This article focuses on the sale and purchase of TV programs and formats at international trade fairs and its implications for our understanding of global television audiences, fans, and texts. Through analytic engagement with the core concept of flow, the authors explore three related issues: (a) how viewers and fans are positioned in distribution practices, (b) the ease through which various televisual elements travel through the distribution process, and (c) the limitations of a conceptual reliance on "traveling" discourses to our understanding of global TV trade.

Our research analyzes the international market for exported television. As a culture industry it is complicated by product uniqueness, culturally-based differences in understandings of desirable product attributes, and the considerable uncertainty of successful reception as programs cross regional, national, and international borders. We draw upon the concept of a culture world to examine both the ways in which matters of cultural production and distribution are "managed" through the business arrangements industry participants rely upon and the ways that the attributes of the products themselves are configured and interpreted by buyers and sellers as they cross borders. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.