+
PUBLIC POLICY AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR
IN AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRIES
By
Harvey B. Feigenbaum
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
The George Washington University
Washington DC 20052
harveyf@gwu.edu
Prepared for the conference “ The New Public Philosophy: Redrawing the Boundaries
between Public and Private”, March 29-31, 2001; cosponsored by the University of
Oklahoma and the Structure and Organization of Government Research Committee of the
International Political Science Association.
Much ink has been spilled over the impact of globalization on policy making.
Popular thinking has tended to view the explosion of international trade and the intense
integration of world markets as providing a set of new constraints on governments. New
initiatives in welfare or environmental regulations, for example are seen as inhibited by
concerns about adding costs to private firms which must now compete globally, often
with companies producing in less regulated, and thus less costly environments. This
argument thus posits a convergence toward neoliberalism in public policy, that is
emphasis on privatization and deregulation, as well as a general convergence of factor
costs, along the lines predicted by neoclassical economics. Those who are not
economists are troubled by the trend and fear that the convergence will lead to “bringing
the Third World home” and a general race to the bottom.
There are now, however, a raft of empirical studies that show such fears are, for
the moment, premature, if not groundless (E.g., Boyer 1993, Wade 1993, Kitschelt et al.
1999). Studies have found that very little convergence among advanced industrial
countries, even in areas where it might be most likely, such as in financial markets (Wade
1993). Institutions of macroeconomic coordination seem alive and well in those
countries that had them historically. Moreover, overtly neoliberal institutions such as the
European Union now seem poised to develop new decision-making structures that will
facilitate market intervention by public authorities, after fifty years of dismantling the
instruments of state intrusion (Marks and Hooghe, 1999).
In this paper I argue that the one area where the Cassandras of globalization seem
to be correct is in the audiovisual sector. Even with the much heralded “Cultural
Exception” in place, there has been a gradual shift in power to the private sector as the
1
tools of public intervention have become less effective and as the world audiovisual
industries produce increasingly similar products. This outcome has been predicated
however, not on the intensification of trade, but rather on two other factors, one
exogenous, the other (politically) endogenous to national audiovisual policies. The
exogenous factor is technology, the endogenous influence is privatization.1 Curiously,
however, the savior of public policy may in fact be the behavior of autonomous corporate
actors. This in fact, coincides with a more general transformation of public policy from
direct intervention in society, to indirect intervention (Feigenbaum et al., 1998, chap. 6).
Moreover, the transfer of audiovisual policy to a privatized and more autonomous
corporate sector may also have a significant negative impact on national cultures.
Public Policy in the Audiovisual Sector
Public policy in the audiovisual sector, which in this paper is limited to television
and film, has been focused along three poles in most countries: setting of technical
standards, regulation of the internal market, and supervision of content. Regulation of the
internal market for has been somewhat different, as one might expect, in liberal countries
like the United States, where the concern has focused on competition and the avoidance
of monopoly, from more interventionist countries where the market has for a longtime
been the monopoly of a public service provider. In the area of film, the private sector has
had a larger role in all advanced capitalist countries.
1
For an argument concerning the political endogeneity of privatization, see Feigenbaum et al, 1998, chap.
2.
2
Technical Standards
The issue of technical standards has largely been one of establishing a collective
good for producers and distributors to avoid cacophony on the spectrum and to allow
economies of scale in the case of competing standards such as NTSC (adopted by the US
and Japan) and PAL (most of Europe)or SECAM (France and Russia).
The technical standards were not simply debated in terms of developing a
collective good, but as different countries developed different standards, these became
issues of industrial policy and international competition. This was not only true of
France’s attempt to encourage others to adopted its SECAM system, but similar debates
cropped up again in the 1990s as governments considered the advantages of different
High Definition Television systems. Here Japan’s much vaunted MITI ended up backing
the wrong horse, as its producers favored an analog system, which became obsolete
almost immediately. The Europeans and Americans waited till a digital standard was
available, but even then the private sector was divided as to which digital standard to
adopt. Paralyzed by private sector indecision, US regulators could not impose a single
standard. Slow development of digital television was the consequence, with PBS, the
American public broadcaster, taking an unaccustomed lead in adapting to the new
technology.
