The Business and Cultural Functions of Global Television Fairs

While the technical capacity for worldwide television broadcasting has existed at least since 1967, when the live program Our World was beamed to thirty-one countries (Parks, 2003), the cultural challenges facing transnational television exchanges have proved more formidable. Even within a single nation, cultural trends and audience tastes are fickle and unpredictable, making television programs risky commercial ventures. The added cultural differences that those programs face when they cross national, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries make it even more difficult to predict the potential popularity of any single television program. Nevertheless, international syndication markets have become more and more important for funding television production around the world over the past two decades (Havens 2006). Consequently, the global television business has developed a variety of strategies to deal with the risks posed by worldwide cultural differences. Central to these strategies are the relationships, reputations, and brand identities that get expressed and renewed at the global television sales fairs.