2012 saw conflicting trends in Britain’s popular-culture consumption. Overall cinema box office revenue was, miraculously, up on 2011, following a phenomenal fourth-quarter bounceback after a summer dominated by the Olympics and the Golden Jubilee. With 189 million total singles sold, the era of the standalone Song remained in full force. And while full-year data isn’t available yet, the trends looked positive for e-books as of summer, with a 188% increase through June vs. 2011, more than balancing the approx. 0.4% print decline. But traditional television took a downturn; 12 of the 14 most-viewed shows of the year were sporting events, and the regular shows that do show up in the top 20 were uniformly down from their 2011 peaks (give or take a patriotism-wave-riding Britain’s Got Talent). And album sales, even including digital sales, were down a troubling 10%.
The wider meaning of these figures for the British media industries will be ruminated upon elsewhere. I’m here to look at just how many of these changes were affected by US cultural exports, and what this all means for the future of American pop culture in the UK.
Cinema
The biggest movie of the year (and of all-time) in Britain was Skyfall, which raked in over £100m (roughly in line with what you’d expect a movie that took $1bn in the US to earn). Of course, James Bond is a very British character, and the cast and crew of the movie are as British as kidney pie, so despite technically being a UK/US co-production, it seems disingenuous to count it as a feather in Hollywood’s “England” cap.
Among actually-American titles, The Dark Knight Rises won the UK battle, earning around £55m. It was up on the performance of its predecessor, and actually did proportionately better here in Britain than it the States. By way of (slight) contrast, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers had to settle for third here (vs first place in the US), with its ~£50m take behind the US pace by around 25%. Buzz around The Avengers wasn’t quite as feverish here as in the USA, and it’s possible that excitement for The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t tempered quite as much here by the Colorado tragedy. Batman is arguably a more iconic internationally-recognised character, too, whereas the likes of Captain America haven’t garnered much British appeal (the Captain earned less than everything from The Artist to Rio in Britain). Indeed, the only previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that became megahits here were the Iron Man films, so it’s plausible that the UK was a tougher market for Marvel to crack with the Avengers; that it still did as outstandingly as it did is a credit to Disney and Marvel’s marketing team. There’s also my ongoing theory that Britons are more open to darker cinematic fare; that may seem churlish when we are talking mere degrees of “vanishingly successful”, but overperformance of fellow summer blockbuster Prometheus, dark horror film Sinister and spooky kid-flick ParaNorman lend credence to the idea.
Comedy-wise, I continue to maintain that Britain is open to quirkier, darker comedic fare, and Ted‘s overperformance by 50% lends weight to that. Ditto The Dictator, whose success here may be partially accounted for by Britain’s love of Sacha Baron-Cohen, but seems more likely to be down to a fantastic, rude joke-laden marketing effort from Paramount. 21 Jump Street underperformed slightly – the source material is not as familiar to Britons – but quirky year-enders Seven Psychopaths and Silver Linings Playbook both nicely outperformed expectations. Killer Joe and Ruby Sparks, which I’ve discussed previously, also did US-beating numbers. The performance of Think Like A Man, a comedy with a predomenantly black cast, is one of the year’s most interesting box office stories, will be discussed by me in a future column.
US action movies, meanwhile, were a mixed bag this year. Taken 2 did oddly well, but The Expendables 2 and The Bourne Legacy underperformed, and the less said about Act of Valour‘s downright abysmal performance the better. Most other stereotypical blockbuster genres held up well, though, with stalwarts from the superhero (Spider-Man), kiddie (Ice Age 4, Madagascar 3, Brave) and fantasy (Twilight 5, The Hunger Games) categories performing strongly, as expected. Looper was a strong crossover sci-fi movie, proportionately outperforming its US returns and a rare bright light in a relatively weak category, but the most exciting surprise hits of 2012 were from movies with a predominantly British interest: The Woman in Black, War Horse, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (all of which garnered over £20m here). Whether that success is down to the quality of the movies or our patriotism coming out in full force for 2012, who can say?
