India
Indian television’s defining moment arrived in early July 1990, when a serialised version of an epic Hindu poem, the Mahabharat, came to an end. The show had entranced 300-million viewers for an hour every Sunday for 20 months on the country’s only TV station at the time, state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan. No programme since has matched that size of audience (partly because there are now 160 channels) and today’s viewers prefer ‘pop idols” to ones found in temples: 30-million tuned into Indian Idol when it launched a few years ago.
More than 110-million homes in the country now have television — more than half are connected by cable and about seven million have satellite dishes.
The most popular shows remain soap operas, especially those that revolve around the tensions between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law in Indian homes. Rupert Murdoch’s Star channel has made its reputation on such ‘Saas-Bahu” soaps, and remains India’s most-watched broadcaster.
Western television has slowly made inroads into India: Desperate Housewives, Spooks, even The Vicar of Dibley can be seen on the small screen. This year’s water-cooler TV event was the budding friendship between a beautiful model and an actor best known for rustic roles in Bigg Boss, the Indian version of Celebrity Big Brother.
India remains a poor country, and not every household has a television, yet the gap is closing. The big problem is that budgets are small and competition for audiences is cut-throat — which means less opportunity for ‘quality programming”. That may be changing, though — Karan Johar, a Bollywood director who made his name with big show productions, has joined with a news broadcaster to launch a new entertainment channel later this year. — Randeep Ramesh
United States
For a nation spoilt for choice between hundreds of channels, it’s amazing that Americans still have so much in common in their viewing habits. They just can’t get enough of reality TV. Of the top 10 places for most popular shows, as rated by Nielsen Media Research, six are occupied by various nights of American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, with up to 30-million people watching them live or recorded that day.
Having said that, the delightful communality of vegging out in front of the TV in the knowledge that millions of others are doing the same is inevitably fading away, as the plethora of options — not least internet viewing and TV clips on YouTube — fragments the audience. The top four networks recently recorded plummeting ratings, with 2,5-million fewer people watching their shows at prime time than in the previous year.
You can see the drift over time. In 1983, for instance, the most-watched programme of the year — a M*A*S*H special — captured 60% of the US TV audience, with 50-million households viewing it. The showstopper this year so far has been the Super Bowl, which enjoyed a similar viewership of 48-million, but attracted only 43% of the US’s by now much larger audience of 111-million TV households. It is hard to believe now, but the investigative 60 Minutes was the most popular programme in 1980, attracting 28% of the total audience. Compare that with American Idol, today’s favourite, which pulls in just 17%.
The three main networks, CBS, ABC and NBC, continue to be major players, in that order, but the big change has been the increasing threat of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox which, as the provider of American Idol, puts out the most popular show in US television and whose average audience has now overtaken the ailing NBC. The appalling frequency of adverts on US television continues to drive people to TiVo and gloriously ad-free pay television, notably HBO, which is certain to have the water-cooler moment of the year: the final part of the final series of the Sopranos. What variety of sticky end befalls Tony already has TV addicts jittering. — Ed Pilkington
China
When it comes to the world’s biggest TV ratings phenomena, you can forget Pop Idol, Big Brother and The Apprentice. The World Cup Final, the Olympics and the Super Bowl may briefly blip into the global consciousness, but they have no staying power. Coronation Street has longevity, but its numbers just don’t compare. No, the real ratings champion of global television is surely the 7.30pm weather forecast on China Central Television’s (CCTV) channel one: rain or shine, the programme claims an average daily audience of 300-million — equivalent to the entire US population.
That is the boast of CCTV, the state-run broadcaster that, in terms of market share and political clout, dominates the world’s most populous nation. CCTV is a propaganda arm of the ruling Communist Party. The weather follows the 7pm news programme, which is compulsorily relayed by every provincial station because it sets the national agenda. Most broadcasts start with the activities of senior Communist officials –the order of their appearance strictly determined by their rank within the party.
But, while that aspect of TV in China still fits the turgid, old-fashioned stereotype of a communist nation, there are intriguing developments in viewing habits that better reflect this fast-changing nation. The hottest programme in 2005 was Super Girl Voice — a Chinese version of Pop Idol — produced by Hunan TV and sponsored by Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt.
Just as in its British and US counterparts, viewers were able to vote for their favourite performers via text messaging. This was a revelation in a nation where people do not have the chance to choose their political leaders.
