1. Global TV Realities International Markets,
Geopolitics and the Transcultural Context of
Reality TV
John McMurria

2. Problems for Britain
January 2007 U.K Broadcast Channel 4 And TV
format producer Endemol placed 10
international celebrities for the creation of Big
Brother.
 Viewer thought that some of the script was racism,
and Channel 4 was using it to get rating.
 For example: “The indian,” and “Bloody Paki
Bitch.”
Celebrity Big Brother UK 2007 - Highlights Show 14 Part 2

3. Complaints
That’s where the Problems started
 Britain’s Telecom regulator Ofcom received 38,000
complaints,
 Channel 4 closed the street outside the studio
where protested gathered.
 They also gathered in city streets in India, this
arrived to British Chancellor. He quotes, “I
want Britain to be seen as a country of fairness
and tolerance, and anything that detracts
from that I condemn.”

4. Incident
The national Structures of Television regulation
and culture that find the British Broadcaster
Channel 4 implicated in a Public debate over
British Identity.
 They described Global TV as an economic and
Cultural Process of Asymmetrical Interdependence
across global, regional, national, and local contexts.

5. TV Globalization
The economic, regulatory, and cultural
dimensions of television in the 1950s and 1960s
were largely national in scope.
In the postwar period the United States led world
television exports, aided by Hollywood’s establish
global dominance in film distribution.
By the early 1960s, U.s television producers made
over $30 million in TV exports to over 40 nations,
most of the revenues coming from Canada, the
UK, Australia, and Latin American

6. Continue
In the late 1980 and 1990 cable and satellite
television increased the number of commercial
channels in many regions.
1989 western Europe aired 40 TV channels but by
2002 offered 1500 though 50 national terrestrial
channels still attracted 75 percent of all viewers.
In 2006 the annual worldwide trade in TV
programming rights was valued at $10 million
with the United States holding the largest share

7. Four development
(emerged)
1. National government formed international
coproduction treaties to share creative and
financial resources so that cooperative ventures
would qualify for national multilateral
coproduction treaties were written for Ibero-
America, the Pacific, Rim, and the European
Union.

8. Continued
2. International program producers and
syndicators established international distribution
networks and relations with global advertisers to
produce programs designed for transnational
audiences.
Arabian Nights 2000
Power rangers Power Rangers Intro
Sesame Street

9. Continue…
3. Large Media conglomerates including
Viacom, Newscorp, Disney Time Warner, Sony
and Discovery Created global TV networks with a
mixture of U.S and localized programming
The U.K.- based Zonemedia developed a
number of global channels including the 24-hour
unscripted entertainment channel Reality TV in
1999
(renamed) Zone Reality in 2006

10. Continue
4. Most critical to the proliferation of reality TV,
the global TV formatting business grew rapidly in
the 1990s as companies with bases in western
Europe built vertically integrated transnational
television companies with huge inventories of
game shows and reality TV formats.
 This was worth 2.4 million 2004

11. Endemol
Produced over 400 different programs totaling
15,000 hours. Ten formats were reality TV,
including
Big Brother, Fear Factor, Extreme Makeover:
Home Edition, Star Academy, The Farm, and the
The Talent show operation Triunfo.

12. FremantleMedia
Owns the Pop Idol Format including
 Farmer Wants a Wife, Australia
 How Clean is Your House?
 Grand Designs
 Families Behaving Badly

13. Regional Developments in
Reality TV
In Japan, the second largest television market in
the world, where 95% of programming is
domestically produced, they made local
versions of some shows, such as Survivor.
Big Brother reached Japanese TV screens but it
focused on the life story and inward emotional
conflicts of each contestants as they develop
friendship under difficult conditions.
 Who Want to be a Millionaire (2000)
 The Weakest Link
 Iron Chief
 Similar Show also reach China and South Korean

