NYTimes.com Article: U.S. TV Shows Losing Potency Around World

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by threehegemons@aol.com.


The headline two stories above this one was on the increasing difficulties the 
US has telling South Korea what to do.  All worth thinking about in terms of 
Wallerstein's theory of US decline.

Steven Sherman

threehegemons@aol.com


U.S. TV Shows Losing Potency Around World

January 2, 2003
By SUZANNE KAPNER 




 

LONDON - Want to catch the latest episode of the CBS hit
"C.S.I." in France? Tune in Saturdays at 11 p.m. How about
the CBS show "Judging Amy" in Singapore? Try weekdays at
midnight. 

Those programs would have been candidates for prime time
several years ago. But today American dramas and sitcoms -
though some remain popular - increasingly occupy fringe
time slots on foreign networks, industry executives say.
Instead, a growing number of shows produced by local
broadcasters are on the air at the best times. 

"Whereas American TV shows used to occupy prime-time slots,
they are now more typically on cable, or airing in
late-night or weekend slots," said Michael Grindon,
president of Sony Pictures Television International. 

The shift counters a longstanding assumption that TV shows
produced in the United States would continue to overshadow
locally produced shows from Singapore to Sicily. The
changes are coming at a time when the influence of the
United States on international affairs has chafed friends
and foes alike, and some people are expressing relief that
at least on television American culture is no longer quite
the force it once was. 

"There has always been a concern that the image of the
world would be shaped too much by American culture," said
Dr. Jo Groebel, director general of the European Institute
for the Media, a nonprofit group. 

The American studios priced themselves out of the market
just as competition began to heat up abroad from newly
privatized commercial broadcasters and upstart cable and
satellite networks, industry executives say. Given the
choice, they add, foreign viewers often prefer homegrown
shows that better reflect local tastes, cultures and
historical events. A recent example is "The Tunnel," a
miniseries about escapees from East to West Germany, which
was the eighth most popular show in Germany last year. 

Unlike in the United States, commercial broadcasting in
most regions of the world - including Asia, Europe and to a
lesser extent Latin America, which has a long history of
commercial TV - is a relatively recent development. 

A majority of broadcasters in many countries were either
state-owned or state-subsidized for much of the last
century. Governments began to relax their control in the
1980's by privatizing national broadcasters and granting
licenses to dozens of new commercial networks. The rise of
cable and satellite pay television increased the spectrum
of channels. 

Relatively inexperienced and often financed on a
shoestring, these new commercial stations needed hours of
programming - fast. The cheapest and easiest way to fill
air time was to buy shows from American studios, and the
bidding wars for popular shows like "Dallas" or "Twin
Peaks" were fierce. 

The big American studios took advantage of that demand by
raising prices and forcing foreign broadcasters to buy
less-popular programs if they wanted access to the
best-selling shows and movies. 

"The studios priced themselves out of prime time," said
Harry Evans Sloan, chairman of SBS Broadcasting, a
Pan-European broadcaster. Mr. Sloan estimates that over the
last decade, the price of American programs has increased
fivefold even as the international ratings for these shows
have declined. "You cannot win a prime-time slot with an
American show anymore," he said. 

In general, shows are priced by ratings. A foreign station
would pay less for an American show that was shown at an
off-peak time. 

At the same time, politicians, concerned about the cultural
influence of the United States, set quotas on American
content. In one example, Dr. Groebel of the media institute
said, French officials became alarmed when an increasing
number of adolescents appearing in court addressed the
judge as "your honor," a term gleaned from American
detective shows. 

But television executives point out that some American
shows, like "The Shield" and "Sex and the City," still
attract a large number of foreign viewers. And some still
generate huge bidding wars. Channel 4 in England was
recently reported to have agreed to pay $1.5 million an
episode for "The Simpsons." Over all, they said, foreign
demand for American shows has actually increased as the
number of channels, including cable and satellite, has
grown. 

