Editing International broadcasting (section)

=== RSS feeds and email ===
Many international broadcasters (television or radio) can reach "unreachable" audiences via email and RSS feeds. This is not at all unusual, as the first commonly agreed international broadcast was a Morse Code telegram transmitted from US President Wilson to the German Kaiser (mid-1918) via a high powered longwave transmitter on the US East Coast (this important event in international broadcasting history was described in depth in the IEEE "The History of International Broadcasting" first volume). As Morse Code is considered to be a data format, with email and RSS merely being refinements of the technology it can be said that international broadcasting has a deep relationship with modern-day datacasting.

The reach of RSS and email for international broadcasters is not really known that well, especially considering that emails get forwarded. The numbers for active RSS and email audiences are probably 5 to 20 times larger than for streaming video. It may take into the 2010s to get meaningful numbers with respect to the size of these audiences for assorted technical reasons related to the RSS and email technologies.

Email and RSS feeds can traverse telecommunications barriers that streaming video cannot, thus the larger expected audience numbers. The global economic downturn of 2008-2009 will probably increase the email and RSS audience sizes as fewer people will be able to afford high speed internet connections in North America, Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions.