ABSTRACT
Discovery’s televisual culture plays a double role in relation to globalization of televisual culture in the following way: on the one hand, Discovery’s televisual culture has benefi ted from and harnessed the processes facilitating the increased global connectedness. The main owner of Discovery, Liberty Media, has had a role in the development of the global media communications infrastructure. Discovery Channel and its tier of sister-channels and new media outlets are harnessing the increased possibilities for distribution of media content and conducting branding activities throughout this infrastructure. Discovery’s corporate activity is organized in national and regional nodes forming the global media network. Discovery is benefi ting from the globalization of production through globalization of labour and transnational co-production of programing. Discovery’s engagement with globalization of labour, especially in Canada, corresponds to the general description of globalized industries as enterprises search the globe for favorable trading and production environments, to lower costs and increase effi ciency. Discovery co-produces television programs with external partners across world. By co-producing with European partners, the programing may qualify as a European production and count towards the EU’s
program quota. But Discovery has also incorporated the co-production process internally in its global network, as regional networks co-produce with each other. This gives the media enterprise an increased degree of control over the production and form of media content.