I remain confident in my predictions that, based on 2012, the major studios will continue to give offbeat comedy the benefit of the doubt in the UK, given its continued success here. Action movies are a tougher call; of course all the studio-backed guns’n’cars monstrosities will be released here in 2013, and they’ll mostly do well enough, but I suspect some Act of Valour-sized cracks will begin to show. Darker fare from all genres will remain successful, with all the many and sundry Twilight ripoffs heading our way liable to do great business here, alongside gothic horrors and nightmare-fuel childrens’ flicks (Hansel and Gretel is already being pushed hard).
UK/USA differences in 2012 box office top 20: relatively minimal.
TV
Unlike the world of cinema, the televisual landscape of Britain remains steadfast in its aims to avoid imported fare on any real scale. Hence, 2012’s top 20 broadcasts are British through and through, there’s nary an American sitcom nor procedural to be found. Rather like the USA, the most-viewed broadcasts tend to be live sports broadcasts and reality show finals. Of course, the specifics differ – we liked football/soccer, and Britain’s Got Talent, whereas you guys liked football/football and American Idol – but both of our nations seemingly form greater consensus on those genres than sitcom or drama. Unfortunately, data beyond that top 20 is uncompiled, so I’ve had to trawl through the archives myself to find info from beyond the surface.
There’s little to no correlation with the US’ own highest-rated scripted shows, whether you go by total persons or adults 18-49. Top-rated smashes-in-the-States NCIS and The Big Bang Theory garner numbers strong for their channels here but still unquestionably well behind home-grown soaps and drama series. (Each typically garners around 2 million viewers for a new episode here; by contrast, Eastenders or Downton Abbey can rack up around 9 million easily.) Ditto Modern Family, which has settled in well alongside The Simpsons on Sky1, but is restrained by that same home. You can ponder about its weak ratings all day long, but it comes down to its Murdoch-owned location on pay-TV. If one of the major channels picked it up, it would do better. (But they wouldn’t.)
Homeland does slightly better, by virtue of being located on the free-to-air Channel 4. It’s recently been getting around 3 million viewers, which puts it firmly atop C4’s weekly ratings charts. It’s the closest thing there currently is to a US-born “hit” here, gaining critical acclaim and viewer attention. Elsewhere, Family Guy and Two Broke Girls are among the best-rated American half-hours, second only to Big Bang; Family Guy thanks to its frat-boy icon status and saturation scheduling, and Two Broke Girls thanks to well-anchored positioning (on the channel E4, home of CBS stablemates Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother).
For most other American teevee, though, it’s not great news. Highly-rated US cable hit The Walking Dead (by some metrics the most popular drama on all of US TV) doesn’t perform anywhere near as well here as at home; given its pay-TV home, it does OK, and hits new highs year-on-year, but still remains mired around 1.1 to 1.2 million viewers, less than repeats of The Simpsons get on free-to-air Channel 4. Among other A18-49 chart stalwarts, CSI, The Mentalist, and Grey’s Anatomy do numbers OK for their networks, while Mike and Molly, Two and a Half Men and Elementary, relegated to niche channels, barely register at all. Lower down in the charts, don’t even bother. Half of NBC’s Thursday lineup isn’t even broadcast over here; most quality cable material is shown on Sky Atlantic, the prestigious network with great TV that no-one watches.
There’s no real reason to expect things to change in 2013. BBC4 has finally picked up Parks and Recreation, but nobody watches BBC4. With home-grown shows pulling in the punters in far greater numbers than imports, it’s likely that American TV mostly remains the forte of niche cable channels, with a few crossover “hits” (Homeland, Big Bang Theory) pulling in slightly stronger numbers on slightly more visible homes. Still, many of the megahits fractured in the UK this year (The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, Britain’s Got Talent were all down year-on-year), and it’s not difficult to envisage the trend of FX’s Walking Dead broadcasts occuring elsewhere too, as buzz for stronger and/or more populist imported shows heightens. But I wouldn’t expect to look at next year’s version of the chart below in 365 days time and suddenly see the UK side dominated by CBS procedurals.
