Resumen
In today's world communication four major trends can be observed: digitization,
consolidation, deregulation, and globalization. It should be a priority
on our research agendas to question how these developments affect people's
lives across the globe.
In the early 1990s the Berlusconi Group was increasingly gaining control
over European TV markets, Sylvio Berlusconi was en route to becoming Europe's
media kingpin. One of Europe's largest advertising companies Publitalia
'80 belongs to the Berlusconi group, the Group produces films on a large-scale
with the Leo Kirch Group of Germany and TF1 from France. The Berlusconi
company has also established a production company in Hollywood and holds
a vast library of over 100,000 TV hours as well as exclusive European distribution
rights to programmes such as Twin Peaks, Dallas and Dynasty.
In 1990 Bertelsmann was filled with cash for expansion. It had only some $
300 million total debt (compared to some $10.8 billion debt Time-Warner has
resulting from its 1989 merger; or Murdoch's $ 2.2 billion debt) and over $
2 billion ready for investments. Actually, the company has announced to spend
in the 1990/1993 period some $ 4 billion for international expansion. Just to
control the former East-German information market Bertelsmann spends over 600
million dollar. (10).
Distribution of revenues:
Publishing/ Book Clubs: $ 3.3 billion
Records/CDs/Music Videos: $2.1 billion
Magazines/Newspapers: $ 2.0 billion
Printing: $ 1.7 billion
TV Production/Broadcasting: $ 0.5 billion
"Electronics giant Matsushita, anxious to secure a ready supply of movies
and TV shows for its video recorders and hich definition TV sets, had watched
archrival Sony Corp. snap up CPE in 1989, reducing to three the number of major
independent studios. MCA, unnerved at the spiralling costs of making movles
and building theme parks, long had been casting about for a de~p pocketed partner.
But the pressure intensified as Time Inc. bought Warner Communications Inc.
and MCA found itself dwarfed by global giants". Matsushita was advised
by Oviz's Creative Artists Agency (who had found CPE for Sony) to purchase MCA
"because of its huge film library and its growing record business".
(11). The deal was closed for $6.13
billion.
Distribution of revenues:
Filmed entertainment: $ 1,7 billion
Music: $ 765 million
Book Publishing: $ 189 million
Other incl, TV station): $ 690 million
This leading music television station (with close to US$ 2 billion revenues)
is owned (for 76%) by tycoon Sumner Redstone (who also owns MTV's parent
Viacom). It beams its signals into over 200 million households in over 70
countries. By comparison although Ted Turner's CNN is received in over 130
countries, it reaches to less than 100 million households. Also MTV revenues
are growing faster than those of CNN. In the past five years MTV has rapidly
expanded into Europe, Australia, Latin America, Russia, and Asia. Together
with the global consolidation of MTV, Redstone is planning to introduce
the popular children's channel Nickelodeon, also owned by Viacom, to non-US
markets. This is done through co-production arrangements with local companies,
such as Canal Plus in France.
Distribution of revenues:
MTV & VH-1 $ 243 million
Nickelodeon $ 169 million
Showtime $ 501 million
Entertainment $ 271 million
Cable systems $ 378 million
Broadcasting $ 159 million (12).
Total revenues of US $ 7.2 billion. Total operating income amounts to $ 1.1
billion. (13).
Distribution of revenues.
Newspapers: $ 535 Million
Magazines: $ 244 million
Television: $ 6.3 million
Movies: $ 82 million
Sony purchased in 1988 CBS Records Inc. for $ 2 billion and in 1989 Columbia
Pictures Entertainment Inc. for $ 3.4 billion. Revenues by March 1991 were
some $ 5 billion in movies, (Columbia and Tri-Star Pictures), Television
(Columbia Pictures TV), and Music (Sony Music Entertainment).
Distribution of revenues:
TV & advertising: $.2 billion
Publishing: $ 1.5 billion
Retailing: $ 3.2. billion.
The trend towards deregulation.
The trends towards the digitization and consolidation go together with a
shift from public-service type, controlled regulated provision of information
and telecommunication services to a competitive environment for the trading
of these services by private market operators. At the same time the trend
towards deregulation strongly reinforces both digitization and consolidation.
In response to recent economic and technological developments many countries
around the world are revising their communication and information structures.
In this process the leading stratagem would seem to be "more market,
less state" and the buzzwords have become privatization and liberalization.