A worldwide economic boom has brought foreign broadcasters
more advertising revenue, which they have invested in local
programming. Initially, many shows emulated successful
American formats. In Germany, for instance, a long-running
hit called "Das Traumschiff," or the "Dream Ship," is a
remake of the American hit "Love Boat." But increasingly,
homegrown programs mined historical events that resonated
with their audience or added local twists to popular myths.


According to a survey by the European Audiovisual
Observatory, the highest ranking show in Italy last year
was "Uno Bianca," a dramatization based on a crime gang.
No. 1 in France was "Julie Lescaut," a long-running
detective series. 

First-run domestic fiction programs in the five largest
European Union countries - Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain
and France - increased 5.7 percent in 2001 and have grown
43 percent since 1996, the European Audiovisual Observatory
recently reported. 

That pattern has played out in many countries around the
world. A 2001 survey by Nielsen Media Research found that
71 percent of the top 10 programs in 60 countries were
locally produced in 2001, representing a steady increase
over previous years. American movies on television still
drew big ratings, grabbing 9 percent of the top 10 slots,
but American dramatic or comedic series typically rated
much lower than local shows. 

In South Korea, for instance, the top-rated show in the
third week of last September was "The Era of the Abandoned
Hero," a locally produced soap opera that attracted 22.7
percent of the population. By contrast, the highest-rated
nonlocal show, "C.S.I.," drew just 2.7 percent of all
Koreans tuning in that week. 

American shows, which are usually dubbed, fared even worse
elsewhere in Asia, where they took a back seat to
programming from Britain and China. In Malaysia, the
highest-rated nonlocal show for the same week in September
was "Mr. Bean," a British comedic series, and in Indonesia
there was the Chinese movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon." 

One exception is Japan, which has historically shown little
American programming but is now giving prime-time slots to
some shows. TV Asahi, for instance, is running the former
Fox Network show "Dark Angel" on Mondays at 8 p.m. And in
Latin America, where there has always been a more vibrant
commercial broadcasting industry, networks have tended to
devote more time to local programming, mainly to soap
operas called telenovelas. 

Some foreign producers have even turned the tables on
American studios by pioneering new formats, like reality
television, that they exported to the United States. John
de Mol, chief executive of Endemol, a Dutch company that
produced the original "Big Brother" and now licenses the
show to broadcasters around the world, including CBS, said
that American studios had initially overlooked the reality
format. "They were playing it safe," he said. 

The change has important implications for the future of
television financing, analysts who follow the industry
said. 

American broadcasters are still the biggest buyers of
American-made television shows, accounting for 90 percent
of the $25 billion in 2001 sales, according to Wilkofsky
Gruen Associates, a consulting firm. But international
sales, which totaled $2.5 billion last year, often make the
difference between a profit and a loss on a show,
executives said. 

As the pace of foreign sales slows - the market is now
growing at 5 percent a year, down from the double-digit
growth of the 1990's - studio executives are rethinking
production costs. Sony, for instance, has cut its
production schedule by two-thirds, Mr. Grindon said. 

Some studios, like Sony, are countering the trend by
opening production centers abroad to better create shows
tailored to local tastes. 

"Mein Leben und Ich," a German show produced by Sony that
translates as "Me and My Life," about the angst of a
teenage girl, is shown on Friday evenings at 9:15 and is
first in its time slot. "A Rich and Famous Governor," a
Sony production about a kindhearted but bumbling government
official, has just been approved for broadcast in Hong Kong
and China. 

And at least in Britain, American media companies may soon
play a larger role. Legislation that is expected to become
law later this year would relax restrictions on foreign
ownership and pave the way for American takeovers of
British broadcasters. 

Still, the changes are humbling for American studios used
to calling the shots abroad. "The worldwide television
market is growing," said David Hulbert, president of Walt
Disney Television International, "but America's place in it
is declining." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/02/business/businessspecial/02TUBE.html?ex=1042476147&ei=1&en=eb7a8ba14a07a6f3



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