Television Across Asia: TV Industries, Programme Formats and Globalisation

Television across Asia

This book explores the trade in television programme formats, which is a crucially important ingredient in the globalization of culture, in Asia. It examines how much traffic there is in programme formats, the principal direction of the flow of such traffic, and the economic and cultural significance of this trade for the territories involved, and for the region as a whole. It shows how new technology, deregulation, privatization and economic recession have greatly intensified competition between broadcasters in Asia, as in other parts of the world, and discusses how this in turn has multiplied the incidence of television format remakes, with some countries developing dedicated format companies, and others becoming net importers and adapters of formats. Albert Moran is Senior Lecturer at Griffith University. He has written extensively on the Australian screen and on international aspects of film and television. Recent books include Film Policy: International, National and Regional Perspectives and Copycat TV: Globalization, Programme Formats and Cultural Identity. His current research includes a reinterpretation of the development of Australian television, a handbook on business/legal aspects of formats and a study of the global flows of fiction formats. Michael Keane is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Creative Industries Research and Application Centre (CIRAC) at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Current research interests include television format trade in Asia and the internationalization of the creative industries in East Asia. He is co-editor of Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis (with Stephanie H. Donald and Yin Hong).

RoutledgeCurzon Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia Series editor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Queensland University of Technology

The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new and established scholars in the West and the East, on all aspects of media, culture and social change in Asia. 1 Television across Asia Television industries, programme formats and globalization Edited by Albert Moran and Michael Keane

Television across Asia Television industries, programme formats and globalization

Edited by Albert Moran and Michael Keane

First published 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group Compilation and editorial matter © 2004 Albert Moran and Michael Keane; individual chapters © 2004 the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-18051-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-34433-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–30905–0 (Print Edition)

Contents

List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements 1 Television formats in the world/the world of television formats

vii viii xi

1

ALBERT MORAN

2 Asia: new growth areas

9

MICHAEL KEANE

3 Feeling glocal: Japan in the global television format business

21

KOICHI IWABUCHI

4 A local mode of programme adaptation: South Korea in the global television format business

36

DONG-HOO LEE

5 Cloning, adaptation, import and originality: Taiwan in the global television format business

54

YU-LI LIU AND YI-HSIANG CHEN

6 Coping, cloning and copying: Hong Kong in the global television format business

74

ANTHONY FUNG

7 A revolution in television and a great leap forward for innovation? China in the global television format business MICHAEL KEANE

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Contents

8 Let the contests begin! ‘Singapore slings’ into action: Singapore in the global television format business

105

TANIA LIM

9 Copied from without and cloned from within: India in the global television format business

122

AMOS OWEN THOMAS AND KEVAL J. KUMAR

10 Closing the creativity gap – renting intellectual capital in the name of local content: Indonesia in the global television format business

138

PHILIP KITLEY

11 Reformatting the format: Philippines in the global television format business

157

JOSEFINA M.C. SANTOS

12 Distantly European? Australia in the global television format business

169

ALBERT MORAN

13 An export/import industry: New Zealand in the global television format business

185

GEOFF LEALAND

14 Joining the circle

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ALBERT MORAN AND MICHAEL KEANE

Bibliography Index International television formats and programme titles index

205 219 221

Tables

4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 8.1 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

Import of programmes by television networks Programme origins of ten television channels in one week Sources of television programme formats from ten channels Examples of television programme formats Local idol-dramas produced by terrestrial and cable television channels Kinds of programme variations resulting from foreign programme adoption Major quiz shows Weekly television programming schedule of the four key channels covering a total of 90% of Singapore households Estimated programme sources on central Indian prime time, 2001 Adaptations of foreign programme formats – apparent, acknowledged or alleged Licensed format programmes screened in recent years on Indonesian television Percentages of local programmes and imported programmes Pay TV services in Indonesia Indonesian programmes allegedly ‘inspired by’ or adapted from international formats

39 61 63 65 70 77 83 115 125 126 139 142 142 144

Contributors

Yi-Hsiang Chen is Associate Professor in the Department of Public Communications at Shih Hsin University in Taiwan. She has received grants from Taiwan’s National Science Council for a research project in the area of media diversity. Current research interests include diversity studies in television programming, prime time television dramas and language variety in Taiwan TV programmes. Anthony Fung is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His PhD dissertation at the University of Minnesota was on theories of political economy of communication in Hong Kong. Research interests include youth, music and popular culture, cultural studies and cultural identity, gender identity and new media technologies. He is co-author (with Koichi Iwabuchi and Michael Keane) of Out of Nowhere: Television Formats and the East Asian Cultural Imagination (Hong Kong University Press). Koichi Iwabuchi is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the International Studies Division of the International Christian University, Tokyo. After working for NTV (Nippon Television Corporation) for 10 years, he undertook a doctorate at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He has published many articles on cultural globalization and transnationalism both in English and Japanese. Main English publications include Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism and Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas in East/Southeast Asia; and Out of Nowhere: Television Formats and the East Asian Cultural imagination (Hong Kong University Press). Michael Keane is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Creative Industries Research and Application Centre (CIRAC) at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Current research interests include television format trade in Asia and creative industries internationalization in East Asia. He is co-editor of Media in China:

Contributors ix Consumption, Content and Crisis (with Stephanie H. Donald and Yin Hong), and co-author of Out of Nowhere: Television Formats and the East Asian Cultural Imagination (Hong Kong University Press). Philip Kitley is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. He has written extensively on television and media in Indonesia and has published Television, Nation and Culture in Indonesia (Ohio University Press) and edited Television, Regulation and Civil Society in Asia (RoutledgeCurzon). Current research is concerned with the idea of the public and popular sovereignty in Indonesia and is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. Keval J. Kumar is Director of the Resource Centre for Media Education and Research, and Reader in Communication and Journalism at the University of Poona, India. He is the author of Mass Communication in India, Media Education, Communication and Public Policy in India, and co-author of Environmentalism and the Mass Media-The NorthSouth Divide. Dr Kumar has presented several papers on national and transnational television in India. Geoff Lealand is a Senior Lecturer in Screen and Media Studies at the University of Waikato. His research and teaching interests include children and media, television studies, journalism training, and big issues of national identity and cultural production. Much of 2002 was spent attempting to maintain some critical distance for teaching purposes, as The Lord of the Rings’ fever swept through New Zealand. Dong-Hoo Lee is Associate Professor of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Incheon, Korea. She obtained her PhD degree at New York University. After moving back to Korea, she briefly worked with the Seoul Broadcasting System. She has written several articles on the hybrid nature of media culture in Korea. Her research interests include media theory and local media culture. Tania Lim is a PhD candidate at the Creative Industries Research and Application Centre (CIRAC) at the Queensland University of Technology. Her current research interests include television format trade in Asia, international co-productions, globalization and Asian television industry development and the internationalization of the creative industries in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. She has worked for 6 years with the Singapore Broadcasting Authority covering areas such as international co-productions and industry development. Yu-li Liu is Professor in Radio and Television at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. She has received grants from the US Fulbright Foundation and Taiwan’s National Science Council. Research interests include electronic media law and regulation, new communications

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Contributors technology, telecommunications and media management. Her numerous books include Multi-channel TV and Audience, Cable TV Management and Programming Strategy, and Cable TV Programming and Policy in China. Consultancies have involved the Telecommunication Advisory Board of the Directorate General of Telecommunication, the Ministry of Transportation and Communication and the TV Program Evaluation Commission (Government Information Office). In 1997, she authored the White Paper of Culture–Radio and Television for the Taiwan Council of Cultural Affairs.

Albert Moran is Senior Lecturer at Griffith University. He has written extensively on the Australian screen and on international aspects of film and television. Recent books include Film Policy: International, National and Regional Perspectives and Copycat TV: Globalization, Programme Formats and Cultural Identity. His current research includes a reinterpretation of the development of Australian television, a handbook on business/legal aspects of formats and a study of the global flows of fiction formats. Josefina M.C. Santos is Assistant Professor at the College of Mass Communication of the University of the Philippines Diliman where she teaches undergraduate subjects such as media and society, television production, and graduate subjects including broadcast criticism and development broadcasting. Amos Owen Thomas is Senior Lecturer in marketing and international business at Griffith University, Australia. His research specialization is the global media industry, with reference to the Asia-Pacific region. Dr Thomas has presented on his research findings at recent international conferences. Several articles and book chapters related to this work are forthcoming. His book Borderless Media Markets is published by Hampton Press.

Acknowledgements

Professor Tom O’Regan, Director of the Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy at Griffith University had a major hand in bringing us together and helping us to identify common research interests in a project of this kind. Part of the initial study – that to do with Australia, India and the People’s Republic of China – was made possible by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Small Grant awarded by Griffith University in the year 2000. In turn, we have been able to extend the scope and deepen the significance of this research thanks to the award of an ARC Discovery Grant for the period 2002 to 2004 for the project entitled Economic, Legal And Cultural Dynamics of Format Flows in the Asia/Pacific Region. Koichi Iwabuchi would like to acknowledge to Hoso-Bunka Broadcasting Foundation (Japan) for a grant to support his research in Japan in 2000/1. The enthusiastic cooperation of all contributors named in this project has made it a stimulating intellectual journey. In addition, we would also like to thank the following institutions for the support that they have made available to the contributors: the International Christian University, Tokyo (Koichi Iwabuchi), Queensland University of Technology (Michael Keane), the University of Incheon, Korea (Lee Dong-Hoo), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Anthony Fung), Taiwan National Chengchi University, Shih Hsin University (Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen), Griffith University, Brisbane (Amos Owen Thomas and Albert Moran), the University of Poona, India (Keval Kumar), the University of the Philippines (Josefina Santos), Queensland University of Technology (Tania Lim), the University of Southern Queensland (Phillip Kitley), and Waikato University (Geoff Lealand). Many people assisted in the compilation of the data. In particular we would like to thank the following: in Tokyo, Mr Sugiyama Makito and Ms Yamato Yukiko; in the People’s Republic of China, Ran Ruxue and Yin Hong (Qinghua University), Zhang Hong, and Chen Qiang; in the Republic of Taiwan, Lin He-chin (for valuable research assistance), Angie Chai (Comic Production), and all interviewees named in the chapter. In Singapore, special thanks go out to Ian Chin, Jeffrey Lim, and Tan May Lan for

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Acknowledgements

their invaluable assistance. In the Philippines Josefina Santos wishes to acknowledge the help of Ricco Alejandro Melchor Santos. In Australia we thank Tim Clucas (Network Ten), Dennis Spencer (Southern Star Endemol), Hugh Marks (Nine Network), Fiona Robertson (Seven Network) and Mark Overett; in New Zealand: Julie Christie (Touchdown Productions) and Geoff Steven (TVNZ); in the UK: Eugene Ferguson (Granada), John Gough (Distraction), Jason Daniel and Bob Cousins (Fremantle Media). Joy Chen provided cheerful and dedicated assistance at the editing stage in smoothing out the chapters and helping bring the collection together. We would also like to thank our commissioning editor, Peter Sowden, who had faith in the project. Moira Eminton at Taylor & Francis helped see the book through the publication stage and we are most grateful for her efforts. Thanks also to Steve Turrington and Sarah Coulson for providing copy-editing support. Finally, we would like to thank our partners, Noela Moran and Leigh Zhang-Keane, for their support and help. We would also like to point out that every effort has been made to realize correct translations of programme titles. In the People’s Republic of China we used the ‘hanyu pinyin’ system of romanization, while in the Republic of Taiwan we used the ‘zhuyin’ system. Brisbane 28 February 2003

1

Television formats in the world/ the world of television formats Albert Moran

From Big Brother is watching to watching Big Brother In 1949 British author George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel that told of a future totalitarian society. Like his Animal Farm that had appeared 4 years earlier, the new book marked Orwell’s continued disenchantment with political regimes based on ideological foundations that attempted to govern all aspects of the private and public lives of its citizens. To symbolize the constant surveillance of his fictional citizens of the future Orwell coined the catchphrase ‘Big Brother is Watching’. Orwell himself had no opportunity of seeing whether his fictions would come to pass, dying as he did in 1950. The year 1984 came and went, and on the surface at least the novel’s prophecies had not eventuated. Instead, in 1999, a half-century after the novel’s appearance, Big Brother did happen, although in circumstances very different to those imagined by Orwell. In an ironic twist the Dutch programme Big Brother offered television viewers the opportunity to watch the activities of a small group of young people who had deliberately made themselves available to the constant surveillance of a battery of cameras and microphones. The success of the first version of the programme prompted the remaking of the format in over thirty different national settings across the world as television producers and broadcasters, as well as audiences, fell under its spell. Taking Big Brother as index, there is no doubt that the past half-century has seen dramatic and significant changes in the economic, social and political lives of populations. Starting with the Cold War aftermath of the Second World War followed by the two international oil crises of the 1970s, there has occurred a series of profound political and economic events that have helped bring about a different world order in the recent present from that which existed at the time of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s publication. Among the most public signs of this change have been the rise of unemployment in the advanced economies of the West and inflation in the Third World, the steady dissolution of the social welfare state and the advent of trade liberalization, the formation of new international trading blocs and the end of the Cold War (Galtung 1993). War and physical

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Albert Moran

disasters, along with changing labour markets and tourism have led to an ever-increasing mobility of populations both within and between nationstates (Castles and Miller 1993). At the cultural level there have been equally significant albeit less visible developments, not least in the areas of transportation and communications, that are profoundly changing populations’ relationships with space and time. Various explanations have been offered as a means of making sense of this change, most notably the notion of globalization.

Economic globalization In the past, terms such as ‘modernity’ or ‘transnationalization’ were preferred labels for summarizing and understanding such changes; now ‘globalization’ has become the favourite epithet, one of the most persistent buzzwords of recent times. Simply put, the idea of globalization is the claim that a worldwide system of economic, cultural and political interdependence has come into being or is in the process of forming. Older systems that organized the distribution of political, economic, and cultural power and generally existed on a national basis are being superseded by a more international set of relations whose reach is well nigh universal (cf. Lash and Urry 1987). The nation-state is withering away or is already dead (cf. Horsman and Marshall 1994). Proponents of an economic globalization thesis assert that a fundamental economic re-ordering is at work which is determining this change: the change is a structural one involving not an evolution but a profound break with the international economic system of the past, a transformation where a global economy, a global culture and a world without frontiers is coming into being. Drawing on signs ranging from the deregulation of the international currency market and the banking industry to the advent of the Internet, advocates of this view assert that more and more of the internal economic management of nation-states is beyond the control of agencies such as national governments. Transnational corporations, often with incomes that surpass those of nation-states, the capacity to locate wherever market advantage dictates and an international reach that make them accountable to no national government, are the principal economic actors on this global stage (cf. Aksoy and Robins 1992). The role of national governments is akin to that of local or municipal authorities, providing the infrastructure and public goods that the transnational corporations need at the lowest possible cost (Julius 1990). However, such a claim is exaggerated and premature to say the least (cf. Held 1989; Dahrendorf 1990). Although the globalization thesis is extremely fashionable, the nation-state is more persistent and its role continues to be more pivotally important, both internationally and domestically, than the globalists would have one believe. Nevertheless, the world certainly has changed since the 1960s, so that if we do not live in a global-

Television formats in the world 3 ized economy we at least inhabit a highly internationalized one in which most companies trade from their bases within distinct national economies. National policies continue to be necessary; indeed they are indispensable in order to preserve the distinct styles and strengths of a national economic base and the companies that trade from it. A world economy with a high and growing degree of international trade and investment is not necessarily a globalized economy: rather, nation-states, and forms of international regulation created and sustained by these entities, continue to have a fundamental role in providing economic governance (Hirst and Thompson 1995: 177–185).

Cultural homogenization Often accompanying the argument of economic globalization is the claim of the advent of an increasingly universal culture driven by the globalization of the media of mass communications. Champions of this view adopt either a negative or a positive perspective on the brave new world they see as coming into being. Theorists of the media as early as Guback (1969) and as recent as Miller et al. (2001) have suggested that the increasing tendency for television programmes and films from the advanced countries of the West, especially the USA, to dominate national audio-visual systems is leading to the breakdown of indigenous or national cultures. Whereas the tone here is one of profound regret and mourning, the supplanting of national culture by a global culture is a cause for celebration in the writings of a post-modernist tradition that runs from McLuhan (1962) to Appadurai (1990). According to both branches of the thesis, national culture is more and more eclipsed by a consumer culture that is rapidly becoming worldwide. Cultural difference is disappearing and populations everywhere are more and more subject to the same global culture, transmitted by what is now seen to be a highly internationalized media system. But yet again, this view seems overstated and precipitous. First, it ignores the historical dimensions of the internationalization of communications. The origins of this linkage lie well before the early twentieth century and the advent of Hollywood, and even the nineteenth-century development of the international submarine telegraphic cables and news agencies. Instead, its seed can be found in such events as the sixteenthcentury establishment of an international postal system and even the fifteenth-century organization of a transnational book publishing industry in Western Europe. Equally, to use the apparent global distribution of films, television programmes, music, and other cultural goods and practices as evidence for increasing cultural homogeneity is simply to collapse important differences between marketing mechanisms on the one hand and social effects on the other. Additionally, this marketing mechanism is nowhere near as universal in its reach as proponents of the cultural globalization argument would

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Albert Moran

have us believe. Instead, in the case of film and television, the cultural artefacts in question would at most only reach approximately one-third of the people living on Earth, with a heavy bias towards the OECD and G7 nations (Ferguson 1993: 73). There is also skewed access due to population size, domestic wealth and geography, as well as structured inequality of access due to cultural backgrounds of caste, class or party, on ethnic cultures defended by bloodshed or kinship traditions linked to religious proscriptions (Ferguson 1993: 72). Most importantly for the research summarized in this book, the fact remains that international trade in television programmes, while impressive in terms of its value, is nevertheless dwarfed by the overall volume of television programmes that only receive domestic circulation. Most of the world’s television programmes are produced and broadcast in national television systems and do not receive international distribution. Noting that research on the global flow of television programmes frequently fails to accord an integral place to ‘local and regional’ production and the ‘indigenizing’ of international product within the resulting market mix, O’Regan has suggested that the amount spent on local production is 29 times greater than that spent in international audio-visual exchange (O’Regan 1992: 87). Such an observation gives pause to the claims of cultural globalists and underlines the key role undertaken by national producers and audiences in localizing television. This same axiom is further confirmed from another quarter. A series of national researchers working independently in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Germany and Quebec have shown that where national audiences have a choice they usually prefer television programmes produced nationally or in the national language as against imported programmes (Becker and Shoenbeck 1989; de la Garde 1994; Ferguson 1993; Katz and Wedell 1977; Larsen 1990; Moran 1985; and Silj 1988; 1992).

