The Localization of Television Formats: Lessons learned from trans-cultural audience research

What can we learn from television audiences when investigating global television formats? This is the main question I want to address in this paper. A global television format can be described as a concept for a television show that has proved itself to be successful in its original market and is then sold to other countries. There, it is ‘localized’ by adapting it to the local context. With this, questions of how to successfully adapt television shows to different local contexts are of interest to media and communication scholars as well as industry professionals. In the field of empirical research however, whereas many studies examine differences (and occasionally similarities) between different local adaptations on a textual level, audiences of television formats have often been neglected.
By drawing on the results of a comparative focus group study with young female viewers of America’s Next Top Model in the USA and Germany’s Next Top Model in Germany, I argue that a trans-cultural mode of reception exists that is similar across national and cultural boundaries. Findings suggest that from an audience perspective no binary or dialectic between ‘the global and the local’ exists and that viewers at the same time localize and ‘re-globalize’ television formats. By referring to their everyday life experiences. viewers use the television format to negotiate ambivalences and thus make sense of the format within their particular ‘locality’. However, these ‘localities’ can be considered as trans-local because similar strategies of negotiation become evident in both contexts.
The results of the study thus shed light on how audiences appropriate and negotiate localized television formats as well as on how qualitative audience research can contribute to a broader understanding of global television formats.


Presentation is part of the Roundtable "The Universal and the Local"