Whereas privatization refers to the complete sale of publicly owned companies
to private interests as well as abolishing regulations that prevent private
entrepreneurs from going into certain economic sectors, liberalization refers
to a de-monopolization of markets by introducing competition in the supply
of information and telecommunication services. Privatization and liberalization
occur in telecommunications, public libraries and public data banks. Deregulation
became the key policy orientation of the 1980s. This decade was characterized
by a wave of telecommunications deregulation finding concrete expression
in privatization and liberalization. In fact, the concept is somewhat misleading
as deregulation tends to mean re-regulation and often leads to rather more
than less rules.
Deregulation also tends to refer to the withdrawal of the state from very
special social areas. There is a trend in many countries to dispense with
state involvement in the area of social welfare. At the same time one observes
in the same countries increased state involvement and related regulation
in the fields of technology policy and industrial policy.
Also in the politics of communication the dominant ideology is the old Adam
Smith superstition that a free market would be to the benefit of everybody.
However, a free market under capitalist conditions leads inevitably to a
concentration of capital, growth of transnational corporations, and forms
of industrial oligopolization which are not necessarily supportive of everybody's
interest and need.
The first period of privatization commenced in the late 1950s within the
USA. As telecommunication users "became aware of their growing dependence
on telecommunications, they organized to lobby government authorities for
specific, far-reaching change in the rules governing domestic telecommunications
provisions". (Schiller ~ Fregoso. 1991: 198). By and large the telecommunication
regulators affirmed business user's demands.
In the 1980s telecommunications systems in the USA, UK and Japan shifted
to deregulatory policies. On January 1, 1984 the mega telecommunication
operator AT&T was broken up into its 22 local companies. In exchange AT&T was
now at liberty to enter new types of business. In 1985 the sale of 51% of
Britain's nationally owned British Telecom shares to private sector interests
was authorized by the UK government.
Also in 1985 Japan developed a new policy towards the liberalization of
its telecommunications operations. The largest operator Nippon Telephone
& Telegraph lost its monopoly in exchange for the permission to begin new
competitive lines of communication business. Part of the government's ownership
of NT&T was sold to the private sector and new local voice carriers were
allowed in the market place.
With the development of transnational data networks and the growth of transborder
data flows, the trend towards deregulation is exported from core to periphery
countries and this raises the question about the adequacy of globalizing
a policy that originates in a specific historical context to all countries
at the same time.
The trend towards globalization.
America's hottest export item to-day is pop culture. US movies, music, TV programming
and home video now account for some US $8 billion trade surplus. Top sellers
are Mickey Mouse, Madonna, Michael Jackson, McDonald's Burgers, Levi's jeans
and Cola. In the past five years the overseas revenues of Hollywood studios
has doubled. The US $20 billion music industry collects some 70% outside the
USA. There is world-wide a clear trend towards an increasing demand for the
American-brand entertainment. As the Fortune magazine recently observed "Around
the globe, folks just can't get enough of America". (14).
A remarkable feature of this trend is that Europeans and Japanese are buying
into this successful export commodity. Of the five global record companies,
Warner, CBS, EMI, and Polygram, only Warner is an American corporation. A similar
trend is showing in the film industry. The Japanese have invested in the past
three years some $12 billion in the US entertainment companies. In November
1990 Japanese hardware manufacturer Matsushita bought MCA for US $ 6 billion
and acquiring with this purchase: Universal Studios, Universal Pictures and
MCA Records. Early 1991 Paramount Communications was negotiating with interested
Japanese companies (Pioneer and Sumitomo). Also the Disney company has formed
a partnership with Japanese investors, among whom Yamaichi Securities and Fuji
Bank. By late 1990 an initial US$ 600 million was provided for film financing.
With these developments the centre of the US film production, Hollywood,
has begun to globalize. Feature film production had to take serious account
of the growing international demand for entertainment products as a result
of the proliferation of commercial TV stations. Joint-ventures have been
initiated between Hollywood firms and co-producers from Japan and the Soviet
Union. Foreign investors have acquired traditional US film "majors",
such as Twentieth Century Fox (acquired in 1985 by Rupert Murdoch's News
Corporation) and Columbia Pictures (purchased by Japanese Sony in 1989 for
3,4 billion US dollars). The very big media companies have outgrown their
saturated home markets and the logical way towards further growth is cross
border expansion. In particular Westeuropean and Japanese firms entered
the US market loaded with cash from very stable and profitable revenues.