Content Supervision
The issue of content supervision has been one of the main battlegrounds of the
“culture wars”,2 addressing issues such as pornography and violence, educational
concerns of children, visibility of national minorities, or the amount and kind of
3
advertising deemed to be permissible. This said, it is obvious that the audiovisual sector
reflects a wide variety of the kinds of conflicts that are the staple of national politics. The
audiovisual sector offers a good opportunity to observe characteristic relations between
state and market, and between state and civil society. These vary across countries, of
course, but commonalities are instructive. Most importantly for this paper, attempts by
many countries to preserve a significant amount of broadcast time for nationally
produced content form a major part of these countries’ cultural policies.
Regulation of the Domestic Market
The earliest interface between the state and the audiovisual sector in advanced
industrial countries involves regulation. It may be useful to start with the United States,
which in many respects is an outlier. The audiovisual sector in the US recalls the general
pattern of "early developers" (Gerschenkron 1962, Kurth 1979, Hobsbawm, 1966).3 The
pattern among first developers is that commercial development starts without the (direct)
help of the state, and flourishes in the absence of foreign competition. Initially there were
few domestic competitors, either, but competition grew quickly in the private and nonprofit sectors.4
Thus, radio followed the product cycle discovered by Vernon (1970).
The monopoly characteristics of the sector associated with the rapid growth of the Radio
Corporation of America led Federal officials to become concerned with the abuse of this
2
Sociologist Todd Gitlin claims to be the first to have used this term.
The idea of development as a stochastic process across countries originates with Alexander
Gerschenkron, "Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective" in his Economic Backwardness in
Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard Belknap 1962). This formed the basis of James Kurth's
argument in "The Political Consequences of the Product Cyle", International Organization ( Winter 1979).
The reference here excludes film, which started indepedently in several countries, most especially France,
as well as the US.
4
Many early radio stations were founded by universities, intended initially to disseminate information
useful to farmers.
3
4
market and an independent regulatory authority was created. What was to become the
FCC started first as an organization to allocate the spectrum, second to control content,
and finally, to limit the possibilities of monopoly (RCA was eventually broken up)
(Hillard 1992, chap. 4).
This experience contrasts with Britain and France, for example, which were "late
developers" in this regard. The latter, like many European countries, pursued policies of
state-created broadcasters. Though this was not in response to American competition,
thanks to the technological limits of the medium, which could barely cross the Channel,
let alone the Atlantic, the public sector origins of radio, and eventually television, would
mark the sector to the present. Until the 1980s the American audiovisual market would
be fundamentally different from the European ones. This of course shaped the public
sector institutional environment. American regulators would primarily be confronted
with the problem of avoiding economic abuses in a competitive market, while the
European regulators would primarily be concerned with political abuses of monopolistic
public service providers.
Film industries, were, on the other hand a different story. The evolution of film
companies in the US and abroad would be much more a response to economic forces than
to political ones. Film was entrepreneurial on both sides of the Atlantic. The Lumière
brothers first outfitted a Paris café to show films in 1895, while Edison began to
consolidate his hold on America's east coast soon afterward. Hollywood came into
existence as the consequence of early film-makers seeking the twin advantages of a
propitious geography: the sunlit, varied terrain in California was advantageous in itself
and was mercifully distant from the Edison Trust on the East Coast. However, neither
5
Hollywood, nor the rest of the American film industry showed signs of the economic
dominance that was to come. Before World War I the US was a net importer of films
from France (Izod, 1988). Indeed, in 1908 the US imported 70% of its films from France
(Saunders, 2000). Presciently, Thomas Edison remarked, “The French are somewhat in
advance of us, but they will not long maintain their supremacy.”(quoted in Saunders,
2000). However, it was not until the end of the Second World War that Hollywood
became the dominant player on world markets, as it moved in to fill the gap left by a
European industry which produced little during either hecatomb.
