ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Joining the Signal map: The History and Implications of the Manufactured Infrastructure for Satellite TV Reception in Romania

• In Event: Peripheries of Power: The Political Economy of Technological Transfer in Late Cold War Europe

English Abstract

Studies of cross-border satellite television in Europe during the Cold War are relatively new and rarely focus on the media apparatus itself (Badenoch et al., 2013; Bönker et al., 2016), with a notable exception (Garda et al., 2020). Additionally, despite creating a new map for transmissions and reception in Europe, the development of satellite television has actually kept Eastern Europe geopolitically separate, while bringing America and Western Europe closer (Badenoch et al., 2013).

Focusing on the history of satellite television reception in the case study of Romania, this paper demonstrates that while Western Europe developed the technology of direct broadcasting satellite (DBS) in the 1980s, former Eastern Europe saw the parallel development of a manufactured infrastructure, challenging the idea of separation by accessing the same satellite signal.

Drawing on archival sources uncovered through my PhD research (Ground station for space telecommunications, National Archives and ham operators surveillance, Secret Police), local electronics magazines and oral history, this paper brings to the fore material evidence of a manufactured infrastructure, which superimposed itself on the period of transition, leading to new understandings of both the local socio-political context and the history of satellite broadcasting technologies in Europe. The presentation maps satellite infrastructure, starting with the 1970s, when Socialist Romania built its own satellite ground station for the INTELSAT network. As DBS took hold in the 1980s, it was the ham operators and electronic enthusiasts, aided by electronic magazines, who gradually built the satellite infrastructure. This growth and relevance continued into the 1990s, when amateurs turned entrepreneurs, eventually leading to the establishment of cable television networks, which later became the first internet access points.

I employ the term manufactured infrastructure to address both its conceptual and material specificity (Larkin, 2008), drawing on a historical materialist approach. Equally important is Sundaram’s (2009) framing of the specific form of infrastructure as pirate modernity, which, in belonging to subalterns, ultimately become part of the media world. Drawing on post-socialist technology studies (Gržinić, 1995; Petrovsky & Ţichindeleanu, 2009; McElroy, 2024), the paper frames the manufactured infrastructure within DIY technoculture and examines its friction with technocapitalism.

Author

• Alexandra Tatar, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna