This history of British and American television drama since 1970 charts the increased transnationalisation of the two production systems. From The Forsyte Saga to Roots to Episodes , it highlights the close relationship that drives innovation and quality on both sides of the Atlantic.
This book examines television drama in the age of streaming—a time when television has been reshaped for national and international consumption via both linear ‘flow’ and on-demand user modes. It builds on an in-depth study of the Norwegian public service broadcaster (NRK) and some of its game-changing drama productions (Lilyhammer, SKAM, blank). The book portrays the formative first decade of television streaming (2010-2019), how new streaming services and incumbent television providers intersect and act in a new drama landscape, and how streaming impacts existing television production cultures, publishing models and industry-audience relations. The analysis draws on insight gained through more than a hundred interviews with television experts and fans, hundreds of hours of observations, and unique access to industry conferences, meetings, working documents, and ratings. The book combines perspectives from production studies, media industry studies, and fan studies to inform its analysis.
The recent transnational reach of Japanese television dramas in East and Southeast Asia is unprecedented, and not simply in terms of the range and scale of diffusion, but also of the intense sympathy many young Asians feel toward the characters in Japanese dramas, so that they cope with their own modern lives by emulating the lives on screen. Through the empirical analysis of how Japanese youth dramas are (re)produced, circulated, regulated, and consumed in East and Southeast Asia, each chapter in this volume variously explores the ways in which intra-Asian cultural flows highlight cultural resonance and asymmetry in the region under the decentering processes of globalization. Key questions include: What is the nature of Japanese cultural power and influence in the region and how is it historically overdetermined? How is it similar to and different from "Americanization" and other Asian cultural sub-centers? What kinds of images and sense of intimacy and distance are perceived through the reception of Japanese youth dramas?
Transnational Korean Television: Cultural Storytelling and Digital Audience provides previously absent analyses of Korean TV dramas’ transnational influences, peculiar production features, distribution, and consumption to enrich the contextual understanding of Korean TV's transcultural mobility. Even as academic discussions about the Korean Wave have heated up, Korean television studies from transnational viewpoints often lack in-depth analysis and overlook the recently extended flow of Korean television beyond Asia. This book illustrates the ecology of Korean television along with the Korean Wave for the past two decades in order to showcase Korean TV dramas’ international mobility and its constant expansion with the different Western television and their audiences. Korean TV dramas’ mobility in crossing borders has been seen in both transnational and transcultural flows, and the book opens up the potential to observe the constant flow of Korean television content in new places, peoples, manners, and platforms around the world. Scholars of media studies, communication, cultural studies, and Asian studies will find this book especially useful.
This history of British and American television drama since 1970 charts the increased transnationalisation of the two production systems. From The Forsyte Saga to Roots to Episodes , it highlights the close relationship that drives innovation and quality on both sides of the Atlantic.
This book explores how to understand the international appeal of Danish television drama and Nordic Noir in the 2010s. Focusing on production and distribution as well as the series and their reception, the chapters analyse how this small nation production culture was suddenly regarded as an example of best practice in the international television industries, and how the distribution and branding of particular series – such as Forbrydelsen/The Killing, Borgen and Bron/The Bridge – led to dedicated audiences around the world. Discussing issues such as cultural proximity, transnationalism and glocalisation, the chapters investigate the complex interplays between the national and international in the television industries and the global lessons learned from the way in which screen ideas, production frameworks and public service content from Denmark suddenly managed to travel widely. The book builds on extensive empirical material and case studies conducted as part of the transnational research project ‘What Makes Danish Television Drama Travel?’
The 2012 smash "Gangnam Style" by the Seoul-based rapper Psy capped the triumph of Hallyu , the Korean Wave of music, film, and other cultural forms that have become a worldwide sensation. Dal Yong Jin analyzes the social and technological trends that transformed South Korean entertainment from a mostly regional interest aimed at families into a global powerhouse geared toward tech-crazy youth. Blending analysis with insights from fans and industry insiders, Jin shows how Hallyu exploited a media landscape and dramatically changed with the 2008 emergence of smartphones and social media, designating this new Korean Wave as Hallyu 2.0. Hands-on government support, meanwhile, focused on creative industries as a significant part of the economy and turned intellectual property rights into a significant revenue source. Jin also delves into less-studied forms like animation and online games, the significance of social meaning in the development of local Korean popular culture, and the political economy of Korean popular culture and digital technologies in a global context.
This book deals with the role of television drama in Europe as enabler of transnational, cultural encounters for audiences and the creative community. It demonstrates that the diversity of national cultures is a challenge for European TV drama but also a potential richness and source of creative variation. Based on data on the production, distribution and reception of recent TV drama from several European countries, the book presents a new picture of the transnational European television culture. The authors analyse main tendencies in television policy and challenges for national broadcasters coming from new global streaming services. Comparing cases of historical, contemporary and crime drama from several countries, this study shows the importance of creative co-production and transnational mediated cultural encounters between national cultures of Europe.
This book presents a compelling case for a paradigmatic shift in the analysis of television drama production that recentres questions of power, control and sustainability. Television drama production has become an increasingly lucrative global export business as drama as a form enjoys increased prestige. However, this book argues that the growing emphasis on international markets and global players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime neglects the realities of commissioning and making television drama in specific national and regional contexts. Drawing on extensive empirical research, Producing British Television Drama demonstrates the centrality of public service broadcasters in serving audiences and sustaining the commercial independent sector in a digital age. It attends closely to three elements—the role of place in the production of content; the experiences of those working in the sector; and the interventions from cultural intermediaries in articulating and ascribing value to television drama. With chapters examining the evolution of British TV drama, as well as what might be in store in its future, this book offers invaluable insights into the UK as a major supplier of and market for television drama.
Although television has developed into a major agent of the transnational and global flow of information and entertainment, television historiography and scholarship largely remains a national endeavour, partly due to the fact that television has been understood as a tool for the creation of national identity. But the breaking of the quasi-monopoly of public service broadcasters all over Europe in the 1980s has changed the television landscape, and cross-border television channels - with the help of satellite and the Internet - have catapulted the relatively closed television nations into the universe of globalized media channels. At least, this is the picture painted by the popular meta-narratives of European television history. Transnational Television History asks us to re-evaluate the function of television as a medium of nation-building in its formative years and to reassess the historical narrative that insists that European television only became transnational with the emergence of more commercial services and new technologies from the 1980s. It also questions some common assumptions in television historiography by offering some alternative perspectives on the complex processes of transnational circulation of television technology, professionals, programmes and aesthetics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Media History.