The Global Village Keeps Shrinking

You’re in downtown Istanbul, in a Bangkok hotel or at a remote ski lodge in Finland, and you’re driving yourself crazy. Did the Lakers win last night? Did your favorite stock split? Did the space shuttle take off? What about the weather in Buffalo?

Until recently, unless you invested in some expensive phone calls, you were out of touch.

Not any more. With few exceptions, maintaining contact with your world at home--and the world around you--has become easy.

A truly global village has been created by new technology, combined with the relaxation of broadcasting and publishing restrictions by many foreign governments.

Travelers who need to know what’s happening can now turn on, tune in and drop in on the world.

A few years ago intrepid voyagers who were news junkies had to carry bulky “transportable” (but not really portable) multiband radios to get a regular news fix. If atmospheric conditions were right they could pick up the BBC World News from London.

Or, if they were in major European capitals such as London or Paris, they could pick up a copy of the International Herald Tribune.

Both BBC World News and the Herald Tribune can still be found; in fact, they’re bigger than ever.

The Herald Tribune prints 230,000 copies a day via satellite from 10 plants around the world. It arrives in most European capitals in the morning. In Asia it is at most newsstands and hotel kiosks by 3 p.m.

There is some stiff competition, however. It’s Cable News Network. Ted Turner’s Atlanta-based CNN can be heard almost everywhere in Europe and in many parts of Asia.

Two years ago, after an 11-hour flight, I turned on my television set at 3 a.m. in a downtown Tokyo hotel room and watched the Iran-Contra hearings live on CNN.

Last year I watched the National Basketball Assn. finals live from Stouffer Grand Beach Resort in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

And from a hotel room above the Arctic Circle I watched highlights of the National Football League championship games.

New technology also has caught up with cruise ships. On the QE2 news is transmitted via satellite to the ship, where it is printed each day in the ship’s newspaper.

High-tech radio also receives the BBC World News and other news programs, and is broadcast in cabins. Passengers can turn on their cabin televisions to receive the daily “Oceansat News Review.”

An experimental program for receiving satellite television news on the QE2 was scrapped recently because of poor quality. “We couldn’t get a stable base for the satellite dish to always work,” QE2 Capt. Alan Bennell said.

“But we’re working to find a better receiver. Once that’s in place, we’ll be able to pick up just about anything from the satellites--sporting events, major breaking news. What we’ve found is that our passengers all say they’ve come on board to get away from it all, and that’s true. But it doesn’t mean they want to be isolated from the news.”

Hotels throughout the world are upgrading their media capabilities. For example, Los Angeles’ St. James’s Club offers 55 video channels in its rooms.

A recent survey showed that in hotels where CNN was offered, 84% of the guests watched the channel. (CNN delivers the service to hotels for about the same cost per room a day as a daily newspaper.)

CNN has become the newest news empire overseas. And owner Turner has enlisted an unlikely ally in his drive to make CNN the international news service of record: the Soviet Union.

CNN has signed a deal to lease a transponder on a Soviet satellite orbiting over the Indian Ocean that will broadcast CNN’s signal to India, Pakistan, Egypt and a few African nations. The Soviet Union could be the next receiver of the service.

“We knew it was popular in Europe,” said one European government official who followed the Soviet deal closely. “But it was already popular in Russia among government officials. The Soviets had been bootlegging the signal for their own use for years, and now they’re just making it available to everyone.

“Soon,” he said, “there may be no need for Radio Free Europe.”