Tunstall, Jeremy. The Media Were American: U.S. Mass Media in Decline

Communication Research Trends, Dec, 2008 by Emile McAnany

Tunstall, Jeremy. The Media Were American: U.S. Mass Media in Decline. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008. Pp. xiv, 465. ISBN 978-0-518147-0 (pb.) $44.95.

Jeremy Tunstall, in traditional Hollywood fashion, is doing a sequel. His first book published 30 years ago, The Media are American, with the thesis contained in the title, struck a popular chord with people who perceived a superpower in pop culture threatening a culture imperialism. Today, with a perception of perhaps a declining superpower, this book might well capture an interested public.

Tunstall's thesis is quite clear: "This book makes a quite separate (and different [from his 1977 book]) argument--namely, that the U.S. media on the world scene peaked in the mid-20th century" (p. xii). He continues with several other aspects of his thesis: "Most people around the world prefer to be entertained by people who look the same, talk the same, joke the same, behave the same, play the same games, and have the same beliefs (and world views) as themselves" (p. xiv):

   A global or world level of media certainly does
   exist. But world media, or American media, play
   a much smaller role than national media.... I
   argue that Euro-America [both North and South
   America and Europe] possesses a single media
   industry that, at least for some years, will be the
   leading single force in world media. (p. xiv)

The thesis makes some sense in the light of growing national production of television by most larger countries with the consequence that U.S. media imports, although still dominant compared to other exporter countries, constitute a smaller percentage of daily viewing in many countries. He also reiterates a common argument long promoted by scholars like Joe Straubhaar (2007) that people prefer their own television programs when they are available. His final assertion that Euro-America constitutes a single media industry is much harder to support with reasonable evidence.

The book is divided into four major sections: 1. American Media in Decline; 2. Big Population Countries: India and China; 3. World Media Pecking Order; 4. National Media and World Regional Media, with each section containing a number of chapters. The book length is 454 pages, not unreasonable for the ambition of covering many of the nations of the world and explaining their media growth and change from their beginning until today. The task is challenging, and in some respects does not achieve the unity of his former book since it looks at dozens of countries instead of just one, the U.S. The other challenge for the book is that the world media are vastly more complex than they were more than 30 years ago. Added to this, the cultural imperialism thesis itself has been in decline so that arguments for a decline in the power and presence of U.S. media may not be news. Still, the argument that the author proposes goes against the popular perception of the dominance of American pop culture on a global scale. Let us look, then, at Tunstall's arguments in each section.

The first section promises to contain the heart of the argument about U.S. media decline. It contains nine chapters over about 120 pages, but the direction and focus of the argument seems to be diffuse and unclear. At the beginning, the author makes a not unreasonable argument based on population, i.e., that we need to look at the 10 largest population countries and the regions to which they belong to talk about dominance of U.S. media. The argument that large countries are self-sufficient in media (news, radio, film, TV, and new media) does not mean that they import little or no content from elsewhere. How much is a lot? Tunstall offers no clear evidences about imports but argues "Taking these 10 countries together, probably no more than 10% of their entire audience time is spent with foreign media" (p. 6). Going forward, the author tackles what has been a central argument in the issue of global media dominance (not cultural imperialism), namely export market revenues, something he calls "Freakish Media Finance." Although he spends a chapter on the issue, he fails to bring up the argument that the U.S. has been and continues to be the dominant power in media content export. In later chapters in this section, he argues that the U.S. has lost its moral authority and brings in a variety of examples from Vietnam to CIA-backed coups, all factual but not clearly related to his thesis. His final chapter here mixes a series of issues on satellites and television exports to the belief in the U.S. as "sole superpower" after 1990 to the Iraq invasion in a way that does not convince readers about the central thesis.

Section 2 covers the four Asian countries with large populations: China, India, Japan, and Indonesia. In each case, the author gives a sometimes lengthy political and media history (three chapters cover over 100 pages). Detailed footnotes assure the reader that the author has done his homework with current research, but it may be too detailed for those who want to follow the media argument without a detour into political history. The India story provides an important contribution that much of the trade references he cites do not usually allude to: non-Hindi speaking parts of India constitute over half of the one billion plus population and that half has flourishing media industries that few outside India know about. He argues against significant influence of global media presence in India but gives little evidence about those media except for Murdoch's Star TV and its hit, Who Wants to be a Millionaire (in Hindi). He alludes to its British origin but fails to mention that it was a major hit later on Fox and brought to India with that allure. The China section is detailed, with a long background on the politics of China from 1900 until 2005, and rightly argues that China has been parsimonious in allowing foreign media into its television market.