National television systems The particular subject of this book, however, is television across Asia and the Pacific: the extent to which it is globalizing and regionalizing on the one hand, and the degree to which it is national on the other. Several mechanisms work alone and in concert to create and sustain world television (including that of Asia) as a series of mostly national systems. First, the fact is that the present international system of wire and wireless communication, including television broadcasting, is based not on the recent activities of transnational media corporations but rather on agreements reached between nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Nowell-Smith 1991). This bulwark has been further strengthened by decisions taken by nation-states that affect such matters as television technology and content. National television systems inevitably produce cultural effects. Subjecting the population within a given territory to the

Television formats in the world 5 same type of service helps to produce notions of equality and commonality. Moreover, instituting expectation of rhythms of service further ties national populations to the same flow of content. This enculturation promotes a sense of community among a particular group of viewers within a national territory. As evidenced in many of the examples in this book, such communities are further secured by the deployment of the national language or languages. Yet another crucial mechanism that helps consolidate the local character of a national television system is domestic production. This can be generated from three different sources: locally originated concepts and projects, programme ideas that serve co-production arrangements, and those based on format adaptations. Government policies and media scholarship have frequently had much to say about the first two mechanisms, but little attention has been given to the subject of programme formats and their national adaptation, the point where the global meets the local. It is to this that we now turn.

What is a format? How do we define a television programme format? The term ‘format’ had its origin in the printing industry where it specifies a particular page size. First in radio, and then in television, the term was intimately linked to the principal of serial programme production. A format can be used as the basis of a new programme, the programme manifesting as a series of episodes that are sufficiently similar to seem like instalments of the same programme and sufficiently distinct to register as new and different. Similarly, behind industrial/legal moves to protect formats lies a complementary notion that formats are generative or organizational. Thus from one point of view a television format is that set of invariable elements in a programme out of which the variable elements of an individual episode are produced. Equally, a format can be seen as a means of organizing individual episodes. As a producer once put it: ‘the crust is the same from week to week but the filling changes.’ Although international television industries talk confidently of the format as a single object, it is in fact a complex entity that typically manifests in a series of overlapping but separate forms. These can be summarized as follows. First there is the paper format: a five or six page summary of the main ingredients of the programme and how these ingredients will combine. Second, the ‘bible’: an extensive and detailed document, often running to several hundred pages of printed information, drawings, graphics, studio plans, photographs and so on, that provides the full detail and advice summarized in the paper format. A package of printed information about the scheduling, target audience, ratings and audience demographics based on broadcast history in other television markets constitutes another form of the format, although this material may be lodged in the bible.

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Fourth, scripts derived from earlier productions of the programme are also useful vehicles for deriving knowledge of the format. Other parallel sources can include off-air tapes of previous versions of the programme, inserts of film footage, computer software and graphics. Finally, the format can also arrive in human form when a consultancy service is provided to new producers by the company owning the format. However, in a real sense, to ask the question ‘What is a format?’ is to ask the wrong kind of question. Such a question implies that a format has some core or essence. As the previous paragraph suggests, ‘format’ is a loose term that covers a range of items that may be included in a format licensing agreement. The term has meaning not so much because of what it is but because of what it permits or facilitates. A format is an economic and cultural technology of exchange that has meaning not because of a principle but because of a function or effect.

Why adapt a format? The producer’s view As we have already hinted, format trade is meaningful because it helps to organize and regulate the exchange of programme ideas between programme producers across time and space. In the past in the West, but also in the present in many other places including the People’s Republic of China and India, the exchange of production ideas has often been ad hoc. Plagiarism has been, and continues to be rife, although as part of a general international formalization of trade in formats, represented by the formation of the Formats Recognition and Protection Association (FRAPA) in 2000, a regular licence fee system has emerged. Meantime, the international multiplication of television channels available within national boundaries has heightened the need for producers to ensure programming success. In examining the particular significance of formats from the point of view of national television producers we can note constraints relating to programme imports on the one hand and national programme productions on the other. Why be involved in the cost of a format adaptation when it is cheaper to import a finished programme? The simple answer is that so far as local populations are concerned, locally produced programmes, whether based on formats or not, are likely to attract larger audiences than imported programmes. Parallel logic then suggests that local broadcasters will prefer a format adapted programme over an original concept. An original concept is exactly that: untried, untested and therefore offering a broadcaster little in the way of insurance against possible ratings failure. By contrast, formats are almost invariably based on programmes that were successful in other national territories and are therefore likely to repeat this success in the new territory. Of course, there remains the question: why pay a licence fee? Unauthorized infringement may lead to costly legal action. In addition, it may

Television formats in the world 7 damage a producer’s business reputation and may in the future lead other format owners to shun that producer. But as the chapters on industries such as those of the People’s Republic of China and India illustrate, this consideration is not likely to prey on the mind of a local producer in some of the more remote cities, so piracy is often rife in such places. However, the maintenance of one’s international business reputation is likely to be important to producers in the metropolitan centres, so there producers tend to abide by the rules. But beyond these contingent issues, the more positive reason why licence fees are paid is that payment gives complete access to the format’s previous success in another national territory. However – and this is an important point – in licensing a format, a producer is allowed a good deal of flexibility so far as the choice and arrangement of elements in the adaptation are concerned. There is a recognition that the original set of ingredients and their organization may have to be varied in relation to aspects in the new television setting such as production resources, channel image, and buyer preference. The original formula does not have to be slavishly imitated but rather serves as a general framework or guide within which it is possible to introduce various changes. Significantly, under standard format licensing agreements, the variations to a television format developed through adaptation become a further part of the format, with ownership vested in the original owner. Clearly under this type of permitted variation there is no veneration of originality; rather the format is seen as a loose and expanding set of programme possibilities. There is on the part of the owner the overriding imperative to gain maximum commercial advantage from everything generated from the initial set of elements. In turn, the new elements introduced as variations in the adaptation will be as available as the original should a further adaptation of the programme be required. Finally, as part of this industry view of format adaptation, it is worth mentioning the legal situation regarding this kind of commercial property. The attempt to secure legal protection for formats has been sought through three instruments: copyright, breach of confidence and passing off. Copyright appears to be the most important of the three. However, the scope of protection under copyright legislation in various jurisdictions is not large. An apparently new format can be devised by changing characters or other elements in an existing format. In addition, the combination of elements may be protected by copyright but such protection exists in limited degree for the individual elements. And while excessive imitations can be fought with this legislation, the plagiarist who makes minimal changes is likely to succeed. Often the strength of the format lies in the idea that forms its basis and it is this which has been shown to be least protected. In any case there are real doubts whether programme formats can be copyrighted. Nevertheless, as we have already hinted, this fact does not prevent an elaborate legal machinery playing its part in the international format business. Formats are registered for copyright purposes, format

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libraries are bought and sold, licence fees are paid, legal threats are continually made and court actions launched. In fact, for the most part, format owners, producers and others behave as though formats have solid legal protection. This is part of a general industry attempt to add value to the commercial property of the format. The argument then is that format trade is a relatively recent development in the international television industry that has led to both a formalization and a regulation of the movement of programme ideas from one place to another. As we have already suggested, a format is a cultural technology which governs the flow of programme ideas across time and space. The elaboration of what is being transferred together with its embedding in a legal framework has been a powerful means of codifying and stimulating trade in this area. By turning now to an examination of Asia and its cultural configurations, including its television industries, we can lay the groundwork for analyses of the phenomenon of programme format trade and its significance across the region.

2

Asia New growth areas Michael Keane

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. American comedian, Fred Allen (1894–1956)

The previous chapter introduced in broad brushstrokes the issues at stake in this study, beginning with a critique of globalization and moving on to sketch in finer detail national television systems, the role of local content, and the economic importance of formats. The chapter concluded with a brief overview of the vagaries of copyright law as it applies to formats. Here, we initiate a discussion of Asian television systems beginning with a much different perspective on the ramifications of cultural borrowing. In this context we note that the format business straddles the divide between creative endeavour and innovation on the one hand, and slavish imitation on the other. This polarization manifests in widespread misunderstanding of the goals of format producers and distributors, and the role that formats play in the shaping of television schedules. We need therefore to flesh out the in-between issues. These are primarily concerned with the relationship between the format and its localization, television consumption within ‘cultural continents’, and changes in media systems. Taking this further we note the relationship between production and reception within Asia, the growth of television industries in the region and the relationship between formatting and new media distribution platforms that use interactive technologies allowing viewers to feedback responses. This exercise enables us to identify an alternative list of conceptual tools to those championed by political economy scholars.

Imitation, emulation and the bureaucratization of creativity The practice of imitation has been around since antiquity. The very early Confucian scholars advocated imitation over creativity, in effect establishing the foundations for what now constitutes format plagiarism within contemporary media markets. But how can we explain the ignorance, naivety, or even the blatant disrespect for intellectual property that

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surrounds format ‘borrowing’ in many parts of Asia? Are copyright breaches simply a consequence of collectivist legacies? Alford has captured the socially-embedded complexities of intellectual property enforcement that persist to this very day in Asia. He quotes the fifteenth-century Chinese scholar Shen Zhou, ‘if my poems and paintings, which are only small efforts to me, should prove of some aid to the forgers, what is there for me to grudge about’ (cited in Alford 1995: 29). A hundred years later in another geo-cultural continent the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne extolled the virtues of imitation and the joy of adding a piece of one’s own inspiration: ‘The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own’ (De Montaigne 1575). Notwithstanding the respect accorded to the emulation of sages in the eastern hemisphere and the Gallic romanticism of de Montaigne, sharing the fruits of creative endeavour has not stood the test of time. As time passed and modernity came to play a leading hand in the transformation of social relations, creative production was gradually transformed from a relationship of cooperation between artists and patrons into a craft-based workshop model where entrepreneurs headed up economic enterprises that would inevitably be organized as corporations. By the twentieth century the institutionalization of what Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) famously termed the ‘culture industries’ had created a relationship of dependency between creativity, mass production, and economic rents (cf. Caves 2000). With the advent of the film and television industries, the managerial aspect of production became a means of mediating the irrationality of creativity (Ryan 1992: 153). As creative personnel were often considered to be less prone to the logic of the marketplace and inclined to indulge in ‘free flights of imagination’ it was necessary to administer the discipline of repetition and standardization around both work practices and creative output to ensure that commercial goals were realized.

The creative format? The connection between creativity and authorship is widely accepted and there is much that we might add about wilful breaches of copyright in countries within Asia. However we also do need to point out that associating practices of copying in television, a very modern electronic technology, with a pre-modern propensity for emulation is more symbolic than real. Television is an industrialized mass medium where programming decisions are made with full understandings of the ethical and legal ramifications of copying. Imitation is also driven in the modern era by communications technologies that can easily replicate, store, and disseminate content and ideas in a flash. The association of formatting with plagiarism and cloning, while a

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recurring theme in our study, is just one side of a story; as is the view that television formats represent an inevitable consequence of the bureaucratization of creativity resulting in a culture of opportunism and a dumbingdown of national cultures. Despite the fact that television formats are being slavishly imitated and even ‘cloned’, in the process reducing reward and recognition for creators, we also need to recognize the fact that television formats are ostensibly about imitation; that is, licensed formats reward imitation and provide an exchange of economic rents between agents. The format in this sense creates a chain of value that can be modified and extended across national boundaries as well as within national media systems. In this sense we are telling a more multifaceted story: that formats are instrumental in promoting industry development, particularly in marginal systems and that in the process they extend the stock of televisual ideas. The confirmation of a positive spin on formats comes primarily from professionals and intermediaries involved in the format business. Such figures will often ‘fervently’ contend that they are in the business of creativity. Of course, this is an industry view that needs to be subject to the same sort of critical scrutiny that we direct at the cultural imperialism thesis throughout our various chapters.

The forest not the trees Asia means different things for different people, reflecting its heterogeneity and geographical dispersion. In spite of such manifest diversity there has been a tendency over time on the part of media scholars, politicians, and pundits alike to speak of Asia through Orientalist lenses, or conversely to rebut this superficiality by asserting that one has to live in Asia and speak the language to be able to write authoritatively about it. We contend that both these versions of Asia are apparitions, driven by compunctions to see ‘Asia’ as both essential and exceptional. In using the term ‘Asia’ we are attempting to investigate the opening up of new frontiers for television formats more so than to look for commonalities based on socio-political or cultural values. In this sense we began with formats as the key object of the research, chose a geographical region, and looked to see how the global format business was being played out; in the process we discovered unprecedented dynamism within and across the region as well as clues to success and failure of television programming based on social and cultural factors. We may be criticized by some for a lack of coverage of Asian countries or for being too liberal with our definition of Asia. In respect to omissions we plead guilty. But this has more to do with the logistics of putting together a research team capable of writing in English than any absolute privileging of countries. In taking English as the lingua franca of this research we were cognizant that there are many excellent researchers in the Asian field who do not write in English. Our preliminary research sought to ascertain who had written on television

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formats in Asia in any language. We were surprised that the literature was virtually non-existent. This allowed us to build a dedicated team of researchers – either currently living in the countries or having lived there in the past – all of whom had the linguistic capabilities to accomplish our agenda. We have endeavoured to challenge debate about the capacity of media internationalization within Asia by moving away from conventional methodologies and frameworks – even as applied by scholars working within Asian research institutions. During this research we came to understand more about Asia and Asian television industries, not as investigators conducting country-by-county studies (cf. French and Richards 2000; Goonasekera and Lee 1998; Guneratne 2000; Goonasekera and Holaday 1998; Curren and Park 2000) but as researchers mapping out the emerging landscape of television industry development across parts of Asia, and critiquing the role played by television creators and intermediaries in these developments. We have endeavoured through our process to de-essentialize Asia rather than to de-Westernize studies of its media. In understanding Asia in this way we were aware of the legacy of scholarship that pits Asia against the West, inevitably reducing analysis to issues of power and resistance to ‘Westernization’. In our view the main problems with this mode of investigation are one-dimensionality and discount of local knowledge. In contrast to Curren and Park (2000) who note that the core research agenda is national media systems we recognize the internationalization and interdependence of media systems within Asia. How media markets interact with consumer expectations and national policy frameworks within the context of cross-linking institutions and industries has only recently been taken up in English language scholarship (Moeran 2001; Chan 1996; Sinclair et al. 1996; Iwabuchi 2002a; Donald and Keane 2002; Lee 1991; Wee 1997) despite an abundance of industry analyses. In this emerging field there is a need for conceptual tools that are both interdisciplinary and non-reductionist. In adopting this view we are also taking critical aim at sections of the political economy tradition that assert as an article of faith that indigenous culture has been eroded by mass culture, in particular Western consumer culture piped along international routes made safe by co-production agreements and international mergers and acquisitions (Miller et al. 2001) What we are identifying in Asia is the potency of local content, and especially the re-invigoration of local content from within the wider region. Moreover, in relation to the field of television studies in Asia there is little purchase to be gained through explications of the role of supranational institutions such as the World Trade Organization on the flow of programming (cf. French 2000). Here again the assumption is that the flow of content from the Western markets will erode the cultural identity of Asian populations. But this argument misses the point about television in

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Asia. Most nations have quarantined television industries by instituting local content standards and where this is not the case (as in Japan, Hong Kong) governments may seek to restrict foreign content on various ‘morality and national security’ grounds, including invoking Article XIV of the GATS.1 Finally, as in most countries of the world decisions about what programming to buy lies in the hands of managers who are responsive to local audiences and advertisers. In short, the development, translation, and exchange of television ideas across Asia are the subjects of our study. Our findings may disappoint some readers in that they do not present another recital of how Western media overlays its values on acquiescent audiences in developing countries. They tell about indigenous applications of global templates within highly networked and globally linked Asian broadcasting industries and they lead us to challenge the view that the Western media over-determine the global media system.

