Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Hausarbeit zur Erlangung des Akademischen Grades
einer Magistra Artium

U.S. Television as a Cultural Force - The Americanization of Cultures

Mieke Schüller

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ... 1

2. Culture

2.1. Culture and Society
2.1.1. Culture as ‘Webs of Significance’ ... 7
2.1.2. Cultural Hegemony ... 9
2.1.3. Cultural Imperialism ... 10
2.2. Culture as Symbols
2.2.1. From Elitist High Art to Mass-Produced Popular Culture ... 13
2.2.2. Popular Culture and Its Emphasis on Visual Design ... 15
2.3. Television: A Popular Cultural Medium
2.3.1. Television Consumption ... 18
2.3.2. Media Socialization and Audience Effect Studies ... 21

3. U.S. Television

3.1. The U.S. Television System and Industry
3.1.1. U.S. Television and Advertising ... 24
3.1.2. The Major U.S. Television Networks ... 26
3.1.3. ‘Merger Mania’ in the U.S. Media Sphere ... 28
3.1.4. The International Flow of U.S. Programs ... 30
3.2. U.S. Television Entertainment
3.2.1. Fictional Television Entertainment: Prime Time Series
3.2.1.1. Rich, Young and Beautiful: Depictions of Wealth, Women and the American Beauty Ideal in Popular U.S. Series ... 32
3.2.1.2. Crime Time: Television Violence and the Depiction of Ethnic Minorities in Crime Series ... 38
3.2.1.3. The U.S. as a Land of Modernity and Scientific Progress in Medical Dramas and the Science-Fiction Series Star Trek ... 44
3.2.2. Non-fictional Television Entertainment: Newscasts
3.2.2.1. U.S. Television Newscasts and News Channels ... 51
3.2.2.2. The Television News Business: Sources, Production, and Presentation ... 53
3.2.2.3. U.S. Television Coverage of Foreign Affairs and U.S. Wars ... 57

4. Americanization

4.1. The Global ‘Imagi-Nation’
4.1.1. American Televisual Aesthetic and America as a Dream World ... 63
4.1.2. The Transnational Imagined Community ... 65
4.2. America ‘Acculturated’
4.2.1. U.S. Television on the Defense? The Increase in Foreign Productions ... 68
4.2.2. The ‘Indigenization’ of U.S. Television Formats and Genres ... 71
4.3. American Cultural Imperialism
4.3.1. Americanization as a Trigger of Social and Cultural Change ... 73
4.3.2. Opposition to U.S. Television News Coverage ... 77

5. Conclusion ... 80

Works Cited ... 85

1. Introduction

The advent of electronic media in the 1920s marked the beginning of the information age and contributed to the formation of modern mass society. The introduction of new communication media, which allowed for the mass production and distribution of information and entertainment services, had wide-reaching consequences for social and cultural life: it transformed human cognition; it changed the organization of everyday life; it linked the world more closely together by means of a global media network. Particularly the television medium opened up a new perspective on the world and revolutionized entertainment, and it soon started its triumphant advance throughout the world.
The U.S. played a prominent role in the development and global distribution of television technology and programming. America began early to experiment with television technology, but for the time being, it was commercial radio that “quickly grew to become the primary entertainment and information source for Americans throughout the Great Depression and World War II” (Emmert, “Broadcast Media”). At last, television was introduced to the public at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, which had “Tomorrow – Now!” (Campbell et al. 13) as a motto. The public gave the new medium an enthusiastic reception, and soon after World War II, “television′s visual images replaced the audio-only limitation of radio as the predominant entertainment and news vehicle” (Emmert, “Broadcast Media”).
During the 1940s and 1950s, television technology and broadcasting transmission techniques were further refined: The cable system was rapidly enhanced and soon stretched across the U.S., thereby gradually replacing the transmission by over-the-air broadcasting signals, which is extremely susceptible to interferences. But only the advent of the cost-effective satellite broadcasting technology made the global transmission of mass media services possible:

The invention and continuous improvement of satellite communications, computers and computer networks, cable television and fiber optics offer the means of blanketing any part of the world instantaneously with a torrent of imagery and data. (Schiller 34)

Today, television is ubiquitous in the developed world; it is an integral element in the lives of millions of people worldwide: “It is part of the domestic scene, its use interwoven into the texture of daily life” (Adler 3). Media consumers take of up-to-date information on cultural, social, and political events – local as well as foreign – and the convenient all-time availability of audio-visual home entertainment as a matter of fact.
Americans devote much time on media consumption, mostly by watching television: “Television has become the primary source of news and entertainment for most Americans; . . . ” (Adler 2); in the statistical abstract 2004-2005, the U.S. Census Bureau indicates 1,701 hours of television viewing per person per year, which is about 5,15 hours a day per person on the average (see “Statistical Abstract”). The number of television sets per household and the program offers are enormous: “Virtually every American household -- 93.1 million of them in 1991 -- has at least one TV set, and 65 percent of TV households own two or more sets. The average American TV household in 1991 could receive 30.5 channels . . . ” (Emmert “Broadcast Media”). The channel offer is constantly increasing; accordingly, there is great demand for program supply, and the U.S. television industry is perfectly equipped to produce television programs on a large scale.
The preconditions for the development of an advanced television industry were specifically good in countries that had already engaged in motion picture production before the inception of television: “In the early years, TV in the industrialized countries could use the services of the film industry and benefit from a highly developed industrial infrastructure and the work of the research and development departments of the manufacturers” (Berwanger 313). Hence the U.S. television industry significantly profited from the availability of established movie production sites and specialized staff in Hollywood, because it allowed the mass production of high-quality programs to be taken up immediately. In the course of time, a complex network of connected industry branches developed; to this day, “popular entertainment, marketing, promotion and advertising have been developed and refined to a high standard in the U.S. commercial economy” (Schiller 42). Furthermore, “[t]he media are a great engine in the consumer society. They provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of technicians, writers, artists, performers and intellectuals. They shape attitudes and beliefs and put pictures of the world into people’s minds” (Emmert, “Overview”). Today, the U.S. media entertainment industry is the world’s largest: “The print and electronic media in the Unites States of the 1990s offer the widest news and entertainment options available anywhere in the world” (Emmert “Overview”); it affects foreign cultural industries worldwide.

The firm belief that American popular culture has model character for nations worldwide is basic to the American understanding, and many Americans assume that American cultural influence favorably affects foreign societies. In 1941, Henry Luce, the publisher of Life magazine, declared: “’It now becomes our time,’ he asserted, ‘to be the powerhouse from which the ideals spread throughout the world’” (Betts 3). Based on this ideological conviction combined with plain economic interest, American popular culture indeed set out to conquer the world, and today, “products of American culture permeate the globe” (Owens-Ibie 132). The systematic distribution of American consumer products and cultural commodities set the Americanization - meaning the adoption of American cultural practices, values, and icons by a foreign society - of countries worldwide into motion: “[T]he Unites States became the creator and arbiter of much of popular culture, as its entrepreneurs expanded into new markets around the world, in a process derisively described as Cocacolonization [or Americanization]” (Betts 3). Nevertheless, the massive influx of American consumer products and entertainment services into countries all over the world is also negatively connoted because it leads to the restructuring of foreign cultural spheres, and allows the U.S. to shape the global economy according to their needs:

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