Abstract

The present study offers an assessment of the regulatory implications of the adoption in Chile of digital terrestrial television (DTTV, i.e., open digital television), particularly following the November, 2008 submission in Congress of the draft presidential reform law to regulate all television (No. 18,838) and after the adoption of the Japanese ISDB standard in September, 2009 in line with Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. This study applies to this vision of the entire television system, including its public policy, economic, industrial, technological, and social dimensions. In addition I will give priority to the public’s perspective as to how digitization may enable them to access (or not) more and better television, at a reasonable cost, with more and better content developed locally. This work has three parts. The first outlines the context of television in Chile, in terms of its social relevance and the changes in the business and production models due to digitization. The second part presents three models of analysis that help manage the regulatory discussion: iberalism/restrictions (Curran & Seaton, 1997), public service television, and parameters of quality television for the various social actors and analytic levels. Each of these applies to the present as well as the historical reality of the legal frameworks of Chilean TV. This section also refers to the British system of DTTV—Freeview—whose success has much to do with a consistent and updated regulatory framework, one of which targets the common good. The third part analyzes and assesses, based on the models and detailed background in the previous sections, the legal reform of the government to allow DTTV.