American regulation in the postwar period was far more interventionist than
elsewhere. However, this role was primarily left to the courts. The famous Paramount
decision of 1948 effectively broke up the old Studio system by forcing these Hollywood
institutions to divest themselves of the theater chains, effectively ending vertical
integration in the industry until the 1990s.
By contrast, European states saw different problems in their film industries. There
was little danger of abuse from the fragile European producers and distributors, but the
looming menace from Hollywood seemed to be much more of a threat to European
markets. Thus Europeans focussed on keeping Hollywood from completely dominating
their markets. Some, like France, established quotas for American films, first in theaters
and then on television. Virtually all countries offered some form of subsidy to indigenous
audiovisual industries. Even by the year 2000, the need for subsidies to the film sector
seemed unremitting. In addition to national subsidies, European producers could count
on aid from the European Union in the form of its successive programs Media, Media II
and Media Plus. The main difference in the last of these was not the financial size but the
6
destination of the subvention. While all Media programs subsidized training and
production, Media Plus focussed on distribution, and even a small amount for marketing.
(Hollywood Reporter, 25 November 2000; Le Maître, 25 November 2000:21; Sotinel 25
November 2000). Small countries, an non-members of the EU could, if they were
members of the Council of Europe, expect some help in mulitcountry coproductions from
the “Eurimages” program (CSA et al. 1997: p. 145).
Conditions for regulation changed very substantially by the 1980s and 1990s. The
1980s saw an explosion of broadcasting companies as European regulators forced their
public service broadcasters to give up their monopolies. Britain had been the precursor
of this movement in the 1950s with the establishment of the Independent Television
Authority. However, it remained with only a single ITV channel for three decades, while
France sold off its first public channel and created four new private channels in the
1980s.`By 2001 there were 92 French cable or satellite networks in addition to the
terrestrial broadcasters (Le Monde 7-8 January 2001, dossier p. 4). Indeed, most
European countries were served by cable, satellite and a host of new terrestrial channels.
This new audiovisual world affected regulation in a number of ways. First,
European regulators began to look more like America's FCC (on which they were often
explicitly modelled) as managing issues of a complex and competitive private sector
became more important than issues of political content. As telecommunication firms
began to enter the audiovisual market the FCC model became even more relevant. Tony
Blair was the first European leader to take the initiative in encouraging audiovisual and
telecommunication regulators to merge and emulate the US (Harding, 2000, p. 16).
7
Second, the new world of private television companies directly undercut the
cultural protectionist policies practiced by a number of European and Asian countries.
The problems created by the explosion of private broadcast, satellite and cable stations
were both technical and financial. While the 1980s and 1990s saw a huge increase in
television channels, there was no corresponding increase in audience size. This meant not
only that that the audience had more choices, but that it would become more fragmented.
There would be fewer viewers per television show. The drop in market share for each
channel as the number of channels proliferated became a severe problem. One of the new
channels in France, Channel 5, went bankrupt almost immediately.5 The problem was
clear: stations which were licensed by national regulatory authorities and whose signals
were by and large aimed at a specific national audience were economically limited by the
size of that audience. If such broadcasters (or cable companies) were to be financed by
advertising revenues, there was a clear limit on the amount such firms could pay
suppliers of entertainment as returns on advertising declined due to competition.
Neoliberal policies, therefore, were limited by the national organization of markets.
On the US side of the Atlantic, both the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission
began to look at mergers more benignly. Not only were first Time-Life and Warner
Brothers allowed to merge, then allowed to merge next with AOL, but vertical integration
was again permitted in the 1990s as the FCC relaxed its “fin-syn” regulations, allowing
networks to produce their own television shows (Feigenbaum, 1998a). The argument
justifying these actions was that competition was now global.
5
The problem was not only a small revenue base, but also bad management. Channel 5 chose to provide an
independent news service, which was expensive and not profitable.(Interviews in France, 1997).
