Global TV Realities International Markets, Geopolitics and the Transcultural Context of Reality TV

John McMurria

Problems for Britain January 2007 U.K Broadcast Channel 4 And TV

format producer Endemol placed 10 international celebrities for the creation of Big Brother. Viewer thought that some of the script was racism,

and Channel 4 was using it to get rating. For example: “The indian,” and “Bloody Paki

Bitch.”

Celebrity Big Brother UK 2007 - Highlights Show 14 Part 2

ComplaintsThat’s where the Problems started

Britain’s Telecom regulator Ofcom received 38,000 complaints,

Channel 4 closed the street outside the studio where protested gathered.

They also gathered in city streets in India, this arrived to British Chancellor. He quotes, “I want Britain to be seen as a country of fairness and tolerance, and anything that detracts from that I condemn.”

IncidentThe national Structures of Television regulation

and culture that find the British Broadcaster Channel 4 implicated in a Public debate over British Identity.

They described Global TV as an economic and Cultural Process of Asymmetrical Interdependence across global, regional, national, and local contexts.

TV Globalization The economic, regulatory, and cultural

dimensions of television in the 1950s and 1960s were largely national in scope.

In the postwar period the United States led world television exports, aided by Hollywood’s establish global dominance in film distribution.

By the early 1960s, U.s television producers made over $30 million in TV exports to over 40 nations, most of the revenues coming from Canada, the UK, Australia, and Latin American

Continue In the late 1980 and 1990 cable and satellite

television increased the number of commercial channels in many regions.

1989 western Europe aired 40 TV channels but by 2002 offered 1500 though 50 national terrestrial channels still attracted 75 percent of all viewers.

In 2006 the annual worldwide trade in TV programming rights was valued at $10 million with the United States holding the largest share

Four development (emerged) 1. National government formed international

coproduction treaties to share creative and financial resources so that cooperative ventures would qualify for national multilateral coproduction treaties were written for Ibero-America, the Pacific, Rim, and the European Union.

Continued2. International program producers and

syndicators established international distribution networks and relations with global advertisers to produce programs designed for transnational audiences.

Arabian Nights 2000

Power rangers Power Rangers Intro

Sesame Street

Continue… 3. Large Media conglomerates including

Viacom, Newscorp, Disney Time Warner, Sony and Discovery Created global TV networks with a mixture of U.S and localized programming

The U.K.- based Zonemedia developed a number of global channels including the 24-hour unscripted entertainment channel Reality TV in 1999

(renamed) Zone Reality in 2006

Continue4. Most critical to the proliferation of reality TV,

the global TV formatting business grew rapidly in the 1990s as companies with bases in western Europe built vertically integrated transnational television companies with huge inventories of game shows and reality TV formats. This was worth 2.4 million 2004

EndemolProduced over 400 different programs totaling

15,000 hours. Ten formats were reality TV, including

Big Brother, Fear Factor, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Star Academy, The Farm, and the The Talent show operation Triunfo.

FremantleMedia Owns the Pop Idol Format including

Farmer Wants a Wife, Australia How Clean is Your House? Grand Designs Families Behaving Badly

Regional Developments in Reality TV In Japan, the second largest television market

in the world, where 95% of programming is domestically produced, they made local versions of some shows, such as Survivor.

Big Brother reached Japanese TV screens but it focused on the life story and inward emotional conflicts of each contestants as they develop friendship under difficult conditions. Who Want to be a Millionaire (2000) The Weakest Link Iron Chief Similar Show also reach China and South Korean

Continue…2006: Sony’s Satellite TV channel created a

marginally successful Hindi version of Endemol’s Celebrity Big Brother called the Bigg Boss. (Had to settle for D-list celebs)

Fear factor, was aired in India, West Africa, Africa

Latin America: Amazing Race and Extreme Makeover, While You Were Out, Wife Swap and Survivor

Spanish translation: Mientras No Estabamos and Cabiemos de Esposas, Expedicion Robinson

Reality TV and Geopolitics of the “War on Terror” The Marine Corps worked with FOX to produce

the reality series Boot Camp which followed 16 civilians contestants through basic training led by active-duty Marine Sergeants. This show resemble Survivor, which the creator of

Survivor and CBS sued Fox for copyright infringement.

Boot Camp clip

Sunk a Japanese Submarine?Two other reality series promoted all four

branches of the U.S. Military. March 2001 TBS debuted War Games, a two hour

reality special involving combat scenarios including Air Force dogfighting, “live fire” exercises and Navy submarine warfare, which was particularly suspended.

Combat MissionTeams from the Green Berets, Delta Force,

Central Intelligence Agency special operations, a SWAT police force competed against an enemy “Shadow squad.” But Scott Helvenston a contestant on the Delta

Force Team, was killed in Fallujah March 31, 2004, other three people died

Combat Missions was not renewed for a second season.

Profiles from the Front line Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk

Down), who collaborated with the Pentagon

13 week reality Series following Special Forces in combat after U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that premiered on ABC in February 2003.

“I have a problem with the idea of confusing the entertainment side of ABC with something as serious as soldiers doing their job. “-director on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University

Profiles was more critical than most of the networks, showing military actions not seen in other news coverage. In one episode, a master sergeant got killed and we followed him from

battlefield to the hospital to his coffin.

“Global TV Industry on a Roll” Article written by Peter Feuilherade for BBC

Monitoring 13 Oct. 2006

At time of article, UK became second to the US in International program sales, with British program exports jumping 21%

New media began to emerge as a significant revenue stream (YouTube and MySpace– Facebook had not yet taken off)

Study by JupiterResearch found that the internet has overtaken newspapers and magazines as the main source of news and feature-type information for Europeans.

“Iraqi reality TV show defies odds in this violence plagued country” Article written by Rawya Rageh (2006)

Iraq's new hit reality television show “Saya Wa Surmaya,” or “Fame and Fortune.”

The show features Iraqi men and women taking on challenges in hopes of winning a contract with Al-Sharqiya television, which airs the program.

“Fame and Fortune” presents a different “reality” from every day life in Iraq – no kidnappings, no killings, no explosions .

Keeping with Islamic tastes, the participants don't spend the night on the set, as they might in a Western reality show. They do eat together, socialize and sit close to one another on a narrow couch. Yet, slick Western production methods are evident in every aspect of the show – from the trademark IKEA interiors, looking more like a New York studio than one of traditional Iraqi tastes, to commercials advertising the show with Frank Sinatra's song “My Way” in the background.

Conclusion Reality TV engaged with the “war of terror” where

national contexts largely determined geopolitical orientation. Though Iraqi viewers had access to diverse international perspectives on Television whereas U.S. viewers did not.

Before the war, only 3 channels aired in Iraq, all controlled by Saddam Hussein. Two years later, Iraqis could watch over 30 channels, plus dozens of satellite channels.

Because theaters in Iraq were closed and curfews were enforced after dark, the sale of TV sets soared, with many turning to reality TV.

EndGlobal realities unscripted entertainment

represents neither fundamental break from the forces of a globalizing modernity nor another western imperialist cultural form but rather a new development in global television worthy of serious attention, contestation, and study within particular localized contexts.