Shut Off
The Canadian Digital Television Transition
Description
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.
Reviews
“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 auction of the spectrum, (freed up by the digital television transition), would be well advised to read this book.” Konrad von Finckenstein, former CRTC chair
"Gregory Taylor's well-researched and thought-provoking text is a timely and relevant intervention in critical Canadian broadcasting policy and regulation studies … [for] any participant in the broadcasting policy process in Canada and abroad." Journal of
"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 sure-footed path to digital television." Dwayne Winseck, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University
"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
"… a timely and critical contribution to a growing collection of scholarly works on digital media transitions. The book is especially important, considering that most transitions from analogue to digital media appear to be "seamless" and occur "under the