Is the U.S. Still the World's Dominant Media Economy?

Introduction: Framing the Question

Is the United States still the world's most dominant media economy? One could probably make an argument either way on this question. Scholars, authors, and media pundits all have worthy theories and learned perspectives, and there is no editorial or socially constructed consensus as to whether the media potency of the U.S. — vis-à-vis an economically struggling and yet still culturally significant America — has passed its zenith and is on a downward slope.

This paper posits that while American culture still has an enormous impact worldwide — due in large part to mass media availability on a 24-hour news cycle in even the most remote parts of the world — the U.S. is not the exclusive, respected world superpower it once was. America has lost its "attractiveness edge," as Nancy Snow phrases it, and she may be engaging in understatement. Although the image of America as the benevolent superpower that saved Europe from Nazism and protects the weak around the globe has faded, American corporate media companies have not lost enough credibility or viewership around the world to be considered second to any nation. It is therefore the position of this paper that yes — the U.S. is still the world's dominant media economy.

The United States' Image and Media Power Envelopes the World

Reading Nancy Snow's 2007 book The Arrogance of American Power: What U.S. Leaders are Doing Wrong and Why it's Our Duty to Dissent is one way to approach how the world sees the United States. Professor Snow, a respected propaganda expert, writes that America is still viewed by millions as an "exciting, commercially driven, market-friendly adjunct global culture to one's native culture" (Snow 119). To millions, the U.S. still symbolizes what Snow calls "openness, trend-setting" — the vanguard when it comes to fashion, music, television, and film — but not dominant enough to "overrun or dilute the less powerful culture" (Snow 119).

Snow goes on to say the U.S. is "the face of our age of globalization" and, as such, is becoming a symbol of globalization that is more of a "threatening concept than American culture alone" (Snow 119). Clearly, Snow believes that when the U.S. image transcends mere culture and becomes the "face" of global power, others around the world have legitimate fears that the U.S. wants it all, everywhere. In the eyes of anti-globalization activists, the U.S. is espousing a "consumerist ideology that is harmful to the physical and mental environment," Snow continues (119).

The face that Europeans particularly disliked — some to the point of public hostility — was that of former President George W. Bush, Snow explains. Bush was "more widely and deeply disliked in Europe than any president in U.S. history," Snow adds, quoting from a New York Times column. On a research trip to Germany, Snow listened intently as German scholars and media professionals told her that America's propaganda came across to them as the "love of money, a market economy that helped the rich and hurt the poor," social policies that were racist, and an "aggressive" foreign policy (Snow 126). That said, the Germans also expressed their love for American popular culture, movies and music in particular. Her point is that "no other country comes close to America's dominance — its stranglehold — over global television, cinema, music, book and magazine publishing and internet presence" (Snow 126).

Powerful global media corporations — like those owned by billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner — are transmitting their "Western images and commercial values" directly and powerfully "into the brains of 75% of the world's population," according to Lee Artz and Yahya R. Kamalipour, both professors of communication at Purdue University (34). Through their media blitz on the world's community, Murdoch and others are globalizing an imagery that "is surely the most effective means ever for cloning cultures" (Artz et al. 34). By cloning cultures, Artz asserts, American media moguls can make those cultures "compatible with the Western corporate vision" (34). Artz refers to this media haughtiness in several ways: it is the "mass-produced outpouring of commercial broadcasting"; it is the fostering of "consumerism in the poor world"; and one could even call its domination "neocolonialism" that will spark "new kinds of struggles to eradicate this enduring cultural influence in the Third World" (34–35).

Artz accuses American entertainment industries of embracing a production principle based on the "lowest-common-denominator" for mass audiences — sex, violence, alcohol — and hence these industries are in reality "pandering to the basic, pleasure-seeking instincts in humans" (35). Because economic globalization has brought higher incomes to many citizens in Asian countries, resulting in an expanding consumer base for media, the U.S. entertainment industry provides these industrializing societies with exploitative, pleasure-seeking themes with little or no substance.

Those very Asian nations that Artz alludes to are experiencing "rising literacy levels" and "increased access to Western (mostly American) entertainment offerings," which leads viewers to "look beyond their traditional cultural practices" (Rampal 33). Even a casual visitor to Asian countries can observe "the pervasiveness of American culture," according to Rampal, a professor of communication. Beyond the issue of U.S. cultural saturation among Asian audiences, there is no doubt that indigenous media industries in Asia are being challenged and, in many cases, overwhelmed by Western culture and media.

Are There Potential Rivals to the American Mass Media Juggernaut?

Could the many nations within the EU become independent of media globalization and be weaned off entertainment programming from the U.S.? All indications based on research suggest that, for the foreseeable future, there are no rivals to American mass media programming. Dr. Jeanette Steemers, professor of media and communication in the UK, writes about the emerging power of European television. While it is true that the "vast majority of television channels in Europe" remain targeted at "distinct national audiences" due to barriers of language and culture across twenty-seven sovereign nations, American media — CNN, MTV, Discovery, National Geographic, and others — is highly visible. Steemers notes that while culturally viable programming in the twenty-seven countries (with 452 million people and 172 million TV households, 92 million of those with cable or satellite TV) has in many respects lost out to "consumer-oriented" and "global" programming, there is hope that cultural pride and local political realities will usher in a more appropriate news and entertainment agenda (59).