UK/USA differences in popular 2012 TV broadcasts: totally different, yet somehow the same.
Music
American has fared poorly in the music sector, too, and here it’s at least something of a surprise; while our broadcast airwaves are dominated by home-grown shows, our radio stations are less clear-cut, and our charts typically offer a strong mix of material from both sides of the Atlantic. Yet the official top 40 albums of 2012 in Britain is just 1/3 American, with Lana Del Rey and Rihanna the only US artists to make the top 10. Our top 40 singles of the year make for equally traumatic reading for the States: among the top 20, a mere five emnate from the States, a showing on par with the traditionally under-represented mainland Europe
American rock is particularly poorly represented on both charts; the only notable presences are fun., riding the wave of the Glee train, and The Killers, who have a history of British success. Major albums from the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, acts whose fanbases still prefer the LP format, didn’t make the cut, and mid-table rockers like Green Day and The Gaslight Anthem dropped like a stone following first-week pent-up demand. Stalwarts of other genres like Rihanna, Pink and Nicki Minaj do their best to bridge the gap, with a number of major artists failing to match sales peaks hit by previous albums.
Part of the problem is simple: a number of major US acts simply didn’t release material in 2012, leaving space for other acts – in many cases, non-American – to take up the mantle. Had 2012 seen a major Lady Gaga or Katy Perry album release, for example, they would have almost certainly taken up residence in the year-end top 20. There’s also the well-worn issue of different genres of music falling in and out of fashion; Eurodance and British folky singer-songwriter are very much in vogue now, compared to R’n’B’s domination of the mid-2000s charts. British consumers will inevitably once again turn en masse to another USA-dominated genre in the coming years.
But another more problematic, long-term issue is the Internet. Unlike with movies and TV, which are still largely dominated by the major corporations, music creators have truly taken advantage of the potential the Internet can bring about, and works from every corner of the globe are now finding it easier to shine among the US- and UK-dominated major labels. Swedish House Mafia, Labrinth and of course PSY have gained traction over the web, successors to the Lily Allen crown; as listeners branch further afield and YouTube fills ever fuller with material both novelty and sincere from mainland Europe, Asia, and Latin America, the majors face ever further competition.
We might not know the difference between “led” and “lead”, but we do enjoy taking joy in the fact that we beat those ‘muricans.
Everything else
I couldn’t find full comparative data on books and video games yet; I have loose plans for dedicated posts about both of those sectors, though. (Unfortunately, the fact that 50 Shades of Grey is English really hampers my import buzz..). I’m back next week with a look at the British news media: an Idiot’s Guide to the who, what and why of our newspapers, and how they compare to the major American titles; the following week, I’ll be looking at the success of American adult animation in the UK, and our own attempts to replicate their success.
More from the week that was:
- Due to the festive break, it’s been quiet in terms of music releases and opinion polls, and most American TV shows have taken a back-seat to homegrown festive shows. (Eastenders, Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey and Coronation Street dominated those crucial Christmas Day ratings.) There’s really only fresh news to report from the box office, where a festive battle between heavyweights The Hobbit, Life of Pi and (after Christmas) Jack Reacher has been pleasant news for cinema owners across the land. The Hobbit has of course been winning out, but Pi and Reacher are each doing very strongly too, with Pi in particular really connecting with British audiences. Pitch Perfect has been doing decently too, following a saturation marketing campaign. Parental Guidance actually did fine as well, with £1.3m in its first weekend. I guess the kind of people who go to see that movie don’t really care about poor reviews. (Or, in my case, just wanted to see how bad it could be..) Figures via Charles Gant. This coming weekend, Playing for Keeps goes up against European productions Quartet and The Impossible. Spoiler alert: it will lose the box office battle, badly.