Opening America?: The Telenovela-ization of U.S. Soap Operas

The U.S. dominance of the international television marketplace has long been a central focus for media scholars and policy leaders concerned with television’s impact on national culture. Thus, research on the export of U.S. television programs has focused almost exclusively on its “one-way flow,” and relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to how programming from abroad fares in the United States or to how U.S. dominance in the global arena is affected as the industry adapts its products for export. This article contributes to the theoretical and empirical “opening up” of the cultural imperialism approach by considering how the U.S. television industry is influenced by program trends from abroad. In particular, it examines the impact of Latin American telenovelason the U.S. daytime soap opera genre in the context of shifts during the past decade in the demographics of the U.S. population and changes in the practices and tastes of television audiences.