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The Inflow of American Television Fiction on European Broadcasting 37

domestic fiction. Competition caused the public channels to increase their
domestic production as well. However, the overall extension of broadcasting
hours forced both public and commercial channels to fall back on American
imports to fill the many extra television hours.
De Bens et al. (1992) provocatively launched the term ‘Dallasification’
referring to the non-stop homogenizing inflow of American programmes and
obviously not to the Americanizing effect of this content on the attitudes and
world perceptions of the viewers. Cultural studies scholars such as Morley
(1980, 1992), Fiske (1987, 1991), Featherstone (1991), Ang (1982) and Katz and
Liebes (1990) did indeed study the reception of this content and they concluded
that no Americanization of worldviews took place. The approach of the two lines
of research is fundamentally different: the first analyses the inflow and the origin
of content, the second its impact on the viewer.
This contribution joins the first line of research. In this study, the programme
analysis of the Euromedia Research Group from 1991 (De Bens et al., 1992) was
carried out again, on a smaller scale, in 1997. In 1991, 53 European television
1
stations from 14 European countries were involved in the analysis. In 1997,
36 stations from six countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Great
Britain and Italy) were examined. The survey included 16 public and 20 commercial
2
stations, all of them national and general interest channels. As in 1991, the period
sampled comprised the last two weeks of January (13–26 January 1997). Similar
studies also use a sample of two weeks or even one week partly because of the
labour-intensive nature of a programme analysis (Nordenstreng and Varis, 1974,
1986; Sepstrup, 1989; De Bens et al., 1992; Buonanno, 1998a, 1998b). However, a
period of two successive weeks of programming might be considered
unrepresentative since it takes almost no account of seasonal influences on
programming. Although the period examined was extremely ‘normal’ and free
of special events influencing the programming, we want to emphasize that the
results refer first of all to the period examined. The figures were processed
and interpreted, and then compared to the figures of the similar investigation
from 1991. 3
In 1991, the following research questions were asked (De Bens et al., 1992: 82):

• Is the position of the American programming industry (fiction) still dominant
on the European television market?
• Are there noticeable differences between the purchasing and programming
strategies of public and commercial broadcasting stations?

The same research questions were used in the 1997 programme analysis. No
audience analysis is made (e.g. questions of preference). Nor did we consider to
what extent European fiction is ‘Americanized’, i.e. modelled on American
examples with adoption of American formats, narrative structures, codes and
recipes. 4
Finally, and in view of our findings, we try to evaluate the sufficiency of the
European Union support measures to promote the European television
programme industry.