At the climax of the first series in 2005, 280-million people tuned in to the final and eight million cast a vote. The winner was Li Yuchun, an androgynous singer with spiky hair and a husky voice. The show was so popular and sparked so many imitators that the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television became worried it was having a detrimental effect on society (and, no doubt, the one-party political system). It issued new restrictions on voting for such shows, and limited each series to a maximum of 10 weeks.
In the early 1980s, there were only 20 TV sets — many of them black-and-white — for every 100 households, so many families used to gather in one place to watch popular shows. By 2005, however, there were 30% more sets than families, so such shared viewing has become a thing of the past.
There is also more programming. Twenty-four-hour broadcasts are now the norm in many cities, with provincial channels producing more of their own material, rather than just using CCTV feeds and reruns of approved films.
Content is still heavily censored, but network bosses are under commercial pressure to be bolder because information is more freely available in other forms of media. Since 1997, the number of TV viewers has remained flat, despite an increase of tens of millions in the population. Internet penetration, however, has surged to more than 150-million.
Many families also ignore the law by buying satellite dishes so they can watch banned broadcasts from Taiwan. Students download them from the internet. The motive is not usually political: Taiwan’s dramas and pop shows are extremely popular on the mainland. — Jonathan Watts
Mexico
Mexican television is dominated by two private networks — Televisa and TV Azteca –although there is growing pressure for more competition. Some 10% of viewers watch the two state-owned educational channels; cable/satellite services are too expensive for most, while digital competition (and developments) are limited by lack of internet access in the majority of homes. Traditional time-slot-driven television is the main source of entertainment and news for most Mexicans, despite frequent complaints about quality.
The primetime backbone is the telenovella. Classic formats involve largely white and one-dimensional villains and heroes, accompanied by loyal, dark-skinned servants. More complex and sophisticated plots are now creeping in. One of these — the Mexican version of Ugly Betty, screened last year — was phenomenally successful, with the finale garnering the country’s third-biggest audience ever (after an international football final involving Mexico, and a celebrity wedding). More than 100 000 gathered to cheer the newly wed fictitious heroine and her beau.
Also last year, presidential elections triggered a very popular, and unprecedented, political satire show on Televisa, The Privilege of Governing. This year, the same network has launched a new line in home-grown series modelled on US successes such as Desperate Housewives. Mexicans soon tired of a particularly tame Big Brother, but have shown more enthusiasm for the singing and dancing reality formats. — Jo Tuckman
Morocco
For Moroccans, the pan-Arab Super Star talent show was, if not this year’s water-cooler moment, then at least the hottest thing to discuss over a glass of green tea. The show was already a hit in Morocco before a tearful Iraqi, Shada Hassoun, won the competition in March. Moroccans eagerly watch not just the finals but also the regional preliminary competitions. This year they are sending three finalists, led by Saad Al Mjarad, to the Beirut-based show.
Although Morocco has two state-controlled channels, TVM and 2M, it is satellite television from elsewhere that has revolutionised viewing habits here. Be they open-to-air Arab channels such as Al-Jazeera and Saudi Arabia’s Iqra, or Spanish channels decoded by pirated cards, satellite is increasingly watched at home or at the open-air cafes where men gather to smoke and chat.
Spanish football, Egyptian soaps and television preachers, and Lebanese gameshows are all part of the regular Moroccan television diet. Al-Jazeera’s 10pm Maghreb news show — refreshingly free of saturation coverage of Morocco’s King Mohammed VI — has, for example, knocked the rankings of local royal-kowtowing news shows. Amr Khalid, a TV preacher from Egypt, is a household name who is beamed in by Saudi-owned Iqra TV.
As a result, state-controlled terrestrial television has had to improve its act. French-speaking 2M may still start the day with a reading from the Qur’an, but it also imports soaps and has Champions League football. Even the more conservative TVM now has several soaps a day. State television buys in European league football, though it has recently been unable to meet the prices set for Real Madrid and Barcelona matches — which divide Moroccans as much as they do Spaniards. Moroccans still have to turn to Spanish satellite channels for that. — Giles Tremlett
Lithuania
It’s Mantas, really, who has been the TV sensation of the year in Lithuania. The budding pop singer won Lithuania Dancing Ten, the Baltic state’s version of Celebrity Come Dancing, and then instantly morphed into the country’s heart-throb.
