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The Americans are probably the most parochial people on earth. (Fowler 1991) Needless to say, they didn’t like it over there [in the USA]. (Harvey 1991) Thus Grundy’s account of the failure in the US of its most successful soap, as voiced respectively by the company’s Senior vice-president of marketing in Los Angeles, its senior vice president of business affairs in Sydney, and its Sydney publicity manager. This tale of failure contrasts starkly with that of Neighbours’s British success. Grundy’s tried out the US market by syndicating the program in a thirteen-week batch, episodes one to sixty-five, to two independent stations, KCOP/13 in Los Angeles and WWOR/9 in New York. In Los Angeles it screened Monday–Friday at 5:30 p.m. from June 3–28, 1991 before being rescheduled at 9:30 a.m. Monday–Friday from July 1–August 30, 1991. In its first and third weeks Neighbours rated 4 per cent of TV sets in the Los Angeles area, which has forty-one channels; in its fifth week, the first at 9:30 a.m. the figure dropped to 1 per cent, and thereafter it never picked up (Inouye 1992). The program was also stripped by WWOR in New York. There it ran at 5: p.m. from June 17 to September 17, 1991, with its audience averaging 228,000 – a poor figure – in its best month, July (Stefko 1992). Plans to extend its screenings to Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, and Phoenix appear to have foundered. Unlike the British case, explanations of Neighbours’s failure in the US market are drawn more from its seller, Grundy, and its buyers, KCOP and WWOR, than from the press, which in Britain sought to account for the program’s colossal success. Press coverage heralded the opening of Neighbours in the US, and subsequently ignored it (the commentaries come from seven dailies and weeklies and Variety in Alexander 1991; Goodspeed 1991; “Gray.” 1991; Kelleher 1991; Kitman 1991; Mann 1991; Rabinowitz 1991; Roush 1991). Belonging mostly to the journalistic genre of announcing a likely new popular cultural success arriving with a remarkable foreign track- record, these commentaries were closer to advertorial than to the customarily more “objective” genre of film reviewing. But since they were not advertisements as such, they did give indicative prognostications of the acceptability of a program such as Neighbours in the US market. The commentaries’ treatment of the ten textual factors contributing to Neighbours’s global successes yield important insights. The last eight categories gave these commentators no pause: women as doers, teen sex appeal, unrebellious youth, wholesome neighborliness, “feelgood” characters, resolution of differences, depoliticized middle-class citizenship, and writing skills. Indeed, all eight are clearly instanced in the highly successful Beverley Hills 90210 with the marginal modifications that their neighborliness is more school- than home-based, “middle class” is defined upwards from petit bourgeois, and writing skills are devoted
DOI link for The Americans are probably the most parochial people on earth. (Fowler 1991) Needless to say, they didn’t like it over there [in the USA]. (Harvey 1991) Thus Grundy’s account of the failure in the US of its most successful soap, as voiced respectively by the company’s Senior vice-president of marketing in Los Angeles, its senior vice president of business affairs in Sydney, and its Sydney publicity manager. This tale of failure contrasts starkly with that of Neighbours’s British success. Grundy’s tried out the US market by syndicating the program in a thirteen-week batch, episodes one to sixty-five, to two independent stations, KCOP/13 in Los Angeles and WWOR/9 in New York. In Los Angeles it screened Monday–Friday at 5:30 p.m. from June 3–28, 1991 before being rescheduled at 9:30 a.m. Monday–Friday from July 1–August 30, 1991. In its first and third weeks Neighbours rated 4 per cent of TV sets in the Los Angeles area, which has forty-one channels; in its fifth week, the first at 9:30 a.m. the figure dropped to 1 per cent, and thereafter it never picked up (Inouye 1992). The program was also stripped by WWOR in New York. There it ran at 5: p.m. from June 17 to September 17, 1991, with its audience averaging 228,000 – a poor figure – in its best month, July (Stefko 1992). Plans to extend its screenings to Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, and Phoenix appear to have foundered. Unlike the British case, explanations of Neighbours’s