| |
All change
Public opinion
in the United States is changing. Slowly, but it is changing. It’s been
changing as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001.
The
American people are beginning to realise that they live in a global community,
where what they do has an impact on what happens to them. They are realising
they can’t afford to be insular anymore; they have to be outward looking. US
sites no longer dominate the Internet anymore. Sites from Canada, Australia,
South Africa, Japan, Europe, the UK, and many other countries are beginning to
make an impact in the US, and that’s not all. Broadcasters from around the
world are beginning, slowly, to infiltrate American broadcasting. But these
processes are taking time, and American broadcasting is falling behind its
global counterparts.
In each area,
whether it is a town, city, district or county, there are a certain number of
media outlets, whether they be audio broadcasting only or audio/visual
broadcasting. You find this in most corners of the world. In the US, in
particular, because TV and Radio are made up of lots of local stations,
sometimes combined into networks, both national and regional, the focus is not
surprisingly a lot more localised than in the UK which is made up lots of
national stations, with only 1 network of regional stations, and 1 channel
that has regional opt-outs. Local TV in the UK is still a rare commodity, but
is slowly growing in strength.
However, the
internet has done more to globalise the media than anything else before. There
are now over 2500 live radio streams on the web, several live video feeds,
including BBC World and BBC Parliament, and there is plenty of live and
recorded audio and video material as well.
Stations from
Canada, Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and many other
countries are now infiltrating the US via the internet and the American public
are choosing what they want to listen to, and more Americans are discovering
the world outside their own country via domestic radio services that before
the internet wouldn’t have reached outside of their home countries, and now,
they are getting international audiences.
What kind of
effect has this internet phenomenon had on broadcasting? It has had 2 main
effects. The first is that it has globalised the news agenda much more now
than ever before, even to the point where a US domestic news service, Fox News
Channel, is now retransmitted around the world by various broadcast providers.
Even on the main US networks, their signature newscasts contain more world
news now than ever before, except perhaps for ABC’s World News Tonight, who
have restored their coverage to levels not seen since Peter Jennings time as a
co-anchor of the programme at ABC’s London bureau.
The second
effect is that formats of successful shows suddenly start appearing in other
countries a lot quicker now, than they ever used to before. Look at how fast
shows like Big Brother, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, The Weakest Link and
Survivor were exported from their home countries to become massive global
phenomenons. It used to be said that if one person knew something, it would
take 24 hours to spread round the world. These days, it would nearer 24
seconds!
With the
internet growing to explore more of broadcasting’s global past, and also to
shape its future, it is becoming ever clearer that the days of being insular
are numbered. American audiences have many more choices now than ever before,
and not just from within their own country, but the American media are slowly
catching on that their audiences are not just tuning away to cable and
satellite, but tuning away to services that have never been considered
competition before, because of the internet. It’s getting tougher for all
broadcasters worldwide, it’s just the American ones need to catch up with the
rest of us, or they could lose out in the ever more fragmented world of
viewing and listening.
Ian
Beaumont
Compilation © 2002 Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
Text © 2002 Ian Beaumont. All rights reserved. Used with permission
|
|

Article Republished with Permission
|