One of the main forms of popular culture I consume, like most of the general public, would be television. We might all watch different television shows or have a preferred way of watching it either on your own on your laptop or maybe it's a family tradition. Either way, it's popularity and impact are prominent in the way we see the world and approach life.
Before television the most important forms of media were print and radio (and to some extent film) but these shows were much more local than television proved to be. From its earliest days television has been a vehicle to expose the audiences to events happening around the world. This ability of television to bring world events with sound and pictures was revolutionary and hugely popular from the start.
In 1953, the Queen's Coronation was the first ever to be televised, the Coronation was watched by 27 million people in the UK alone and millions of audiences around the globe. Other key historical and political events were accessed worldwide due to television, such as the moon landing in 1969. Meanwhile the global exposure provided by TV had a huge impact on social developments such as the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war.
At the same time as television began in western countries were experiencing increasing consumer wealth post WWII (especially in the US). This meant that the middle class could afford tvs and the value of advertising led to growth in the TV production industry. The makers of TV shows became very good at producing what was popular and maximising advertising revenue.
The successful formulas for popular TV grew in the developed countries, especially the US and the UK. The formats and shows then began to be exported and the globalisation of TV entertainment took off. Perhaps more than anything television has been a vehicle for globalisation of culture, and some might say the acceleration of cultural imperialism. Many argue that the dominance of western media has led to the expansion of western consumerism at the expense of local culture and values. This is well captured by this quote from Castella “We are not living in a global village, but in customized cottages globally produced and locally distributed” (Castella 2000, page 370, as cited O’Shaughnessy 2012).
This idea that local culture has been pre-packaged in tv studios in the US and the UK, and then exported and rebuilt around the world is more evident today than ever. One example is the commercialization and marketing of television leading to the general public preferring to watch entertainment over news and journalism. This has created new genres such as "infotainment", "edutainment" (add citation) and others. This observation has mostly been negative and has created what Kees Brants (1998) refers to as "infotainment scare" discourse. Through this discourse, news and journalism has been drowned out by entertainment.
Another more obvious and more recent example is the explosion of reality tv show formats. These formats not only reproduce almost exactly the same shows with local contestants, they also seem to export the behaviours and cultural values and apply these to the local participants.
O’Shaughnessy, M. (2012). ‘Globalisation’, in Media and Society, 5th ed. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press
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