The Communications Toolkit: How to Build and Regulate Any Communications Business (Uncorrected Proof)

A toolkit of basic principles to help those in business, industry, law, and other professions deal with a constantly changing communications sector.

Although telephone, cable, broadcast, print, and Internet companies are changing at a fantastic rate, the fundamentals of communications, networks, and competition have remained constant. This book provides the tools necessary to build lasting, flexible strategies to survive and grow in these times of transition. Whether you are a business executive, lawmaker, policy analyst, industrialist, stock analyst, lawyer, or judge, these tools will help you to solve real problems right away.

The toolkit contains six tools—essentially ways to view the workings of the communications sector from a larger, more inclusive perspective. The tools draw on knowledge and concepts from communications, engineering, biology, business, and law. Tool #1, New Building Blocks, presents the big picture of the communications sector. Tool #2, Networks, develops the fundamental parts and processes found in all networks. Tool #3, Competition and Cooperation, presents the basic characteristics shared by most processes in which two or more entities compete or cooperate to obtain a scarce resource. Tool #4, The Three Visions of Convergence, sorts out the many things people mean when they say "convergence." Tool #5, Convergence Theology, shows how people's faith (or lack of it) in convergence influences their predictions for the future. Finally, Tool #6, Concentration/Diversity, focuses on the forces that drive things together and those that pull them apart. The book also discusses how the tools can be used to understand and influence public policy issues.

P. H. Longstaff is Associate Professor of Television, Radio, and Film at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, and a Research Associate at Harvard University's Program on Information Resources Policy.