New growth areas: ‘the industry has changed’ The key to understanding the changing relationship between peripheral media systems and the distribution dominance of USA (Hollywood) is the format. Television formats have emerged over the past few years as an exemplary mode of flexible production within television systems outside of the Western hemisphere, as well as travelling back from East to West along the electronic trade routes opened up by the new global media missionaries. Our initial stimulus came from Albert Moran’s earlier study (Moran 1998) that examined television formats as a component of programming strategies within globally aspirant television networks and production companies. Format license sales are positioned as an alternative revenue stream to finished programmes. As argued in the preceding chapter, the format is a loose term whose utility is embedded in what it permits or facilitates. We therefore began our search by speculating that there are new dynamics of production and exchange within Asia that have implications for the way that people select media. We postulated that the format was playing a central role in determining these choices. This hypothesis was supported by industry debate concerning the advent of multi-channelling and the convergence of delivery platforms, which have on a global scale increased the demand for content and diversified the platforms by which content is distributed and accessed. While content may still be king the format is now the template for local production. These hypotheses were explored through research methodologies that have provided a comprehensive and textually-rich introduction to the cultural, social, and economic dynamics of television format activity within Asia. The findings are far from mundane. We demonstrate the revitalization of local content through the agency of formats. In addition, there is strong evidence within our findings that Western influence is waning in

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television markets in Asia as local productions, many of which are formats or based on formats, consign foreign programmes to the margins of schedules. As an Indonesian producer maintains, talking about the maturity of the industry, the need to buy finished foreign programming has diminished because of the competition to produce good innovative local content (Kitley). In this context we discover a consanguinity of production inputs that are linked to social mores and cultural values. While this does not lead to any particular essentializing conclusions, it does suggest that format adaptations within Asia are influenced by specific structures of feeling. In contrast therefore to the political economy school where the emphasis remains focused on power and effects we turn over different conceptual soil. The core concepts that we identify and problematize are globalization and modernity. In tracking these we follow a line of enquiry taking into account the notions of modelling, cultural borrowing, cultural technology transfer, risk, and local knowledge. Moreover, in contrast to much existing literature that depicts Asian media as unsophisticated compared with the gloss and glitter of Hollywood, we note throughout the capacity of highly ‘wired’ media infrastructure that facilitates new interactive formats, most notably in urban centres such as Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Mumbai, and Jakarta. The idea of modelling is a useful one and it applies to many of the examples in our study. As Braithwaite and Drahos point out, modelling is more than mere imitation. A model is ‘that which is displayed, symbolically interpreted, and copied’ (2000: 581). Of course, the idea of modelling also brings with it a plethora of negative associations including plagiarism, mimicking, and cloning. Equally though, it can also be associated with bench-marking, ‘know-how’ modelling, or in the case of formats what we refer to as ‘cultural technology transfer’: the migration of techniques, practices, and ideas, sometimes codified knowledge in the form of industry bibles, at other time tacit in the sense of learning on the job. For instance, the detailed bible instructions that accompany the localization of The Weakest Link in Hong Kong (Fung) can be contrasted with ‘on-the-job learning’ about how to produce continuous and parallel narratives as identified in the Chinese re-versioning of Coronation Street (Keane). Likewise the transition from producing in-house to outsourcing and the move towards joint venture co-productions (Fung, Iwabuchi) significantly changes the dynamics of the media system. The format, itself bundled with associated promotional gimmicks and products that are often accessible on-line, contributes to expanding the media value chain in unprecedented ways. In the context of industry competition there is the ever-present element of risk. Television production – like many other creative industries – is uncertain and involves a great deal of sunk cost. The format represents a means of obviating risk and obtaining results. The strategy of a quick turn

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over of ideas that is central to the global format business is not inimical to industry development – as studies of Japan and Hong Kong have demonstrated. Yeh and Davis note ‘When a genre or fad proves popular in Hong Kong, it swiftly blazes out of control’ (Yeh and Davis 2002: 2). The key is flexibility and responsiveness. These factors co-exist uneasily with risk minimization. For instance, why would a television network choose to outlay a large amount of money purchasing a franchise when they can simply adapt elements? However, whereas simply pilfering ideas from elsewhere may have worked in the past, now there is no certainty. The studies of Taiwan and Korea indicate the practice of cultural borrowing from Japan and the USA has been occurring for some time. A more recent trend lies in the strategic application of local knowledge to the transferred know-how (Lim). In the end it is fine to borrow and adapt elements but the growing participation of players in what Iwabuchi calls the global television ‘fiesta’, made possible by lower start-up costs, means that audiences have become more savvy to copy-catting and critical of poor imitations, and in a kind of mock celebration of diversity even blasé about other nations copying ‘our’ formats (Iwabuchi). At the end of the day (or night) it is innovative and high-quality programmes that provide the answers by producing income for creators and contributing to the diversity of the fiesta (Liu and Chen; Lim; Fung; Keane). Japan is a key player in the television format business, allowing us to point to distinctive applications of modelling, cultural technology transfer, risk and local knowledge. Japan might be conceived as the architect of cultural formatting in the cultural region that includes Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, the People’s Republic of China, and Singapore. Over the past decade Japan has built a strong cultural presence in these countries to supplement the well-documented out-sourcing of its economic activities. In a sense this indicates a form of muted cultural imperialism expressed as the indirect insertion of Japanese culture into the East Asian region. As Iwabuchi argues elsewhere, Japanese cultural industries are more concerned with indirect export of their cultural products, as well as selling the ‘know-how’ and expertise of how to indigenise Western cultural forms (Iwabuchi 2002b: 256). Japanese formats are to be found in schedules worldwide, and in most instances Japanese origins are erased (mukokuseki) to counter the ‘offensive’ memory of military colonization. The success of Japanese animation in the past decade and more recently formats such as Iron Chef, Future Diary, and Happy Family Plan confirm Japanese producers’ strategies in targeting the global market. Nonetheless, and despite its claim to be the most self-sufficient media market in the world after the USA, Japan has embraced global brand-name quiz shows such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Survivor. However, Japan remains a net exporter in the global format business. Iwabuchi’s description of Japan’s ambivalence to its mimickers demonstrates that origins are now less important given the recognition of ‘ubiquitous modernity’. In the

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re-configuration of production and distribution the Western gaze that has long dominated the material and discursive construction of non-Western modernity ‘melts’ into a global gaze based on the de-centring and pervasive forces of globalization. In saying this Koichi Iwabuchi reiterates that global cultural power has not disappeared: it has been dispersed. In South Korea Japanese programming has exercised a strong attraction for local producers, not the least from the fact that Japanese popular forms have until recently been banned, partly due to the legacy of Japanese colonialism, and for their perceived bad effects on Korean citizens. In spite of these impediments to cultural flow there has been a history of modelling. In critiquing the media imperialism thesis of Western hegemony Lee Dong-Hoo points out that it is Japan that has been culturally signified in the localization of trans-national programmes in Korea. And in strongly echoing Koichi Iwabuchi’s argument, Lee argues that the Korean television industry with limited financial resources has sought to mimic Japanese content and utilise Japanese formatting know-how as a means of piggy-backing on the success of Japanese programmes elsewhere in Asia. However, the real signification of Japanese television occurs in the sometimes subtle, sometimes overt emulation of Japanese popular culture that is in turn recoded to accommodate Korean ‘structures of feelings’. In her discussion Lee Dong-Hoo discusses unlicensed and licensed format adaptations, the former being further differentiated into cloning, developing, and collaging types. Also discussed are cultural attitudes towards wholesale copying of programmes, with the surprising (for some) revelation that Korean producers feel positively disposed towards American generic forms in preference to the ‘suggestive and sensational’ content of Japanese culture. The success of Korea in ‘learning’ from Japan has helped Korean television (and film) industries compete in the Asian marketplace. In the chapter on Taiwan by Liu Yu-Li and Chen Yi-Hsiang we find the heavy – sometimes competing – presence of Japan and Korea. As in Korea, the Taiwan government had applied a ban on Japanese cultural products. However, whereas Korea’s ban remained intact until 2003, Taiwan had opened its cultural borders by 1992, following which Japanese formats and genres gained a strong foothold on Taiwan’s burgeoning cable and satellite channels. In providing a more broad definition of the format as it applies to the Taiwanese mediascape, Liu and Chen work though the range of strategies that Taiwan’s television industry has embraced to keep pace with its neighbours, and ultimately define its own formats. Korean drama has been influential in Taiwan due to its cheaper cost in comparison to Japanese drama. Meanwhile the influence of Japan is reasserted in youthoriented popular culture, illustrated by a case study of the reception of idol drama, fashionable among young working-women and students. The idol drama, which is often based on Japanese manga, became extremely popular in the 1900s, eventually driving Taiwanese producers to localize

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their own idol-drama, the very successful Meteor Garden, which has done big business in Greater China, although banned in the People’s Republic of China for its ‘effects’ on youth. Anthony Fung’s chapter takes up the issue of Hong Kong residents’ aspirations to consume modernity. He argues that the emerging practice of borrowing television formats, or indeed elements of formats, helps to satisfy cosmopolitan desires that on a macro-level enhances Hong Kong’s status as a global city. He provides an alternative model of format adaptation based on two indicators: the ‘origin of the programme format’ and the ‘locale of production’. Taking a case study of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? he shows how struggling network ATV strategically used this global brand-name format to challenge the hegemony of TVB, Hong Kong’s preeminent broadcaster. He positions the emergence of television formats within a broad socio-economic context, arguing that greater social mobility among Hong Kongers due to improved transport infrastructure ultimately forced television stations to be more innovative. In contrast to Iwabuchi’s use of ubiquitous modernity Anthony Fung sees television formats, at least quiz formats, as representative of ‘interim globalization’, a constantly moving apparition that undermines the central argument that globalization is fundamentally transformative. The People’s Republic of China provides a less traversed format trade route – and by way of comparison – a somewhat atypical response to globalization. The format is a relative newcomer within China, although much cultural content over the past four decades has been ‘politically formatted’. Social and political liberalization, along with the maturation of China’s media has played a key role in renovating the media landscape. Foreign distributors have carved out a presence in recent years with global brand name formats, eking out significantly reduced licensing fees in order to stake a presence in the greatest market of all. The big problem for creators is that once a format claims a substantial audience in the Chinese market it is likely that it will be duplicated within a matter of weeks. Michael Keane looks at two perspectives on format activity in China. These are the propositions that the flexible format is tailor-made for the Chinese media environment, which is long accustomed to mimicry and non-creative production. The second proposition is that the format is a development strategy adding to the stock of ideas within the Chinese mediasphere. He uses the terms mimetic isomorphism and R&D to discuss these two positions, and concludes that the presumption that it is only foreign ideas that are indigenized devalues the role of local ingenuity. In actual fact, it is not so much the hybridization of foreign ideas that is at play, but the copying of foreign ideas already localized within China. Singapore is a multi-racial post-colonial city-state with a population of some 4 million people, and some would say a well-deserved reputation for conservative governance. In the context of our study it functions as a gateway between cultural continents. Its small domestic film and television

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sector does not accrue the economies of scale of its larger more exportoriented neighbours, added to which it has the challenge of addressing its media to three distinct cultural groups (Chinese, Indian, and Malay). In locating a competitive advantage Singapore positions itself as a communications hub, a forward-looking global city with a literate population linked to a fast broadband network. This conjuncture of conservatism and technology provides a perfect vehicle for the development of television game shows. Tania Lim gives us an insight into a ‘Singaporean field of production’ that has been reconfigured by multi-channelling, user-customization, and a local propensity for producing lively game shows. The import and subsequent localization of shows such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and The Weakest Link provide interesting examples of how Singapore’s multi-racial policy is used to critique industry logistics. The production of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in Mandarin Chinese provoked passionate outbursts from some ‘non-Chinese’ Singaporeans, insinuating that the show was directed at the highly affluent Chinese majority. Amos Owen Thomas and Keval Kumar shift the focus to the Indian sub-continent where greater impetus for domestic programme production coincided with the rapid growth of domestic commercial television in the 1990s. The resultant competition for advertising through high-rating programmes was one motivation for adaptations of foreign formats. Thomas and Kumar map the phenomenon of such copycats and clones of foreign game-shows, soap operas, and talk-shows in Indian television, exploring the pre-conditions, motivations and rationale of the television industry for adaptations, licensed or otherwise. These include the precedents of adapting Hollywood movies into local languages and the robust hybridity that already existed in various cultural products, given the lack of stringent copyright laws and difficulties of enforcement. They discuss difficulties in establishing clear demarcation between copies, clones and genre. By way of comparison with Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia, they examine the phenomenally successful adaptation of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in India. The findings in India suggest that the incidence and success of format adaptation in developing countries can best be understood within cultural and economic contexts. The success of formatted quiz shows is therefore directly associated with people’s aspirations of success. In the modern fiesta success has become culturally and economically signified as demonstrated in India and Hong Kong. There is also a strong relationship between success, knowledge and nation building in countries where there have been legacies of authoritarianism. Singapore, the People’s Republic of China, and Indonesia all provide rich examples where the take-up of quiz shows accommodates the ethos of collectivism and social capital formation. In the case of Indonesia, however, as Kitley notes, format licensing constitutes a tactical response whereby the licensee is able to satisfy domestic demands for local programming as well as derive a transfer of know-how. Also important is

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the fact that ‘renting intellectual capital in the name of local content’ sets up a relationship of trust with international providers, who in turn use this relationship to ensure against reversions to industry specific legalities that constituted developing countries’ communications and broadcasting environments prior to joining the World Trade Organization. The Philippines is significant within this study for a distinctive postcolonial, and more recently highly globalized cultural melange, expressed by Josefina Santos in the metaphor of the jeepney, a public transport vehicle in the style of an American jeep but localized with a melange of cultural trappings. A highly Catholic country, infused with indigenous Filipino structures of feeling, augmented by Spanish, American, and Japanese cultural influences, the Philippines provides a unique example in our study of how innovative local content works against the dominant grain of sophisticated Western programming. During the 1960s a great deal of American programming was made available to Filipinos. In later years the increasing ownership of television receivers by lower-income ‘grassroots’ Filipinos usurped the hegemony of Western programming and led to the formation of strong local genres, including telenovelas. While Channel 2, the highest rating channel, maintains a dominant quota of local programming, other less financially independent channels provide a mix of foreign and local content. Again we see proof that local content wins out over imported or syndicated programming. When Channel 13 imported the global quiz format Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, it was duly translated into the lingua franca, Filipino, even though English was well-understood by upper and middle-classes. More importantly, however, was the re-versioning of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? by the leading local content network ABS-CBN into a show called Are you Ready for the Game (Game Ka Na Ba), offering greater prizes, as well as a smart modernistic set. Although only a short distance from Indonesia, Australia finds itself recurringly uncertain of its cultural identity so far as Asia is concerned. Alternatively bracketing itself as part of Asia, the Pacific or Oceania, some of the country’s political and economic aspirations are belied by its cultural affiliations, such that as a white settler society Australia continues to inhabit a diasporic space of post-colonialism where its natural bedfellows might include Canada, South Africa and New Zealand rather than its immediate geographical neighbours. As in the other chapters in this collection Albert Moran is again concerned with the two-way flow of formats between a national ‘inside’ and an international ‘outside’, although this particular traffic belongs to an Anglophone mainstreet, a European geolinguistic region. As a ‘major minor’ in such a continental arena Australia’s role in international film and television has oscillated considerably. The Australian state has been a major player in helping galvanize and support these industries and this function has led to significant but brief international acclaim for feature films in the 1970s and for television drama during the 1980s. A similar evolution is evident in terms of

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Australia’s place in the global format trade. Australia has alternated between being a significant exporter of formats to Europe in the 1990s – in effect teaching a new genre of soap opera there – to more recently reverting to a more historical role of being an important importer of formats in the recent present. In this transition it has learnt the ‘language’ of reality television. The final chapter in this group of studies concerns New Zealand, a twoisland nation-state of 3.5 million inhabitants, stretching into the south-west Pacific at the furthest remove from Japan and the People’s Republic of China. This difference concerns not just geography but also television and programme formats. As Geoff Lealand indicates, New Zealand has been ruthless in adopting doctrines of neo-liberalism in its television industry so that broadcasters and producers, in adapting to the onslaught of market pressures, have had to position themselves strategically to the realities of globalization. Formats have constituted a significant part of this readjustment and it is now possible for New Zealand devisor/producers to be significant players in the international Anglophone ‘mainstreet’ despite their small size and physical remoteness. Lealand charts some of the history of format development and in particular two brief case studies – one where the intellectual property was lost offshore and one where it was retained. The latter case is part of an expanding optimism among New Zealand broadcasters and producers about their role in the new international format landscape, an optimism that the author himself shares. Given the concern on the part of the editors and the contributors to this book to suggest innovative conceptual and empirical ground from which to view the new international television format landscape, this is then the right emphasis on which to round out the collection.

Note 1 This provision allows member countries to forbid programming to safeguard morals, public order, health, consumer protection and privacy (see Keane 2002a).

3

Feeling glocal Japan in the global television format business Koichi Iwabuchi

In March 2001 a Japanese newspaper report entitled ‘Indians are addicted to a quiz show’ drew attention to a phenomenally popular television programme in India – a quiz show that attracts millions of viewers in which challengers strive to win prize money (Asahi Shinbun 2001). What was particularly eye-catching for the journalist was the profligately decorated studio set located in Mumbai (Bombay) and the caring guidance of the MC, a film star famous in India. The name of the show, as you might have already inferred, was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. The reporter was obviously unaware the programme was closely based on the globally traded bible of the original British format, now broadcast in more than 120 countries. This industry bible provides minute details on how to produce the show based on the original production format: instructions on how to build a science fiction-like studio set; how to best use music and lighting; as well as guidelines for MCs in performing as compassionate consultants while dramatizing the quasi-life success and failure of the challengers. Also missing in the article was the fact that the format was at that time very popular in Japan. The reporter’s excitement in describing this programme as very ‘Indian’ attests to the efficacy of local adaptations of globally diffused television formats. In such instances of localization cultural specificity is articulated while the globalization of television culture assumes the modality of ‘formatting’, rather than simply disseminating American products. In this sense formatting entails a more complex form of cultural standardization and heterogenization than the mere trading of programme rights. In this chapter I will discuss Japan’s position and involvement in the looming global format business. With the second largest television market in the world, Japan’s role in the global television format trade is not limited to importer. Japan has emerged as an important international format exporter. In order to provide an overview of the development of Japanese television production from importer to exporter, I will examine the emergence of the format business in terms of Japanese television industries’ negative conception of the universality of Japanese ‘cultural odour’ embodied in products and the differential reception of Japanese

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media products in Western and Asian markets. I will conclude the chapter by arguing that the prevalence of television formats that market the pleasure of being both same and different, in other words, of feeling ‘glocal’, is indicative of an uneven process of decentring globalization.

Japanese television industries: from importer to original producer One of the most remarkable features of the Japanese audiovisual market is its near self-sufficiency in television programming. Japan is the only country, apart from the USA, where more than 95 per cent of television programmes are produced domestically. The comparisons between the USA and Japan go even further. Since World War II Japanese popular culture has been deeply influenced by American media. While no regulatory policy was put in place to counter the influx of American media culture, Japan successfully localized these influences by imitating, emulating and appropriating the original, rather than being dominated and colonized by American products. At the time of the inception of Japanese television history in 1953 Japanese television programming relied heavily upon imports from the USA; however by the mid-1960s the imbalance had drastically and quickly diminished. As early as 1980 Japan imported only 5 per cent of all programmes; this trend has continued to this day (Kawatake and Hara 1994). There were several significant reasons for this rapid transformation. First, during the early 1960s two national events contributed to television’s widespread popularity. These were the crown prince’s wedding in 1959 and the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. The two events precipitated a nationwide boom in television sales. Second, the maturity of feature film production provided a catalyst for the rapid ascendancy of the television industry at the cost of its own decline. The popularity of television resulted in a decrease in Japanese movie attendance, declining drastically from 1.1 billion in 1958 to 373 million in 1965 (Stronach 1989: 136). The number of feature films produced fell from more than 500 in 1960 to 58 in 1990 (Buck 1992: 126). In response to this downturn, many capable filmmakers turned to television production for employment, a migration that in turn led to the maturity of the television industry. Finally, Japan’s economic miracle and its large domestic market made rapid development possible. With a population of more than 120 million people and sustained by strong economic wealth, the Japanese television market prospered. Along with the USA the Japanese television industry represents a model of self-sufficiency. As in the USA, domestic programming is filled with a constant supply of original dramas, variety shows, quiz shows, reality television, and infotainment programmes. While American products undoubtedly have greater worldwide distribution, they fail to prevail in markets where there is strong local content.

