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6 Resisting American Hegemony:

A Comparative Analysis

of the Reception of Domestic

and US Fiction

Daniel Bilter e yst

Reception Analysis and the Impact of US Fiction

There is a growing awareness among communication scientists from different
standpoints that studies of international television flows and the cultural impe-
rialism thesis should be complemented by more analysis of the consumption
(e.g. Collins, 1986; Fejes, 1981; Katz and Liebes, 1990; Nordenstreng and Varis,
1974: 11; Sepstrup, 1989; Tracey, 1985). As has been pointed out by Preben
Sepstrup (1989: 395), most studies of these subjects have concentrated on the
supply of television programmes, ‘but not on the consumption of the import and
the impact of this consumption’.
The same arguments may be used in the debate on the loss of ‘cultural
identity’ – a concept that, with the advent of ‘Europe 1992’, as well as the ongoing
transnationalization and commercialization of media structures, has become of
central importance for contemporary European communication research (McQuail,
1990; Morley and Robins, 1990; Schlesinger, 1986, 1988). A crucial pivot in this
flourishing cultural debate is the potential, growing influence of foreign (US)
fiction programmes on the identity of European collectivities. The great quantity
of US drama will, most scholars state, unquestionably imply a process of further
‘Americanization’ or homogenization of European cultural diversity.
As in the cultural imperialism debate, it is clear that these arguments start
primarily from a causal relationship between supply and effects: conclusions
about the possible effects are mainly based on the volume of imported foreign
(US) television programmes. However, empirical data on the consumption of
US fiction programming itself are practically unavailable. So we do not only
need data on the amount of consumption (audience ratings, for example), but
especially data on the nature or the qualitative aspects of it. The argument goes
that if we could understand how audiences outside the USA really consume,
experience and decode US fiction, we would have a more accurate view of its
potential influence. [...]

Source: EJC (1991), vol. 6: 469–497.