ABSTRACT
This chapter complicates, and perhaps contradicts, the notion that infinite re-interpretations of television source material are either possible or likely. It demonstrates that the frames placed around international news stories by television news agencies do carry through to the stories that are broadcast and to the construction of newscasts, especially in the case of smaller broadcasters, which are highly dependent on agency product. Despite the increasing number of news services, ownership is highly concentrated, and broadcasters are becoming increasingly dependent upon just two news providers to supply the international images they use on the air. Global television news production and distribution has become a fairly minor commodity subset of the cultural production of a few highly diversified transnational conglomerates. Television news coverage of the developing world is likely to diminish and become increasingly more homogeneous.
