Britain is better at exporting media than almost anything else. The world’s biggest newspaper website, Mail Online, is British. British musicians have supplied the world’s bestselling album in five out of the past six years, and the country accounts for 13% of the global album market. “We’re about twice as good at this as we are at selling other services, and four times better than we are at selling goods,” says Geoff Taylor, head of the BPI, the record labels’ trade association.
Despite a glut of reality shows on television, an episode of “X-Factor” can draw as many as 10m viewers in Britain. It has conquered the world, too. Versions of it exist in about 40 countries, from Colombia to Kazakhstan. It is in the vanguard of British exports of reality-TV formats—a small industry, but one that Britain unquestionably dominates.
