So how can Europeans reverse the trend of this American cultural domination? One solution could be to take inspiration from the European music industry. European music producers are increasingly asking their artists to record songs aimed solely at European audiences in English, from the start, without a local language version. Take for example the German singer Sarah Connor. She is unknown outside of continental Europe and yet she sings in English to be broadcast on radios across the continent. A radio station in France will broadcast a song in English, but not in German. Perhaps the same strategy could eventually be employed by European television producers. If you're making a show about police in Berlin and want it to be watched by people across Europe, you might have a better chance if the German actors speak in English. It can be humiliating to have to produce a local TV series in a foreign language, but language remains the biggest obstacle for European TV producers wanting to make big-budget shows. If Europeans are worried about the increasing Americanization of their television programs, filming European shows in English, with a pan-European audience in mind, could be the way of the future. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'? Get an original essay Even in the UK, a TV producer has no hope of exporting a British fiction TV series to American audiences , which is the only way we could make a huge investment in production profitable. So the highest quality programming will likely continue to come from the United States, where television money is invested in shows that bring in returns not only to American audiences but also to global audiences through export. Over the past decade, a popular European television format has been imported to America: the reality show. Of course, Americans don't watch other countries' reality shows, but they do watch American reality shows based on concepts that originated in Europe. These types of low-budget shows have been produced for years in Europe, and as U.S. television networks' budgets have shrunk in recent times, they have turned to this same low-cost format. Examples include American Idol (from Pop Idol in the United Kingdom), Survivor (from Expedition Robinson in Sweden), and Big Brother (from its namesake in the Netherlands). These examples are limited to the cheap-to-produce game show/reality format. Examples of American fiction television series based on European series are rare – and all come from the United Kingdom. The historical list of success stories is relatively limited: The Office, Dear John, Three's Company, All in the Family, Queer as Folk. But in these cases, a new American version was made and the format was radically changed. Only one of these shows, The Office, is currently airing in the United States. So why exactly are the world's (and particularly Europe's) televisions so dominated by American TV series? Of course, it's not just television, but all aspects of popular culture. Movies, music, products, games: they all come from America. Is it simply because Americans are much more creative than everyone else? The answer probably has more to do with the fact that the United States is such a large anddeveloped. It was also the first developed market to speak a single language, which meant that as new television, film and recording technologies developed (at first mainly in Europe, in fact), The United States had a golden combination: a large amount of capital, and a huge population speaking a single language. This huge American audience raises expectations of big monetary returns for television producers, justifying the risk of investing tons of money in a series. The higher the money, the higher the quality, the higher the quality, the higher the quality. audience, with higher audience comes more money, Another example: the cross-platform sensation Transformers. Originally a Japanese toy purchased, redesigned and renamed by the American company Hasbro, it is now a multi-billion dollar film franchise whose latest installment was filmed in China and partly financed by the Chinese. The film has no artistic merit but provided a field day for commentary on the growing soft power rivalry between the United States and China. Zhing Yu, a U.S.-based Chinese media scholar, notes in Foreign Policy magazine that the film depicts Chinese people as spectators in a struggle on Chinese soil to save the world. They are a group of American individualists, led by Mark Wahlberg, who "save the day." This message of individualism, Mr. Yu said, spread to China, where more people saw the film than in the United States. An example: Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular video games in the world. It was developed in Edinburgh, but it is performed in recognizable fictional cities in the United States. For what? Not only because the American market is huge, but also because “American” is a global visual language. American popular culture remains preeminent, not only for its creativity, but also for its business acumen. Stalin may or may not have said, "If I could control American cinema, I would need nothing else to convert the whole world to communism." » But totalitarian leaders have long envied Hollywood's extraordinary ability to tell stories that speak to the entire planet. Much of the secret to Hollywood's success is that it was founded by immigrants: Goldwyn, Mayer, Warner had all just jumped ship. Their cultural frame of reference was a synthesis of New World optimism and Old World culture. The stories their studios told and the way they told them meant that the films had appeal far beyond American shores. US film and TV exports brought in $16.2 billion in 2012. By comparison, UK film and TV exports, riding a wave of popularity, were worth $1.2 billion. Having invented personal computing, the United States is the largest player in the rapidly growing video and computer gaming market. It is difficult to find export figures comparable to those of film and television in this area of ​​the cultural industries due to the globalized nature of the production of games and the machines on which they can be played. But it is clear that America is the main influence on these products. An interesting effect of the dominance of American culture in films and other media is that many people who have never been to the country nevertheless feel they have a good idea of ​​what it is like to live there. The stereotypes that American cinema and television sell to their domestic audiences become the subject of international opinion. ByFor example, action heroes from films like the Rambo and Die Hard series are regularly mentioned when talking about American foreign policy. (In this regard, the image of the Texas cowboy has been particularly popular of late.) Likewise, people may feel like they know what it means to live in New York after seeing several years of episodes of Friends or Seinfeld. Depending on what you look at, you can easily conclude that most Americans are happy with guns, girls, or just slapping. And while these stereotypes may annoy Americans when they travel abroad, they only have themselves to blame for spreading them around the world. American cultural influence through cinema has been particularly strong. The simple word “Hollywood” itself conjures up visions of movie stars, Oscar parties, and Western gunslingers gearing up for the shootout. Cinema may not have been invented in the United States, but modern films were perfected there. The numbers are impressive. For example, in 2006, 64% of all films shown in the European Union were American. By comparison, only 3% of films shown in the United States came from Europe. In addition, the twenty highest-grossing films in the world in 2006 were American or made in partnership with an American film company. This included the year's number one hit, Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which grossed over $1 billion, most of it from international audiences. This is what led former President Jacques Chirac to support limiting the number of American films that could be shown in French theaters, because he did not want to see "European culture sterilized or obliterated by American culture for reasons economics that have nothing to do with American culture. with a real culture. Turn on the radio, check the TV listings, check out what's on at the local cinema, pull out a video game or just go online and look for a cool chat room - do any of these things and in no time you'll will come across American cultural influence. Why does America have such reach in these media? One answer is the market. The United States has a domestic market of more than 300 million people, in addition to a potential global market of more than two billion English speakers. This means that Americans can profitably produce large numbers of television programs, movies, songs, computer games, and other products for use at home, and then export those same programs abroad at lower prices. very low. No other country has this advantage, both in terms of numbers and language. Another reason is innovation. It is often in the United States that new forms of communication have been invented or perfected. Television broadcasting is a good example. In the 1950s, American television networks created a zoo of new types of programming, including game shows, soap operas, crime shows, westerns and, of course, sit-coms that were then exported internationally. Later, cable television expanded the variety and quality of American programming, creating international bestsellers such as The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Heroes. And it also laid the foundation for the first international news network, CNN (Cable News Network). Perhaps the easiest example to recognize is the phenomenal increase in the use of personal computers and the World Wide Web over the past few decades. Both launched in the United States and eventually spread around the world.)