Thank you for compiling all of this, fox1!
Actually, I think the later examples look more influenced by UK productions rather than those from the US.
Unless that actually means that perhaps
we
are becoming more like the US.
A bit of both I would say. In recent years, Australian TV networks have certainly moved away from simply adopting American logos, promos, graphics, etc., and have instead looked more towards European broadcast design for inspiration. They have also succeeded in developing a distinctly Australian look and feel. Of course, American influences are still there -- they are readily apparent in some cases -- but they are not nearly as dominant as they once were.
On the other had, television news in much of the world has grown considerably more American in the past few decades, so American style, in slightly modified forms, no longer jumps out as much as it once did.
Even the BBC has become American-influenced to some extent. Just take a look at some of the clips of BBC News (and even ITN!) from the late 1970s or early 1980s on TV Ark. The style of anchoring (formal, reserved, somewhat staid; with dual anchors sitting far apart from each other as if they had just had an argument), the selection of stories (often dominated by news from Westminster with little effort to make it all seem relevant to the average viewer), and even the language used by anchors and reporters are typical of the era before American influence became widespread. Even though the BBC still looks different from most US news operations, the changes it has seen in the past few decades -- particularly the trend towards making the news for interesting to average viewers -- mostly originated in the US.
The same is true for most European broadcasters. In fact, the reason why Australian commercial TV networks mimicked the United States so closely in the 1980s was (in part) because they didn't have much choice if they wanted to beat the competition. Australian television news was competitive, so they sought inspiration from another country with fully competitive news. In the UK, the BBC and ITN, with their fairly cozy, gentlemanly doupoly (and no head-to-head competition in news) -- operated in a very different environment -- an environment that wasn't really applicable to the Australian television landscape.
Former Australian news executive John O'Loan (and, not altogether coincidentally, the first head of Sky News in the UK) explained to me in personal correspondence that
"the vast American market, with many hundreds of different channels in some very competitive markets, gave us fellow English speakers in Australia the chance to see the result of many and various different approaches to communicating the news, which is after all what journalism is all about. After studying why various things may or may not have been successful in their own home town markets, we would often adapt the successful ideas to Australian conditions. Much the same is true of most of Australian media, not just television news. [...] I think Eyewitness News became popular [in the early 1980s] because we dared to look outside Australia for new ways to communicate, rather than continuing to copy what other broadcasters had been doing in Australia, the same way, for decades. From the very beginning, much of the original style of Australian broadcasting had grown up basing itself on the British BBC, which at that stage was a monopoly provider and not very respondent to the requirements of market based audience preferences."
Later, as old television monopolies crumbled, broadcasters around the world began to adopt American techniques -- but rather than simply mimic American style, they eventually found ways to combine successful US techniques with distinctive "local" styles.
Last edited by WW Update on 15 August 2010 3:28pm - 3 times in total
My description ("CNN Atlanter..") was rather tongue-in-cheek. Jane was seriously funny (and good) as Bobbie. The videos those screenshots are from were hilarious. Unfortunately, some clips that were on YouTube are "no longer with us", but I kept the shots here anyway. Just 