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There is ample evidence to demonstrate viewer preference for ‘local’ programmes in many parts of the world. In Japan too, particularly since the 1980s, programmes directly imported from the USA have not fared so well, with a few occasional exceptions such as The X-Files, which was popularly acclaimed in 1997. Many American television series, including Dallas, Dynasty and The Simpsons, have been available but never received high ratings.1 And while recent American dramas such as Beverley Hills 90210, ER, and Ally McBeal attract young female viewers, their popularity does not compare with Japanese television dramas. This is not to say however that foreign popular culture is no longer consumed in Japan. In fact American popular culture has continued to exert a strong influence. People in Japan have been saturated with American popular culture and information about the American way of life frequently appears in the mass media. Japan remains one of the most important and profitable markets for Hollywood movies and American pop music. Furthermore, Japanese television, like other countries discussed in this collection (see Lee; Liu and Chen), has been able to develop a variety of original programming for its nearly self-sufficient market through the indigenization of many programme formats and concepts influenced by, and borrowed from American programmes. Thus, while Japanese audience taste for television seems stubbornly localized, this localism is not concerned with the question of whether the programme is ‘originally’ made locally or adapted from international models. Who knows – and who really cares – whether the Japanese version of a popular American quiz show The Price is Right in the early 1980s was of Japanese origin or not? What audiences ultimately care about is whether the programme features a ‘Japanese odour’, both in relation to the cast and the actual content. In this sense it is indeed a contentious question whether the indigenization of American culture in many parts of the world shows the relative decline of American cultural hegemony, at least in terms of the popularity of its television programmes (Tunstall 1995) or actually testifies to the deeper level of ‘Americanization’ of the world media through the global spread of American popular cultural forms (Morley and Robins 1992). In any case, it can at least be said that the ‘local’ can only be articulated vis-à-vis the ‘global’ and that a binary view of global–local and international–national fails to acknowledge the complex, juxtaposed and fractured nature of cultural globalization.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Survivor in Japan The increasing centrality of localism based on cultural borrowing provided the foundation for the rapid growth of the format business during the 1990s. Thanks to the development of international television trade fairs and the maturation of television production techniques outside the USA

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(particularly in Europe), the practice of localizing foreign formats has become more institutionalized and more rigidly monitored according to the industry bible that intricately monitors production know-how. As a major market in its own right Japan cannot be left outside of the global reach of the format business. Around the turn of the millennium Japanese television networks began buying new global television formats. Fuji TV, the most popular commercial network in Japan, broadcast Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in 2000 followed by The Weakest Link the next year. While the latter failed to capture viewer approval and disappointingly ended its run in six months, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (7–8pm) has become one of the most popular quiz shows in Japan. The quiz show is a well-received format in Japan, to such an extent that the format is commonly incorporated within variety shows. Even travelogue documentary programmes are produced in a quiz format in which several media celebrities compete with each other to guess the mysteries and unfamiliar customs of foreign places.2 According to the manager of the international division of Fuji TV at the time that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? entered the Japanese market, Fuji TV opted to buy the programme because its quiz shows were not performing well and they realized that buying formats had become the high tide of the global television business.3 It seemed easier and quicker to buy the format rather than emulate the original with the added expenditure in terms of trial and error necessary to refine a successful local version. According to the manager, ‘the format business is a typical pattern of technology transfer that offers a completed system for the production of successful programmes.’ The global format of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? ‘is a highly sophisticated one that incorporates all the important elements for an audience-participation quiz show and all the details of the know-how of the popular programme production’. Nevertheless, as with most countries that purchased the format license, there were adjustments necessary to accommodate local conditions. While the Japanese version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? follows the British original in highlighting challengers’ human dramas by revealing their personal backgrounds to the viewers, and while motivations, frustrations, anxieties, excitement, and anguish are all strongly stressed, the Japanese version does not foreground the layperson challenger to the same extent as other international varieties. A distinguishing feature of the Japanese Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? – and a significant factor in its popularity – is the constant appearance of celebrity challengers. According to the above Fuji TV manager, ordinary people are lacking in appeal for local audiences. Japanese television producers want to reduce risk as much as possible by making celebrities’ performance more conspicuous as well as buying a popularity-guaranteed format. As we will see, Japanese television producers’ distrust of the usefulness of ordinary people is evident in format adaptations of, as well as original production of reality television programmes.

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Another globally sought after format, Survivor also landed in Japan via the USA. The programme commenced in April 2002 (Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), 6.30–7.30pm) with immense promotional activity. About 2,500 people applied for the roles as the sixteen challengers of the initial series. According to the publicity surrounding the programme most participants were not simply seeking the lucrative prize (about US$80,000), but aimed to find their ‘true self’ by testing the limits of their ability in highly stressful situations, physically and mentally, and through competition with other challengers. As one female applicant admitted, ‘I am interested in how I will perform when put in such a dire position’ (Asahi Shinbun 2002a). The producer of the Japanese version also acknowledged the difference between the USA and Japan in terms of people’s national characteristics. He mentioned that while the main feature of the US version is the exposure of naked human nature, as witnessed in betrayals and plots forged among contestants to expel a particular rival, the Japanese version places more focus on the inner mental conflicts of each challenger. He said, ‘the Japanese version attempts to feature the life story of each contestant so as to intricately show how each contestant’s emotions, frustration, and friendship with other challengers develop in an extreme environment’ (Asahi Shinbun 2002a). However, the Japanese Survivor has itself struggled with survival. Its ratings were on average 6–8 per cent, far below the accepted ratings of 15–20 per cent in the popular prime time slot. According to the producer, the programme failed because the depiction of contestant emotions is much too intricate to be easily portrayed and understood, while the emphasis on a search for the true self did not result in unexpected or exciting interpersonal relationships, such as love affairs among contestants that are a significant element of international versions (Asahi Shinbun 2002b). The confrontational thrill of Survivor that develops through the strategic deployment of interpersonal alliances, including the plots and betrayals to survive that forged contestant alliances in the USA and other international versions, is apparently unsuccessfully translated into the inward-looking exposé of the unattractive aspects of contestant egos that align with a fear of being excluded from the group. While these cultural variations should be considered with some caution so as not to essentialize cultural differences between the USA and Japan, the show’s ‘survival of the fittest’ trope apparently works differently in the Japanese version: collectivist logics rather than individualistic tactics tend to prevail such that ‘losers’ and ‘winners’ are adjudicated in a negative way. This point might have some bearing on the absence to date of a Japanese Big Brother, another phenomenally popular global television format, documenting the 24-hour activities of contestants living in the same house where the winner (the preferred contestant) is determined by audience vote. In my interviews with television producers in Japan it was pointed out that the Big Brother format is deemed to be too nasty for Japanese

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viewers. However, if truth be told, there are Japanese programmes in the 24-hour mock-documentary genre that are no less nasty, such as where unknown comedians are put in a room and asked to perform ridiculous tasks, or where contestants backpack by hitchhiking from Japan to Europe, Africa and South America. The main differences between Big Brother and these Japanese shows again comes down to whether the ‘players’ are laypersons or not, and whether what is documented is a contest to survive among the participants or a personal or cooperative interpersonal struggle to achieve the goal in a stage-managed way. At the end of the day, what Japanese producers conceived as nasty is less the revelation of contestants’ 24-hours antics than laypersons’ strategic self-representation to win the vote of the viewers. Japanese reality television producers appear to believe that, as was the case with Survivor, the shooting of laypersons’ performative rivalry will be just too harsh and depressing to entertain viewers, while the inter/personal conflicts and struggles exposed by reality television need to be softened and made more entertaining by featuring celebrities or semi-laypersons who can perform comic roles assigned by television producers. In short, what is considered most important in Japanese reality television is the subtle stage-managing of ‘reality’ by television producers rather than the exposure of how people really think, feel and act in extreme situations. I will return to this point later in regard to those Japanese formats that are exported all over the world.

Japan as a television programme exporter The purchase of a few prominent European/American television formats only tells a partial story of contemporary Japanese television industries. While the discussion of format business internationally is nearly exclusively related to the maxim ‘Western television format goes global’, such a view itself is unjustifiably Western-centric in that it disregards the ascent of non-Western exports and intra-regional non-Western flows in the age of globalization. Japanese television industries, with their relatively sophisticated skills and experience in production, actually export a considerable number of programmes and formats to many parts of the world, far more in fact than they import. Various kinds of Japanese programmes, including television dramas and variety shows, not to mention animation, have been massively and systematically exported to East and Southeast Asian regions since the 1990s with the attendant development of intra-regional cultural flows and market linkages (Iwabuchi 2002a, 2003). Nevertheless there remains a belief that compared to Japan’s conspicuous cultural presence in the Asian region, its television programmes (except for animation) are rarely exported to Western markets. This is reminiscent of a conventional view about the un-exportability of Japanese television programmes due to an assumed high ‘cultural discount’

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(Hoskins and Mirus 1988). While, as Hoskins and Mirus argue, the universal appeal of American popular culture is largely attributed to the international prevalence of the English language and America’s status as the origin of mass culture, Japan is supposedly obsessed with its own cultural uniqueness, hence not making allowances for global markets. Furthermore it is often suggested that the Japanese language is not spoken outside Japan. The ‘un-exportability of Japanese television’ thesis also explains why animation has been exported globally from Japan with its real meaning intact. From the time of Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy during the early 1960s Japanese animation has been consumed internationally. Japan routinely exports animated films, which made up 56 per cent of television exports from Japan in 1980–1981 (Stronach 1989) and 58 per cent in 1992–1993 (Kawatake and Hara 1994). Elsewhere I have also argued that the major cultural products which Japan exports are characterized as ‘culturally odourless’ – animation, video game and consumer technologies – in that the perceptible embodiments of a preferable lifestyle or idea of ‘Japanese-ness’ tend to be absent or at least not foregrounded (Iwabuchi 2002a: 24–35). The cultural odour of a product is also closely associated with racial and bodily images of a country of origin. Animation and video games are cultural artefacts that present an imagery in which the bodily, racial and ethnic characteristics are erased or softened. This is particularly evident in Japanese animation where the characters for the most part do not look ‘Japanese’. Such nonJapaneseness is called mukokuseki. This literally means something or someone lacking any nationality, but also implies the erasure of racial or ethnic characteristics and any context that would embed the characters in a particular culture or country. Consumers and audiences of Japanese animation and games may be aware of the Japanese origin of these commodities, but they perceive little ‘Japanese bodily odour’. Furthermore, it is no accident that Japan has become a major exporter of culturally odourless products. Japanese animation industries have always had the global market in mind and are mindful that the non-Japaneseness of characters works to their advantage in the export market (Akurosu Henshûshitsu 1995: 36–97). While other film genres are mostly exported in Japanese, only 1 per cent of animated films are in Japanese. This implies that animation is routinely intended for export (Stronach 1989: 144). This is also the case with a made-in-Japan global phenomenon, Pokémon. To enter global markets, Japanese producers are keen to localize Pokémon in various international markets, not just to translate characters’ names and content into ten languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Greek) but also to hide the product’s ‘Japaneseness’ by using the American commercializing initiative as a part of global promotion strategy (Time 1999). The propensity to de-Japanize and/or erase Japanese odour from media products is even more conspicuous with video games. While most

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Japanese animators do not consciously draw mukokuseki (racially, ethnically and culturally embedded) characters and stories in order to export their animation, the producers and creators of game software intentionally make computer game characters look non-Japanese. They assume this works to their advantage in the export market (Akurosu Henshûshitsu 1995). Mario, the principal character of the popular computer game, Super Mario Brothers does not invoke the image of Japan. Both his name and appearance are designed to be Italian as Japanese creators are clearly targeting the global markets. Sony, which has had a policy of becoming a global company from the outset, is also widely recognized as a significant global company due to its marketing strategy of ‘global localization’ (Aksoy and Robins 1992). Global localization today is not exclusively a Sony practice, but a marketing buzzword of the global business world. Nevertheless as Robertson (1995) points out, the Oxford Dictionary of New Words clearly acknowledges that ‘global localization’ and the new word ‘glocal’ originate in Japan and that the global marketing strategy is another of Japan’s significant contributions to consumer society: In business jargon: simultaneously global and local; taking a global view of the market, but adjusted to local considerations . . . Formed by telescoping global and local to make a blend; the idea is modelled on Japanese dochakuka (derived from dochaku ‘living on one’s own land’), originally the agricultural principle of adapting one’s farming techniques to local conditions, but also adopted in Japanese business for global localization, a global outlook adapted to local conditions. (Oxford Dictionary of New Words 1991: 134) It is indeed an intriguing question why the term ‘glocal’ was originally used by Japanese companies,4 but we should not regard the act of dochakuka (indigenization) as uniquely Japanese. Cultural borrowing, appropriation, hybridization and indigenization are common practices with the global cultural flows. A more relevant question to be addressed regarding any distinct Japanese engagement with glocalization is how Japanese companies are imagining Japan’s position in the global cultural flow when they develop strategies of glocalization. Behind such development there is apparently distrust held by Japanese corporations as to the appeal of visible ‘Japaneseness’ embodied in cultural products and commodities in a global context. The widespread localization of Japanese products demonstrates both the success of Japanese popular culture and its failure to conquer in its original form in a manner reflective of Japan’s own experience of localization of American products decades earlier. The most negative response to this supposed distrust led to speculation by Japanese television industries during the early 1990s that Japanese television programmes, aside from animation, would not attract international

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audiences due to Japanese cultural and language differences (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 1994). Japanese television industries seemed to believe that their products would suffer a high ‘cultural discount’, particularly in Western markets and that the suppression of Japanese cultural odour is imperative for Japanese media industries to make inroads into international markets.

Glocalizing Japanese formats It is on this premise that the format business is considered as a highly effective way of exporting Japanese media products to Western markets, as the format is destined for localization in various markets. Japan can successfully sell programme formats and concepts to Western countries, including video materials used for programmes. These contain hardly any ‘Japanese odour’. The success of selling Japanese formats in the 1980s has made Japanese producers gradually realize the great potential in entering lucrative Western markets where the trading price of television programme is 10 to 40 times higher than that of Asian markets. TBS, the leading exporter of television programmes and formats in Japan, has so far sold programme formats to more than forty countries. TBS started its format business when it sold the format of Wakuwaku (exciting) Animal Land – a quiz show dealing exclusively with animals – to The Netherlands in 1987 (still a popular show called Waku Waku in that country). The format has been further sold to more than twenty countries. Nippon Television Network (NTV), another commercial television station, has also sold several quiz show formats including Show-by Showby to Spain, Italy, Thailand and Hong Kong during the mid-1990s. Showby Show-by is a quiz show about bizarre commerce and shops around the world (shoubai or ‘show-by’ means ‘trade’ in Japanese). Like Wakuwaku Animal Land, the advantage of this quiz show is to be able to sell visual material of world scenes for quiz segments, as well as the actual concept of the programme. Japanese television industries have also pioneered the production of new kinds of audience participation programmes and reality television programmes. It remains internationally unacknowledged that the globally adapted format of America’s Funniest Home Videos was originally produced by TBS. It was a segment of a variety show titled Katochan Kenchan Gokigen Terebi, which was broadcast from January 1986 to March 1992. The American network ABC bought the rights to the format in 1989 and since then has exported the amateur video show format to more than eighty countries in the world. The format of a video-game-like amateur participation game contest, Takeshi Castle, which was broadcast during the 1980s in Japan has also been exported to several Western countries including the USA, Germany and Spain. A similar show, Flaming Challengers (Honoo no Charenjâ), in which people compete against each

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other in many kinds of difficult tasks such as singing a song without making a single mistake or memorizing drama scripts in a short time, has also been sold to Sweden by another Japanese commercial television station, Asahi National Broadcasting Company (ANB). Fuji TV’s Iron Chef (Ryouri no Tetsujin) is an innovative format of a cooking entertainment programme in which professional chefs compete with each other. Each week two chefs representing different cuisines are assigned to produce several creative dishes within one hour with one featured ingredient. Their struggles are dramatically reported and filmed in a live sports telecast style, with the stylishly decorated studio as the kitchen stadium. Cooking skills, professional creativity, subtle presentation techniques, as well as the ultimate taste are all taken into consideration by four guest celebrities who adjudicate on proceedings. The programme was first exported to a US cable network but its popularity has urged the television producers of Paramount Network in the USA to make an American version by purchasing the format rights in 2001. TBS has also been successful in selling reality television formats. One of the most widely distributed formats is Happy Family Plan (Shiawase Kazoku Keikaku). It is a programme in which the father is assigned to master a task (such as juggling) within a week and to perform this successfully in the studio. If he succeeds the family will receive the prize they nominated (such as an overseas trip) before the father was informed of the task. The highlight of the show is the father’s final performance in the studio but also foregrounded is the process through which he has tried to master the task with the encouragement of other family members. Documentary-style home video filming of the father’s exertions, frustrations, the pressures induced by repetitive failures, the subsequent strengthening of family ties, and the re-establishment or recovery of the father’s authority in the family in the course of his mastering the skill form the key entertaining elements. The programme won the 1998 Silver Rose Award in Montreux for Best Game Show and an International Emmy Award in the same year. Its format has been sold to more than thirty countries all over the world, including China’s Beijing Television (BTV) (see Keane this volume). More recently TBS has also been successful in selling another innovative reality television format Future Diary (Mirai Nikki), originally also a segment of a variety show. It is a quasi-documentary-drama romance. The programme invites viewers to participate in experiencing a drama-like heterosexual romance. Selected applicants (usually two or three) are given a pre-written rough scenario at several points – the future diary – which instructs them about where to meet their partner and what to say to him/her (including prompts to disguise their emotions or to help the rival get along well with the partner s/he really likes) in order to complicate their relationship (in some case a love triangle) and dramatize their affairs (often in a tragic manner until the climax). The camera closely tracks how romantic feelings develop and the frustrations that result when the

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participants are assigned to act out an unexpected role-play within the programme. Nearly all participants nurture some romantic feelings toward the partner and in the final scenario they are allowed to act according to their emotions and decisions. The viewers are encouraged to immerse themselves into the ‘real’ but nevertheless stage-managed dramatic development of love romance. Future Diary was shown at the Cannes MIP in October 2000 and received unexpectedly positive responses for its innovative approach to romantic documentary-drama that subtly blurs the boundaries between the real and the fiction. The format has so far been sold to sixteen Western countries including the USA, where ABC has produced an American version titled The Dating Experiment. ABC actively promotes the programme as one of the highlights of its new titles, describing it as ‘a real-life soap based on a Japanese format in which two strangers – one male, one female – are tossed together and literally told what to do and where to go each day via a pre-written “future diary”.’

