Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders

No televisual shift has so shaken traditional models of media studies as the recent explosion of format television around the world. Straddling local and global production, circulation and viewership, television formats both represent and shape the current landscape of television, and offer a particularly current vantage point on global cultural exchange. The chapters assembled in this collection take up the format phenomena from multiple locations--the Middle East, Western and Eastern Europe, South and West Africa, South and East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, North America, South America, and the Caribbean--to examine how and why format television is so central to the global cultural experience. Contributors address both little known examples and massive global hits ranging from the Idol franchise around the world, to telenovelas, dance competitions, sports programming, reality TV, quiz shows, sitcoms and more, offering a wide spectrum of perspectives on how format history, market, technology and industry development, political and social forces and changing audiences participate in the shaping of global media culture and contemporary entertainment.