In the late 1970s, there was an extensive debate in Swedish newspapers and other forums about a TV satellite called Nordsat. Nordsat was a Nordic TV-satellite project that would expand the TV range to all Nordic countries. The Nordic countries planned to jointly finance a satellite that would transmit and expand live TV. The project met with strong criticism from both politicians and the public. The Nordsat project was never implemented due to the strong opposition it faced in Sweden, but also in other Nordic countries. In this thesis, I will examine the criticism that was directed at the satellite project to see what was perceived to be the big threat with Nordsat and an expansion of TV channels during the years 1977 – 1980. I will use Swedish daily newspaper as source material, and as a theoretical framework I have categorized the content of the source material according to the themes that I have identified.
The key findings are that the criticism against Nordsat was about a concern for children and other vulnerable social groups, a frustration directed at politicians and companies who use bogus arguments to hide a financial interest and that Nordsat would have affected the Swedish culture negatively in different ways. The argument and the criticism that I have analysed in this thesis are universal and have been used, are being used and are going to be used against technical and media development at all times.