American television programmes manage to cross cultural and linguistic frontiers with great ease. This phenomenon is so taken for granted that hardly any systematic research has been done to explain the reasons why these programmes are successful or, even more fundamentally, whether and how such quintessentially American products are understood. The often heard assertion that this phenomenon is part of a process of cultural imperialism presumes, first, that there is an American message in the content or the form; second, that this message is somehow perceived by viewers; and, third, that it is perceived in the same way by viewers in different cultures.