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Neighbours, as Reg Watson said, was the softest concept he had ever come up with, and he thinks the success of the show worldwide is the softness; whereas in this country when you’re dealing with a foreign accent in a soft premise, you have a tougher row to hoe. (Cristal 1992) Here, Cristal touches on the second, and major, incompatibility between Neighbours and the US mediascape: its foreignness. He elaborates: The real problem . . . is that the American marketplace – and I don’t agree with it, but so be it – is, has been anti-foreign material for as long as I can remember . . . . The one show that broke through – and it was on a network – was Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan. (Cristal 1991) Variety, more hard-nosed in its trade prognostications than the more “newsy,” advertorially-oriented commentaries cited above, frankly notes that “it’s questionable whether [Neighbours] will achieve the level of runaway success it’s found elsewhere . . . . International pop–cultural exchange seems to be one-sided for the US, which is generally xenophobic about embracing fare from other nations” (“Gray.” 1991: 72; this rare acknowledgement of American media ethnocentrism does not, of course, undercut Variety’s servicing role in relation to the US media’s domestic and overseas markets). The Americanization of non-American film and television is big business. Hollywood versions of foreign film successes as varied as The Vanishing and La Cage aux Folles represent a significant proportion of Hollywood production. One sizable company, Don Tafler International, specializes in Americanizing foreign television programs. Till Death Do Us Part is a major example of a foreign program which “had to be remade . . . because the original was not acceptable in this country . . . and yet Archie Bunker, All In The Family . . . which was a direct lift from that show . . . became a classic in our country” (Cristal 1992). Grundy’s themselves supported the sequelling and Americanization of Prisoner: Cell Block H with Dangerous Women, an American production with Peter Pinne as its executive producer. If the Patrick McGoohan Prisoner was exceptional in its status of being foreign material which gained entrance to the fiercely ethnocentric US television networks, few more successes have been registered with independent stations. The bulk of such material – and overall there is precious little of it – finds its way into the US market by way of the more upmarket route of public service television, most of whose imports are British, largely genteel and respectable, though extending to include EastEnders. With this point in mind, Cristal remarked: “I would think that Neighbours, in retrospect, might have been more appropriate to a public broadcaster” (Cristal 1992). In the year of Neighbours’s attempt on the US market, public service television screened The Shiralee and Dolphin Cove, and Bangkok Hilton was shown on cable. This is a
DOI link for Neighbours, as Reg Watson said, was the softest concept he had ever come up with, and he thinks the success of the show worldwide is the softness; whereas in this country when you’re dealing with a foreign accent in a soft premise, you have a tougher row to hoe. (Cristal 1992) Here, Cristal touches on the second, and major, incompatibility between Neighbours and the US mediascape: its foreignness. He elaborates: The real problem . . . is that the American marketplace – and I don’t agree with it, but so be it – is, has been anti-foreign material for as long as I can remember . . . . The one show that broke through – and it was on a network – was Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan. (Cristal 1991) Variety, more hard-nosed in its trade prognostications than the more “newsy,” advertorially-oriented commentaries cited above, frankly notes that “it’s questionable whether [Neighbours] will achieve the level of runaway success it’s found elsewhere . . . . International pop–cultural exchange seems to be one-sided for the US, which is generally xenophobic about embracing fare from other nations” (“Gray.” 1991: 72; this rare acknowledgement of American media ethnocentrism does not, of course, undercut Variety’s servicing role in relation to the US media’s domestic and overseas markets). The Americanization of non-American film and television is big business. Hollywood versions of foreign film successes as varied as The Vanishing and La Cage aux Folles represent a significant proportion of Hollywood production. One sizable company, Don Tafler International, specializes in Americanizing foreign television programs. Till Death Do Us Part is a major example of a foreign program which “had to be remade . . . because the original was not acceptable in this country . . . and yet Archie Bunker, All In The Family . . . which was a direct lift from that show . . . became a classic in our country” (Cristal 1992). Grundy’s themselves supported the sequelling and Americanization of Prisoner: Cell Block H with Dangerous Women, an American production with Peter Pinne as its executive producer. If the Patrick McGoohan Prisoner was exceptional in its status of being foreign material which gained entrance to the fiercely ethnocentric US television networks, few more successes have been registered with independent stations. The bulk of such material – and overall there is precious little of it – finds its way into the US market by way of the more upmarket route of public service television, most of whose imports are British, largely genteel and respectable, though extending to include EastEnders. With this point in mind, Cristal remarked: “I would think that Neighbours, in retrospect, might have been more appropriate to a public broadcaster” (Cristal 1992). In the year of Neighbours’s attempt on the US market, public service television screened The Shiralee and Dolphin Cove, and Bangkok Hilton was shown on cable. This is a
Neighbours, as Reg Watson said, was the softest concept he had ever come up with, and he thinks the success of the show worldwide is the softness; whereas in this country when you’re dealing with a foreign accent in a soft premise, you have a tougher row to hoe. (Cristal 1992) Here, Cristal touches on the second, and major, incompatibility between Neighbours and the US mediascape: its foreignness. He elaborates: The real problem . . . is that the American marketplace – and I don’t agree with it, but so be it – is, has been anti-foreign material for as long as I can remember . . . . The one show that broke through – and it was on a network – was Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan. (Cristal 1991) Variety, more hard-nosed in its trade prognostications than the more “newsy,” advertorially-oriented commentaries cited above, frankly notes that “it’s questionable whether [Neighbours] will achieve the level of runaway success it’s found elsewhere . . . . International pop–cultural exchange seems to be one-sided for the US, which is generally xenophobic about embracing fare from other nations” (“Gray.” 1991: 72; this rare acknowledgement of American media ethnocentrism does not, of course, undercut Variety’s servicing role in relation to the US media’s domestic and overseas markets). The Americanization of non-American film and television is big business. Hollywood versions of foreign film successes as varied as The Vanishing and La Cage aux Folles represent a significant proportion of Hollywood production. One sizable company, Don Tafler International, specializes in Americanizing foreign television programs. Till Death Do Us Part is a major example of a foreign program which “had to be remade . . . because the original was not acceptable in this country . . . and yet Archie Bunker, All In The Family . . . which was a direct lift from that show . . . became a classic in our country” (Cristal 1992). Grundy’s themselves supported the sequelling and Americanization of Prisoner: Cell Block H with Dangerous Women, an American production with Peter Pinne as its executive producer. If the Patrick McGoohan Prisoner was exceptional in its status of being foreign material which gained entrance to the fiercely ethnocentric US television networks, few more successes have been registered with independent stations. The bulk of such material – and overall there is precious little of it – finds its way into the US market by way of the more upmarket route of public service television, most of whose imports are British, largely genteel and respectable, though extending to include EastEnders. With this point in mind, Cristal remarked: “I would think that Neighbours, in retrospect, might have been more appropriate to a public broadcaster” (Cristal 1992). In the year of Neighbours’s attempt on the US market, public service television screened The Shiralee and Dolphin Cove, and Bangkok Hilton was shown on cable. This is a
ABSTRACT
STEPHEN CROFTS