News Services of Charted Space

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The News Services of Charted Space sell what is perhaps the most important commodity of all within Charted Space, which has always been and continues to remain: Information.

  • They are controlled and/or regulated by many different actors on the interstellar relations stage: polities, megacorporations, various sophont races, and vast array of interest groups.
  • All of these different actors hold different values, relationships with data, and priorities.
  • A few of these actors believe in traditional values of bringing the facts to the people to prepare them to make their own decisions.
  • Please see AAB article Communication Technologies of Charted Space for related information.

Description (Specifications)

Even in a galaxy where FTL star travel is a way of life, information travels relatively slowly throughout Charted Space. Instantaneous communication, a long-held dream, has never been achieved by any known race. Thus communication is usually limited to the speed of packets, couriers, and other types of message-laden starships. Lesser frequented spaceways might only receive mail transmissions, physical mail packages or letters, and other communications once every few weeks. While the more frequented trade routes most often receive messages several times a subjective Terran-standard 24-hour period (day).

  • Regardless, the great stretches of Charted Space are vast, and it can take months or even years for information to pass from one end of civilization to the other.

Holovid Network Providers

Among the best known Holovid networks and providers are:

Periodicals of Charted Space

Books of Charted Space

History & Background (Dossier)

Charted Space contains a vast variety of technological information systems. While standards exist, news is typically formatted into a number of different media based upon bandwith, locality, TL, and a variety of other criteria. Despite all of these differences, basic plaintext data bursts in common binary computer codes still predominate amongst news agencies using FTL starships for news transfer. These basic data transferences have the advantage of being usable by worlds of very different levels of technology mastery.

More complicated data involving sound, graphics, and video files can be added to these basic binary data bursts for the more prosperous markets that can afford larger and more expensive news data files.

  • For additional information, please see the following AAB article: News Media

Network Sizes & Polity Reach

News networks operate anywhere were there is a market to support them.

  • Even the largest networks can only move information at the speed of travel. Some news networks with adequate funding run X-boat-like systems to move news.
  • While most news data has broad appeal to most sophonts, entertainment programming is much more species and region specific. Some polities closely control the news and rigorously censor it.

They generally grow in the following sequence:

  • Subplanetary News Networks
  • Planetary News Networks
  • Subsector News Networks
  • Sector News Networks
  • Multi-Sector News Networks
  • Very Large Networks

Postal Unions

A Postal Union is a group of political units associated to a greater or lesser degree for the purpose of communication among citizens, businesses, and governmental units over interstellar distances.

  • They are more properly known as Interstellar Postal Unions.
  • Please see the AAB article Postal Union for more information.

Interstellar News Association

The Interstellar News Association is a cross-polity organization intending to promote the largely free flow of information across Charted Space.

References & Contributors (Sources)

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