Today transnational TV networks count among television's most prestigious brands and rank among Europe's leading TV channels. This is the first, dynamically told story of the extraordinary journey of transnational television in Europe from struggling origins to its present day boom. It is based in extensive research into the international television industry and makes full use of its author's remarkable access to leading industry figures, from Sky and Turner to Discovery and BBC World.The tale begins with a few cross-border TV channels, who fought hostile governments, faced antagonism from the broadcasting establishment and provoked the contempt of advertisers. But, Jean Chalaby argues, the planets came into alignment for pan-European television in the late 1990s, when a transnational shift in European broadcasting was produced. He shows how transnational television and globalization have transformed one another, and how transfrontier TV networks reflect - and help sustain - a global economic order in which the connection between national territory and patterns of production and distribution have broken down.

Jean K. Chalaby teaches media history as well as comparative media systems and international communication at City University, London, where he is Director of the MA in Transnational Media and Society. He is the author of 'The Invention of Journalism' (1998) and 'The de Gaulle Presidency and the Media' (2002) and editor of 'Transnational Television Worldwide' (I.B. Tauris, 2005).

Contents
Acknowledgments
Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction: Television's Transnational Shift
Part One: Impossible Beginnings
1 Pioneers in Satellite Television, 1982-1984
2 The Difficult Expansion of Europe's Satellite TV Market, 1985-1989
3 The End of a Chimera?
Part Two: The Coming of Age of Pan-European Television
4 Ushering in a New Era: European Regulation and Satellite Technology
5 The Advent of Transnational Advertising
6 Public Broadcasters: Coming to Terms with the New Media Order
Part Three: Transnational Television in Europe
7 Key Entertainment Genres and Channels in Transnational Television
8 Powering Tomorrow's European Television: Diversified Entertainment Conglomerates and American TV Brands
9 The Sun Always Shines on Global News TV Networks
Part Four: Inside Globalization: The Transnational Shift
10 Reasons and Strategies for Crossing Boundaries
11 When the Local Meets the Global: Transnational TV Networks
12 Reconfiguring Communications Networks: Television for a Global Order
Conclusion: New World, New Networks
Appendix
Notes
Index