The Future of Global Television News

Abstract

Television has, in the past forty years, trans-formed the ways we think about the news. The medium’s immediacy (especially when “live”), the unique way it lets us “see” events ten blocks—or ten thousand miles—away, and its mass accessibility (compared to written news) have all proved unprecedented in shaping how we absorb the news. But having accustomed ourselves to that initial transformation, we appear poised on the edge of another momentous shift.

This new transformation goes by several names, most commonly “global” or “borderless” TV, and many newscasters, media moguls and media critics alike insist” global” represents the future of TV.

But what is “global television”? After” seeing” television’s coverage of Tiananmen Square, or the Russian White House, or the Gulf War, it’s hard to doubt that some sort of transformation is going on. Each of these distant events was not only changed by being broadcast “live,” but because we as an audience were in some sense changed too—aware (as were the event’s participants) that what we saw was being seen simultaneously in more than a hundred countries around the world.