Sir Howard Stringer, an American Brit, at Sony

The New York Times reports on the unexpected ascent of Sir Howard Stringer to the top job of chairman/chief executive of the Japanese Sony Corporation, one of the globe's largest media companies. In a special "Man in the News" piece in today's paper, Bill Carter of the Times provides an admiring overview of this Welsh-born, Oxford-educated Brit who left Britain for America as a young man, found himself drafted during the Vietnam War, then returned to begin a shining career in the U.S. media, first at CBS and later with Sony's U.S. operations. Along the way he got a knighthood from the queen, and he still splits his time between New York and England.

Carter's piece notes how Stringer's very British persona may well have helped him considerably as he made his way through the U.S. corporate world. Even during his most controversial corporate action, the evisceration of CBS's news division in the late 1980s,

Sir Howard was never widely blamed for all that bloodletting .... The main explanation for that accomplishment, cited by associates of Sir Howard, then and now, is his most outstanding management skill: his personal charm. Certainly few network newspeople had ever been told they were losing their jobs with so much sensitivity - and in such an elegant British accent.

Stringer epitomizes a key point that characterizes not only external British media operations (such as the BBC) that operate within the United States, but also British individuals who operate within the U.S. media system: their ability to ingratiate themselves with and be accepted by their American hosts while still maintaining a veneer of "classy" foreign cultural independence that sets them apart from other, "more" foreign countries and people. Like a good drama or sit-com, Brits in America are familiar enough to be comfortable with, but just different enough to seem exciting, distinctive, and (usually) classy. Bill Carter notes that at 63, "Sir Howard has built his long record of success on shrewd adaptation to circumstances." You could say something similar about British media's infiltration of the United States.