8
Consequences of Audiovisual Neoliberalism for Cultural Policies
While national macroeconomic policy institutions, such as welfare states and
corporatist bargaining structures, by and large have resisted convergence along neoliberal
lines (Kitschelt et al. 1999, Esping-Anderson, 1999), many countries have feared that free
trade in cultural products and services would result in a complete domination of
American culture.6 Nowhere was this fear more evident than in the negotiations of
multilateral trade agreements such as NAFTA, the Uruguay Round of GATT, and the
establishment of the WTO. Canada insisted that “cultural industries,” which include
audiovisual and print industries, be exempt from the North American Free Trade Area
(Mulcahy 2000, p. 8). The European Union, strongly encouraged by France, insisted on
the “cultural exception” for film and television in the very tough Uruguay Round of
GATT negotiations. They have insisted on this exception in the World Trade
Organization and were willing to sink the negotiations for a “Multilateral Agreement on
Investment” because the latter was seen as an attempt to let in American film and
television products “through the back door”(Bortin 1998, p. 11.; de Bresson1998, p. 5.).
Not only the French were concerned: the Swedish culture minister backed their position
at the meeting of culture ministers in Ottawa, where the US was pointedly excluded:
“Culture should not be locked up in agreements on investment.” (quoted in DePalma,
1998, p. B-1, B-10.) Nor was such concern over audiovisual imports limited to either the
products of the US or trade in the Northern Hemisphere: Australia fought to exclude New
I have written elsewhere rather skeptically about whether or not such “cultural imperialism” is real or
important, but there is no doubt that many people outside of the US think it real. See Feigenbaum, (1999:
pp. 115-124)For a serious treatment of the concept of cultural imperialism, see Tomlinson, (1991).
6
9
Zealand television programs from being included in its own free trade area between the
two countries (Australian courts sided with New Zealand).
Thus trade in “cultural services” (the term adopted by the European Union)7 has
become an extremely sensitive issue to many countries, and trade protection in the
cultural area has become part and parcel of the cultural policies of a significant group of
countries. But while neoliberalism is seen as a threat to national culture in its advocacy of
free trade, the consequences of other neoliberal reforms, most especially privatization in
broadcasting and telecommunications, are the real culprits.
The problem, as alluded to above, is the fragmentation of domestic
markets due to the proliferation of private broadcasters and cable companies. Companies
were confronted with diminished audiences on which to base their advertising rates.
They became very sensitive to the cost of programming (known as the licensing fee).8
In a world of fragmented markets and shrinking advertising revenues, Hollywood
has a clear advantage. While Hollywood films and television programs have much
higher production costs than foreign competitors, the licensing fees are actually cheaper.
This is because Hollywood products are amortized over much larger markets. This is not
only because America has a huge domestic market. Two other mechanisms broaden the
base over which Hollywood amortizes its products: there is a secondary domestic
television market, so that television shows are sold once to networks and a second time to
local channels as reruns. The second mechanism is that both films and television shows
7
There is considerable debate as to whether movies and tv shows are "products" or
"services". The latter designations obviates "local content" regulations. I am grateful to
Chris Maule on this point.
10
are sold internationally as well as domestically. Indeed, the only companies which can
distribute film or television shows to the entire world market (and not just regions) are
American (Rosenfeld and Farhi, 1998, p. A-1, A-26.). In 2000 the US exported more
television shows than all other countries combined (Saunders, 2000).
Thus privatization of the audiovisual sector served to undermine attempts by
many countries to reserve a public space for their own languages and culture.
