Monday's Read: Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach

Flickers, Andreas and Catherine Johnson, eds. Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach. (New York: Routledge, 2012)


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Transnational Television History is a volume that takes on media, and broadcast television in particular, as a means by which "imagined communities" à la Benedict Anderson derive their identities. Yet it seeks to go further than previous historiographical work that looked at television in terms of individual nation-building alone. Instead, it works to look at the role and function of television transnationally. It is significant here that all of the essays are about European television, and engaging specifically with many of the countries that have been uniting into the European Union. In this sense, it is useful to consider the idea of the role of television and the transnational in tandem with Etienne Baliber's work, We, the People of Europe?, as will be explained shortly.

Transnational is divided into three main sections. Section I: "Actors and Arenas of Transnational Television: A Historical Re-Assessment" includes eight chapters. Andreas Flickers begins with "The Birth of Eurovision: Transnational television as a challenge for Europe and contemporary media historiography." This is followed by Christian Henrich-Franke's "Creating Transnationality through an International Organization? The European Broadcasting Union's (EBU) television programme activities."Sonja de Leeuw continues with a specific case study in Holand, "Transnationality in Dutch (Pre) Television: The central role of Erik de Vries." Michele Hilmes introduces the role of the U.S. in a more retrospective analysis, "The 'North Atlantic Triangle': Britian, the USA and Canda in 1950s teleivsion." Returning to Europe, Dana Mustata addresses Romania under Ceauşescu in "Within Excess Times and a Deficit pace: Cross-border television as a transnatioal phenomenon in 1980s Romania." Jonathan Bignell analyses American television again in "Transatlantic Spaces: Production, location, and style in 1960s-1970s action-adventure TV series." Finally, Eggo Müller discusses the genre of crime television in "European crimewatches: A comparative perspective on Aktenziechen XY's transnational circulation."

Section II, "Roundtable: Perspectives on Localizing the Transnational in Regional Television History" locates specific countries within the context of the transnational in four case studies. Benoît Lafon writes about "France 3, a state institution: the French model of regional television." Edgar Lersch discusses "Regional television in Germany." Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano continues with "Regional television in Spain: the Andalusian case." Sarita Malik finishes the discussion with "From multicultural programming to diasporic television: situating the UK in a European context."

Finally, Section III ventures into unique territory through a discussion of the television archive, including only one final chapter: Rob Turnock's "Curating European Television History Online: Video Active and the challenges of creating access to television content from the archive."