Contemporary international television offers a rich site for the investigation of matters concerning cultural adaptation. Over the past 20 years, a formalized, organized system has developed whereby program production knowledge can be borrowed from place to place for the re-creation of a television program in another territory. The TV program format is a kind of template or recipe whereby particular industry knowledges are packaged to facilitate this process of remaking. This article provides a trade background to the development of the TV format industry. It links the TV format's emergence to the practice of franchising, with its attendant cultural need to customize the format to suit local audience taste and outlook in a particular territory. This process of localization is examined on three levels using a model derived from translation theory. The article finds that the localization which occurs in such processes primarily involves the development of content that is nationally unexceptional through which audiences in a national territory can be addressed as a collective 'we'. Even beyond this detail, format adaptation raises crucial issues concerning globalization and nationalization, and these are addressed in the final part of the analysis.

Internationalization is a key to the success of television formats. To understand format trade it is necessary to draw out distinctions between formats and genre. Engines— innovations in programming engineered by format devisors—allow formats to regenerate and hybridize across genres. The core principle of formats, however, is the practice of franchising. Causal relations can be established between formats, engines, and the tradability of television culture. The article shows how formats have impacted platforms, markets, labor, audiences, and distribution of TV content.

Beginning in 1999 with Big Brother, the international television industry has seen a succession of mega programme formats over the past fifteen years. Yet, while critical researchers scramble to make sense of this phenomenon, the fact is that the practice of media franchising is not new, even if its place in the spotlight is relatively recent. To support my overall claim about the longevity of programme replication, I will consider the trajectory of content remaking since the 1930s in terms of four periods. The article identifies the programme remaking that occurred in each stage. It also pinpoints a cluster of factors that helped precipitate each new phase, thereby contributing to the emerging field of global television format studies.

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