City, University of London Institutional Repository伦敦大学机构重点知识库.pdf

City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Chalaby, J. (2012). At the Origin of a Global Industry: The TV Format Trade as an Anglo-American Invention. Media, Culture Society, 34(1), pp. 37-53. doi: 10.1177/0163443711427198 This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/3942/ Link to published version: /10.1177/0163443711427198 Copyright and reuse: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ publications@city.ac.uk At the origin of a global industry: The TV format trade as an Anglo-American invention Introduction: A revolution 50 years in the making Traditionally, international TV trade flows have been dominated by finished programmes, such as films and TV series, much of it produced in Hollywood. However, the ‘format revolution’ radically changed the nature of these flows when, in the late 1990s, concepts adapted from territory to territory began to cross borders in great numbers. Four formats played a prominent role in this revolution, namely Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Survivor, Big Brother and Idols . They were identified as the first ‘super-formats’ not just because of the quantity of local adaptations and the speed at which they traveled around the world, but because they alerted broadcasters to the untapped potential of the TV format (Bazalgette 2005). A format can be defined as ‘a show that can generate a distinctive narrative and is licensed outside its country of origin in o