This article examines three major policy issues surrounding the transition to broadcast digital television (B-DTV): digital transmission and programming, interoperability and compatibility, and copyright protection. By examining these issues in the B-DTV transition, this article aims to show the discontinuity between the current B-DTV changeover and the most commonly referred to changeovers in TV history, color television. The comparison points to the transformation of television as an important component in the national and global information infrastructures. The article suggests that the long, complicated journey to B-DTV demonstrates the limitations of broadcast policy in its attempts to reconfigure the technological, political, economic, and cultural features of analog media to reach the digital promise land. With the features of traditional television in flux and the contradictions of global capital quite apparent, the changeover to B-DTV is going to be more drawn out and costly than the transition to color TV.
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