Internet-based Broadcast Access
The development of the global Internet has created the ability for television and radio programming to be easily accessed outside of its country of origin, with little technological investment needed to implement the capability. Prior to the development of the Internet, this would have required specially-acquired satellite relaying and/or local terrestrial rebroadcasting of the international content, at considerable cost to the international viewer. This access can now instead be readily facilitated using off-the-shelf video encoding and streaming equipment, using broadband services within the country of origin.
In some cases, no additional technology is needed for international program access via the Internet, if the national broadcaster already has a broadband streaming service established for citizens of their own country. However, countries with TV licensing systems often don't have a way to accommodate international access via the Internet, and instead work to actively block and prevent access because their national licensing rules have not evolved fast enough to adapt to the ever-expanding potential global audience for their material.
For example, it is currently not possible for a citizen of the United States to pay for a British TV License in order to watch all of the BBC's programming, streamed live over the Internet in its original format.
Read more about this topic: Television Licence
Famous quotes containing the words broadcast and/or access:
“Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The last publicized center of American writing was Manhattan. Its writers became known as the New York Intellectuals. With important connections to publishing, and universities, with access to the major book reviews, they were able to pose as the vanguard of American culture when they were so obsessed with the two Joes—McCarthy and Stalin—that they were to produce only two artists, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, who left town.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)