14. Continue…
2006: Sony’s Satellite TV channel created a
marginally successful Hindi version of Endemol’s
Celebrity Big Brother called the Bigg Boss. (Had
to settle for D-list celebs)
Fear factor, was aired in India, West Africa,
Africa
Latin America: Amazing Race and Extreme
Makeover, While You Were Out, Wife Swap and
Survivor
Spanish translation: Mientras No Estabamos and
Cabiemos de Esposas, Expedicion Robinson

15. Reality TV and Geopolitics
of the “War on Terror”
The Marine Corps worked with FOX to produce
the reality series Boot Camp which followed 16
civilians contestants through basic training led by
active-duty Marine Sergeants.
 This show resemble Survivor, which the creator of
Survivor and CBS sued Fox for copyright
infringement.
Boot Camp clip

16. Sunk a Japanese
Submarine?
Two other reality series promoted all four
branches of the U.S. Military.
 March 2001 TBS debuted War Games, a two hour
reality special involving combat scenarios including
Air Force dogfighting, “live fire” exercises and Navy
submarine warfare, which was particularly
suspended.

17. Combat Mission
Teams from the Green Berets, Delta Force,
Central Intelligence Agency special operations,
a SWAT police force competed against an
enemy “Shadow squad.”
 But Scott Helvenston a contestant on the Delta
Force Team, was killed in Fallujah March 31, 2004,
other three people died
 Combat Missions was not renewed for a second
season.

18. Profiles from the Front line
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk
Down), who collaborated with the Pentagon
13 week reality Series following Special Forces in combat after
U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that premiered on ABC in
February 2003.
“I have a problem with the idea of confusing the
entertainment side of ABC with something as serious as
soldiers doing their job. “-director on Press, Politics and Public Policy at
Harvard University
 Profiles was more critical than most of the networks, showing military
actions not seen in other news coverage.
 In one episode, a master sergeant got killed and we followed him from
battlefield to the hospital to his coffin.

19. “Global TV Industry on a Roll”
 Article written by Peter Feuilherade for BBC Monitoring
13 Oct. 2006
 At time of article, UK became second to the US in
International program sales, with British program
exports jumping 21%
 New media began to emerge as a significant revenue
stream (YouTube and MySpace– Facebook had not
yet taken off)
 Study by JupiterResearch found that the internet has
overtaken newspapers and magazines as the main
source of news and feature-type information for
Europeans.

20. “Iraqi reality TV show defies
odds in this violence plagued
country”
 Article written by Rawya Rageh (2006)
 Iraq's new hit reality television show “Saya Wa Surmaya,” or “Fame and
Fortune.”
 The show features Iraqi men and women taking on challenges in hopes
of winning a contract with Al-Sharqiya television, which airs the program.
 “Fame and Fortune” presents a different “reality” from every day life in
Iraq – no kidnappings, no killings, no explosions .
 Keeping with Islamic tastes, the participants don't spend the night on the
set, as they might in a Western reality show. They do eat together,
socialize and sit close to one another on a narrow couch. Yet, slick
Western production methods are evident in every aspect of the show –
from the trademark IKEA interiors, looking more like a New York studio
than one of traditional Iraqi tastes, to commercials advertising the show
with Frank Sinatra's song “My Way” in the background.

21. Conclusion
 Reality TV engaged with the “war of terror” where
national contexts largely determined geopolitical
orientation. Though Iraqi viewers had access to diverse
international perspectives on Television whereas U.S.
viewers did not.
 Before the war, only 3 channels aired in Iraq, all
controlled by Saddam Hussein. Two years later, Iraqis
could watch over 30 channels, plus dozens of satellite
channels.
 Because theaters in Iraq were closed and curfews
were enforced after dark, the sale of TV sets soared,
with many turning to reality TV.

22. End
Global realities unscripted entertainment
represents neither fundamental break from the
forces of a globalizing modernity nor another
western imperialist cultural form but rather a new
development in global television worthy of
serious attention, contestation, and study within
particular localized contexts.