Neoliberalism, however, cuts both ways. While it has undermined national
cultural policies, it has also created new “cultural entrepreneurs”. This has occurred, for
example, in both Britain and France. In both countries, public audiovisual production
companies (the BBC and the Société Française de Production, respectively) were initially
the exclusive providers of content to the national broadcasters. In Britain, Mrs. Thatcher,
who loathed the “Beeb”, which she saw not only as a den of hostile intellectuals, but also
an over-manned public enterprise, insisted rather modestly, that 25% of broadcasts no
longer be done in-house. The result is that many employees of the public broadcaster left
(or were forced out by restrictive budgets) to form their own production companies.9 In
France, the SFP, originally hived off the old ORTF public television monopoly in 1974,
was also subjected to competition in the 1980s (Chirot, 2000, p. 16). The result was a
cluster of vibrant small producers, contracting at first with the national broadcaster, and
later with the newly private channels. A similar effect occurred in Germany as hundreds
of new corporations developed to service the needs of the many new, private broadcasters
(Harnischfeger, 2000, p. IV).
Not to be confused with Britain’s “television license”, which is a tax on households. Broadcasters pay the
“licensing fee” to companies owning the rights to a program.
9
Interviews in Britain, 1995.
8
11
The problem, however, would still remain. Could such small producers
amortizing over only the national market, be able to compete with cheap American
products?
Technological Complications
Privatization of broadcasting was not the only threat to public sector culture
policies. Technology also served to make life more difficult for the newly created private
production companies. For those countries that employed quotas restricting the broadcast
of American film and television shows, two technologies created new obstacles. Satellite
broadcasting companies such as Rupert Murdoch’s B Sky B in Europe and Star in Asia, or
Direct TV in North America, now offered consumers the possibility of receiving a
multitude of channels by simply putting up a small, cheap, satellite dish. What is offered
is mostly American programming, with some other appealing options like local sports
programming that is no longer available on terrestrial channels. While courts in Europe
have ruled that satellite companies are subject to domestic quota legislation in receiving
countries, the reality is that such quotas are very difficult to enforce.
Even worse for the new production companies, digital compression technology,
which multiplies the number of channels that can be broadcast on the spectrum, will soon
make “television-on-demand” possible. That is, consumers will be able to choose which
programs they want to view from vast libraries, whenever they find it convenient. They
are unlikely to pay attention to quotas.(Yoon and Feigenbaum, 1997: pp. 141-142).This is
not science fiction: Hong Kong inaugurated a limited version of this form of interactive
television in 1998 (Lucas, 1998, p. 4).
12
Private Sector Responses
The solution to problems created by neoliberal policy in the audiovisual sector, to
some extent, are exactly the ones a partisan of neoliberalism would expect. The
production companies have become more dynamic and have sought corporate solutions
to what is, for them, a problem of –at best, growth, and –at worst, survival.
Film production, for instance, has truly become global in exactly the sense that
the cheerleaders of globalization originally intended.10 Since the 1950s Hollywood has
gradually been doing more and more of its production abroad. This was first primarily
location shooting in an attempt to compete with television by finding dramatic locales
(Hozic, forthcoming). However, production and post production are now done around
the world. Prague has become a very important location for indoor shooting because of
its available sound stages and highly competent personnel willing to work for a fraction
of the wages of Californians.11 For the same reason, film crews are multinational, with
“above the line talent” being recognizable, usually American, stars, while technical staff
are drawn from many countries .12 “American” films (financed by French banks) with
Hollywood stars may be shot at Pinewood Studios in London, postproduced in Australia
and distributed around the world.
10
The most recent version of this rather breathless literature is Friedman (1999), but similar, and equally
breathless claims were made by Kindleberger as early as 1969. On the internationalization of film
production, see Hozic, (forthcoming).
11
Competion from Czech soundstages eventually spelled the end for the famous Boulogne-Billencourt
studios outside Paris. The studios closed, and were scheduled to be razed to make way for real estate
development. They were saved by cinema’s old nemesis, television, which found a use for the facilities.
12
I visited Prague in the summer of 2000. During the short time I was there six American companies were
shooting films. I observed a made-for-tv production being filmed in an old airplane hangar, because all the
country’s sound stages were filled. An American production of a Chinese fairy tale, the stars were
American and Chinese, the stunt men were from Hong Kong, the director and wardrobe mistress and their
respective staffs were British, while the technicians were Czech.
