A Communications Cornucopia Markle Foundation Essays on Information Policy

by Noll, Roger G.; Price, Monroe E.

• ISBN13: 9780815761150
• ISBN10: 0815761155
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-05-01
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Summary

Rapid progress in information technologies has produced an ever-broadening array of choices in information products. At the same time, it has caused historically segmented industries, such as television, telephones, computers, and print media, to converge and compete. The result is a cornucopia of products and potential in communications along with enormous strain on the governmental institutions that use and regulate information technology.The essays in this book provide a broad look at the many ways that information technology relates to issues of governance and public policy. Adjusting regulatory instititions to the new technical realities is a great challenge. Will monopoly power threaten the traditionally regulated areas of telephones and cable television or the software systems that integrate all information technologies into a single system with many competing players? Can traditional approaches to intellectual property rights and control of socially harmful content be applied to the converged information sector? This book sheds light on these issues, and in so doing demonstrates the usefulness of rigorous, multidisciplinary policy analysis in assessing the significance of changing technology.

Author Biography

Roger G. Noll is professor of economics and director of the Public Policy Program at Stanford University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Table of Contents

Preface
Communications Policy: Convergence, Choice, and the Markle Foundation	p. 1
Media and Democracy
Manufacturing Discord: Media in the Affirmative Action Debate	p. 39
The New Telecommunications Technology: Endless Frontier or the End of Democracy?	p. 72
And Deliver Us from Segmentation	p. 99
Media, Transition, and Democracy: Television and the Transformation of Russia	p. 113
The Market for Loyalties in the Electronic Media	p. 138
Turner, Denver, and Reno	p. 172
Global Communication Policy and the Realization of Human Rights	p. 218
Promoting Deliberative Public Discourse on the Web	p. 243
Media and Children
Sesame Street and Educational Television for Children	p. 279
The Children's Television Workshop: The Experiment Continues	p. 297
Children's Television in European Public Broadcasting	p. 337
Media Content Labeling Systems	p. 350
Communications Policy
The Evolving Politics of Telecommunications Regulation	p. 379
Telephone Subsidies, Income Redistribution, and Consumer Welfare	p. 400
Electronic Substitution in the Household-Level Demand for Postal Delivery Services	p. 421
Public Harms Unique to Satellite Spectrum Auctions	p. 448
Keeping Competitors Out: Broadcast Regulation from 1927 to 1996	p. 473
Regulatory Standards: The Effect of Broadcast Signals on Cable Television	p. 499
Public Policy and Broadband Infrastructure	p. 518
Public Interest Regulation in the Digital TV Era	p. 543
Toward a Better Integration of Media Economics and Media Competition Policy	p. 573
The Future of Television: Understanding Digital Economics	p. 594
Contributors	p. 617
Index	p. 619
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