ABSTRACT
Certain aspects of television as an information technology make the free flow principle difficult to foster. Basically, television is an expensive and complicated technology, which fosters centralization and control by a few groups that have the money and influence to create and send messages. Evidence about television and other mass media messages concerns the quantity, structure and direction of the flow of these messages. Herbert I. Schiller, in Mass Communications and American Empire had already indicated the American dominance in international mass communications. By reversing the question of the social effects of the media to ask where important social and cultural change is found and then what role the media have played, we are more likely to discover the true role of the media as a contributor and not the root cause of change. Historically, most countries have chosen a full television schedule at relatively low cost, but they have done so at cultural and political costs.
