Global Television Formats Understanding Television Across Borders

Winner of the 2013 SCMS Best Edited Collection Award

For decades, television scholars have viewed global television through the lens of cultural imperialism, focusing primarily on programs produced by US and UK markets and exported to foreign markets. Global Television Formats revolutionizes television studies by de-provincializing its approach to media globalization. It re-examines dominant approaches and their legacies of global/local and center/periphery, and offers new directions for understanding television?s contemporary incarnations.

The chapters in this collection take up the format phenomena from around the globe, including 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. 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. Looking to global television formats as vital for various cultural meanings, relationships, and structures, this collection shows how formats can further our understanding of television and the culture of globalization at large.

Introduction: Television Formats--A Global Framework for TV Studies Tasha Oren and Sharon ShahafI. Format Theories and Global Television 1. More than Copycat Television: Format Adaptation as Performance Vinicius Navarro 2. Calling Out Around the World: The Global Appeal of Reality Dance Formats Dana Heller 3. Television Formats and Contemporary Sports Tony Schiarto 4. A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasure Eddie Brennan 5. Interpreting Cubanness, Americanness, and the Sitcom: WPBT-PBS's Que Pasa USA?Yeidy M. RiveroII. Transnational Formats: Historical Perspectives 6. From Discrete Adaptations to Hard Copies: The Rise of Formats in European Television Jerome Bourdon 7. "National Mike": Global Host and Global Formats in Early Italian Television Chiara Ferrari 8. Telenovelas in Brazil: From Traveling Scripts to a Genre and Proto-Format both National and Transnational Joseph Straubhaar 9. Reversal of Fortune? Hollywood Faces New Competition in Global Media Trade Paul TorreIII. Case Study: The Idol Franchise 10. Idol Worship: Ethnicity and Difference in Global Television Biswarup Sen 11. NZ Idol: Nation Building through Format Adaptation Joost De Bruin 12. Global Television Formats in Africa--Localizing IdolsMartin Nkosi Ndlela 13. We Are the World: American Idol's Global Self-Posturing Erica Jean Bochanty-AgueroIV. Trans-Formats: Local Articulations and the Politics of Place and Nation 14. The Social and Political Dimensions of Global Television Formats: Reality Television in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia Marwin M. Kraidy 15. A Revolution in Television and a Great Leap Forward for Innovation? China in the Global Television Format Business Michael Keane 16. Global Television Formats and the Political Economy of Cultural Adaptation: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in India Lauhona Ganguly 17. Global Franchising, Gender, and Genre: The Case of Domestic Reality Television Sharon Sharp 18. Reiterational Texts and Global Imagination: Television Strikes Back Tasha Oren

Tasha Oren is an Associate Professor of English and Media Studies, and is the Coordinator of the Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies track at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Sharon Shahaf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University.