Next-generation networks are hard to build. It takes a lot of money and effort to lay fiber, install wireless infrastructure, build satellite earth stations, and more. It also requires a reasonably certain business case for deployment, which is all too often hard to prove in parts of the country with sparse population and/or lower incomes.
Most of the planet's terrestrial surfaces are visually accessible through video cameras and satellite imagery, if not physically within reach. Even the approaches to Mount Everest are now littered with human debris. One can drive to Timbuktu, which for centuries was synonymous with inaccessibility.
I think when people see Pluto revealed by New Horizons, its satellite system, its complex surface, its atmosphere, I think they'll have a hard time saying 'That's not a planet' because it obviously will be, and I think most people are already coming to that opinion anyway, but I think that's really going to drive it home viscerally.
We have been talking with leaders: Change is coming; you can no longer have a closed regime with an open society - satellites, social media, the Internet - you have this kind, this kind of society moving forward, and you are running this closed regime; this is not sustainable. This cannot continue.
Before I had satellite radio installed in my car, I thought I would lose my mind listening to commercials and having limited choices on the dial. Your car is your home in L.A., so you've got to have some good stuff to listen to.
I remember when cable happened and everyone said broadcast was dead, and then satellite happened and everyone said cable was dead, and then DVDs happened and everyone said everything was over. Nothing was over. I'm very optimistic about the future.
Obviously with the onset of cable and satellite, there are more opportunities for programming and original programming, so it creates more opportunities for actors and producers and directors and everything.
We grow up with this idea that we're all individual agents. We work, make our money, have our place to live and our satellite TV. But whether you like it or not, you need family or community.
We're enlarging in every single area of the ministry at In Touch. We're on radio and television. We're in over 110 million homes in America plus radio on satellites. We just acquired the NAMB FamilyNet television network, and with that expanding possibilities of the gospel.
Our legislation addresses broadcasts over the public airwaves, but I hope the cable and satellite industries see the importance of this issue and voluntarily create a family tier of programming and offer culturally responsible products.
