Mass Culture and National Traditions: The BBC and American Broadcasting, 1922-1954

Valeria Camporesi

Editorial: European Press Academic Publishing • 2000

• In English / En inglés. A reconstruction of British attitudes towards America in broadcasting policies and programs. . Basically historical and factual in form, this book has theoretical ambitions. It attempts to formulate an analytical pattern which would help to determine what happens when something like a cultural product defined by its national origins is imported into a foreign country. The case-study analysed, that is to say the reconstruction of British attitudes towards America in broadcasting policies and programmes, should therefore be read against a more general background which endeavours to come to terms with mass communication theories, on one side, and sociological and historical analysis on national identity on the other. As a conclusion to the presence of American products in British broadcasting, a strong argument emerges which seriously questions the analytical operativeness of terms and expressions such as "Americanization", "American influence", "American impact", and so forth. The emphasis which they place upon the US side of the process tends inevitably to conceal the importance and complexity of the reactions of those who dealt with it, and might probably be better approached taking as a starting point a native European cultural nationalism, one of whose main defining features would be its un-Americanness.