Transnational Television in Europe: Reconfiguring Global Communications Networks

by Jean K. Chalaby

Overview

Today transnational TV networks count among television's most prestigious brands and rank among Europe's leading TV channels. This is the first, dynamically told story of the extraordinary jourbaney of transnational television in Europe from struggling origins to its present day boom. It is based in extensive research into the international television industry and makes full use of its author's remarkable access to leading industry figures, from Sky and Turbaner to Discovery and BBC World.The tale begins with a few cross-border TV channels, who fought hostile governments, faced antagonism from the broadcasting establishment and provoked the contempt of advertisers. But, Jean Chalaby argues, the planets came into alignment for pan-European television in the late 1990s, when a transnational shift in European broadcasting was produced. He shows how transnational television and globalization have transformed one another, and how transfrontier TV networks reflect - and help sustain - a global economic order in which the connection between national territory and patterns of production and distribution have broken down.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845119546
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/28/2009
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jean K. Chalaby teaches media history as well as comparative media systems and international communication at City University, London, where he is Director of the MA in Transnational Media and Society. He is the author of 'The Invention of Jourbanalism' (1998) and 'The de Gaulle Presidency and the Media' (2002) and editor of 'Transnational Television Worldwide' (I.B. Tauris, 2005).

Table of Contents

Tables ix

Abbreviations xi

Acknowledgements xv

Introduction: Television's Transnational Paradigm Shift 1

Part 1 Impossible Beginnings

Chapter 1 Pioneers in Satellite Television, 1982-4 7

Chapter 2 The Difficult Expansion of Europe's Satellite TV Market, 1985-9 21

Chapter 3 The End of a Chimera? 43

Part 2 The Coming of Age of Pan-European Television

Chapter 4 Ushering in a New Era: European Regulation and Satellite Technology 57

Chapter 5 The Advent of Transnational Advertising 83

Chapter 6 Public Broadcasters: Coming to Terms with the New Media Order 99

Part 3 Transnational Television in Europe

Chapter 7 Key Entertainment Genres and Channels in Transnational Television 115

Chapter 8 Powering Tomorrow's European Television: American TV Brands and Diversified Entertainment Conglomerates 155

Chapter 9 The Sun Always Shines on Global News TV Networks 173

Part 4 Inside Globalization: The Transnational Shift

Chapter 10 Reasons and Strategies for Crossing Borders 195

Chapter 11 When the Local Meets the Global: Transnational TV Networks 207

Chapter 12 Reconfiguring Communications Networks: Television for a Global Order 227

Conclusion: New World, New Networks 241

Notes 245

Index 263