From High Culture to Hip Culture: Transforming the BBC into BBC America

Abstract

In a 2003 television ad campaign for BBC America, a group of American twenty somethings offer testimonials extolling the greatness of the cable channel’s hit BBC import, The Office. “It’s willing to take a risk in a way that no American show is willing to,” says one. “It’s so real, that it was kind of shocking,” says another. “It’s over the edge of what would be acceptable at a normal American network.” One might easily mistake this as a commercial for HBO, since the ad pinpoints the primary traits of ‘quality TV’ associated with the prosperous pay-cable outlet: it’s risky, it’s ‘real’, it’s not network TV. This is an intriguing connection, in fact, as the hip, maverick identity established in this commercial diverges notably from what the BBC brand has historically signified in the U.S. Indeed, prior to the emergence of BBC America in the late 1990s, few Americans would have connected the BBC with HBO; PBS would have been the most likely association. Further, the material that BBC America has presented to the U.S. differs significantly from what the BBC has sent over to American television in the recent past.

“If you’re an American flipping through hundreds of channels and you come across us, you’re probably thinking, ‘hmmm, BBC America, that’ll be some nice Jane Austen piece’. Then there’s me with a big dildo.”¹

— British comedian Graham Norton