World Entertainment Media

Global, Regional and Local Perspectives

Paolo Sigismondi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351603706
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This new book offers an insightful guide into the complex tapestry of global entertainment media markets. It features analyses and case studies from leading international media scholars, who explore the causes and effects of globalization upon this ever-evolving industry.

There are still opposing and restraining forces to globalization processes taking place in media, and the global mediascape comprises international, regional and local markets, and global and local players, which in recent years have evolved at an uneven pace. By analyzing similarities and differences in a landscape where driving forces of globalization meet locally situated audiences and institutions, this volume unveils a complex, contested space comprising global and local players, whose success is determined by both their national and international dimensions. It guides its readers to the geographical and intellectual exploration of the international media landscape, analyzing the global and local media players and their modus operandi.

Editor Paolo Sigismondi's insightful, engaging collection presents a compelling and novel approach to the analysis of global entertainment media. World Entertainment Media: Global, Regional and Local Perspectives is an ideal starting point for students and practitioners alike looking to build a solid understanding of the global mediascape, and a great resource for instructors and scholars in global media entertainment.

1 Introduction

Entertainment Media as a Lens to Probe the Twenty-First-Century Global Landscape

Paolo Sigismondi

Entertainment Media in a Complex and Dynamic Twenty-First-Century Global Landscape

An unprecedented avalanche of entertainment media content is available to viewers worldwide with access to the Internet. The leading social media platforms (which did not exist only 15 years ago) report astounding data at the time of this writing: Facebook has on average 1.4 billion daily active users, whereas a billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube every single day by more than a billion viewers. As these numbers indicate, both platforms have established a global footprint, above and beyond their country of origin – the US mediascape – exceeding the one billion regular user threshold with localized versions around the world. YouTube has for example launched local versions in more than 88 countries in 76 different languages covering 95% of the Internet population (Facebook 2018; YouTube 2018).

These platforms are increasingly funding and distributing media entertainment content in competition with legacy media and other internet-based platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, which have also reached a critical mass of viewers and are situated at a pivotal nexus in the evolving entertainment landscape, as analyzed by scholars (see for example Lotz, 2017 and Lobato, 2019) and monitored by trade journals tracking their increasingly relevant role in financing original creative content (see for example Jarvey, 2017). The unprecedented availability of entertainment media content ushered in by the rise of internetbased media platforms is just one aspect of the unfolding phenomena of globalization, which are irreversibly shaping the international media landscape on multiple levels, impacting the activities of financing, producing and distributing media content while offering new ways for audiences to access, retrieve and interact with entertainment media.

In the current chapter of the evolution of globalization processes international trade in services and intangible assets is increasingly significant, and current estimates of the value of cross-border flows of free digital services (ranging from e-mail to mapping, search and social media from companies such as YouTube and Facebook), currently untracked by trade statistics as they are free for global consumers, indicate it could be worth up to 3 trillion USD annually (McKinsey Global Institute, 2019, pp. 50–52). Within these unfolding processes Wolf (2003) has convincingly argued that the industry of creating, distributing and exhibiting entertainment media is a key driver of the current post-industrial economy, defined as an entertainment economy.

Entertainment media plays a central role in human communication and has gained a pivotal role in societies around the world. Why is it so relevant and worth investigating? Huizinga (1949) insightfully pointed out the central role of play in human development over the centuries, tracing the evolution of homo ludens since ancient Rome and Greece through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early modern world. For example, in ancient Rome panem et circenses [bread and circuses] were deemed by the poet Juvenal essential needs to be satisfied in order to prevent social unrest, positioning entertainment at the same level as the physiological desire for food in the hierarchy of needs, as both basic human necessities to be provided in functioning societies. Media entertainment, in all the old and new emerging forms, has been in many aspects overlapping with and replacing in the twenty-first century most of what used to belong within the realm of play, amplified in engagement power and planetary reach by evolving communication technologies. How the entertainment media landscape is evolving both in global and local terms represents a central theme of investigation to analyze society, and the relevance of media entertainment has not gone unnoticed in scholarly conversations from different strands of inquiry and in public discourse, generating an evolving body of literature.

