INFO WAR MEETS THE DEATH STAR 

While the world has been transfixed by the upheaval in the Soviet Union and the epic "Crisis in the Gulf", the battleground another wrenching conflict has been gathering electrons, photons and leviathans. This is the first real "Info War" of the Information Age. And, it's very real. Although President Reagan had his Strategic Defense Inititive (SDI) or 'Star War' scenario, outside of wasting money nothing really developed. Today in battle the yen/mark/dollar has replaced the sword. The Info War has already mapped out its battle ground and even introduced a secret weapon, the Death Star. Ten years ago a brash sailor named Ted Turner from Atlanta took a bankrupt television station and turned it into the money-making Turner Broadcasting System (TBS). It's also the Cable News Network and Headline News (CNN), the TBS Movie Network, a radio network of the same name together forming a force to be reckoned with. The traditional networks just wish that Turner hadn't found that bankrupt station or Jane Fonda. He has rained down signals that ruined their day.

Today the former intensly arrogant U.S. network companies like ABC, NBC and CBS are on the ropes pitted against TBS who saw the future and decided it was theirs. When Turner & Co. saw "their" world, it like the satellites they rode, saw no national boundaries. Now, CNN sweeps into any country, including Canada without any strong resistance. More people are believed to watch CNN in Canada via private satellite dish than watch CBC "Newsworld". CNN goes into 55 million cable-linked U.S. homes and accounts for 27 percent of all TV news watching. ABC currently catches 28.3 percent; CBS 27.5 percent and NBC 17.2 percent, according to a survey by The Christian Science Monitor. However, CNN is also hard-wired into 10 million homes outside of the U.S., along with 250,000 hotels, embassies, businesses and stock exchanges. It gathers and repackages news from over 120 countries and relays it into about 100 countries. It's about the only thing that President Bush, Fidel Castro, Lech Walesa, King Hussein and Saddam Huessin have in common. They all watch it. CNN influences all other networks in news-gathering and in shaping programming and that's not just in the U.S.

As of now that's Battle One in the probably long-lasting Info War. Coming up Battle Two: the High Definition struggle for new equipment, transmission techniques and most importantly, viewers. In the equipment confrontation, it's my opinion after watching this quiet build-up for well over 10 years, that the Japanese HDTV system will win regardless of whatever the U.S. Government attempts to do within their previously defendable borders. The same applies to Canada. In transmission techniques the clash is more equal. At the moment satellite transmission has the edge, with the fibreoptic Intergrated Services Digital Network (ISDN or "Electronic Highway) being at least being an equal power by the end of the decade.

It's the battle for viewers that brings in the 'Death Star' ... a satellite so powerful it could put cable companies out of the game, knock down all presently-existing over-air and cable traditional networks and local private and independent TV stations. The shake-up in the advertising world will be utter chaos as money streams become blocked, closed, diverted and otherwise altered. What will cause all this disruption? Sky Cable, the largest consortium of all, that plans to be pushing 108 channels out of the heavens within three years. All will be high quality signals directed to the home (or office) via Very Small Apature Terminals (VSAT). That signal can go anywhere. Sky Cable and whatever other Direct Broadcasting Service (DBS) companies try to elbow into the game will all have to offer HDTV to capture a slice of the whole n ew pie. Once viewers watch HDTV, their old TV sets will become the latest landfill site problem (A 160-million set/1500-TV station/9000-cable system problem). Not only TV can come via these new satellites. You may answer the phone via the TV set, handle banking, shopping and stock-market manipulations or read newspapers or magazines via the same route. Fibreoptic networks can match and, in many ways, outperform even the new satellites, under some conditions. However, the new 'Death Star" (so nicknamed by fearful cable operators) will likely be locking up customers well before fibre-optic network salesmen arrive in your neighborhood.

And what about Ted Turner and CNN Inc.? He'll be there in one reincarnation or another. No one in the business has his foresight, ability to change direction or flip channels. He is the only one that has really "gone global". Besides, he's fun.

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