Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Differing diversities– there is a good deal of evidence that audiences can and do make appropriatedistinctions between home and foreign content and watch the latter in moredetached ways which makes any impact on the “own” culture less likely. 1“Alien” cultural influences are often resisted or filtered out in the receptionprocess;– there is much imitation of American models in home-produced fiction andentertainment, but different, more culturally familiar types and versions ofsome genres are appearing in Europe 2 , just as America borrows and adaptsfrom Europe. European soap opera tends to be more realistic and more community-oriented;– language remains a major barrier to all sorts of cross-cultural media influence(Biltereyst, 1992). The early expectations that international satellite channelswould strongly compete for audiences with national terrestrial transmissionsproved false, just as did the expectation that a viable pan-European channelmight be a culturally unifying influence. 3 Barriers of language can be partlyovercome by dubbing, but where possible, as in Music Television or News,“regional” language editions of international channels have to be introduced tocompete with local provision (Roe and De Meyer, 2000). Financial and mediastructural problems have also been considerable, despite efforts to facilitatecross-border advertising.Convergence of media systems and threats to diversityIn general, research has not yet confirmed that either “European culture” or thatthe different national cultures of Europe are seriously “at risk”. There are also differingviews about the significance and strength of any process of media globalisation.A number of comparative and cross-national studies of media systems andpolicy 4 indicate that television systems and underlying values are not really convergingdespite the common trends of commercialisation and deregulation.There is even less evidence of convergence (thus of declining diversity) in thenewspaper press. 5 Barriers of language and the deeper embedding of the press inthe national culture serve as a cultural preservative. Patterns of audiencebehaviour (amount and type) as well as styles and genres of content remain quitediverse, suiting local needs and stemming from national history and tradition. 6Amounts of television viewing and newspaper reading vary a great deal asbetween northern and southern countries of Europe. Inter-country differencesshow up in content preferences amongst adults and also children. 7__________1. See Biltereyst, 1991.2. See, for instance, Liebes and Livingstone, 1998.3. Cross-border satellite transmission in Europe has had little impact, examples of some successincluding the Franco/German Arte and Euro-News.4. For instance Blumler, 1992; Siune and Truetzschler, 1992; Robillard, 1995; Mitchell and Blumler,1994; Hoffmann-Riem, 1996; D’Haenens and Saeys, 1998.5. See Gustafsson and Weibull, 1997.6. See Wieten, Dahlgren and Murdock, 2000; Pasquier et al., 1998.7. See Livingstone, 1998.78