This first chapter explains why and how the GVC framework can make a contribution to media and communication studies. International communication, the discipline’s subject area dealing with cross-border media scholarship, stands as at a crossroads because its concepts were fashioned when a clear line of demarcation between the local and the global prevailed. This line has blurred, rendering some aspects of the discipline obsolete. The chapter argues that the GVC framework can help lay the epistemological foundations of a forward-looking paradigm that is altogether holistic, multidisciplinary, and cosmopolitan. In the global era, the global cannot be an adjunct to a pre-existing theory but must be inherent to its epistemology. With the GVC framework, the global TV industry can be holistically analysed as a single systemic entity. The first part highlights existing theoretical issues within international communication, and the second explains how the GVC framework can contribute to solve them.

This chapter covers the value-adding segments of television GVC’s programme-making phase. It is a phase dominated by artistic intent and creation, right from the birth of the concept to post-production, where colour grading, sound mixing, and editing are taking place. The segments are: facilities (support and services to TV content producers), content production (content creation), and distribution. This chapter traces the route content follows from creation to final production master. It provides an in-depth analysis of each segment of the programme-making phase and includes aggregation. It examines firm behaviour and explains why the search for scale plays such a determining role in the strategies of firms. It highlights three key trends that characterise the chain’s programme-making production network: internationalisation, consolidation, and vertical integration, emphasising that they occur in the wider context of industry segmentation. The chapter looks back at the formation of ten global TV studios (or TV production majors) and defines the role and nature of content aggregation in the TV GVC.

The formation of a TV GVC was decades in the making. At the core of the historical process lies the industry’s global shift, which began into the last two decades of the twentieth century (the end of the broadcasting age) and accelerated in the new millennium (towards the streaming era). Documenting the latter part of this shift is the purpose of this chapter, which surveys the streaming landscape and focuses on the distinctive feature of the TV industry in the digital era: the rise of platforms. It contextualises the advent of streaming by raising the following question: is it an evolution or revolution in the history of screen entertainment? This chapter highlights the importance of scale, before introducing the concept of the platform to explain how it is achieved. It distinguishes three types of streaming platforms (internal, multisided, and transactional), which connect to three business models (SVoD, AVoD, and video-sharing).

The chapter delves into the transnational dimension of the global TV system. Transnational media have evolved, and this chapter contends that a new generation has emerged. The first, which developed in the later part of the twentieth century, consists of cross-border TV networks and formats. The second is the rise of streaming platforms. During the first generation, the transnational remained a professional practice out of viewers reach. With the arrival of the second generation, the transnational has become an everyday mode of media consumption and interaction. The chapter’s second purpose is to examine the key organisational characteristics of the transnational media firm. It compares four types of organisational configuration (multinational, global, international, and transnational), and analyses the latter in depth. It connects organisational theory to the GVC framework, demonstrating how the nature of a firm’s activities and position in the value chain play a determining role in the type of organisational structure it is most likely to adopt.

The formation of a TV GVC was decades in the making. At the core of the historical process lies the industry’s global shift, which began in the last two decades of the twentieth century (the end of the broadcasting age) and accelerated in the new millennium (towards the streaming era). Documenting the early part of this shift is the purpose of this chapter, which focuses on the broadcasting age and broadcasters in the streaming era, providing an overview of the growth of cross-border trade in finished programming (e.g. drama) and TV formats (adapted shows such as reality TV), and the formation of transnational TV networks. This chapter adopts a bird’s-eye view and concentrates on those aspects of the shift that are most apparent, restricting the analysis to the market-facing activities of lead firms and the industry’s consumer brands.