13
Interventionist public policies take a perverted turn under conditions of
globalization. Local content legislation may prove an ephemeral obstacle. Hollywood
producers will hire enough Canadian personnel to meet Ottawa’s regulations to acquire
Canandian subsidies, but American production in Canada is more likely to be attracted by
a favorable exchange rate than by a Canadian subsidy (Interviews at Columbia Studios,
1995). For this reason, along with lower paid technicians, American movies and
television shows have been increasingly filmed in Toronto and Vancouver Likewise,
much of the Hong Kong film industry, attracted as much by the weak Canadian dollar as
they were repelled by the prospect of interference from the Peoples Republic, moved to
Toronto as the former British Crown Colony was integrated into the mainland.
The neoliberal climate has encouraged production in other high-wage countries as
well. The new market of German language television channels, which grew out of the
wave of privatization and who have growing needs for content have turned Cologne into
one of the greatest production centers in Europe (Harnischfeger, 2000: p. IV). Financed
by the newly created German “Nasdaq”, the Neuer Markt, a host of film production
companies have also begun to appear, but their goal is not merely local production. While
Germans eyeing the world have not always been greeted with enthusiasm, the new media
companies have been well received as they aim for world markets. They have begun
partnering with Hollywood companies (Harding, 2000a: p. 7). The academy award
nominated film Traffic, a Miramax film, was coproduced by Germany’s Splendid
Media.(Harding, 2000a.: p. 7). This brings us to a significant issue.
14
Corporate Alliances as Cultural Policy
Like many other sectors of the world economy, private sector actors in the
audiovisual industry have confronted the world market by forming alliances. This has not
been to subvert national legislation, as multinational corporations were accused of doing
in the 1970s (Barnet and Müller, 1974). Like so many firms in the era of globalization,
those in the audiovisual field have formed alliances to become more competitive. What I
shall argue, however, is that they may also, inadvertently, be undertaking the task of
national cultural policy. Even more important, they may be successful, where state
intervention is not. Equally important, there is a price to pay.
Entertainment corporations in a number of countries have sought alliances with
Hollywood media groups. Not least among these are corporations from Korea and
France. Perhaps the most well known venture linking Korean and American corporations
has been the investment of Cheil Jedang in DreamWorks SKG, the relatively new studio
founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffin. Cheil Jedang agreed
to fund DreamWorks to the tune of $300 million in exchange for 10% ownership. In
additions Cheil received distribution rights for DreamWorks products in Asia (with the
exception of Japan, Australia and New Zealand) and seats on the board of directors and
executive committee(Iritani, 1996: pp.A-1,6). The Korean company also concluded
agreements with Raymond Chow, a Hong Kong film tycoon, to distribute western and
Asian films in Asia and to build multiplex cinemas on the continent (The Economist,
1995,: p. 60). The association with DreamWorks is intended to provide know-how.
According to Ms. M.K. Lee, the company's president: "What we want from
DreamWorks is know-how, marketing and management skills, how we can identify
15
attractive things to the audience, etc."(quoted in Yoon and Feigenbaum). To this end
Cheil is sending interns to their Hollywood partner to acquire knowledge in marketing,
intellectual property, contracting with talent (writers and directors) and film finance.
Eventually, Cheil hopes to sell multi-media products on world markets, and especially in
China.
There have indeed been a myriad of alliances formed in the last couple of years.
Sony Pictures signed a $60 million deal to make movies at Germany’s Babelsberg
Studios; Canal+, a unit of Vivendi, concluded a $120 million deal with Warner Brothers
before its parent coporation bought Universal (Echikson, 1998, p. 17). Vivendi itself not
only purchased Universal Studios, leading to significant possibilities for knowledge
transfer to Canal+, but also backed Barry Diller’s plans to expand the USA Network into
a major player (Harding, 2001, p. 10.). British film production is completely structured
on international alliances (Rowthorn, 1998, p. 7).
