Shut Off: The Canadian Digital Television Transition

by Gregory Taylor

Overview

Digital technology has revolutionized modern television but what exactly has changed? The history of the digital transition is one of great scientific achievement, expensive failures, and significant political and industrial power struggles. In Shut Off: The Canadian Digital Television Transition, Gregory Taylor examines the technology, institutional players, and the policies that have shaped Canada's efforts to switch from analogue to digital television broadcasting. Taylor shows how digital television is part of a global media movement by comparing the Canadian experience with the ways in which the digital transition has been managed worldwide. Shut Off is about more than television - the digital transition is also a precursor for new developments in mobile digital media. The wireless spectrum freed by the move to digital television is a multi-billion dollar public resource, whose auction is impending. The book reveals how digital broadcasting has been the site of dramatic change in the political economy of Canadian media, and questions the market-driven process through which the still incomplete transition has unfolded. Considering wide-ranging issues such as equal access and television as a public good, Taylor highlights public and institutional actors in the policy process to provide an analysis of government and industry. Succinct and insightful, Shut Off is a timely assessment of a period of technological and economic upheaval in Canadian broadcasting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780773588301
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	655 KB

About the Author

Gregory Taylor is a post-doctoral fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Gregory Taylor is assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary and author of Shut Off: The Canadian Digital Television Transition.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Acronyms xi

Introduction: Please Adjust Your Set 3

1 Detours along the Way 23

2 Early Policy Development in Canada and the United States 43

3 The Global Transition 59

4 Broadcasting Distribution Undertakings 78

5 Over-the-Air Broadcasting 110

6 Other Voices 141

Conclusion: Paying Dividends 150

Notes 161

Bibliography 187

Index 201

Editorial Reviews

"Evoking the spirit of Graham Spry whose advocacy ensured the funding of public broadcasting eighty years ago, Taylor's book is a convincing argument to maintain this ethos of communication technologies for the public good in our digital era." Leslie Regan Shade, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University


"Shut Off is a tale of missed opportunities, well told by an author who has a sound grip of the issues and knows the terrain and the actors involved well. Taylor is to be commended for writing such a high quality and readable account of Canada's less than


“Gregory Taylor precisely and expertly summarizes the analog conversion and makes a very logical and plausible prognosis about future Canadian developments in the world of wireless transmissions. Anyone wanting to fully understand the debate over the auct

From the Publisher