Since the mid 90s, governments in almost all industrialized countries have been attempted to prepare their national economies for the information age and to support the change towards the information society via action programs. Governmental measures predominantly aim at favorable legal conditions for the development of new media technologies and try to support the spreading of interactive media applications in the society. In this study, the exemplary national initiatives for the information society in Germany and the U.S. are systematically compared and evaluated in terms of how successful they were in achieving their goals. The examined initiatives are: "Info 2000. Deutschlands Weg in die Informationsgesellschaft" (1996-1998) and the "National Information Infrastructure-Initiative" (1994-1997) of the Clin-ton/Gore administration. The study focuses on measures, regulation issues, and support-strategies which apply to the development of interactive television, whereas "interactive TV" is used as a generic term for the specific development in three sectors: interactive TV-Services (enhanced TV, WebTV, t-commerce), broadband-Internet (DSL and cable modem systems), and video on demand. Governmental actions which are specifically effecting these sectors can be identified within the regulatory regime of the telecom-regulation, certain provisions of the content regulation, and specific measures to coordinate the switch from analog to digital TV. In order to determine the effects and the appropriateness of governmental measures, a synthesis of top-down- and bottom-up-approach, as it was developed in implementation research, is utilized. This means that the respective action programmes are examined in a first step with regard to their implementation within the administrative and institutional context (top-down) and in a second step it is asked, which were the specific effects of theses measures in the local context of content and technology providers as well as users? (bottom-up). The bottom-up-anaysis is based on six media-development ("pilot"-)projects respectively commercial introductions of interactive applications which were extensively researched by way of expert interviews and document analysis. The individual projects were chosen as examples for the general development of interactive TV in Germany and the U.S. The case studies show in great detail the technical, economic and regulatory barriers and potentials, new interactive TV-applications face today. The following projects are described: · DVB Multimedia Bayern · InfoCity NRW · IVS Stuttgart · WebTV · Excite@Home · Full Service Network Orlando The study concludes that it takes an intelligent combination of "hard" (regulation of telecommunications and broadcasting sector) and "soft" factors (agenda-setting, symbolic politics, awareness) for governmental programs to succeed in the field of interactive media development and expansion. Also important for the implementation success is an open and participative implementation proccess and the ability of the political leaders to integrate the respective administrative bodies and interest groups. The comparison with the U.S. shows that Germany has to set up specific provisions to guarantee infrastructure competition between the different access technologies and that special governmental actions are required to improve the media competence of its citizens.     «

Since the mid 90s, governments in almost all industrialized countries have been attempted to prepare their national economies for the information age and to support the change towards the information society via action programs. Governmental measures predominantly aim at favorable legal conditions for the development of new media technologies and try to support the spreading of interactive media applications in the society. In this study, the exemplary national initiatives for the information so...     »