The World Still Watches America

Some observers point to the decreasing popularity of American TV shows abroad as evidence that anti-American sentiment is on the rise around the world. Indeed, anti-globalization protestors who fear that globalization will lead to an American-dominated global mono-culture may take solace in the fact that the top-ranked US TV show, C.S.I., garners only three percent of the viewing audience in South Korea, for example. But author Neal Gabler explains that "one shouldn't mourn the end of American cultural domination quite yet… The truth is, American movies, not TV shows, are the truly potent examples of our cultural imperialism." Why are movies thriving overseas while TV shows flounder? Perhaps, he suggests, it has "less to do with resentments or economics than with fundamental differences between American television and American film. Movies are universal, TV is not." – YaleGlobal