Branding Bridges
In 2011 the United Kingdom’s leading pay TV provider launched a new channel, Sky Atlantic. Central to the channel’s promotional appeal was the sourcing of “quality” American drama, primarily via a £150 million deal with HBO that secured exclusive rights to its past and future productions. Building on ideas of importation as a process of assimilation with the national market, this chapter considers how, for Sky Atlantic, interaction between transnational and national industrial spheres has not simply served as a means of acquiring content, but has itself formed a key brand narrative. Through close reading of promotional texts surrounding the channel’s launch, as well as industrial data and press reception, the chapter demonstrates that recent commercial and technological developments in British television are leading not to a dissolution of national borders, but to the intense monetization of control over the flows that take place across them.