Will Internet TV extend America’s cultural hegemony? Eli Noam of the Financial Times thinks the question needs to be raised:
As broadband internet spreads around the world, television distribution over the new medium moves from experimentation to commercial possibility. The question then arises of whether this medium will be dominated by US content, as film and television have been. Will TV over the internet be American?
The implications of American TV, from Fox News to Angel, in homes world-wide are pretty staggering.
What about Bollywood? They’re not very good, but they’re all the same, and relatively easy to understand without speaking the language.
Internet TV is cheap. Anybody can do it. Americans should brace themselves for the next wave of globalization.
I was under the impression that Internet TV wasn’t really possible with today’s tcp/ip networks….Richard ?
Leave it to the Europeans to decide how best to protect their citizens from the pernicious impact of “American cultural hegemony”…
If the Europeans don’t want McDonalds, maybe they ought to stop walking in and buying them. Same’s true for Internet TV — ain’t no one forcing you to click on that link, dear.
And I *like* Bollywood!
You can move video data across the TCP/IP networks of today by transferring files and by buffering streams, like Real and Microsoft do. It’s hard to do video conferencing, but IP version 7 will correct that problem.