A good illustration is the French publishing giant Hachette that in 1988
bought the magazine group Diamandis in the US. Hachette now owns 74 magazines
in 10 countries with total circulation of some 650 copies. Also German Bertelsman
has expanded into the US market with the purchase of publisher Bantan Books,
Doubleday and record company RCA Records in 1986. In 1986 German publisher
Holtzbrink acquiredHolt, Rinehart en Winston from the publishingbranch of
CBS.
Rerently the European market has seen a great deal of cross-border activity.
West-German (Bertelsman) and French (Hachette) publishers are developing
activities on the Spanish market for magazines. Murdoch, Maxwell and Servan-Schreiber
have made investments in the Spanish economic press. Robert Hersant, the
French tycoon, has acquired provincial newspapers in Spain and Berlusconi,
the Italian media baron, has signed contract for regional TV stations in
Spain. Murdoch acquired a 25% interest in the publishers group Grupo Zeta,
which is publisher of 4 dailles and 20 magazines. Hachette has acquired
interests in the Italian publishing house Rizzoli- Corriere della Sera.
The Berlusconi group has had since 1987 investments in West German cable
TV operations (Kabelmediaprogramm Gesellschaft in Munich). The Finivest
company (Berlusconi) has a stake in TV station La Cinq. The Maxwell company
had a stake in the French Tv station TF1.
There are obvliously also movements from US companies towards European markets.
The US conglomerate Time/Warner collaborates with Hachette and Berlusconi
in the Fortune editions in France and Italy. Simon & Schuster has bought
from Hachette Regents Publishing and the NBC station (owned by General Electric)
moved in 1993 into the European TV market through the acquisition of Super
Channel.
An important feature of the trend towards globalization is that the trading
by the mega-companies is shifting from the international exchange of local
products to production for global markets.
As the communication conglomerates extend their activities to more countries,
the production of culture and information takes on a cosmopolitan hue. The
activities of media-barons such as the late Maxwell, Murdoch and Berlusconi
in the recently opened Eastern European information markets are telling
examples. Since the changes in East-West relations the countries of Eastern
Europe have become important targets for cross-border expansion. In September
1989 Murdoch bought 50% of the shares of the Hungarian daily Mai Nap and
the weekly Reform. April 3, 1990 it was announced in Budapest that the West-German
Springer concern acquired 4 regional dailies from the Socialist Party. Together
they have 187.000 copies. The company also expressed its intention to invest
in the next years some 40 million DM in Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, and Czecho-Slovakia.
Bertelsmann acquired in July 1990 a majority interest in the Daily of the
former communist party, the Nepszabadsag.
Also Maxwell made investments in the Hungarian press through a 40% interest
in the former government paper Magyar Hirlap
Berlusconi has concluded agreements with the Polish TV for the sales of
Polish TV programmes on the European market and Hersant (publisher of Le
Figaro and co-proprietor of French TV station La Cinq) receivea permission
to publish two financial newspapers in the Soviet Union.
Particularly active in Eastern Europe is French advertising giant Havas.
In 1990 Havas signed exclusive contracts to sell advertising time on TV
networks in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. Havas CEO
Dauzier also "hopes to plaster billboards all over Eastern Europe".
As this goes on, it is difficult to escape the impression that the globalization
is more inspired by cultural conquest than cultural co-existence. When the
Hungarian edition of Playboy appearel in December 1989, the newspaper advertisement
proudly announced that the availability of the magazine represented the
freedom the Hungarians had been fighting for. The following month, when
McDonald began selling hamburgers in Moscow a company executive announced,
"We're going to McDonaldize them" and described this as the company's
cultural conquest.
Also in early 1990, the French government announced that it was increasing
its funding for cultural exports as part of a big cultural campaign to conquer
Eastern European countries.
Over the past years the communication industry has become increasingly oriented
towards exports and developed ever more interest in collaboration with or
acquisition of foreign companies. Some examples of the role of exports are
given in Table 11. An interesting case of global expansion is the effort
of Playboy Enterprises Inc to market its videos worldwide through a joint
venture with Philips Electronics Nv and IBM. Together with these partners
interactive CD-ROMs are developed to boost its overseas home video sales.
