Making Global Television

Review by Lane Crothers
Illinois State University

Global Television: Co-Producing Culture. Barbara J. Selznick.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-59213-504-2. 210 pp.

Barbara Selznick provides an interesting overview of the increasingly interconnected ways in which global television programming is produced and disseminated.  The text explores reasons why global co-productions have become common and the effects such productions have on the content of the programming itself and the broader cultures into which it is introduced.  As such, it offers a useful and insightful analysis of the interaction of economic and cultural forces in contemporary globalization.

The core of the book’s argument is laid out in its extended introduction.  Economics is the driving force both of global co-production and the cultural consequences that may follow.  Thus global co-productions emerged as a result of increased costs of production in the context of market fragmentation once the industry was deregulated around much of the world in the 1980s and 1990s: they were a means to spread costs around in a challenging market.  In addition, co-productions allowed U.S. corporations to satisfy national quota requirements and indeed to spin off local subsidiaries that could benefit from various state subsidy programs.  Such co-productions intend to wash away the kinds of culturally specific content that might limit access to global markets; the question is whether or not they also wash away the flavor and texture of sophisticated and engaging programming in search of an international audience.

Selznick then traces out the types and consequences of global television co-productions in four major areas of television programming arrayed in four main chapters: History without Nation: Global Fiction; Clear, Strong Brands: British Television as a Marketing Tool; The Three C’s: Children, Citizenship and Co-Production; and Global Truths: Documentaries for the World.  In History without Nation, for example, Selznick traces the way(s) in which historical fiction is shaped to decontextualize the history of the participants in order to globalize its appeal.  History, after all, can be more easily stripped of culturally current controversies than can programs focused on current affairs; linked to the near-universal use of English in such programs this de-historification of History is further enhanced.  Thus “history” fiction tends to focus on the challenges and problems of historical characters who are largely devoid of any historical, culturally specific context.  The absence of content is key to the program’s appeal—or at least it is supposed to be.

Selznick follows a similar path in subsequent chapters, tracing out how the label “British” came to be perceived as a mark of quality that could be turned into global market share, particularly in the United States; the ways increased demand for children’s programming in the United States encouraged the importation of foreign-produced fare even as it provided opportunities for American programs like Sesame Street to go international; and the forces that led to the rise of international documentaries, primarily focused on diverse dimensions of World War Two or science/animal programs, that dominate so many television networks today.  Each of these chapters usefully and effectively traces the economic and business forces that led to the emergence of the specific form of globalized television production under review. 

The text has two additional strengths beyond the skill with which Selznick traces the rise of global co-production in the four areas she examines.  The first of these is the many cases through which she analyzes the issues she addresses.  Selznick carefully traces the production process, funding, and central themes of a wide array of global television programs.  These range from shows like The Highlander, which is used as an exemplar of an explicitly ahistorical “history/adventure” show, to The Odyssey, Sesame Street, Cracker, The Nazis: A Warning from History and, in a warning about the foibles of global co-production, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.  Each usefully illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of global television and as such adds materially to the book.

Second, Selznick’s innovative use of various notions of citizenship introduced by Toby Miller is a particularly strong way to analyze the cultural concerns associated with children’s programming.  Selznick applies Miller’s categories of political, cultural and economic citizenship to an analysis of how children’s programming enacts the education of children into these various kinds of citizenship.  This frame allows Selznick to assess the way(s) in which the economic interests of the corporations that produce most children’s programs stand in tension with notions of cultural or political citizenship.  It also allows Selznick to analyze how corporate interests may shape the nature of the program—and thus perhaps to shape the nature of the program’s young and potentially malleable viewers.  Such analysis avoids the “what about the children?” rhetoric that so often informs discussions of children’s programming—usually to less-than-profound effect—and offers instead a helpful and useful way to encounter and engage such tricky turf.

No book is perfect, of course.  To start with the least important critique first, this is a specialist’s book.  A reader does need to be directly and seriously interested in the question of global co-production to engage Selznick’s book.  This is an issue with any specialist work, of course, and the fact that it is technical and detailed makes it very useful for other specialists.  It is not a work that would make a valued supplement to a course, however. 

More seriously, the work tends to get bogged down in its examples.  This is an inevitable concern with any work derived from the industrialized world of mass corporate pop culture production: no matter how much one discusses, there is always vastly more that might be addressed.  Indeed, as was noted earlier in this review many of the examples are quite useful as tools to explore underlying themes.  Yet large numbers and often brief references to varyingly recognizable television works requires a knowledge of and fluency in global pop culture that few but the most specialized professionals are likely to have.  Moreover, the multiplicity of examples offered in the book, often with little commentary, sometimes obscures the underlying themes under review. 

Perhaps most disappointingly, the book hovers at the fringes of what is certainly the most important issue embedded in questions of global culture, whatever its form: does popular culture, as a product of a capitalist system, shape local cultures in favor of hegemonic, imperialist and homogenized global norms? Given that the book quite literally ends with a discussion of the culturally transformative effects globalized co-productions might have in the future, it is striking that throughout the book Selznick raises these concerns but does a better job exploring the risks associated with “Europudding”—co-productions so washed of cultural flavor they also lose all their potentially interesting and engaging material—than with answering the concerns of critics who imagine a world of children raised on programs that serve the needs of the international capitalist system but undermine the cultural and political types of citizenship so central to democracy and identity.  Such analysis might have made the book longer of course, although judicious editing of examples might have freed more space for this kind of broader cultural analysis.  In any case the conclusion seems grander than the data allow—leading to the wish for a different data matrix.

None of these critiques should be taken for more than they are, however.  All books are the manifestations of compromise and approach, and Selznick has authored a sophisticated, thoughtful and detailed analysis of one increasingly significant component of contemporary globalization.  Globalization is a force that will take a variety of shapes and modes well into the future, each leading to surprising new arrangements of social, cultural, economic and political affairs.  We need these kinds of chronicles and analyses of globalization’s many dimensions, particularly in the popular culture arena.  Whether downloaded on the Internet, watched on a satellite dish or heard on a ringtone, popular culture has a global reach into people’s lives.  We need to examine what people consume, why these products are available in the first place, and what effects they have in people’s lives.  Selznick’s book is a useful and valuable addition to this ongoing process of grasping globalization.