Supplemental Post #5 - Lilla

 This week’s focus on global TV reminded me of a discussion we were having in my reader class CTCS 467 this week about dubbing. The consensus was that dubbing these days is pretty much unheard of, unless it’s animation. This got me thinking about the US vs. international TV landscape, and how different my TV experience was growing up in Europe. In the US, all shows I see on TV are American (or occasionally British) shows, and I don’t see people watching any shows in other languages, unless it’s anime (which I am not familiar enough with to discuss). At the same time, growing up in Hungary, most TV shows I watched were also American. There were two competing Hungarian soap operas running on the two competing basic cable channels, but that was it. Everything else on TV was dubbed American TV shows — and dubbing, in fact, has a huge culture in Hungary.  There is a select group of famous voice actors whose voices everybody recognizes, as it is this same group of people who dubs every show. And subtitles are not even available.

Every Monday to Friday, on both major cable channels, a 20-minute episode of one of the Hungarian soaps follows the evening news, after which an episode of an American police procedural airs. Premium cable channels only featured dubbed American shows. Kids channels feature dubbed American cartoons. So it’s interesting to think about how certain countries don’t have a major TV industry, and do rely on US output to fill their TV time. I’m sure this isn’t true for the majority of Europe and is just my experience, but it always surprises people when they learn that I grew up watching the exact same shows that they did, even though I was on a different continent.