Can TV save the planet?

American Demographics, May, 1996 by Chip Walker

As focus groups go, this one is fairly typical. On one side of a two-way mirror, a group of teenagers sits around a table talking with a moderator about clothing preferences. On the other side, observers from an advertising agency eat M&Ms and occasionally take notes. A relatively small group of brand names keeps coming up: Levi's and Calvin Klein jeans, Timberland boots, and Adidas and Nike footwear. What is the most important source of fashion information? No surprise: it's TV ads. To an American observer, the unusual thing about this group is the fact that the only English words being spoken are the brand names. This is Bangkok.

Worldwide access to commercial television is creating a global consumer Culture. But it isn't the homogeneous "global village" that pundits have been predicting. Regional differences in attitudes, values, and beliefs still abound. In many areas, they are stronger than ever. Yet TV is creating a common culture of consumption. More than ever, people around the world know about and want the same types of branded goods and services. Rather than a global village, mass exposure to TV is creating a global mall.

The global consumer culture is most clearly seen among young people who have grown up on a steady diet of television. While these young people still clearly belong to indigenous cultures based on religion and national identities, they have all learned to understand marketing in much the same way.

"In some markets, there has been a concern that western media will cause national identity and values to suffer," says Janet Scardino, vice president of international marketing at MTV Networks. "What we've seen is that the media don't change values or ethics. They are much more likely to impact kids' behavior as consumers. We're seeing a growing commonality among global youth as it relates to media habits and spending habits."

"Young people are certainly more global in outlook and behavior," says Tom Miller, senior vice president of Roper Starch Worldwide in New York City. "The primary reason for this is the influence of popular culture emanating from the U.S. and the U.K."

TV is becoming the great unifying force in the world. Thus, the course of the future may not lie so much in the hands of governments, or political or religious movements, but rather in the hands of those who shape commercial TV. This in turn provokes the question: If TV really does unite the world and marketers control TV, what kind of world is in store?

A GLOBAL MALL

TV isn't just an activity. It's become one of the most popular ways to spend leisure time since the invention of the nap. Virtually all households in North America have a television, according to a 1995 Roper study. The only thing people in these countries are more likely to do on a given day than watch TV is brush their teeth; 95 percent brush and 91 percent watch the tube. Related items such as "shampooed hair" and "read a magazine" rate considerably lower, at 52 percent and 35 percent, respectively. In fact, just 32 percent took a nap.

While Americans appear to be the number-one couch potatoes, our fellow viewers around the world are not far behind. Middle Easterners watch the most (3.6 hours per day), followed by North Americans, including Mexicans (2.9). Western Europeans watch the least, at 2.5 hours a day. Only work and sleep take up more of our time than TV does.

Here in the U.S., our adjustment to the TV life has been gradual. During the 1960s and 1970s, most households had access to only a handful of channels. With the advent of cable, we gradually got more. But elsewhere in the world, communities have gone from no TV to dozens of channels overnight, thanks to satellite-dish technology. The from 12 channels, finds Roper. North Americans get the largest channel selection, averaging 27. Western Europeans are a distant second, with 14. Latin Americans and Central Europeans average 12 choices, Middle Easterners 11, and Asians 9. Residents of the former Soviet Union have the most limited channel choice, with 4.

As media markets have grown more sophisticated and consumer demand has surged, local programming has proliferated. Gone are the days when a dubbed rerun of "Dynasty" or "Dallas" suffices for viewers worldwide. What remains unchanged is the popularity of western genres - soaps, sitcoms, talk shows, movies - and most pervasive of all, the ads. American advertising agencies dominate the global marketplace by huge margins. Seven of the top-ten global shops are U.S.-based.

Nearly everyone agrees that the impact of mass TV watching is seen most clearly among today's youth. Think of it this way: During a time of crisis, people in more than 200 countries can tune in to news on CNN or BBC World Service Television and watch the same news reports at the same time. But imagine a group that tunes in to the same type of programming, complete with ads, every day. MTV now reaches over 239 million viewers in 68 countries, most of them teens and young adults.

What is the nature of this emerging global consumer generation? Most multinational studies understandably focus on those with the most money - adults. But what about teenagers? The New World Teen Study was designed as the first global syndicated quantitative study to focus on this target. Conducted in schools among 6,500 15-to-18-year-olds, the study provides a read on the attitudes, lifestyles, values, and consumer behavior of teens in 26 countries.