In 1992 Playboy increased its reacht from 17 countries to 64 and the home
video division reported an eighty percent sales increase. As Playboy CEO
Christie Hefner commented in the International Herald Tribune of November
3, 1993: "Starting in 1989, as we saw the clear trend toward privatization
of television and satellite delivery overseas plus the growth and penetration
of VCR ownership both in the Far East and Europe, we felt that there ought
to be some opportunities for Playboy to take its programming niche and brand
outside of the US".
The growth of exports is among other factors due to rapidly rising costs
of production. For example, the major US film companies needed in 1985 a
worldwide rental income of US $ 3.1 billion in order to break even. Their
share of foreign earnings has increased between 1983 and 1988 particularly
in sales of films for TV distribution from 23% to 57%. The leading European
media companies are presently operational in quite some countries across
the world. Their global spread is still a long way to go, but they are moving
towards it. (Table 12 gives some examples). Murdoch's News Corporation provides
an excellent illustration with its recent invasion of Asia. On July 26,
1993 the owner of Star-TV Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing sold 64% of
this first Asian satellite TV network to Murdoch for US $ 525 million.
As Business Week projects, "With Star, Murdoch now has a signal that will
reach 70% of the world's population by 1995, from Japan to the Middle East".
(15). The deal between Li Ka-shing and
Murdoch was largely motivated by the pressure on his network caused by the announcement
of Turner (CNN which spends some US$ 15 million to develop production capacity
in Asia), Time Warner's Home Box Office (on cable in some eight Asian countries),
Capital Cities/ABC ESPN (the sports network), the Discovery Channel, and Hong
Kong-based Television Broadcasting Inc. to compete with Star TV in 1994 after
the launch of a Chinese communications satellite. Other companies entering the
huge Asian markets are Dow Jones & Co. and NBC. Both firms are interested
in promoting business broadcast news from operations based in Singapore and
Hong Kong.
Among the driving forces of the globalization processes, the following factors
can be observed.
Technological innovations, especially in the field of informatics, telecommunications
and their convergence have largely facilitated processes of globalization.
In fact, one could argue that communication/information technologies provide
the essential infrastructure for global transactions.
It is likely that the growth of global financial markets in the 1970s
triggered off the acceleration of globalization processes. This was reinforced
by the rapid proliferation of offshore financial markets and the global
circulation of vast amounts of money outside the jurisdiction of national
authorities.
Sweeping reductions in costs of air travel and shipping have facilitated
phenomenal expansion of cross-border trading. In the process, not only the
volume of trade has enormously increased, but also its character has considerably
changed. The steeply rising costs of developing new technologies and new
products have forced companies to employ on the emerging global markets
the use of global brand-names and global advertising.
The new global approach has meant that corporate strategies focus increasingly
on global delivery systems, corporte networks, and electronic markets. Exports
and foreign investments in the conventional sense are increasingly replaced
by networking arrangements with local delivery systems.
Transactions are conducted through transnational data flows that operate
through the wide variety of corporate networks that have been created in
the past two decades.
Increasingly in many countries the political climate is very supportive
of globalization processes. The creation of global electronic networks,
for example, is largely facilitated through the privatization of public
telecommunication services, the liberalization of electronics markets, and
the deregulation of tariff structures. All such politico-regulatory measures
are intended to accommodate the claims of the large corporate users of global
communications.
The policy proposals as presented in the 1987 EC Green Book on telecommunications
are illustrative example of measures which facilitate the establishment
of global corporate information networks.
The Impact of Globalization.
There are undeniably globalization processes at work to-day. There are trends
towards cultural activities spanning the globe. However, despite these realities,
there is a strong likelihood that we currently see the emergence of a "fragmented
globalism" of the world economy (Lanvin. 1991: 99). A remarkable feature
of much discourse on globalization is that completely bypasses the fact
the world is very starkly divided and fractured on many counts. Highly visible
fissures are present in the growing economic disparities between both the
North and the South and between different social groups within nations.
In the field of world communication, one certainly has to ask 'how global
is global'? As was discussed in chapter two, there remains to-day in the
communication field a stark disparity between the affluent industrial nations
and the countries of the Third World. If there is a global communications
party, the majority of the world's population has not yet been invited to
join. As Vijay Menon asks, "But how much a part of the global village
is Asia?". (Menon. 1993: 29). This is obviously an ambiguous situation.