Specifically probing and explicating the appeal of media entertainment, communication scholars have proposed theoretical frameworks, such as the role of transportation into narrative worlds (Green, Brock & Kaufman, 2004) and enjoyment at the heart of media entertainment (Vorderer, Klimmt and Ritterfeld, 2004), which contribute to the understanding of the deep linkages between audiences and entertainment. Moreover, Zillmann and Vorderer (2000) suggest we have entered an entertainment age, such is its central role in society, investigating the psychology of its appeal.

The international dimensions of entertainment media are fascinating, yet complex to ascertain. International media landscapes, from a competitive standpoint, are becoming more and more intertwined and it is therefore essential for all entities operating in the twenty-first century to consider positioning themselves above and beyond their national borders. Global leaders in the international mediascape have, over time, built a competitive advantage, being able to capture additional revenue streams from international distribution, which allow them in turn to fund popular culture artifacts with a higher production value (Sigismondi, 2017). Legacy media players, such as the Hollywood studios, have, through successful international distribution of entertainment productions, both feature-length motion pictures and TV series, created and sustained a global competitive advantage in the twentieth century and continue to hold their primacy at the turn of a new millennium. At the same time, new entities in the field of non-scripted entertainment (“reality” TV programmes, quiz shows, etc.), such as the European-based players Endemol and FremantleMedia, have been challenging, in the last decade, Hollywood’s competitive advantage in television outlets around the world by introducing programmes like “reality TV” shows, which are able to create and capture economic value both in the traditional, linear landscape and the new digital environment, successfully adapting their formats internationally (Sigismondi, 2012). Also new media players, such as the aforementioned global social media platforms, are adapting their content to better intercept the needs and expectations of locally situated audiences. To better compete in the changing landscape, legacy global players are undergoing processes of mergers and consolidations leading to the creation of increasingly larger global media conglomerates, and are constantly scanning the globe to monetize their content, facing rising competition from the corporate giants emerging from the digital revolution, sometimes referred to as FAANG, an acronym indicating the best performing tech stocks, namely Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, all competing in the media landscape at global level as well.

The international media scene, however, is far from being a uniform landscape. It represents a mosaic comprising regional and local markets with distinct unique features including local players, which in recent years have evolved at an uneven pace, oftentimes taking advantage of the opportunities ushered in by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution while branching outside their local media ecosystems. Notwithstanding (or precisely as a result of) the acceleration of phenomena of globalization, there are opposing and restraining forces to globalization processes taking place in media, ranging from national controls to local preferences or just downright opposition to phenomena of internationalization, when local audiences, noticing the increased loss of sovereignty of their nations, fear the unfolding dissipation of local cultures in danger of being swept away by a foreign-originated avalanche of media content to which they feel oftentimes disconnected.

Two events in the past years brought to the fore in the US and internationally how uncomfortable, if not plain hostile, a large portion of citizens within different countries and cultures are when confronted with phenomena of globalization: the 2016 presidential elections in the US and the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, which have set in motion the exit of this country from the European Union, the so-called “Brexit.” Both events can be explicated, in their complexities, also as backlashes against globalization, identified as a culprit, if not the scapegoat, of the malaise of affluent twenty-first-century societies with uneven distribution of resources and access to globalization rewards. It is worth noting that these pushbacks take place in countries that retain a pivotal role in these processes and overall economically benefit from globalization and, not surprisingly, there are even more signs of growing opposition in countries marginalized at the periphery of globalization, which are left behind and perceive their relevance increasingly diminished in the international arena.