East Asian imitation: more authentic than the format As stated earlier the international format business is attractive to Japanese television industries because its main buyers are Western television markets in which the value of television licenses and programme rights are much higher than their Asian counterparts. This represents much bigger business than the direct export of Japanese television programmes to Asian markets. Nevertheless the format business also became a popular localizing strategy of the Japanese television industry as it entered Asian markets during the early 1990s, as demonstrated by the above-mentioned Show-by Show-by, sold not just to Europe but also to Thailand and Hong Kong (Asahi Shinbun 1993; Nikkei Trendy 1995). During the early 1990s the ‘format trade’ in Asia was mainly promoted by Dentsû, the largest advertising company in Japan. TBS’s Wakuwaku Animal Land was a notable case. Dentsû sold the concepts of chat and game shows that were well-accepted in Japan to Asian television stations, together with video material and the supervision of production, as well as Japanese programme sponsors. Dentsû’s main purpose was to promote ‘syndication’ so that it could sell the commercial time for Japanese sponsors in several Asian countries as well as selling the programme concepts. The syndication sales compensate for the low trading price of television programmes in Asian markets (Nikkei Trendy 1995).5 Nevertheless, straightforward imitation is a more common way of programme transfer in the region than format trade. There are numerous Japanese programmes that have been copied and imitated by Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese television industries. For instance, whereas the broadcast of Japanese television programmes (aside from animation) is still effectively banned in Korea, Korean television producers regularly watch Japanese television programming for inspiration. It has often been

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pointed out that narratives and character settings of Japanese youth television dramas were copied by Korean television producers (see Lee this volume). Korean media have severely denounced this tendency as disgraceful, so much so that in 1999 MBC, a Korean commercial television station, was forced to cancel a drama series allegedly based on the Japanese drama, Love Generation. This development is not confined to drama, and there have been more clear-cut imitations in the production of variety shows. TBS’s Happy Family Plan is a case in point. The Korean commercial television station, SBS, broadcast Special Task! Dad’s Challenge from 1997 to 1999. As the title suggests, the content of the show is completely in synch with the Japanese Happy Family Plan. According to TBS’s investigation the content of the task (such as the juggling of eggs) is nearly identical and the same tasks often appeared just several weeks after Japan’s initial broadcast (e.g. juggling eggs on 6 January 1999 in Japan, 8 February 1999 in Korea). It is thus easily inferred that SBS based the production of the programme on the imitation of Japanese content. TBS officially complained to SBS with the implication of filing a suit; the show finally ended in June 1999 after 2 years (the Japanese show ended in September 2000). According to the manager of the international sales division of TBS,6 the most surprising element was the subtlety in making an exact copy of the Japanese programme, not just in terms of the specific content of the tasks, but also in terms of the reactions of father and the family members during the week-long efforts to master the task. The manager informed me that it was usually not an easy thing for Western buyers to master the subtle stage-managing skills associated with entertainingly demonstrating the ‘real’ development of family ties. He stated that ‘99 out of 100 laypersons will not perform in a manner that is interesting enough to assure good ratings. Finding an ‘interesting’ person is a key to success for audience participation variety shows.’ Television producers also partly stage-manage the settings and scenes to ensure that reactions among the family members are interesting and dramatic. Furthermore, the father’s position in the family defers in many parts of the world and it is often necessary for European television producers to modify the programme by making other family members attempt the task or to replace the family with friends as a unit. This modification that arises from cultural nuances apparently does not impact upon Korean imitation. The similar patriarchal positioning of the father within the family – the relationship between parents and children and between father and mother – has enabled Korean producers to seamlessly read the ‘original’ intention of the programme and to construct a replica in Korean settings. In this sense as the above manager of TBS suggested, apparent cultural closeness (or proximity) is more effective for format transfer than the minute instructions of the industry bible! Taiwan is also (in)famous for its copying of Japanese variety shows, although unlike Korea there has been no strong social criticism of this act. It is partly due to the fact that the imitation is not as subtly identical as

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Korean counterparts. Yet as East Asian media markets and industries become more intensely connected in the process of media globalization Japanese television producers are increasingly aware of Taiwanese copycats. Interestingly, they have shown an intriguing response to plagiarism, a tactic quite in contrast to the official warning of filing suit. Several Japanese variety shows (including ANB’s Flaming Challengers and Fuji TV’s Mecha x2 Iketeru!) have exploited the existence of the copy for their own programme content. They have humorously reported on the ‘shocking’ revelation that Taiwanese television producers have scandalously, and in an inferior manner, copied Japanese shows. Determined to teach the imitators a lesson, performers (mostly comedians) flew to Taiwan to appear in the Taiwanese show to verify how the Taiwanese copy cannot be equal to the Japanese original. As a variety show the tone is not serious but teasing. The Taiwanese producers also insist that they are the originators and the Japanese were in some cases beaten. In any case which side wins or which is more authentic does not matter much. This example shows another side to the format business: the insignificance of maintaining ‘authenticity’ and the blurring of the boundaries between the original and the copy have also become incorporated into television business.

Wanna be different and same The recent advent of the format business around the globe reveals the decentring processes of cultural globalization marked by the relatively low profile and participation of the USA. While American players remain more concerned with directly exporting their programmes to as many countries as they can – a tested strategy ultimately more profitable than format export – the fact that US networks are increasingly buying formats from Europe and Japan testifies to the rise of non-US television cultures. While it can be argued that most of the globally disseminated television formats are ‘within the larger, overarching framework of what is essentially an American conception of the world’ (Hall 1991: 28), it is now untenable to single out an absolute symbolic centre that belongs to a particular country or region. The prevalence of the format business shows that the global cultural power alignment is highly dispersed and decentred. In this process, transnationally circulated images and commodities, I would argue, tend to become culturally odourless as origins become subsumed by local transculturation processes. While the operation of global cultural power can be witnessed in local consumption, cultural reworking and appropriation at the local level necessarily takes place within the matrix of global homogenizing forces. Local cultural difference can be convincingly and successfully advocated precisely through the diffusion of a common format. The world is standardized through heterogenization and heterogenized through standardization. In this development of cultural formatting, the pleasure of being same

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and dissimilar in the global television fiesta is promoted. This is demonstrated, as seen in the above-mentioned Taiwan’s case, when foreign replicas are strategically introduced – not in the sense of condemning plagiarism but in celebrating the impact of the original format. Programs based on officially purchased formats actively reveal the proliferation of national/local versions of the programme throughout the world. Happy Family Plan actually produced a special programme that introduced various localized programmes broadcast in different countries (aired on 6 January 1999). Apparently this attempt is to proudly show off how a ‘made-in-Japan variety show goes global’. Yet no less important in the special programme is the introduction of similarities and differences from the Japanese original that each localized version has subtly, and not just in an inferior manner, embodied. Similarly, the Japanese Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? also informs the audience of the fact that the show is a globally produced format. The production of a programme based on the format that is originally developed elsewhere is not conceived as disgraceful or second-rate any more. Rather, the format business has given audiences a pleasure in sharing the common frameworks and the irreducibly different appearances that manifest in local consumption. Put differently, what is being promoted is not simply ‘global localization’ that aims to adopt the common to the difference but also ‘local globalization’ that makes audiences feel ‘glocal’, that is, a sense of participation in a global society through the reciprocated enjoyable recognition of local (in most cases, synonymous to ‘national’) specificities articulated through the shared formats. Gradually disappearing in this process is the perception, not the fact, of derivative modernity, the sense that ‘our’ modernity is borrowed from a modernity that happened elsewhere (see Chatterjee 1986; Chakrabarty 1992). What has been foregrounded instead is a ubiquitous modernity that is based on a sense that ‘our’ modernity is the one that is simultaneously happening everywhere. To put it differently, the Western gaze that has long dominated the material and discursive construction of non-Western modernity is now melting into a global gaze, which is based on the de-centring and pervasive forces of globalization. Here it needs to be reiterated that global cultural power has not disappeared: it has been dispersed and solidified simultaneously. The unevenness in transnational cultural flows is intensified not solely by American cultural power but by various kinds of consumerist axes globally structured by transnational media and cultural industries in the developed countries. The pleasure of feeling same and dissimilar requires the minimum economic strength that enables people to enjoy consumer modernity. A vast number of people in the world are excluded from the fiesta. The sudden, massive media attention to the hitherto forgotten nation of Afghanistan at the beginning of the twenty-first century compels us to recognize that the disparity in economic and cultural power between the haves and have-nots

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has been despairingly widened, and how the disparity itself has been left out of commentaries on global media communications. The glocal fiesta excludes the incommensurable differences of cultural others (e.g. immigrants, refugees) that cannot be pleasurably consumed or easily formatted. Such unmarketable differences are considered as dangerous, something to be expelled from the ‘We’-realm. Local globalization also means the ubiquity of such globally institutionalized unevenness and exclusion in each locality. Japan will remain significantly implicated in this imbalanced process of marketing global desire to be at once similar and different, to be both global and local.

Notes 1 Concerning the failure of Dallas in Japan, see Liebes and Katz (1990). 2 The latest popular quiz-variety shows in Japan deal with lawsuits within the institution of everyday life. 3 Interview conducted on 23 July 2001 at Fuji TV. 4 It is interesting to note that McDonald’s derived a firm conviction of the effectiveness of the multi-local strategy from its local-owner operation in Japan (Watson 1997: 13). 5 In 1997, NTV, a popular commercial television station in Japan, also started coproducing a programme to promote the syndication business in Asian markets. This was Chô Ajiaryû (Super Asians), produced with Hong Kong (TVB), Taiwan (CTV), South Korea (SBS), Thailand (ITV) and Singapore (TCS8). Each week, programme content consists of a main topic, such as fashion, idols or karaoke, and each station covers the topic in the local cultural scene. What is interesting, however, is that each of the television stations uses the footage differently. Only CTV broadcasts the same programme as NTV with subtitles. SBS, ITV and TCS8 incorporate some film coverage in local information programmes so as to make the programmes look like a locally produced one. 6 Interview conducted on 2 March 2001 at TBS.

4

A local mode of programme adaptation South Korea in the global television format business Dong-Hoo Lee

Television has been called ‘a Western-originated project’ (Barker 1997: 5) and an institution of Western capitalist modernity. The global circulation of Western-centred, or more specifically, American-centred cultural products, contributes to the formation and dissemination of a global shared culture that reaches across the boundaries of nation-states. In the process American cultural products play a role in the formation of local television cultures. The key question that needs to be addressed concerns the extent and limits of this hegemony. According to advocates of the cultural imperialism thesis, developed countries dominate the internationalization of cultural products. In this view the import and subsequent reception of Western cultural products in foreign markets undermines local cultures (Schiller 1976; Hamelink 1983) and propagates Western ideologies (Dorfman and Matterlart 1975). Hoskins and Mirus (1988) explain the pervasiveness of American media products with the notion of ‘cultural discount’. This term describes the diminished value of cultural products in foreign markets due to indigenous characteristics such as accents and cultural nuances that make reception problematic. It is argued that American television programmes can establish a strong hold over the international programme market because they have little ‘cultural discount’, or to use Olsen’s alternative concept (1999), they are culturally transparent and make sense across many cultures. The concept of a one-way flow of media and capital from the West to the rest has been met with strong counter-arguments. Tomlinson (1997) argues that discourses of cultural imperialism hardly explain the multidirectional and multi-dimensional processes of globalization by which the global maintains a dialectic relationship with the local. Defenders of active audience theory argue that the local audience makes sense of globally distributed media products according to their own personal contexts and their social, cultural and economic milieus (Liebes and Katz 1993; Crofts 1995; Singhal and Udornpim 1997). Attention has also been drawn to national gate-keeping policies, dynamics of audience preference, and the resources of local media industries, which have in various degrees of effec-

South Korea 37 tiveness limited the inflow of Western media products (P.S.N. Lee 1998; Chadha and Kavoori 2000). Moreover, there is ample evidence to confirm the fact that domestic programmes occupy local prime time scheduling more than imported global programmes (Cantor and Cantor 1986; Straubhaar 1991; Waterman and Rogers 1994), and attract higher ratings (Wang 1993). Imported programmes, even if dubbed or subtitled, still accrue cultural discount, reducing their local appeal (Dupagne and Waterman 1999). The notion of unilateral globalization fails to take into account the diverse and disjunctive dimensions of cultural – or media – exchanges within Asia, as well as between Asia and the West. Indeed, the popularity of Japanese media products in Asia in the 1990s has questioned the hegemony of US/Western media culture. During this period Japanese popular culture served as a leading resource for the transcultural phenomenon among Asian countries. By the late 1990s Korean popular culture, itself explicitly and implicitly influenced by the Japanese, had emerged as yet another resource. While the USA remains the most important global player directing media products into Asia, the growing interpenetration of media markets and products in proximate Asian countries suggests a new order of complexity within the global television market (see Wang et al. 2000; Iwabuchi 2003; Sinclair, Jacka and Cunningham 1996). Korean popular culture has itself evolved alongside the importation of Western media culture, especially American media culture. In other words, the formation of a distinctive Korean television culture has been contextualized by American media culture. And yet, there is another reference point to consider in this trans-cultural grid. This is the instrumental role of Japan in shaping Korean culture. More specifically, Japanese media culture has become an important vehicle for internalizing Western culture within a Korean context. This process has occurred despite Korea’s 36-year experience of colonization by the Japanese and the banning (until recently) of Japanese media products. While the influx of Japanese television culture via informal routes of copying was reported contemptuously during the 1990s, adaptations of Japan’s popular culture have profoundly affected the narrative forms of Korean television. This chapter examines how global programmes have flowed into Korea, and specifically how Japanese television has been culturally signified in the localization of transnational programmes in Korea. By examining how Korean entertainment programmes have adapted transnational television conventions some of the complicated processes of globalization are revealed. This is a process in which the global production of the local and the localization of the global are intertwined (Robertson 1995). For this investigation I will first examine the Korean television industry’s changing dependency upon foreign programmes and the increasing popularity of domestically produced programmes. In discussing how Korean entertainment programmes have adapted transnational programmes in order to catch up with global trends it is important to point out here that the inflow

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of foreign programmes has occurred not only through the official importation of programmes and formats but also through informal copying practices. As foreign programmes were moved to fringe timeslots, copied formats, especially from Japan, became increasingly noticeable. Unlicensed cloning practices have thus served as one of the main production mechanisms for the Korean television industry, an industry which has relatively limited resources with which to seize the sizable local audiences and close the gap between the global and the local. In this way the Korean television industry has been neither a passive follower nor an independent player within the global media industry. In order to analyse the types of programme adaptations I will examine the narratives of entertainment programmes. This analysis follows Chatman (1978) and Rimmon-Kenan’s (1983) notions of narrative as it pertains to copying practices in story and discourse. While a story is composed of causally arranged elements such as characters and events, discourse can be examined through the ways in which the story is described, for example, plot sequences, the roles of narrators, and presentational techniques. A television format can thus be defined as a pattern of narrative that is found in a series of programmes. Moran (1998: 13) says that a format is a ‘set of invariable elements in a programme out of which the variable elements of an individual episode are produced’, and ‘a means of organizing individual episodes’. To inquire into the extensive copying practices in Korea during the 1990s I will observe the ways in which narratives, rather than formats, are adapted.