Having been left out, has noticeable disadvantages. As the technological
infrastructures remain very expensive to acquire and maintain, an important
issue will be the possibility that only a limited number of actors will
have access to the emerging global circuits. It may well be that the developing
countries will experience a "selective short-circuiting" (Lanvin.
1991: 99) of their trading opportunities. However, this may also be a blessing
in disguise. It may make those not invited less vulnerable to the problems
as posed by the McDonaldization of the world.
Globalization means the emergence of global customers that want global services
by global suppliers. These customers (the mega companies) look for the one-stop
agency to provide them with the necessary telecommunication and information
network services. They will increasingly push for open access to telecommunication
facilities around the world. In accordance with this goal they will Lobby
strongly for supportive regulatory and technical concepts. So far this has
successfully led to the elevation by the ITU of the principle of 'interconnectivity'
-the norm that compatible networks and services makes communication for
anyone with anyone possible- to an international legal standard. (Grewlich.
1991: 17). According to the WATTC 88 agreement interconnectivity provides
both for a new legal framework that stimulates innovation in new networks
and services, and that protects the developing countries from being cut
off the global telecommunications system. (Grewlich. 1991: 17).
The question is whether the multilateral fora involved such as GATT, ITU,
WIPO, ISO, and UNCTAD will be able to cooperatively address the issue of
global open access to networks and services and whether this will be beneficial
to only the privileged inhabitants of the 'global system' or to all its
people. Whatever its blessings may be, for many people the development of
a 'fragmented globalization' means a continuation of a situation of dependency,
exploitation and poverty.
Today's discourse on globalization suggests the emergence of a global culture.
The worldwide proliferation of standardized food, clothing, music, TV drama,
Anglosaxon business style and linguistic convention, create the impression
of an unprecedented cultural homogenization.
Facilitated by technological innovations, the enormous growth of international
trade, and a very supportive liberal political climate, one observes the
rapid transnational proliferation of mass-market advertising and electronic
entertainment produced by a handful of mega-conglomerates. There is a worldwide
spread of commercially packaged cultural products. A uniform consumerist
lifestyle is aggressively marketed across the globe.
One could obviously argue that the 'McDonaldization' of the world does not
yet create a uniform, global culture. And -correctly- one may point to the
forcefully distinct cultural entities in the world to which the manifold
inter-ethnic conflicts are ever so many dramatic testimonies. Or, one could
cite the fact that non-Western values are by no means extinct and that an
impressive volume of local customs is very much alive around the world.
One could also claim that the project of a global culture is inherently
weak as it has no historical and spatial location.
A basic ingredient is missing for a global culture. Culture provides people
with a sense of identity, a past, destiny, and dignity. Culture is bound
to time and space. McDonaldization is a-historical and spatially non-located.
It is hard to see that people can identify with it or derive dignity from
it.
But even if "global culture" is not an adequate category of analysis,
there is undoubtedly a process of "cultural globalization".
A lively expression of cultural globalization are the Disney amusement parks,
whether in Tokyo Disneyland or Paris Disneyland that opened in the spring of
1992. "We're going to be American because America sells really well",
says Robert Fitzpatrick, president of Euro Disneyland, the 5,000-acre park just
East of Paris. The French who occasionally have been in strong opposition against
USA cultural imperialism have received "this shrine of American pop culture"
enthusiastically despite some critics describing the Disney invasion as a "cultural
Chernobyl" (Marguerite Duras). As a matter of fact the French government
has reduced the value added tax on theme parks from 18.6 % to 7%, lent 4 billion
francs at preferential rates and provided 2.7 billion francs in infrastructure
improvements, such as highways and rail roads. (16).
Ironically, it turns out in late 1993 that Euro Disney is not very successful
and has lost already over US$ 1 billion. Among the arguments for the limited
interest that French people show for the American project, is that no wine drinking
is allowed in the amusement park. The McDonald type cultural conquest has an
important impact on economic development patterns and may well raise serious
obstacles for self-reliant economies. Its greatest success is the world-wide
emergence of consumer societies. McDonaldization sells very persuasively a consumerist,
resource-intensive lifestyle that this world's ecology can ill afford. What
matters most is that McDonaldization reduces local cultural space.
