Today transnational TV networks count among television's most prestigious brands and rank among Europe's leading TV channels. This is the first, dynamically told story of the extraordinary journey of transnational television in Europe from struggling origins to its present day boom. It is based in extensive research into the international television industry and makes full use of its author's remarkable access to leading industry figures, from Sky and Turner to Discovery and BBC World.The tale begins with a few cross-border TV channels, who fought hostile governments, faced antagonism from the broadcasting establishment and provoked the contempt of advertisers. But, Jean Chalaby argues, the planets came into alignment for pan-European television in the late 1990s, when a transnational shift in European broadcasting was produced. He shows how transnational television and globalization have transformed one another, and how transfrontier TV networks reflect - and help sustain - a global economic order in which the connection between national territory and patterns of production and distribution have broken down.

Although television has developed into a major agent of the transnational and global flow of information and entertainment, television historiography and scholarship largely remains a national endeavour, partly due to the fact that television has been understood as a tool for the creation of national identity. But the breaking of the quasi-monopoly of public service broadcasters all over Europe in the 1980s has changed the television landscape, and cross-border television channels - with the help of satellite and the Internet - have catapulted the relatively closed television nations into the universe of globalized media channels. At least, this is the picture painted by the popular meta-narratives of European television history. Transnational Television History asks us to re-evaluate the function of television as a medium of nation-building in its formative years and to reassess the historical narrative that insists that European television only became transnational with the emergence of more commercial services and new technologies from the 1980s. It also questions some common assumptions in television historiography by offering some alternative perspectives on the complex processes of transnational circulation of television technology, professionals, programmes and aesthetics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Media History.

This book maps the landscape of contemporary European premium television fiction, offering a detailed overview of both the changes in the digital production and distribution and the emergence of specific national and transnational case histories. Combining a media-production approach with a textual and audience analysis, the volume offers a complex, stratified, systemic view of ongoing aesthetic, sociocultural and industrial developments in contemporary European TV. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the book first offers an overview of the industrial, policy and cultural context for the renaissance of European television drama over the past decade, based on original comparative research. This research is then supported by case study chapters from the key contexts within which quality European television is being produced, offering a complex and complete picture of the industry’s strengths and limitations, its traditions and trends, its constraints and future perspectives. A European Television Fiction Renaissance is a must-read book for TV scholars working across Europe and beyond in the areas of media studies, international communications and television studies, media industries studies, production studies, European studies, and media policy studies as well as for those with an interest in television drama, Netflix, globalisation, pay TV and on demand.

Like its companion volume, Telecommunications in Europe, this book deals with the evolution of powerful monopoly institutions in the communications field--the public broadcasters--and the dramatic changes that took place in the late 1980s throughout Europe, and transformed the media landscape. It provides a comprehensive view of European broadcasting systems, using the perspective of economics and policy analysis. The introductory part offers a framework for understanding media and the forces of change affecting them. The main section is a unique series of chapters covering the broadcast and cable television systems of almost thirty European countries.

This book deals with the role of television drama in Europe as enabler of transnational, cultural encounters for audiences and the creative community. It demonstrates that the diversity of national cultures is a challenge for European TV drama but also a potential richness and source of creative variation. Based on data on the production, distribution and reception of recent TV drama from several European countries, the book presents a new picture of the transnational European television culture. The authors analyse main tendencies in television policy and challenges for national broadcasters coming from new global streaming services. Comparing cases of historical, contemporary and crime drama from several countries, this study shows the importance of creative co-production and transnational mediated cultural encounters between national cultures of Europe.

This is the first study devoted to the highly significant roles played by France and Britain in the formulation of European audiovisual policy, providing a truly comparative analysis of the contemporary audiovisual scene in the two countries.

This book is the first to offer a global perspective on the unique contemporary media phenomenon of transnational television channels. It is also the first to compare their impact in different regions of the globe. Revealing great richness and diversity across some of the world's main geocultural regions (Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Greater China and Latin America), international contributors with in-depth industry knowledge examine the place of these channels in the process of globalization, their impact on the nation-state and on regional culture and politics. The book also considers audiences and geocultural TV markets, providing new ways of thinking about the emerging transnational media order.