Within these unfolding, contested phenomena of globalization, this book aims at providing a geographical and intellectual exploration into the complexities of global entertainment media, revealing an evolving tapestry of diversity. It intends to shed light on the multifaceted international media landscape, analyzing the global trends as well as the distinctive features of local and regional media landscapes, their players and their modus operandi. The book is intended for those interested and curious to deepen their knowledge of the cultural, economic and political forces shaping the media playing field around the world, ranging from students and scholars in different disciplines, such as communication and media studies, international relations and public diplomacy, media economics and business, to practitioners operating in the media industries in non-profit or profit oriented entities, or policy makers at local, regional and international level, interested in learning more about the different activities of production, distribution and exhibition of media entertainment around the world.

Entertainment media is specifically utilized to probe the twenty-first-century global landscape, as a unique prism to analyze similarities and differences in a globalized world where driving forces of globalization meet locally situated audiences and institutions to unveil an evolving, contested space comprising global, regional and local players, whose success (or lack thereof) is determined by both their national and international dimensions. The twenty-first-century global mediascape is located at a particular juncture within the multifaceted phenomena of globalization. It is being impacted by the globalization processes of which at the same time it constitutes a major driver. The technological drivers – such as the digital revolution ushered in by the Internet – and the political drivers – such as international trade agreements – at the center of globalization processes are globalizing the media sectors not unlike other industries. At the same time, however, the increased international interconnections of the media landscapes also contribute to accelerate the other processes of globalization via the increased flows of media content facilitated by the more-and-more globalized conduits, the international distribution platforms.

Entertainment media can indeed provide a unique intellectual entry point to analyze phenomena of globalization, focusing on entertainment flows at all different levels, as these flows can be considered simultaneously a unique driver and a major consequence of globalization. An exploration on a country-by-country basis of the development of different media ecosystems can shed light on how phenomena of globalization materialize in local contexts, and to what extent different players around the world currently are, or have the potential of, successfully distributing their content internationally.

Theoretical Frameworks on Global Media Entertainment

A Brief Overview

The analyses presented in this volume aim at contributing to conversations and discussions on global media entertainment, whose academic debates in the last decades have focused on many different aspects of the international flows of media entertainment content crossing national and cultural boundaries. The collection of chapters in this volume intends to do so by focusing on 20 different media landscapes and analyzing how these conversations and debates, and the diverse theoretical lenses shaping them, materialize in different mediascapes. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to conduct a thorough literature review on all the themes investigated by the different academic voices interested in international media entertainment analyzing the topic with their own theoretical lenses and intellectual vantage points. A brief overview is offered instead, with the goal of situating the analyses presented in this volume within broader scholarly conversations.

A central aspect of the analyses conducted by an evolving body of literature on global media entertainment, within the different research foci adopted, has been to shed light on and explicate the phenomenon of the international trade imbalances of cultural goods between the West and the rest of the world, and in particular, the role of US global media conglomerates. The concept of cultural imperialism was introduced in scholarly conversations, within different academic fields of inquiry, when analyses of the international entertainment landscape revealed a significant imbalance generated by the flow of exports from Western economies, and the US in particular, vastly exceeding the imports from the rest of the world in all the different sectors of entertainment.

Since the 1970s research conducted by UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – helped raise international awareness on the issue and contributed to this debate, providing voices and intellectual ammunition to the concerns and demands originating from the developing countries of the world, specifically analyzing the relationship between international communication and national development, and demanding a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), as indicated for example by the 82 recommendations on global communication issues provided by the MacBride Report (1980, pp. 191–233). At the same time different strands of inquiry in academia within the fields of communication, business and economics, political science and cultural studies have been analyzing and dissecting different issues in global entertainment ever since.

Within these debates Herbert Schiller’s seminal works Mass Communications and American Empire (1992) and Culture Inc. (1989) identified the rise of the American empire as the modern reincarnation of former European colonial empires (mainly British, French and Dutch), including its primacy in the cultural industries worldwide, raising con...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Entertainment Media as a Lens to Probe the Twenty-First-Century Global Landscape
• Part I The Americas
• Part II EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa)
• Part III Asia and Oceania
• Index