The post-communist country of 3,5-million boasts one to two TV sets in each of its 1,5-million households. Satellite dishes are sprouting from the sides of the drab, Soviet-era housing blocks and the lovely old Hanseatic apartments of the capital, Vilnius. Cable packages are also popular. So, as everywhere else in Europe, viewing habits are far more fractured than they used to be, with people watching non-terrestrial Russian or Scandinavian channels, as well as stuff such as BBC World, CNN and Discovery.
The dancing spectacular was a triumph for the national public broadcaster, which has two channels competing fiercely with three commercial channels. The epidemic of reality TV programmes and Big Brother copycats is currently attracting most viewers, as is the local version of Pop Idol. — Ian Traynor
Nigeria
The Nigerian government would prefer that the tens of millions who crowd in front of televisions to watch the fourth-largest network in the world every evening were drawing cultural lessons from the official programming about the common values of Africa’s most populous but divided nation. But, as in much of the continent, Nigerians rely on a diet of football, religion and soap operas for most of their entertainment — although the order of preference is very much determined by geography.
Saucy soap operas are kept off many of the local TV stations in the overwhelmingly Muslim north, where religious broadcasts from the Qur’an and preachers acceptable to the government are a staple. In the mostly Christian south, the tangled pursuit of sex, money and power in the soaps — local and Latin American — sits comfortably alongside the praising of God.
TV in the south is packed with Pentecostal services and preachers promising to cure the sick or make the poor rich. Three years ago the government banned religious broadcasters from showing on television miracles that are not ‘provable and believable”. Religious broadcasting is popular not only with the audiences but with the mass of local television stations that rely on it as a leading source of income.
Football unifies where other popular programmes divide. The ups and downs of Nigeria’s football team provide sporadic hope in a country where it is often in short supply. But it is the English Premiership soccer league that has many on the edge of their seats each week. — Chris McGreal
Britain
When I made a documentary looking back at British television from the 1960s, greying witnesses recalled eerie evening silences on city streets, occasionally broken by the hurrying footsteps of a last tardy commuter rushing home to be in front of the set in time for The Prisoner, The Morecambe & Wise Show or The Wednesday Play.
Time romanticises memories, but that vision of viewing holds some truth. With two channels and no video recorders, watching television was of necessity a shared experience. Now, the reception of even a hit show is fragmented and elongated. You won’t see workers dashing through empty streets to catch Little Britain or Life on Mars because one section of the audience has recorded it, another is waiting for the box-set of DVDs and a third may even be watching it on a laptop or, soon, a cellphone.
A useful symbol of how consumption of the medium has changed is the relationship between the TV industry and the pub. Forty years ago, a standard expression of a show’s success was that it emptied the bars. Now, a big England football or rugby game is more likely to fill the bars, as games increasingly migrate to non-terrestrial channels, forcing old technology viewers, against all historical instinct, to leave the house when there’s something good on TV.
But, though now solitary rather than communal, viewing remains addictive — the average Briton still watches 23 hours and 56 minutes a week. — Mark Lawson
France
The odd thing about French television is that it is so unremittingly awful. Inane game shows, insipid documentaries, unincisive interviews, irrelevant dramas, incredibly lame cop series that the French have known (literally) since 1976 and unbelievably dreadful four-hour Saturday night song-and-dance spectaculars.
The problem is that the medium itself is not considered suitable for serious endeavour. It’s a historico-cultural thing: TV was a state monopoly, and often a government mouthpiece, until as late as the mid-1980s.
The most-watched TV programme in France this year will undoubtedly turn out to be the Sarko-Sego debate before the second round of the presidential election, which attracted 20,5-million viewers. By way of comparison, last year’s top programme was France v Italy in the World Cup final, which drew 22,2- million. Outside football matches, the most-watched programmes of 2006 were films (headed by Seventies cult French comedy classics Les Bronzes and Les Bronzes Font Du Ski, Pirates of the Caribbean, Les Choristes and Asterix), all of which pulled in about 12-million, followed by a two-part costume drama about a celebrated post-war murder case in which a woman was accused of poisoning her husband (11-million).
To protect the ‘audiovisual industry”, there are rules about the amount of domestic programming that must be shown, but they don’t stop French telly importing a lot of US and even a few British programmes. CSI is huge at the moment, though ancient French cop series do just as well, with Julie Lescaut (created in 1992), Navarro (1989) and Commissaire Moulin (1976) taking up most of the rest of the top 100, with audiences of 10-million-plus. — Jon Henley,