The development of Korean television and its dependence on foreign television programmes Television was first introduced in Korea in 1956 by an entrepreneur aspiring to sell RCA television monitors. However, it was not until the early 1960s that the Korean television industry began to be regulated. This was a time when Korea began to put every effort into modernization. In 1961 the military regime founded KBS-TV, the national broadcasting system, to ‘cure the citizens’ sick minds’ and to display an image of ‘the renewing nation’ (Jung 1991: 135). During the 1960s, due to poorly equipped production facilities and resources, programmers depended on foreign, mostly American programmes, especially during the golden timeslot between 7.30pm and 8.30pm (Choe and Kang 2001: 183–184). Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), the national station, and Tongyang Broadcasting Company (TBC), a commercial channel, competed with each other in scheduling foreign programmes (Korean Broadcasting Association 1997: 435–436). The broadcast of foreign programmes in prime time continued until 1969. In the early 1970s another commercial broadcaster joined the ratings competition. As competition intensified between the one national and two commercial stations Korean broadcasters developed local genres, espe-

South Korea 39 cially daily soap operas, which accommodated local audience’s ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams 1977) rather than merely relaying foreign programmes. Korean daily soap operas made the most of limited production resources, and eventually substituted foreign programmes. As the local productions achieved greater popularity, most of the foreign programmes were moved to relatively marginal timeslots, such as 10.30pm on weeknights or the early hours of weekend evenings. The growing popularity of indigenous narrative forms was paralleled by the rapid diffusion of television sets in Korea. In 1970 only 6.4 per cent of Korean households had television sets, yet by 1979 the rate had reached 78.5 per cent (Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism 1979: 215). Several factors impacted upon the gradual decrease of the Korean television industry’s dependency on foreign programmes during the 1970s. During this time production facilities and technologies were stabilized. The augmentation of local relay stations and the domestic production of television sets encouraged larger local audiences to watch television. The rapid growth of audience availability enlarged the pie for television advertisement, which also facilitated the development of the Korean television industry. However, the development of local genres did not mean that broadcasters’ preference for foreign programmes suddenly disappeared. During the following decade KBS2 and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation continued to schedule foreign programmes at the weekend in the prime time rating slots (Han 1989). By the 1990s the preference for foreign programmes had certainly declined and the number of foreign programmes scheduled during prime time further decreased (Jung 1999). Table 4.1 illustrates that the total amount of programme imports by network television decreased in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the early 2000s cable and satellite television have become the major channels for foreign programmes to flow into Korea. While multi-channelling has accelerated the inflow of foreign programmes, especially American programmes, ratings of cable and satellite stations are still far behind those of network television. Table 4.1 Import of programmes by television networks Year

Amount (US$1,000)

Rate of increase (%)

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

26,043 34,267 38,893 15,386 20,094 26,743 18,032

⫺31.1 ⫺31.5 ⫺13.5 ⫺60.4 ⫺30.6 ⫺33 ⫺32.5

Source: Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

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Modes of programme adaptation Unlicensed adaptation The Korean broadcasting industry developed rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s and sought cost-effective indigenous programme forms. Japanese television programming and scheduling practices were seen as a successful model of adapting American broadcasting know-how and creating local conventions. As the industry became more concerned with ratings and competition Korean broadcasters began to actively emulate Japanese network programmes. In 1991 a commercial broadcasting company called Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) entered the existing competition between the two public broadcasting companies, KBS and MBC. This coincided with the introduction of the People Meter technology by rating research company Media Service Korea and an increased network scheduling of prime time entertainment programmes, often directly competing with each other. This was also the time when local audiences demanded that domestic programmes reach global standards. The industry needed an efficient recipe for ratings success and Japanese television programmes were considered to be good models. As the Korean government had banned the import of Japanese popular culture since its liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 – and still banned some programmes such as dramas and entertainment shows – pure adaptations of Japanese television programmes could not be made legitimately. Despite the regulation of Japanese television programmes the influence of Japanese television culture grew stronger during the 1990s through copying, an informal route for the inflow of Japanese television programmes into Korea. During the 1990s copying practices were so widely used that many complained that there was little difference between the two nations’ entertainment programmes (Joongang Ilbo 1998b).1 A total of forty-six cases of suspected plagiarism of entertainment programmes were reported during this decade.2 In 1997 when the Korean National Assembly inspected KBS, it was reported that 59.1 per cent of 186 television producers understood the serious implications of copying foreign programmes (Joongang Ilbo 1997). Moreover, entertainment programmes are the genre that has most frequently been perceived as having serious problems with copying and plagiarism. In 1999 when the Korean Research Centre asked 200 Korean producers to choose which genre of foreign programmes was more likely to be copied or plagiarized, more than 90 per cent of the producers pointed to entertainment programmes. Although a provision enacted by the Korean Broadcasting Law prohibits plagiarism, there have been few cases actually submitted for disciplinary review. As other studies in this book have demonstrated, it is not easy to apply sanctions against plagiarism, especially in cases where there is insufficient evidence. For example, in 1999 the Korean Broadcasting Commission issued an order of public

South Korea 41 apology to Seo Sewon’s Superstation (SBS) because one of its segments called ‘The Most Wanted’ was suspected of being a copy of ‘the Runaway’ in Fuji TV’s Run for Happiness. Immediately after that order was issued the Korean producer cancelled the suspected segment and simply destroyed the damning evidence. As Japanese entertainment programmes were officially banned it was not easy to render a legal decision on plagiarism; this has resulted in the proliferation of shady copying practices. In 2000 a smaller number of entertainment programmes were suspected. Only three, including Star Revolution (MBC) were accused of plagiarism. This decrease does not reflect a reduction in references to Japanese programmes. The public opposition to plagiarism during the late 1990s made broadcasters more cautious of blatant plagiarism. They began to buy Japanese formats and seek co-production rights. In identifying the degree of reference to Japanese models, unlicensed adaptations can be classified as cloning, developing, and collaging types. The cloning type describes those programmes that directly copy Japanese models, while the developing types are those that apply or extend a specific part of a Japanese programme to create their own format. The collaging type can be identified as those programmes that refer to several Japanese models, and blend them to construct a hybridized programme. The following section describes cases of each type. Cloning type The cloning type is most frequently associated with claims of plagiarism. According to the degree of copy-catting, this type can be divided into programmes that replicate most or all of the narrative of their counterparts and those that copy only a specific part. There are several notorious cases of programme replication. In 1993 Challenge, the Mystery Express (MBC) was accused of copying Quiz, the Magical Brain Power (NTV), and Get Household Goods (SBS) was accused of copying One Million Yen Quiz Hunter (NTV) (Korean Broadcasting Institute 1993). The type of contest and stage setting was said to resemble those of the foreign programmes. In 1999 still more cases of programme replication were found (see Korean Broadcasting Institute 1999). For example, Game Show, High Five (SBS) was suspected of plagiarizing Tokyo Friend Park 2 (TBC). Japanese quiz genres are most frequently copied by Korean producers. While Western-style quiz shows that offer large sums of money or those that border on gambling are not permitted in Korea, Korean producers are drawn to the recipes used in Japanese quiz programmes. The Japanese quiz formats capture audience attention through the amusing contest settings and are not extravagant, in comparison with American quiz shows that offer huge cash prizes as audience incentives. Although the above-mentioned suspect programmes are accused of

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being replicas, there are several minor differences. These differences derive from the demeanour of local hosts and the localism of subject matter, or from larger contexts such as programming conventions and the economics of production. For example, Game Show, High Five creates a scenario from participants’ strenuous efforts to help poor teenagers who have to take care of their own families; this spirit of helping unfortunate people is rarely found in the Japanese counterpart. ‘Dong-Yop Shin’s Remodelling Business’, one of three segments of Sunday, Sunday Night (MBC), also provides a narrative similar to Great Strategies of Love to Emerge from Poverty (Tokyo TV). It diagnoses the problems of a store selected through an audience member’s request, then remodels the interior and trains the employees to provide better service. However, whereas the Japanese programme allows the makeover subject to appear in the studio and show his/her improved service to the MC and the panellists, the Korean programme shows two MCs following up the remodelling events outside the studio and edits these events to fit into a relatively shorter broadcasting slot. On the other hand there are many programmes that copy specific elements of Japanese programmes. The long-lived and popular programme Family Entertainment Hall (KBS2, 1984 to the present) has presented a segment called ‘Between the Rooms’, which was accused of copying ‘Send a Message with Action’ from Magical Brain Power (NTV). Magical Brain Power is a popular Japanese quiz show for all that includes various games. In one of these games the participant will take a word in katakana (phonetic script) and write it in kanji (word character which cannot be guessed from the sound); in another the participant will listen to a sound and have to spell out what it sounds like; yet another has the one participant draw a picture and pass it on until it reaches the last person who has to guess what the object is. Other quiz programmes like Showdown between the 20s and the 40s (SBS), Puzzle Express (KBS2), TV Quiz Meeting (SBS), and TV High-School Alumna (SBS), were also accused of copying different elements of Magical Brain Power. Several programmes have simultaneously competed with one another to target the same Japanese programme, extracting specific features that are relevant to their own format. Japanese Programmes like Magical Brain Power (NTV) and Please Go Slowly! (NTV) have been frequently pirated by various Korean programmes. Since there has been no concrete regulation restricting unlicensed adaptation many Korean producers have scrambled to utilize the strong points of Japanese entertainment programmes and have produced various epigones that differ slightly from one another. The presentational techniques of utilizing candid cameras, subtitles, multivision, instant replays, English titles, numerous MCs, specific gestures, and voice-overs have been said to come from Japan. In 1995 the producer of TV Park (MBC), which first featured the usage of subtitles for fun, admitted the program’s debt to Japan’s programme trends (Hankyeorae 1999).

South Korea 43 These entertainment techniques have become the newest trends in Korean entertainment programmes. Developing type There are several programmes, such as Human TV, Pleasant Wednesday (MBC) and Seo Sewon’s Making A Good World (SBS), which can be classified as the developing type. Seo Sewon’s Making A Good World was accused of copying Samma’s Super Trick TV, and yet it has fundamentally adapted the Japanese 3-minute quiz segment, ‘Silver Quiz’, and another ‘Video Letter’ segment, both of which turn the village elderly into objects of ridicule for entertainment’s sake. Compared with Super Trick TV, the Korean programme Making A Good World has gradually extended the time of the segments and reframed them in a slightly different context, sensitively illustrating the lives of the village elderly. In 1998 when Making A Good World was first broadcast the Saturday evening timeslot was filled with variety programmes targeted at viewers in their teens and twenties. The early series Making A Good World also tried to attract a young audience. In addition to ‘Silver Quiz’ and ‘Letter from Home Country’, there were two other segments, ‘Seo Junghui’s Pleasant Dinner’ and ‘Star Cops’, which featured young entertainers and celebrities. ‘Silver Quiz’ was intended to make fools out of the rural elderly; for example, it asked them to guess the meaning of obscure English words. There were conflicting opinions on this programme. After the first episode many viewers registered negative feedback on the electronic board, saying that this programme made fools of the rural elderly and commercialized their lives to achieve ratings. One week later the Korean Broadcasting Commission issued a warning to the programme, saying it would ‘impede the development of people’s righteous value system in respecting their elders’ (Joongang Ilbo 1998a). However, as the programme began to focus more on the rustic and straightforward lives of the rural elderly it drew more positive appraisals. In particular it was said that it presented the lives of people who were simple, honest, and humane by nature (Chosun Ilbo 1998). In 1998 the press corps selected the programme as the year’s best. The producers of Making A Good World have since added or taken out some segments and have changed narrative forms. The programme has evolved to consist of the following three parts. The first is called ‘Letter from the Home Country’, where a reporter visits a country village and while chatting with the rural elderly introduces the lifestyle of the village. This part includes a commercial or a music video in which the rural elderly publicize ‘Our Home Country’ and features video letters that they send to their children living in other places. The programme evokes deep emotions and nostalgia through scenes in which the elderly, speaking with provincial accents, send their felicitations to their children. The second

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segment might feature a young city-dwelling star or a foreigner experiencing country life. At other times the rural elderly visit the city or go abroad. Their candid reactions are the main selling point of this segment. The third part, ‘Silver Quiz’, induces wild responses from the elderly by posing questions familiar to most city dwellers and younger viewers. Despite the quiz format the elderly speak freely with each other, apparently unaware of the camera. The central narrative of Making A Good World constructs the country village as a place where one can expect unusual experiences and pleasures, or as the realm of the elderly, nature, the past, long-held traditions, different dialects, and simplicity. The country is thus portrayed as a place that maintains all that the city has lost through the reckless drive toward modernization. But at the same time, it is depicted as a place that is lagging behind. Its image oscillates between a romanticized home dear to everyone’s heart and a place lacking in the attributes of modernity. Although Making A Good World makes the audience laugh at the outdated attitudes of the rural elderly, it also shows the plain country life, uncontaminated by the city’s self-interested value system. While the Japanese ‘Silver Quiz’ makes fools of the rural elderly who cannot catch up with the modern lifestyle, Making A Good World rediscovers the healthiness of the country and evokes nostalgia and tender feelings. Both Japanese and Korean programmes gaze at the country from the viewpoint of citydwellers or the younger generation, but the latter emphasizes the nostalgic images of the home country. Until its cancellation in October 2000 Making A Good World maintained its format of featuring the village elderly. Collaging Type The collaging type of programme combines elements of several shows to construct a new narrative. Avoiding the criticisms levelled at direct cloning, the collaging type appropriates the ideas or elements from the Japanese models and blends them. The Korean programme Paradise for Curiosity (SBS) is an example. When Paradise for Curiosity was first broadcast in 1998 it evoked two opposing opinions. One view was that the programme successfully combined information and entertainment in a novel way, differentiating it from existent programmes, while the other condemned it for copying Power! Thursday Special (Fuji TV), which was an extension of ‘The Investigators’ in The Alarm-Clock TV. Despite the suspicions of plagiarism, Paradise for Curiosity (SBS) became a popular programme and was followed by the similar series Confirmed, Lift the Veil (KBS2) and The Mysterious World of Science (KBS1). Paradise for Curiosity takes elements from a number of Japanese infotainment programmes that address the questions of ordinary people through research, experimentation, or inspection. Its main source includes ‘The Investigators’ in The Alarm-Clock TV (Fuji TV), Experiment and

South Korea 45 Nod (NHK), Great Discovery, The Laws of Fear (ANB), Discovery, The Great Aru Aru Cyclopedia (Fuji TV), Dokoro’s Megaten (NTV), Gonnomisako’s Science Hall (ANB), Dakeshi’s Book of Genesis (ANB), and Special Mission, Research 200X (NTV). These Japanese infotainment programmes demonstrate great variety in terms of subject matter and formats for providing information. Each programme deals with different topics, such as cultural sentiments, customs, mysteries, commodities, foods, and the human body. ‘The Investigators’ bustle around to investigate natural phenomena, extraordinary things or places and common knowledge the audience may be curious about. Whereas the programme features relatively simple and uncomplicated investigations, other variants choose specific topics and research them using diverse methods. Experiment and Nod divides the main topic into several sub-topics. Great Discovery, The Laws of Fear approves or disapproves of the laws underlying social customs and phenomena, attaching more weight to the on-site examination of the probability of a proposition rather than experimentation and explanation. Dakeshi’s Book of Genesis builds a sequence of introduction, development, turn and conclusion, just like a thesis; the Great Aru Aru Cyclopedia provides a vast amount of information related to one selected subject, such as rice, milk, tofu, and sleeping; while Special Mission, Research 200X explains keywords taken from the experts’ presentations within the narrative format of a science fiction drama. While the Japanese infotainment programmes have different scales and formats for providing information, Paradise for Curiosity appropriates the common narrative. Rather than benchmarking the narrative of a specific programme, Paradise for Curiosity follows the basic concept of Japanese programmes that seek to provide both information and entertainment by researching and experimenting daily curiosities. At the same time the programme employs some common presentational techniques. It includes a scene in which a reporter runs to the experiment site or to the experts. This mimics the first scene in ‘The Investigators’, which shows the back of the reporter who is running off on her/his investigation. Moreover, like many other Japanese infotainment programmes it uses subtitles to emphasize what has been said. In particular it presents a seal-shaped subtitle declaring ‘Curiosity Solved’, just as Great Discovery, The Laws of Fear displays the subtitle ‘Approved’ to indicate a case’s closure. On the other hand, Paradise for Curiosity satisfies the audience’s curiosity by explaining the keywords that come up during the interviews with the experts just as in Special Mission, Research 200X. Paradise for Curiosity takes the common denominator from the related Japanese programmes and appropriates some of their presentational techniques, yet is dissimilar in the way it presents the role of the MC. While Japanese programmes such as Dakeshi’s Book of Genesis, Dokoro’s Megaten, and Gonnomisako’s Science Hall are dependent upon the celebrity of their MCs, Paradise for Curiosity casts four actress/actors and

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comedians as MCs and categorizes their roles according to their gender, age, and image. For example, a young female actress is expected to give mischievous, youthful responses. At the start Paradise for Curiosity was publicized as the show of Sookwan Hwang, a well-known medical professor in Korea. But before long his name was dropped from the programme. The show’s popularity was due to its narrative form rather than the celebrity of its MCs. Paradise for Curiosity blends the narrative elements found in various Japanese infotainment programmes and makes use of their strong points. As it follows their common narrative form and appropriates some presentational techniques, Paradise for Curiosity tries to introduce a programme format new to Korean audiences, thus avoiding accusations of plagiarising a specific programme. Licensed adaptations Although informal copying practices have widely prevailed, few sanctions have been initiated against them. In late 1993 the international agency of Japan’s TBC sent KBS an official document accusing KBS’s Racing Sunday of copying TBC’s Lucky Zenda, and requesting a US$30,000 royalty for using the format (Hankyeorae 1994). Immediately after this warning was issued, the programme was cancelled. In 1998 the agency demanded that the producers of SBS’s Special Mission, Father’s Challenge officially buy the format. SBS apologized for their negligence and then cancelled the programme. Korean television is unaccustomed to the business of buying formats, especially from Japan. In 1999 MBC officially purchased the license for the format of Boys and Girls in Love from Fuji TV. MBC uses this format in a segment called ‘Love Train’ in Eve’s Castle. Eve’s Castle presents two other segments called ‘Confession at the Street’ and ‘Power of Love’. In ‘Love Train’, the participant who confesses his/her love rides a special train whose track can veer in different directions depending on the partner’s reply. MBC, which still had the bitter memory of cancelling its drama called Chongchun due to charges of plagiarism,3 was willing to officially purchase the format. Even though the usage of a special train as a medium for love confessions was in itself a novel idea, the narrative structure was not new. Other variations had already been utilized. For example, a segment called ‘The Choice of One’s Heart’ in The Beautiful Meetings (SBS) presents a similar plot in which the participant declares their love to someone whom she/he has secretly been pining for. The difference between ‘The Choice of One’s Heart’ and ‘Love Train’ lay in the method of portraying confessions and replies. Eve’s Castle failed to differentiate itself from the existent dating programmes and subsequently did not draw much attention. It was cancelled after one season. In the early 2000s the Korean television industry became much more

South Korea 47 concerned about the accusations of plagiarism and began to consider licensed formats. In 2002 several entertainment programmes officially adapted Japanese formats. ‘Brain Survivor’, one of the segments of Sunday, Sunday Night (MBC), has adapted the format of TBS’s two-hour special Brain Survivor 2. The main idea of this quiz show is that it does not require knowledge, but rather a good memory and intuition; one has to guess a word, put the picture back in its original place, and remember a series of names or a sequence of colours. Jungkyoo Park, the Korean producer of ‘Brain Survivor’, was interviewed for this study, and he said that he was impressed by the ways in which TBC’s Brain Survivor 2 displayed the questions and answers (personal interview, 23 October 2002). He also approved of ‘Stairs of Memory’, in which the contestant has to memorize the sequences of colours shown on a monitor and ascend the stairs of matched colours. ‘Brain Survivor’ borrows the main plot from Brain Survivor 2, as well as its presentational techniques. However it does not simply reproduce the same programme. Park argues that the contents have been changed ‘in our way’. In fact, there are some notable differences to be found besides the addition of a local host and a local language version of the quiz. ‘Brain Survivor’ features a diverse range of panellists, not only young entertainers but also aging performers, doctors, and athletes. In addition, the ultimate winner among the sixteen panellists is supposed to offer prize money to her/his old school as a form of scholarship. ‘Brain Survivor’ takes on the characteristics of a public service, rather than a merely gratuitous entertainment quiz show. The sense of public service obligation has been continuously imposed upon the production practices of Korean network television. There have also been a series of programmes portraying courtrooms in Korea. Solomon’s Choice (SBS) is a programme that officially adapted its format from a Japanese special; it turned the special into a regular programme. Soonyoung Chung, the executive producer of the programme, revealed that SBS had to pay royalties for adaptation of a specific element rather than the whole format (personal interview, 30 October 2002). Existing local segments such as ‘Attorney Kim, Attorney Lee’, ‘The Comedy Courtroom’, and ‘The Pleasant Courtroom’ have built up their narratives based upon conflict situations in the courtroom. Solomon’s Choice follows the same narrative conventions and yet it required a licensing agreement to put four attorney panellists in the studio who state different views on the same case. The adapted narrative frame is however filled with local panellists and local cases. Until 2002 formats have been imported mainly for the purpose of adapting specific settings. With the opening of the door to Japanese entertainment programmes now imminent, the Korean broadcasting industry has been paying more attention to the global format agencies as well as the domestic accusations of plagiarism. Although many global television

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formats, especially Japanese television formats, have already been brought into Korea through copying practices, a growing pressure on unlicensed adaptations would make the Korean broadcasters pay more royalties.

