Abstract: It is a pervasive phenomenon that more and more people watch American TV series and abandoned our own programs. The motivation of writing this article is mainly to find out the advantages and disadvantages of the operation American television industry and learn the advantages by comparing with our own operation. This article will start probing the reason from analyzing the competitive market structure of the American television industry and explaining what the normal television market structure is by scanning the change of the market structure in the American television industry. 

　　　Through studying the development history of the American television industry, the basic platforms, the types of programs, the law background and competition environment, this article try to find out the commons and differences between American and Chinese television industry. By probing the law background to find out the imperfection of our law which is granted too much right to a single organization and prevent good programs from production and competing with each other. By referring to the developing history and market structure to learn precious experience for improving our own market structure. 

　　　Although in the past years, Chinese television industry has great progress, we still don’t have many good original programs. If the Chinese television wants to win their audience back, it must keep innovating, reducing the monopoly of the organization and executing the globalization strategy.

Key words: television industry mechanism; market structure; competition and monopoly; regulation mode