Television format traffic-public service style

Abstract

Beginning in 1998, there has been an explosion in the flow of television programme formats worldwide witnessing to the advent of a global television system for programme production and distribution. In fact, this kind of programme adaptation and remaking had a long gestation that reaches back even before the beginnings of regular television broadcasting to the early 1940s. Media scholars were very slow over the subsequent half-century to register what was taking place, let alone inquire into its dynamics and critical significance. If programme remaking was noticed at all, it was understood in high culture terms as confirmation of crassness and materialism operating in commercial television. Critical research added a further charge of media imperialism to describe the supposed national and social outcomes of such a practice. However, since the 1990s, scholarly inquiry has affected a seachange in its engagement with the phenomenon of television programme remaking that was prompted not least by a realisation that its commercial and cultural operations and consequences are more interesting, intriguing, and multi-dimensional than was earlier thought. In this context, three programme format transfers that happened between the UK and Australia in the 1960s are examined. The three sets of programme transfer constitute a rich, engaging area of analysis for several reasons including the fact that they were ‘live’ programme formats whereas their exchange took place in a public service context, the latter being a sector that usually falls under the critical radar. Drawing connections of this kind across an imperial cultural space can make a significant contribution to transnational television history from a comparative Anglophone perspective.