Cultural attitudes toward programme adaptations As copying grew rampant during the 1990s there were many heated discussions about these practices. The arguments can be summarized as follows. First, these copying practices would result in legal conflicts that would cause great economic losses and international condemnation. Second, they would further accelerate cultural dependency on Japan. Third, they would paralyse the ethical consciousness of the local broadcasters. Fourth, they would weaken local creativity, and furthermore, reduce the competitive power of Korean programming in the global market. Fifth, the increasing dependency upon Japanese programmes would infringe upon the local audience’s right to watch good quality diverse programming. As viewers have gained access to more channels through which to identify the originals and to exchange their critiques, they have become very sensitive to the ‘voluntary’ influx of Japanese programmes. The Korean press has often picked up and publicized these critiques. In 1998 when the Korean government first declared its policy of openness towards Japanese popular culture, many concerns were expressed about the ripple effect on local television. It was said that the unfiltered expressions of ‘suggestive and sensational’ programmes could devastate national sentiment and cultural identity (Kookmin Ilbo 1998), that young people would be greatly influenced by Japanese celebrities (Kyonghyang 1998), and that in the worst case scenario Korea would come under cultural occupation by Japan (Hankook Ilbo 1998). Many were extremely sensitive to the inflow of Japanese television programmes and worried about the possibility of cultural subordination to Japan. The affirmative side argued that the openness would normalize the market for Japanese cultural products, eradicate the practices of plagiarism, build up cultural strength, and keep up with the global trends. However, despite the benefits of openness, bitter memories of the Japanese colonialists have unconsciously and consciously contextualized the current cultural exchanges with Japan. The criticism of copying practices has concentrated mainly on those producers imitating Japanese programmes. But in fact there have also been many cases that have borrowed from US programmes. Three Boys and Three Girls (MBC), a programme that achieved great popularity and founded a local sitcom convention targeted at the young generation, followed the sitcom format of NBC’s Friends. Its stage settings and characterizations were similar to those of the American programme. The Johnny Yoon Show, which first introduced the American-style talk show format in early 1990s, imitated the formats of The Late Show With David Letterman

South Korea 49 and The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. There are entertainment news programmes that copy the format of Entertainment Tonight and even a quiz show called Live Show, I Love Quiz Show (MBC), which resembles Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. These programmes have rarely been accused of plagiarism. Although their copying practices are clearly evident, they are not criticized as much as those that copy Japanese programmes. Many Korean producers feel positively disposed towards American generic forms and at the same realize the difference in ‘structures of feeling’. The producers and personnel of Live Show, I Love Quiz Show argue that they were inspired by Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? but that they did not plagiarize the format. They maintain that their company has had a long tradition of producing local quiz shows, and thus, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? did not appear to be so original. Live Show, I Love Quiz Show developed its own lifeline techniques of ‘ARS Chance’ and ‘Eraser Chance’ by which participants would be given a hint. In addition, the winner of the Korean format has to donate half of her/his prize money to help unfortunate people. The number of shows that have consciously adapted American programmes is much fewer than those that have adapted Japanese programmes. It seems people are less anxious about the inflow of American programmes. In 2000 Korean television stations were allowed for the first time to import Japanese-produced sports programmes, documentaries, and news reports. By the end of 2002, however, the government had yet to allow Japanese television dramas and other entertainment programmes be imported due to the public fear that undesirable cultural aspects of the former colonizer, such as relatively liberal expressions of sex and violence, as well as commercialism, would negatively impact upon Korean culture. Japanese popular culture has been often regarded as problematic with the result that the issue of plagiarism and copyright has evoked a strong nationalistic sentiment. It cannot be argued that rampant copying practices have been made possible just because of the ban on Japanese programmes. Likewise the open door policy by itself cannot stop the widespread copying practices. Informal copying practices have derived from structural problems in the Korean television industry rather than from any individual’s misconduct. As the television industry plunged into reckless competition for ratings during the 1990s, poor production conditions resulted in many rough-andready productions with little capital investment and planning. Under an obsession with higher ratings, the entertainment programmes that usually occupy the early evening or fringe timeslots are susceptible to severe ratings competition. They have been given little time and money to conceive and produce synopses and this has often led to blatant plagiarism. It is a fact well known to most industry people that company executives have handed over video copies of Japanese programmes, and producers have even gone on business trips to Japan in order to observe the newest trends

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in programme production. According to the report on ‘Copying Practices of Broadcasting Programs: Present Conditions and Countermeasures’ issued by the Korean Broadcasting Institute (1999), the thirty producers questioned indicated that what they watch for most keenly is programme format or formal structure (56 per cent), followed by the programme idea or main concept (20 per cent), production technique (17 per cent), and detailed items (7 per cent). Japanese programmes, which are regarded as having less ‘cultural discount’ than any other foreign programmes, have played the role of an index that reflects the newest trends in television production. Since 2000 there has been less public discourse on copying practices, but this does not mean those practices have disappeared. With audiences more attentive to the media, and with the imminent opening to the Japanese programme market, the Korean television industry has turned its interest to buying formats. The cases of blatant plagiarism have decreased, but at the same time the methods of appropriating aspects of Japanese programmes have become more complex. When MBC officially bought a format for the first time in 1999 this attempt was negatively viewed as ‘an open copying practice’ (Chosun Ilbo 1999; Hankyeorae 1999). Although the Korean broadcasting companies have become more ready to buy global formats (Hankook Ilbo 2002) many criticize purchasing as a temporary expediency that reveals a lazy attitude toward production (Moonhwa Ilbo 2002; Chosun Ilbo 2002). During the 1990s copying foreign programmes has become one of the ways of importing or catching up on novelties and advances in the industry. In the early 2000s purchasing formats constitutes an important means of discovering newer formats and techniques. Korean producers still need the foreign referents, whether or not these are officially purchased. From these overseas models they attempt to discover new formats, techniques and topics, while at the same time carefully checking what is or is not workable in Korean contexts. Chung, the executive producer of Solomon’s Choice, has said, ‘Since the audience selects what it wants to watch, the Korean producers have to do their best to adjust foreign elements to Korean sentiments’ (personal interview, 30 October 2002). In the future Korean producers may purchase more formats, or they may meet the increasing demands for creative adaptations. While the market increasingly impacts upon the course of local production, audiences’ structures of feeling cannot be neglected. Translocal adaptation takes place based upon the shared meaning or value system in a society within its national boundary. Even though local storytellers have turned to foreign cultural products, they always carefully conduct the inevitable modifications so that cultural products resonate with the audience.

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Concluding remarks As the local broadcasting industry has taken shape it has developed domestically produced content that accommodates local tastes. It has also given more priority to scheduling practices centred on local programmes. During the 1990s when the industry faced stiffer ratings competition and audiences acquired more sophisticated tastes, more cost-effective, competitive programmes were sought. Korean television, which entered the history of world broadcasting rather late, has been quickly catching up with the frontrunners. In the course of taking up the newest trends in television production the Korean broadcasting industry has discovered relevant reference points in Japanese programmes. And despite deep-rooted anti-Japan sentiments derived from the colonial experience, the Japanese broadcasting industry is viewed as a model that has successfully adapted Western television culture to its own cultural context, that has deployed for the first time in Asia a systematic marketing strategy for programming, and that has always been developing new entertainment formats. Korean entertainment programmes, which are expected to be lower budget leadins to prime time evening viewing, have found precedents in trendy Japanese entertainment programmes. Although the globalized media industry easily crosses national boundaries, only a select few developed countries lead its flow of traffic. These leaders are not always Western. The Japanese media industry has been one of the important players in shaping the transnational media flow in Korea. Japanese popular culture influences upon Korea do not support the standard media imperialism thesis, which criticizes the Western media’s domination in the world. Japanese media culture, which has reprojected Western media culture, has initiated the diverse means of transnational exchanges among Asian nations, including Korea. In the 1990s Korean television programmes came to look similar to their Japanese counterparts. Japanese television culture was brought into Korea via informal routes (i.e. copying practices), in the process creating great local anxiety about Japan-ization. This inflow, however, is hardly a one-way process of cultural imposition on the ‘indigenous’ culture. Types of transnational programme adaptations, such as cloning, developing, and collaging, suggest that the process of inflow is extremely complicated. Korean television has not just mechanically transplanted Japanese television. Local cultural contexts of Korea in the 1990s, the government’s policy toward the importation of Japanese popular culture, the media’s changing landscape, the rapid development of a global consumer culture, the sustaining cultural coding systems, and audience activities, for instance, have deeply conditioned the practices of transnational adaptations of Japanese television programmes. Korean broadcasters refer to Japanese television programmes, but they always carefully conduct an inevitable modification to tune

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themselves to local ‘structures of feeling’ as well as to local production conditions. The flux of Japanese television culture has further facilitated cultural hybridization locally and has played an important role in bridging the gap between global pop culture and local pop culture. In the late 1990s greater cultural exchanges with Japan as well as the more marked presence of global media in Korea, along with the development of new media, complicated and hybridized the Korean media landscape to a greater degree. The imminent open-door policy to Japanese entertainment programmes would do away with informal copying practices and make transnational programme adaptations more visible. The recent inflow of Japanese formats illustrates what would happen after that complete opening. Korean broadcasters, who have been the cultural mediators in producing the Korean version of Japanese television culture without paying royalties, will have to purchase the formats or the broadcasting rights. They cannot continue to appropriate those elements they want to keep and thereupon construct a bricolage programme without due payment. Although their role of cultural mediator will become limited, they will continue to operate as a cultural filter or re-interpreter. When contents and images are fitted into formats, they are translocalized from Japan and re-localized in Korea. Korea has in place an undersized production scale compared with Japan, which has built up competitive power with a long tradition of advertising revenues determined by ratings, independent productions, complete pre-productions and productions, long-term scheduling strategies based upon advanced technologies, and large amounts of capital. As Korean production conditions are far behind those of Japan, Korean broadcasters’ choices are limited. The growing trend towards rating for rating’s sake and market-centred practices in Korea will give more priority to economic efficiency. Korean broadcasters are more likely to be attracted to cost-effective format purchases, but will pay more attention to the popular sentiments of local audiences. As transnational cultural exchanges have become more active, the boundaries of local culture delimited by geography and nationality have become more blurred. Since these cultural exchanges are shaped overwhelmingly by Japan’s cultural traffic, ordinary Koreans worry about cultural subordination. But Japan’s transnational cultural power has not been desired in the same way as has that of the USA. The cultural practices of viewing Japan as the colonizer of the past and the possible cultural colonizer of the future have made Koreans much more conscious of the process of adaptation. In the meantime, Korea has come to build up a cultural tradition that blends foreign and local elements to create something ‘Korean’.

South Korea 53

Notes 1 It is not easy to define entertainment programmes as a genre. In this chapter, this term refers to various kinds of programmes that aim at entertaining. This includes quiz shows, talk shows, comedy shows, and variety shows presided over by hosts. 2 To examine the public discourses on the plagiarism of entertainment programmes, the KINDS (Korea Integrated News Database System, http://www.kinds.or.kr/) database was used to search for news reports containing keywords such as plagiarism, copying, and Japanese pop culture, from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2001. The Korean Broadcasting Institution published three reports on plagiarism in Korean television, in 1993, 1996 and 1999. 3 In 1998, MBC’s mini-series drama Chongchun (Youth) was cancelled because it was accused of copying a 1997 Japanese television drama, Love Generation (NTV). This case marked the first time that a broadcasting company officially admitted its plagiarism, and decided to take action.

5

Cloning, adaptation, import and originality Taiwan in the global television format business Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen

Taiwan residents enjoy one of the most abundant television diets in East Asia. Eighty per cent of households subscribe to cable television services, offering a buffet of more than eighty channels including niche and full service channels. Taiwan’s television industry, while relatively small in comparison with its competitors in East Asia, has established a reputation for creatively re-generating formats developed elsewhere. But are Taiwan’s television genres and formats original, or do they merely mimic the successes of other countries? A number of critics have taken the industry to task for its dependence on copying and have criticized it for a lack of innovation. However, Taiwan’s producers have taken a more pragmatic approach to producing content for the marketplace. Some describe foreign formats as ‘inspirations’, and their work as ‘adaptations’, rather than using the more pejorative term ‘clone’ which implies little or no innovation. Moreover there is a widespread practice of surveying other countries’ formats and taking the pieces that accommodate the tastes of local audiences. In this process the local format is arguably still innovative. This chapter concerns the borrowing and localization of television programme formats in Taiwan. The key theme is that formats play a key role in both the survival and revival of Taiwan’s television industry. The discussion will cover definitions of formats as they apply to Taiwan, factors influencing format change, formats in the current schedule, and uniquely Taiwanese formats. A case study of the Taiwanese idol-drama, Meteor Garden, will illustrate how a particular format contributed to the revival of the local industry.

Multi-channel television environment Taiwan has a hybrid television system with both commercial and public television. Viewers have a multitude of channel options, albeit with a heavy emphasis on entertainment and ‘infotainment’ genres and formats. The nation’s public television service (PTS) supplements four terrestrial commercial stations, 68 cable operators, and 128 satellite channels. The

Taiwan

55

four commercial terrestrial television stations have occupied the mainstream since the early 1960s: Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV) was established in 1962, China Television Company (CTV) in 1968, Chinese Television System (CTS) in 1971, and Formosa Television (FTV) in 1997. As in the USA Taiwan began broadcasting with commercial terrestrial (free-to-air) television. Public television is a recent addition to the Taiwanese televisual landscape. Taiwanese cable and satellite television stations have evolved from within a competitive and sometimes chaotic environment. Before the Cable Television Law was passed in 1993 (revised in 1999) there were about 300 illegal cable system operators (Liu 1994). These operators were made to apply for licenses in 1994. A period of rationalization subsequently transpired during which mergers and acquisitions reduced the number to the current level of 64 cable system operators, all of which are privately owned. Not surprisingly, given the early boom in cable, the cable (Pay-TV) penetration rate exceeds 80 per cent of households. Nowadays, most of the channels carried by the cable systems are delivered via satellites. Most are privately owned: 54 domestic and 14 foreign companies offer 128 satellite channels. They have to compete to enter contracts with the cable systems as the capacity of cable systems can only allow carriage of 80 channels at this stage (Government Information Office 2001). The liberalization of Taiwan’s mediascape can be best understood from the perspective of political economy. The Taiwan government abolished Martial Law in 1987. The government subsequently relaxed bans on newspapers in 1988 and moved to regulate the cable television industry in 1993. Since that time Taiwan’s media have embraced pluralism. An example is the programme 2100 All the People Talk (2100 Quan Min Kai Jiang), which was instigated in 1994 by the cable television channel TVBS. This was a live call-in programme, inviting representatives from all the major political parties to debate a major issue of the day. As the first live call-in television programme it attracted widespread support from viewers. Host Lee Tao even tried to dress and act like CNN’s Larry King. After 2100 All the People Talk became popular, other cable television channels adopted the call-in format. Now the period from 8pm to 10pm on cable channels provides a fertile field for political talk shows and call-in programmes. This does not, however, imply diversity: most of the time their topics are the same and sometimes the same guests appear on different channels on the same day. This example illustrates an important characteristic of Taiwan television that pertains to the international shift towards trade in television formats. Stations and channels are by nature conservative and are reluctant to change audience viewing habits due to fear of a loss of ratings and advertising revenue. Tried and tested schedules with recognized formats and genres are guarantors of success. In this kind of conservative

56

Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen

production environment formats can play an important role. For instance, from 7pm to 8pm most stations and full-service channels broadcast news and in doing so follow an American exemplar. Mimicking American news formats, Taiwanese stations persist with a solitary anchor. This mimicry creates a tendency towards isomorphism in the scheduling of television programmes. Prime time schedules in all the commercial terrestrial television stations and some full-service cable channels are almost identical. Indeed, when there is a change in programming it brings about a kind of herd mentality. News and weather reports are almost identical and they follow each other’s leads: if one anchor broadcasts on-the-scene news others will follow suit. From 8pm to 9pm most channels (except the niche cable television channels) broadcast dramas. If one station were to expand the drama period from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, other stations would soon follow the new practice. In this sense they choose to apply head-to-head programming strategies and rarely adopt counter-programming strategies.

