Travelling Cultures: The Development of the American Mini Serial and its Import to Britain

Charlotte Brunsdon has argued that ‘the television studies that developed in Britain . . . did so within the taken-for-granted dominance of public service models . . . In contrast, the US system is one organised on commercial principles, textually distinguished by the normality of advertising spots and breaks’ (1998: 96). The emphasis on difference in the description of television in the USA and the UK is widespread in the study of television. Even in studies of American television programmes on British screens, which is also the subject of this article, this difference is emphasised. Paul Rixon, for example, describes his own experience of watching American programmes – in Britain in contrast to America