On a practical level, the advent of satellite transmission has made it nearly impossible for European countries to keep global — that is, U.S. — programming out of homes, Steemers writes (64). The heavy lobbying of commercial media interests in Europe — to eschew "restrictive legislation and ownership rules" — has prevented EU leadership from instituting a "single integrated market" to promote "a more sustainable European television economy" (Steemers 64). The EU would eventually like to provide the production infrastructure powerful enough "to compete with the United States," Steemers explains (65).

Steemers also asserts that even though "globalization transcends national boundaries," the "nation-state" remains relevant (Steemers 8). Western approaches to entertainment and cultural programming tend to "ignore alternative models and systems." Indeed, there is validity in the "Media Imperialism Thesis" (Schiller), which posits that the U.S. sees communication as "a one-way" street and not "multi-directional" (Steemers 19). The imperialism thesis implies that while the U.S. still dominates computer functionalities (Microsoft) and entertainment programming (Disney, News Corp, Time Warner), by underestimating overseas resistance to that domination the U.S. may perhaps be heading for an eventual decline (Steemers 21).

Rupert Murdoch is considered by many in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world a right-wing ideologue — a multi-billionaire whose political economy and economic clout allow him to invest in, and purchase, corporate media companies around the world. If U.S. corporate media's entertainment stranglehold is as compelling in the global community as some scholars believe, Murdoch's corporate approach adds hard-core conservative propaganda to that entertainment genre and must be accounted for in any complete analysis.

Will China's media interests — which have instituted new market-related practices and thereby "reshaped journalistic culture" — allow it to produce original, interesting, and vital programs notwithstanding the tension between "rapid commercialization and continued ideological control"? (Ma 21). Given the subsequent years since that analysis was published, during which China first flirted with Google and then effectively sealed a quasi-censorship arrangement while continuing to censor its Internet content, Ma's narrative may be somewhat dated. Still, Ma believes that just because China has moved from "planned socialism to market socialism," it would be "naive" to believe "market forces have initiated a process of peaceful evolution in China where the media have modeled themselves on the liberal media in Western capitalist societies" (26, 32).

CNN and CNN International: American Perspective and Culture Flowing Freely

The extraordinary success of the Cable News Network — nationally and internationally — is itself part of the answer to the thesis question posed at the outset of this paper: U.S. corporate media companies continue to be the dominant media economy. The advent of the Internet has changed the way millions of people get their news and other information, and the ability to gain instant access to online news from anywhere on the planet at any moment has truly been a revolution in communication — and has, at the same time, turned the tables on print media. Newspapers, especially in the U.S., are on the shrinking side of the ledger as their revenue has been cut drastically because people are getting their news online.

Meanwhile, CNN has been in the forefront of online content for perhaps longer than most other media sources, certainly those abroad. Jacob Groshek writes in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media that the online versions of CNN and CNN International are "remarkably consistent in telling audiences in America and abroad what to think about" (Groshek 52). Telling people what to think about has a "big brother" sound to it, but that is what major media outlets strive to do, and CNN is consistent with other media in that regard.

Groshek's research shows that CNN.com online content for the most part mirrors CNN's television news programs. CNN television programs have 72 million "unique viewers per month" in the U.S., and CNN.com boasts 24 million "original U.S. news users" monthly in the U.S. (as of 2006) (Groshek 54). CNN International (as of 2006) was distributed to over 198 million households around the world and "is the leading international news network in terms of viewership by almost 25%" (Groshek 54). CNN International has had "the largest broadcast news audience in Asia for the last 10 years," and moreover, CNN.com was visited by 70% more Asian respondents in a given month than its nearest competitor (Groshek 54).

In the Middle East and Africa, CNN's web presence receives 19 million combined page visits per month; in Latin America, CNN's online site gets 16 million page visits monthly; and in Europe, CNN.com records over 90 million page visits per month (Groshek 54). A notable achievement is that in Asia, CNN International is "generally equivalent" in reach to Channel News Asia — a company staffed by Asians with a news format directed at Asian audiences (Groshek 55).

Does this evidence lead to the impression that U.S. media corporations are losing their international audience or being beaten by rivals in other countries? Certainly disagreements exist, but the overwhelming evidence continues to show that U.S. media — despite the damage done to the global image of the country, especially during the Bush presidency — dominates the world media stage. As Tim Arango explained in The New York Times: the American TV show "CSI" is more popular in France than in the U.S.; movies produced in Hollywood sell "far more tickets" abroad than domestically; and a Russian remake of the American sitcom "Married with Children" proved so wildly popular that the show's producer, Sony, hired back "the original writers to produce new scripts for Russia" (Arango 1).

Conclusion

In Nancy Snow's book Propaganda Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World, 3rd edition, she takes great pains to discuss the reasons for — and the duties of — the United States Information Agency (USIA), essentially the official American government's propaganda machine. When one considers the enormous global impact of American commercial media in addition to the $55 million budget of the USIA's propaganda operation, Snow's remark seems entirely apt: "America is now the Schwarzenegger of international politics: showing off muscles, obtrusive, intimidating … never before has a country dominated the earth so totally as the United States does today. Globalization wears a 'Made in the U.S.A.' label" (Snow 2010 92).

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