Hacker News Reader

well are europeans show likewise ?

Much of european TV is like the most awful american TV. For example there's some kind of equivalent of the daily show in almost every european country. But that's not because the US forces it on europe, it's just what people like.

Indeed. US seems to be the primary distributor of what we can call "universal culture" - i.e. the things that culturally outcompete other things. It's not even that the US has the best cultural ideas - but being the strongest and relatively free market economy for most of the 20th century let the US import ideas from all around the world, distill them through market competition, and re-export globally as "American".

Indeed, the US pursued cultural export to Europe and Asia very aggressively, as a deliberate, planned policy [3] after the war. E.g. the Marshall plan granted convenient access to American film, pop music, and later on television to the Western European market [1] [2]. After the US built a huge culture industry, it was much easier to maintain momentum.

[1] https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/9701

[2] The World Audience for America's Story, US Advisory Commission on Information, 1949

[3] Coca-colonization and the Cold War, R. Wagnleitner, 1991

Reply on news.ycombinator.com