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National and Regional TV Markets and TV Program Flows
International Communication Assn. Conference
May 2003
Abstract
This paper takes a theoretical and empirical look at a key problem posed for world cultures,
namely the unequal flow of television programs across national and regional borders. It examines
the literature on television flows, advances several specific research propositions, and then
examines the actual production and importation of television programs in sixteen countries in
Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and NAFTA. National production is compared with imports
from the U.S., from within the country’s cultural linguistic region, and to other international
imports. We look at the countries over 40 years, in 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, and 2001. This
empirical data base permits to examine trends in light of several competing theoretical predictions
from cultural imperialism, cultural proximity, and asymmetrical interdependence.
Introduction
This paper takes a theoretical and empirical look at a key problem posed for world cultures,
namely the unequal flow of television programs across national and regional borders. There are
several dimensions to these uneven streams of TV that this paper seeks to address. In the early
1970s, studies observed that most countries imported the majority of their television programming,
which was largely entertainment-based and largely originating in the United States (Nordenstreng
& Varis, 1974; Varis, 1984). This unequal distribution of television products, together with an
even more one-sided flow of news, impelled a great deal of the New World Information and
Communication Order debate which took place during the 1970s (McPhail 1989). The unbalanced
exchange has been termed media imperialism by Boyd-Barrett (1980), Lee (1980) and others, but
subsequent studies see changes in those dynamics and have looked for other theoretical
explanations (Antola & Rogers, 1984; (Hoskins and Mirus l988); Straubhaar, 1991; (Waterman
l993). Theoretical work since then has focused on cultural discount (Hoskins, 1988), cultural
proximity (Straubhaar 1991), cultural relevance (Galperin 1999), language markets (Wildman and
Siwek 1988), and the rise of cultural linguistic markets (Sinclair 1995).
How do we explain the continued streaming of cultural products from the United States,
which together comprise an increasingly central export for the U.S. information economy, while at
the same time recognizing that a number of countries are making more cultural products, both for
their own consumption and to export to their neighbors? Can changes in technology be driving
both increased world cultural flow and increased local productions? We propose to look at the
issues in terms of a more complex and dynamic set of relationships, asymmetrical
interdependence, in which separate nations and cultures have varying levels of production and
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