The process of cultural globalization is engineered by forces that are intent
on reducing local cultural space. The aggressive around-the-clock marketing,
the controlled information flows that do not confront people with the long-term
effects of an ecologically detrimental lifestyle, the competitive advantage
against local cultural providers, the obstruction of local initiative, all
converge into a reduction of local cultural space. The process of globalization
has given rise to a concern about the nationality of media-ownership. Ironicaly,
particularly in the USA, there has been an expression of serious worry about
the Japanese take-over of traditional Hollywood companies. However, this
concern tends to lead attention away from the more basic problem: globalization
increases the mega-corporate control over the provision of information and
culture. As Schiller writes, "The daily instruction of most Americans
is now in the hands not of the schools but of the corporate multimedia packagers".
(Schiller. 1990: 829). There would seem a very realistic chance that the
"Lords of the Global Village" (Bagdikian. 1989) will control before
the turn of the century most of the world's expression, creativity, and
instruction. With the globalization of informational and cultural production,
no longer US transnational companies, but equally Dutch, German, or Japanese
firms use information and culture to sell consumerism across the globe.
Maintaining American style and production values, media products have now
become 'the generic material for all transnationals, whatever their ownership
base'.
Fusing different sources of capital, the global transnational information
and cultural producers are 'turning the world into a shopping mall for those
with sufficient disposable income'. (Schiller. 1993: 29 and 40).
There are also instances where the global operators have understood that
adaptations to local taste make their exploits even more successful. The
performance of the music television station, MTV, on the Asian markets is
a good case in point. MTV beams its signals to Asian audiences through one
of the channels on Satellite Television Asian Region (STAR TV). This Hong
Kong based satellite operator reaches out to some 3.75 million households
in Asian countries. With many Asian youngsters ready to spend on global
tastes this is clearly a promising market for MTV advertisers. In order
to accommodate local taste, some 20% of MTV programming is Asian. This includes
the promotion of Thai and Chinese pop stars and Mandarin sung Mando-Rock
music.
MTV products may be regionally customized, its prime orientation remains to
offer advertisers a profitable market for consumer products and to lure consumers,
particularly young ones, to watch its programmes and in the process influence
their tastes, life styles, and moral values. This cultural adaptation is also
a concern of those TV companies that are trying to cash in on the expansion
of payTV markets in Latin America. Among the contenders are Turner Broadcasting,
ESPN, NBC (with 24 hour Spanish-language news), MTV Latino, and Murdoch's Fox
Latin America channel. Although payTV only reaches a limited portion of Latin
American TV households, it represents an affluent and a growing market for advertisers.
In order to make the programming more acceptable to local audiences, they are
given Latin looks. As the vice-president of Fox Latin America comments, "you
have to add the salsa to it". (17).
Opinions differ regarding
the effect of cultural globalization.
For the Asian region one finds those defending an optimist position, "We
in Asia have a particular advantage..nobody has yet moulded us....even in the
most economically advanced Asian societies, we are a very tradition-minded people".
(Joseph Wang, advertising expert from Hong Kong quoted by Menon. 1993: 31) against
anthropologist Santasombat from Thailand (Yos Santasombat, quoted by Menon.
1993: 31) "That society today is indeed in a state of confusion and expedient
westernisation. McDonalds, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts. Fast foods and fast profits--Thai
culture and traditions are becoming obsolete and irrelevant, if not outright
obstacles to modernisation and westernisation" (18).
The concern about the cultural en economic impact of globalization is not
restricted to Third World countries. The expansion of the US cultural industries
has become a hot political issue in Europe. In September 1993 the French
audiovisual industry has taken the initiative to protest against the inclusion
of audiovisual products in the final text of the Uruguay Round GATT negotiations.
In these negotiations, the USA demands that the world trade in audiovisual
products follows the principles of a free trade regime. This implies that
a variety of protectionist measures (such as national import quota and state
subsidies) which are common in European countries are abandoned.
In a countermove representatives of the French entertainment sector (with
the support of the EC ministers of culture) have claimed that only removing
audiovisual product from GATT rules can save the European film and entertainment
industry. An appeal signed by over 4,000 professionals in the industry accuses
the USA of 'cultural dumping'. Important considerations for the French action
were the 22 billion francs European trade deficit with the USA in audiovisual
trade and the fact that some 80% of movies exhibited in European cinemas
are made in the USA against only 2% European films released in the USA.
The European film industry is convinced that subjecting its sector to free
trade implies a global spread of Hollywood materials and the effective annihilating
of European culture.
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