The Global Village Tunes In

By Laurence Zuckerman

Bobbie Battista, an anchorwoman for Cable News Network, is not exactly a household name in the U.S., but she is a celebrity in Poland. French, Italian and Japanese viewers now wake up to the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, while Australians fall asleep to the sound of Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel of NBC's Today show -- at midnight. Marshall McLuhan's oft-cited 1967 declaration is finally coming to pass: "We now live in a global village . . . a simultaneous happening."

No network exemplifies this vision more than CNN, whose service is currently available in 58 countries. When President Reagan arrives in Moscow this week to meet with Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, CNN will provide a special broadcast on a low-power UHF channel available to most Muscovites. The cable network will soon begin selling a Spanish-language news program to broadcasters in several countries in Latin America.

Economics, not communications theory, has been the real impetus for the explosion in the export of U.S. news shows. "What we've got here are programs that are already produced," says Samuel Roberts, executive director of international broadcasts for CBS News. "Anything that we sell for overseas is just gravy." An increase in the number of communications satellites and the relaxation of strict state regulation of TV in many countries have encouraged the growth of new broadcast and cable channels. ABC has signed a deal with Dublin-based Anglo-Vision to distribute its news shows to hotels in 17 European countries. And the television version of USA Today, set to make its debut in September, has already been sold to broadcasters in Australia, the Philippines and Argentina.

So far, earnings from the networks' burgeoning overseas sales are more significant "in the promise than in the reality," says NBC News President Lawrence Grossman. What the export market does provide, however, is an elite audience, composed largely of international businessmen, government officials, journalists and opinion makers.The houses of parliament in Sweden and Norway receive CNN, and Italian President Francesco Cossiga is said to be a fan. When CNN aired a briefing on the Middle East by Secretary of State George Shultz last February, Jordan's King Hussein, watching in Paris, quickly called the network's Atlanta headquarters to respond.

) Such close monitoring can cut both ways for a journalist in the field. CNN's Latin-American correspondent Lucia Newman was taunted by a mob opposed to Panamanian Strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega after she was seen smiling during a televised interview with the general. But when ousted President Eric Arturo Delvalle granted an interview to a U.S. network, he chose CNN because of its high profile in Panama. Ultimately, Newman's reporting offended Noriega, and she was expelled from the country.

In some countries, the influx of American news telecasts has rubbed off on domestic productions, which now copy the slick look of U.S. programs on their own news shows. Not long ago, Japanese broadcasts resembled a televised newspaper, long on talking heads, with little in the way of graphics or live news coverage. "The introduction of CNN to Japan has changed the way the other networks cover foreign news," says Keiji Koyama of Japan's TV Asahi.

But many governments consider the availability of foreign TV news programs subversive. Individual ownership of satellite dishes is restricted in most of the East bloc and many other countries, including India, Singapore and South Africa. "We may not be able to check foreign TV's intruding into our lives for much longer," admitted Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in a recent speech. Indeed, the global village is growing bigger every day.

With reporting by Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta and Naushad S. Mehta/New York