Globalization and the Protection of National Culture: Film and Television in Comparative Perspective

Research and Event Summaries

Project Abstract

For many people outside the US, globalization means "Americanization". National identities appear at risk. Part of the reason is that the economics of film and television production strongly favors American exports. US films and television shows are amortized over a large domestic market. Most other countries cannot compete. Thus many governments limit the number of us entertainment products that can be shown, usually by insisting on prime time broadcast quotas and limiting the number of American movies which can be shown in local cinemas. Global policy trends, such as privatization have made these strategies more difficult. The increasing number of private TV stations has fragmented audiences, while reducing advertising revenues per broadcast and making networks very sensitive to the cost of each show. American shows and films, amortized over a huge domestic market, thus have a cost advantage and add to pressures against quotas. Likewise technologies such as direct satellite broadcasting and television-on-demand make quotas unenforceable.

This project seeks to understand the process of cultural globalization by examining the strategies several countries have employed to preserve national cultures. The focus is on government support for film and television industries, as well as regulation. The US, France, Britain, and Korea have already been researched. Australia is especially interesting because public policy discriminates against us products, but the private sector has developed significant local industries that collaborate with Hollywood studios. Thus, I hope to spend part of the summer in Australia interviewing elites, to see how they intend to cope with the economic and technological constraints cited above. Government elites in Canberra will be interviewed, as well as private sector executives in Sydney and Melbourne.

Faculty

Harvey B. Feigenbaum (PI), Professor, Department of Political Science

Publications

The Effects of New Technologies on Cultural Protectionism
Occasional Paper, CSGOP-02-04

The GW Center for the Study of Globalization
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