failure in the US market are drawn more from its seller, Grundy, and its buyers, KCOP and WWOR, than from the press, which in Britain sought to account for the program’s colossal success. Press coverage heralded the opening of Neighbours in the US, and subsequently ignored it (the commentaries come from seven dailies and weeklies and Variety in Alexander 1991; Goodspeed 1991; “Gray.” 1991; Kelleher 1991; Kitman 1991; Mann 1991; Rabinowitz 1991; Roush 1991). Belonging mostly to the journalistic genre of announcing a likely new popular cultural success arriving with a remarkable foreign track- record, these commentaries were closer to advertorial than to the customarily more “objective” genre of film reviewing. But since they were not advertisements as such, they did give indicative prognostications of the acceptability of a program such as Neighbours in the US market. The commentaries’ treatment of the ten textual factors contributing to Neighbours’s global successes yield important insights. The last eight categories gave these commentators no pause: women as doers, teen sex appeal, unrebellious youth, wholesome neighborliness, “feelgood” characters, resolution of differences, depoliticized middle-class citizenship, and writing skills. Indeed, all eight are clearly instanced in the highly successful Beverley Hills 90210 with the marginal modifications that their neighborliness is more school- than home-based, “middle class” is defined upwards from petit bourgeois, and writing skills are devoted
The Americans are probably the most parochial people on earth. (Fowler 1991) Needless to say, they didn’t like it over there [in the USA]. (Harvey 1991) Thus Grundy’s account of the failure in the US of its most successful soap, as voiced respectively by the company’s Senior vice-president of marketing in Los Angeles, its senior vice president of business affairs in Sydney, and its Sydney publicity manager. This tale of failure contrasts starkly with that of Neighbours’s British success. Grundy’s tried out the US market by syndicating the program in a thirteen-week batch, episodes one to sixty-five, to two independent stations, KCOP/13 in Los Angeles and WWOR/9 in New York. In Los Angeles it screened Monday–Friday at 5:30 p.m. from June 3–28, 1991 before being rescheduled at 9:30 a.m. Monday–Friday from July 1–August 30, 1991. In its first and third weeks Neighbours rated 4 per cent of TV sets in the Los Angeles area, which has forty-one channels; in its fifth week, the first at 9:30 a.m. the figure dropped to 1 per cent, and thereafter it never picked up (Inouye 1992). The program was also stripped by WWOR in New York. There it ran at 5: p.m. from June 17 to September 17, 1991, with its audience averaging 228,000 – a poor figure – in its best month, July (Stefko 1992). Plans to extend its screenings to Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, and Phoenix appear to have foundered. Unlike the British case, explanations of Neighbours’s failure in the US market are drawn more from its seller, Grundy, and its buyers, KCOP and WWOR, than from the press, which in Britain sought to account for the program’s colossal success. Press coverage heralded the opening of Neighbours in the US, and subsequently ignored it (the commentaries come from seven dailies and weeklies and Variety in Alexander 1991; Goodspeed 1991; “Gray.” 1991; Kelleher 1991; Kitman 1991; Mann 1991; Rabinowitz 1991; Roush 1991). Belonging mostly to the journalistic genre of announcing a likely new popular cultural success arriving with a remarkable foreign track- record, these commentaries were closer to advertorial than to the customarily more “objective” genre of film reviewing. But since they were not advertisements as such, they did give indicative prognostications of the acceptability of a program such as Neighbours in the US market. The commentaries’ treatment of the ten textual factors contributing to Neighbours’s global successes yield important insights. The last eight categories gave these commentators no pause: women as doers, teen sex appeal, unrebellious youth, wholesome neighborliness, “feelgood” characters, resolution of differences, depoliticized middle-class citizenship, and writing skills. Indeed, all eight are clearly instanced in the highly successful Beverley Hills 90210 with the marginal modifications that their neighborliness is more school- than home-based, “middle class” is defined upwards from petit bourgeois, and writing skills are devoted
ABSTRACT
STEPHEN CROFTS