It is through these alliances that European and Asian firms are learning to do what
Hollywood does best, to make entertainments that attract large audiences. In some
important ways, these private sector alliances help to solve some of the contradictions
caused by the conflict between neoliberalism and national culture policies. While it will
still be left to national regulators to enforce quotas, it is likely, as noted above, that such
quotas will cease to be effective as new technologies become wide spread. National
television and film producers will gradually lose the protected space they currently enjoy.
. Privatization has already created huge disincentives to broadcast national content.
Corporate alliances should help make these producers more competitive in their
own national markets. As the domestic audiences of most countries routinely prefer
16
Hollywood movies to the home-grown variety, these companies are learning to make
movies that attractive to their own home markets.13 In fact, European companies, in
alliance with Hollywood corporations, are learning to make movies and television shows
that sell internationally: The Fifth Element and The Enemy at the Gate are just two
examples. European television shows and, especially formats, such as Survivor and Big
Brother, are also being to sell. This, to some extent, offers a remedy to European problem
of high cost licensing fees. Now European producers are beginning to amortize their costs
across international markets, just as privatization has encouraged a small secondary
market in both Germany and France.
The Costs of a Neoliberal Cultural Policy
It is true that the activities of the private sector are in some ways replacing the
dirigiste cultural strategies typified by broadcast quotas and film subsidies. There is a
kind of democratic satisfaction in market-driven culture policies: people get the culture
they want. There is also a cost. Producing cultural goods for the international market
does not always mean producing for the lowest common dominator, but it means that
often. It means substituting action for dialog, reducing and simplifying plot lines. The
subtleties of national culture get lost.
National cultural protectionism has been beneficial in a very important respect: it
has preserved diversity. Cultural diversity on a global scale has real economic and noneconomic advantages. Differences encourage innovation. New ideas often come from
abroad, and are quickly adopted here. This may, at the most obvious level, be crass
13
Knowledge transfer is also taking place in television. Columbia Television organized writers seminars,
jointly sponsored by Canal + in the fall of 1995 to teach European script writers Hollywood techniques
17
imitation. Kirosawa’s “Eastern” Seven Samurai became a Western, The Magnificent
Seven. French comedies become middlebrow fare like Three Men and a Baby. In many
ways, foreign films serve as prototypes for later mass production offerings from
Hollywood.
Foreign films are, of course, most useful when they are different, when they set
new trends. That is what we call innovation. It is something that artists are good at. In
countries where the tradition of film is art, rather than industry, innovation can be the
most useful product. Moreover, art is an exercise in cross-fertilization. We are all better
off when we have occasional works that stand out from the mass produced entertainment
that otherwise surround us. We don’t all like the same things. But we are more likely to
be satisfied if we have a variety of options to choose from. Foreign entertainment
producers, at the very least, give us variety.
This also helps us understand the concern many Europeans express at the spread
of American chains of mass produced and mass-marketed goods and services. The
ubiquitous McDonald’s restaurants are successful because wide varieties of people are
interested in fast, cheap and convenient meals. No one, of course, would want
McDonald’s (or Pizza Hut, or Popeye’s) to be the only options available. A little
protectionism, in this sense, might provide a public good: variety.
Conclusion
While neoliberalism has been a dominant trend in intellectual circles and among
management reformers in a number of countries, globalization has hardly spelled the end
of dirigisme. Welfare states persist, corporatism continues where it has been established,
(Interviews, 1995).
18
and varieties of regulation are effectively maintained in both advanced and developing
countries. The poster child for neoliberalism, however, may be the audiovisual sector.
Regulation has become “market friendly”. Media companies have become global,
privatization is rampant, and national cultures are under threat.
As predicted by its
enthusiasts, privatization has encouraged hundreds of dynamic cultural entrepreneurs
worldwide. Large international corporations based in London, Paris, Seoul and
elsewhere have learned to give Hollywood a run for its money, though more frequently
they cooperate rather than compete. Sadly, the cost of such dynamism may be as real as
it is hard to measure. Nations may not have souls, but they do have distinctive cultures.
Neoliberalism has put that cultural variety at risk.
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