ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the world of American television programming as a cultural product for export abroad, as part of a larger project on global television. It also examines the "culture world" of television production, relying conceptualization, which expands Howard Becker's notion of art worlds to include the specific roles of organizations and audiences. Countries with large internal markets, such as Brazil's television and India's film industries, now supply not only their own markets but also send exports internationally. As a result, some genres of programs are selectively marketed to specific regions, producers and syndicators often allow buyers to control editing and other modifications for their markets, and producers sometimes avoid certain themes and language in anticipation of the decisions of gatekeepers in foreign markets. In 1974, Nordenstreng and Varis showed that entertainment programming typically predominates when a network is commercially owned and operated rather than noncommercial or state owned.
