of the two technologies into information and communications technology (ICT). As it has turned out, ICT could now be used not only for broadcasting, but also for communications. (To be continued) (iseneres@yahoo.com/PN)
