ABSTRACT
Globalisation is the most significant factor in the television landscape of the 20teens. Of course, television has always looked beyond the UK’s borders. A Mickey Mouse cartoon was the first programme when television restarted in 1946; Dallas and Dynasty helped define the 1980s, well before ‘Nordic noir’ caught the imagination of the 20teens. And the United Kingdom has produced programmes, from Dr Who to Teletubbies, which have been marketed across the world. Since Brideshead Revisited and before, dramas that exude ‘Britishness’ have been made with an eye on the international market. But today a globalised landscape is a multichannel landscape. Increasingly, over the 2000s, viewers have gained access to hundreds of television and internet channels that circulate the globe with little respect for territorial boundaries. They arrive on our screens via digital satellite and cable technology, and by streaming on the internet, targeted at a global audience. It is difficult to see television as a self-contained national industry controlled by national legislation when global players such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Netflix are providing easily accessible streams of content.
