Multilingual sat broadcast to overrule political wills.

Technology has run over most politicians without even ruffling them. While European politicians are arguing loudly about how many terrestrial channels should an entity own, businesspeople are quickly developing multilingual, multichannel satellite TV services.

The sad part is that these politicians are zealots in taking into consideration all national interests -- political, patriotic, financial -- except one: the public interest.

It is unfortunate because, by excluding the public interest, those same politicians will be depriving their local industry of a tool with which to compete against satellite technology.

While in Australia, Canada, the U.S. and some other countries, localism has shielded the industry from satellite competition. In Europe, satellite TV services have been aided by the lack of localism.

"The birds" are, therefore, gradually taking over the European and Asiatic stratospheres, and they are well on their way to revolutionizing television.

The changes, in themselves drastic, become even more significant with the growing practice of having satellites offer programs with multiple language soundtracks.

Since that practice is particularly applicable to the news, it is upsetting governments in areas of the world where information tends to be tightly controlled.

Already, the manufacture and sale of dish antennas has been banned in Saudi Arabia and in China, and now come reports that a similar ban is to be imposed in Iran. The Indonesian government also is curtailing the sale of dishes.

In the U.S., the United States Satellite Broadcasting Co. has a capacity of carrying 32 language tracks simultaneously.

Super Channel also offers some German and Dutch broadcasts. Spain recently launched its own satellite, 1B, to be used by Antena 3. It will be partially a news channel and is planned for a number of languages.

In Asia, Star TV from Hong Kong, has branched out into English and Mandarin on its two new movies and music channels.

Owned by Rupert Murdoch, Star TV ran into trouble with the Chinese government and promptly dropped the BBC World Service News, which seemed to irritate Bejing. Earlier this year, Murdoch in a speech in London, put his finger on the great importance of multilingual satellite news.

"It makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled TV," he noted.

In Europe, the most unique news service is Euronews. Run by the European Broadcasting Union, it involves a daily exchange of news clips among all the Euronews members. Euronews goes out over Eutelsat in five languages--English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. The news also goes on cable. In Eastern Europe alone, according to a Euronews spokesman, some 15 million cable homes tune in.

Some competition to Euronews and the Super Channel is waiting in the wings. CLT in Luxembourg has corralled a number of European broadcasters to share the news, and there are reports that Germany's RTL, a Belgium company, and CBS and Sky News in Britain are discussing a news-exchange service.

In Britain, the BBC World Service offers a multilanguage series of news programs, but not unlike Euronews for instance, these are individual programs, spoken and tailored to specific countries, following the BBC Radio World Service Pattern.

In the entertainment area, technology will soon resolve the problems associated with different lengths of soundtracks for the same program. At that point, local sovereignty will have little meaning and the "birds" will rule.