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Because the name Europe refers to different geographical, cultural, and political spaces, statistics on European media use also refer to varying regions. Reference is often made to the European Union (EU) and its current 25 member states: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Focusing on this group of countries makes it easier to describe the European media landscape because these states have agreed on some common principles regarding their media systems, and there are more advanced comparative statistics on this level. Because of their close cultural, political, and economic relationships to the EU, Norway and Switzerland are often included in European statistics. In addition, there are many countries in eastern and southeastern Europe that belong to the wider understanding of Europe; these include Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, and Turkey.

Transnational Media in Europe

Despite recent trends of globalization and European integration, the European media landscape is still divided along national and cultural boundaries. One important reason for the continuing predominance of national or even regional and local media is the plurality of languages in Europe. Even among the 25 member states of the European Union, there are 19 different national languages and an additional number of regional languages. On the basis of the numbers of native speakers, German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish are the most important languages. For international communication, English is by far the most important language; around 50% of the people within the European Union are able to understand English. However, this does not mean that these people use English-language media. Thus, in general, the European media landscape is strictly divided by language barriers.

Beyond this general rule, only a few European media outlets target transnational European audiences. In television, the most important examples are Eurosport, a commercial sports channel, Euronews, an initiative by several public broadcasters to offer a transnational news channel, and the commercial music television station MTV, which offers several versions of its programming for different parts of Europe. MTV has been particularly important for young people in providing current pop music, stories about famous pop idols, and innovative entertainment formats for young people.

Although dedicated transnational media do not play a significant role in Europe, there are other ways to distribute international content to children and young people. The most important one is international pop music as distributed by music television, by hit radio stations, and via the Internet. In this respect, European children and adolescents tend to follow international trends; with the exception of some outstanding stars, they do not prefer the respective national music. The other kinds of international content are movies, television series, and television entertainment programs. As throughout the world, a large amount of programming on European television and movie theaters is imported from the United States; according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, U.S. imports constituted about two thirds of the overall imports of television fiction. Thus, for example, German or French viewers are much more likely to see American movies or series than Spanish or British movies or series. This general rule is also true for children's programs: All European children know Disney and other American productions; more recently, the globally distributed Japanese anime formats like Pokémon and Dragonball have become familiar to many European children. So far, there has been only limited exchange of children's programs within Europe; however, the European Broadcasting Union and its Working Group for Children's Programmes have set out to further international co-productions and exchange between the public broadcasters in Europe.

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