Definitions and sources of formats In defining formats for the purpose of the following analysis, we utilize a broad definition of formatting. To speak of formats is to describe the transfer of ideas and know-how, both in the sense of open or closed adaptations of programmes. The open adaptation model implies the selective use of generic elements while the closed model refers specifically to the industrial format model where there is a higher level of replication. Strictly speaking, Taiwan’s formats have historically displayed a lack of distinctive native characteristics. During the early days of television programming in the 1960s and 1970s Taiwan’s news programmes and quiz show formats were influenced by American television, while variety shows absorbed Japanese influences (Fang 2002, personal interview).1 More recently Taiwan television drama series have taken to borrowing ideas from Japanese television dramas. This cultural borrowing has given Taiwan’s entertainment programme formats a more Japanese look, rather than simply imitating American models. However, in more recent times, with the format assuming greater importance in a multi-channel environment, we are witnessing the emergence of a distinctive Taiwan look in drama formats. The categories of format that are prevalent in Taiwan include imported programmes, licensed format, clone, adaptation, re-production, original format, syndication, and free use. 1

Imported programmes: These are finished programmes purchased from abroad and rebroadcast in Taiwan utilizing subtitles or dubbing but with no changes to content. This category has been referred to as the ‘parrot’ format, in the sense that like a parrot it mimics (Lee 1991). The main sources are Hong Kong, Japan, America and South Korea.

Taiwan 2

3

4

5 6

7

8

57

Licensed formats: This is what we construe as a legitimate format where a licensing agreement is established between two companies to produce an authorized local version. The contract will indicate the use of whole format, or just expertise, props or scripts (usually with dramas). Clone: This format model is unlicensed and often opportunistic. Cloning by definition implies copying the entire format. However, this is difficult to prosecute as most producers will make variations on the copied format. Adaptation: This is where a foreign programme is copied or alternatively significant elements of it are taken and adapted for local consumption. Based on the degree of adaptation there are distinctions between loose and close adaptation, and open and closed adaptation. Re-production: The footage is bought abroad and re-edited, often with a local host added (e.g. Funniest Home Videos). Original: This is the format originated by local producers. Most of these will exhibit some degree of hybridity in that it is difficult to have a purely original work. Some ingenious producers blend format ingredients so as to make a programme appear local and original. Syndication: This has more to do with format distribution practices. Terrestrial stations, independent producers or cable television channels will sell their programmes to other local stations or channels after a first run. Free copy: This is where programmes are provided by other channels (such as religious channels) free of charge.

Undoubtedly most producers aspire to exhibit originality in their programmes. However, Taiwan’s market is very small; its audience size (6 million households) is limited, with an extraordinary number of channels competing for eyeballs. If the rights-holder, the producer, or station cannot be guaranteed sales to overseas markets (usually within Greater China), it is not economical to produce an expensive first copy, which will only be broadcast locally. Taking this risk factor into account, producers inevitably adopt the most cost-effective option. As scholars have demonstrated, the costs of importing programmes tend to be lower than the costs of producing domestic programmes as the production costs of the imported programmes have already been covered when first run in their own domestic market. The value of imported programming, however, is never a given. Hoskins and Mirus (1988: 503) use the term ‘cultural discount’ to describe ‘the cross-border reduction in the value of a foreign programme’. They suggest that a programme rooted in one culture would have a ‘diminished appeal’ elsewhere as viewers find it difficult to identify with the values, beliefs and behavioural patterns of the materials. A ‘cultural discount’ therefore applies with foreign programmes bearing nuances, or accents that diminish their value in a second market. This

58

Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen

factor lends weight to the argument for the format as a new mode of transaction. In short, buyers look to the format as a basis for creating value through the addition of culturally specific local ingredients, in this way diminishing the cultural discount. This is especially true for entertainment programmes (Papandrea 1998). During the 1960s and 1970s Taiwan imported many television series, movies, and feature films from the USA. By the 1980s, Taiwan was importing many dramas from Hong Kong. In the 1990s Taiwanese viewers gained access to Japanese channels carrying movies, drama series, and variety shows. Terry Lee (2001, personal interview),2 the programming manager of CTS, suggests that there are several reasons why Japanese programmes are now widely received by Taiwanese audiences. First, Taiwan was occupied by Japan from 1895 to 1945 and some older audiences can still speak or at least understand Japanese. Second, Japanese programmes are more diverse and more oriental, so are easily understood by Taiwanese audiences because of the ‘cultural proximity’ factor (Straubhaar 1991). Third, many younger Taiwanese consider it fashionable to consume Japanese programmes and to identify with Japanese fashions and styles. Fourth, Taiwanese producers are constrained in terms of budgets, talent, and time. It is faster to borrow ideas from Japanese programmes and more economical to ‘borrow’ than pay fees. A senior media critic even joked that some Taiwanese producers went to Japan and stayed in their hotel rooms to watch Japanese television programmes. They euphemistically call this kind of behaviour ‘getting inspiration’ rather than copying or imitating. In reality it is difficult to prove that a programme or format is a direct copy as producers often borrow an idea from one programme and a segment from another. In their parlance this is called ‘coincidence’ or ‘incidental inspiration’. As mentioned in the introduction of this book, while programme formats are not copyrightable this does not preclude creators threatening legal action. However, if the imitator makes changes the format originator’s claim to ownership merely creates public embarrassment for the copier (see Chapter 1; also Moran 1998: 15–17). In 2001 the Korean drama series Blue Life and Death Love was imported by a cable channel GTV and subsequently became very popular. In 2002 the terrestrial television station TTV broadcast a Korean drama series Glass Slipper and received harsh criticisms from the local Performers Union, as terrestrial television stations are considered to carry greater cultural responsibility including broadcasting more locally originated programmes. According to a local producer’s analysis, elements of Korean dramas such as scripts, characters and even setting were copied from Japanese drama series. In effect, there is a transfer of ideas to Taiwan from Japan via South Korea. Despite the Japanese attributes, the success of Korean drama series in Taiwan can be attributed to Korean dramas targeting all audience ages. Moreover, the high degree of cultural proximity

Taiwan

59

between Taiwan and South Korea means that the narratives of Korean dramas also reflect life in Taiwan. In addition, their presence in Taiwanese schedules has as much to do with economics as taste. Due to restricted budgets Taiwan’s cable channels seek cheaper programme alternatives and the Korean programmes represent better value than Japanese programmes (Wang 2002, personal interview).3 In addition, Korean producers are adept at promoting their programmes, often sending leading actors and actresses to Taiwan (Tso 2002, personal interview).4

Factors impacting upon format change Factors impacting upon format change include competition, changes in audience tastes, ratings, budget constraints, and technology. When there is strong competition producers might choose to modify formats or to change elements in order to retain or build audiences. A popular format called Imitation Show demonstrates changes within formats. In this programme the host or guests imitate a famous singer, actor/actress, or political figure. CTS’s Diamond Stage (Zuan Shi Wu Tai) and CTV’s Golden Partners (Huang Jin Pai Dang), broadcast in the late 1980s, both contained a segment of the ‘imitation show’ format. Riding on the programme’s popularity many other variety shows added ‘imitation show elements’ into their programmes. Inevitably, audiences lost interest in the duplicated format, pushing the producers to search for something new. When audience tastes change, whether through fatigue or fashion, producers will consider changing the format or at least changing some elements. Even the most popular and enduring shows incorporate variations, such as inviting a special guest or changing the props. Falling ratings are another important signal for producers to change the formats. When ratings fall producers will contemplate changing elements or completely renovating a format (Che 2002, personal interview).5 When competitors’ ratings are higher producers become predatory, copying formats to attract audience numbers. A popular drama series broadcast by CTS, Fair Judge Pao (Bao Qing Tian), received the highest rating for drama when it was aired. Fair Judge Pao was not only popular in Taiwan but also in China, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese markets. Another station, CTV, attempted to copy the programme’s success by changing the Judge’s gender. The CTV version was called Female Judge (Nu Xun An), but despite the makeover it was unsuccessful. When budgets are limited or constrained producers will consider formats as a way of cutting costs. For instance, it is more expensive to produce news magazine programmes compared with call-in programmes or talk shows. News magazine programmes entail outdoor footage, editing, sound track license fees, and more production personnel. Call-in programmes and talk shows have minimal costs, such as fees for guest speakers. Indeed their ratings may exceed those of news magazine programmes.

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Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen

For cost minimization purposes cable channels tend to prefer call-in programmes or talk shows to news magazine programmes. A good example is 2100 All People Talk. Technology also impacts upon format change. Technologies such as computer graphics, 3D effects, sound effects, and virtual reality software and equipment allow producers to add more elements and a greater degree of interactivity in order to further enrich the programme formats. Some puppet shows (Pu Tai Hsi) broadcast by Pi Li Channel adopted sound and visual effects that made them very different from traditional puppet shows previously shown on terrestrial television stations during the 1970s. However, the end result of how well the technology functions in the amended format ultimately depends upon social, cultural, economic factors as well as the physical environment.

Formats in current schedules The Broadcasting Radio and Television Law of 1976 divides television programmes into four genres: news and government, education and culture, public service, and entertainment. The Law requires entertainment programmes to comprise less than 50 per cent of total programming. This ensures that stations broadcast news and government information, and educational, cultural and public service programmes. In reality it is not difficult to meet these content requirements as entertainment programmes can be categorized as educational or cultural programmes. An entertainment programme Walk Ten Thousand Miles of the Country (Jiang Shan Wan Li Qing) combined entertainment elements (inviting celebrities on to the show) with quiz elements. This hybrid or ‘edu-tainment’ format satisfies regulatory requirements as well as attracting a considerable audience. With the recent expansion of the satellite television industry in the Asia-Pacific region sources of programming have become more widespread. Programme origins in our study can be further analyzed into six categories: imported, adaptations, re-production, original, purchased locally, and free use. Table 5.1 shows the results. This categorization mirrors our eight format definitions mentioned earlier, except that the category clone is absent due to the difficulty of adjudicating if a format is actually a clone based on the information available to us. Since the sampling week does not contain any licensed formats (licensed script or licensed programmes), the numbers of licensed formats are all zeros. Hence, these two categories clone and licensed formats do not appear in the table. As indicated in Table 5.1, the category original comprises 54.72 per cent of ‘first-run’ programmes and 58.12 per cent of repeats under the column 24 hours. In other words, locally produced programmes occupy the largest proportion of overall broadcasting time. It is interesting to note that the

49 50 3 192 8 0 302

16.22 16.55 0.99 63.57 2.64 0 99.97

%

■ 187 41 57 422 106 7 820

No. 22.80 5 6.95 51.46 12.92 0.85 99.98

%

Non-prime time

■ 236 91 60 614 114 7 1122

No.

24 hours

21.03 8.11 5.34 54.72 10.16 0.62 99.98

%

■ ■ 52 54 3 224 8 0 341

No. 15.24 15.83 0.87 65.68 2.34 0 99.96

%

Prime time

Include repeat

■ 251 56 57 620 116 11 1111

No.

22.56 5.04 5.13 55.80 10.44 0.99 99.96

%

Non-prime time

■

303 110 60 844 124 11 1452

No.

24 hours

20.86 7.57 4.13 58.12 8.53 0.75 99.96

%

Note The data are sampled from the week of 21 May to 27 May 2002, based on broadcasting time in the unit of 30 minutes. Prime time is defined as the time from 7pm to 11pm.

Import Adaptation Re-production Original Purchase Free Total

No.

Prime time

First-run

Table 5.1 Programme origins of ten television channels in one week

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Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen

adaptation format claims 16.5 per cent of prime time programming, the second highest percentage, but only 5 per cent in non-prime time. This difference is the biggest among all formats. This implies that adaptation programmes are principally played during prime time. The categories adaptation and original are clearly dominant in prime time. For ‘first-run’ programmes, the adaptation and original programmes increase from 5 per cent to 16.5 per cent and from 51.4 per cent to 63.5 per cent respectively. The remaining programme formats have larger percentages in non-prime time. Importantly, both adaptation and original are pure local productions or are localized (or inspired) by overseas programmes. Since the most valuable audience cohort is found in prime time stations screen their best programmes during this time. Consideration is also given to cultural difference: will an original idea with a local flavour compete with the localization of already successful programmes? At the end of the day (or night), what will be the best way to achieve higher ratings? During non-prime time periods the cost of producing the programmes becomes a major concern and imported programmes and repeats purchased from other channels are the best money-saving strategy. Comparing the data across 24 hours the original category increases from 54.72 per cent in ‘firstrun’ to 58.12 per cent in ‘include repeat’. Other formats tend to not follow suit. This suggests that original programmes are usually repeated within 24 hours. As shown in Table 5.2, regardless of terrestrial or cable channels the major source of television programming in Taiwan is domestic production. This comprises 85.19 per cent of first-run programmes. Sources outside Taiwan provide a minor proportion of total programming, with repeats from Hong Kong, Japan, USA, Korea, and Mainland China comprising 6.86 per cent, 6.37 per cent, 1.89 per cent, 1.10 per cent, and 0.42 per cent respectively. During prime time all terrestrial channel programming is domestic except for a very small number of programmes from Mainland China and Japan. In contrast some cable channels broadcast imported programmes from Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea during prime time. These are usually serial dramas, and are repeated several times in non-prime time, as shown in the parenthesized numbers. The high percentage of domestic programmes in terrestrial channels and the high percentage of outside programmes in cable channels correlate with the requirements of the Broadcasting Law in Taiwan. According to this the locally originated content of terrestrial channels should be not less than 70 per cent, and of cable television not less than 20 per cent. Accordingly, most terrestrial channels broadcast news and serial dramas in prime time as these programmes are produced domestically. In Taiwan most variety programmes are influenced by Japan with local producers taking ideas from Japan variety shows and adapting them for local consumption. A variety show Super Sunday (Chao Ji Xing Ji Tian), broadcast by CTS has received awards on several occasions. A segment for

28 150 178 21 133 147 (154) 28 155 179 (183) 41 145 183 (186) 35 139 160 (174) 13 104 104 (117) 24 85 84 (109) 32 89 108 (121) 24 142 60 (166) 11 116 86 (127) 1289 85.19 1329 81.43

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0 4

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1 1

7 0.16 7 0.42

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1 5

11

9

0

0

7

0

0

0

0 0

0

0

1

0 2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0 0

P

22 0 (38) 29 32 0 (40) 72 4.75 112 6.86

29

10 (21) 10 5 (10) 0 0

14

0

0

1

0 2

NP 24 hrs

9

2

0

0

0

5

4

2

6 3

31 2.04 31 1.89

9

2

0

0

0

5

4

2

6 3

NP 24 hrs

USA

Non-Chinese

Notes 1. The data are sampled from the week of 21 May 2002 to 27 May 2002. 2. Data in columns P (prime time) and NP (non-prime time) include repeat programmes. 3. Entries without parenthesis under 24 hrs do not include repeated programmes. 4. Entries with parenthesis under 24 hrs include repeated programmes.

First-run First-run % Repeat Repeat %

TVBS

STAR

SET

GTV

ETV

PTS

FTV

CTS

TTV CTV

P

P

P

NP 24 hrs

Mainland China Hong Kong

Taiwan

NP 24 hrs

Imported

Domestic

Chinese

Table 5.2 Sources of television programme formats from ten channels

0

14

0

0

0

0

0

1

1 0

P

0

0

2 (3) 0

2

15

3 7

88 5.81 104 6.37

59 (74) 0 0

60

0

0

0

3

2

14

2 7

NP 24 hrs

Japan

0

0

0

5

0

0

0

0

0 0

P

0

0

0

13

0

0

0

0

0 0

6 0.39 18 1.10

0

0

6 (18) 0

0

0

0

0

0 0

NP 24 hrs

Korea

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0 0

P

6

0

0 0

0

2

0

0

20 1.32 31 1.89

0

2

0

0

11 (22) 1 1

22

6

0

0 0

NP 24 hrs

Others

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Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen

this show called Super Compare (Chao Ji Bi Yi Bi) was adapted from a Japanese variety show. The producer paid US$3500 dollars to buy the script and know-how for each episode. Super Compare was a ‘charades’ game with five to six players. The first player receives an axiom or short phrase, and the next player attempts to guess the meaning from the body language of the first player. During the game players are not permitted to speak, with the game continuing until the last player produces an answer. More often than not answers are far from correct. Another example of licensing is the game show Every Fight is a Victory (Bai Zhan Bai Sheng), which was also very popular some years ago. This show’s format was licensed from Japan’s Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS). Through cooperation with TBS the producers also gained ‘knowhow’ and suggestions about making stage props and running the show. The producer, Wang Chun (2002, personal interview), said that although the format of Every Fight is a Victory was taken from Takeshi Castle of TBS, the ideas and the competition among the players are original. Terry Lee, CTS manager of programming department, pointed out that the cost of Every Fight is a Victory is very high for reasons of safety. This game show involves not only hosts and contestants but also a large cheer squad. Out of necessity the production company spent a lot of money on designing an interesting game for the players, and on building a safe spot for the viewers and barrackers. This programme received high ratings and it continued to air for 8 years. It is an example of a successful programme utilizing a licensed format adapted to local tastes. However, its success does not translate to other cases. Another game show called Wise Men Survive (Zhi Zhe Sheng Cun) was less successful, even though it obtained the licensed format of The Weakest Link from the BBC. This show has not been particularly well received due to a cultural discrepancy between the UK and Taiwan. The somewhat serious atmosphere of this ‘game-show’ and the host’s abstruse questions were apparently not the right formula for an entertainment show in Taiwan. Audiences voted it off with their remote controls. In most instances producers in Taiwan pay the license fee for the format and remake the shows for domestic audiences rather than import the foreign show (See Table 5.3). However, programme prices are a primary determinant for a domestic producer. Due to budget constraints some producers prefer to clone the formats directly from original programmes with the risk of violating copyright or being caught out by the original production company. Wang Tzu-Sou (2002, personal interview),6 a senior reporter for Ming-Sheng Daily newspaper, commented that variety shows primarily clone Japanese programmes due to cultural proximity. Even some award winning programmes have been criticized for borrowing ideas from Japanese programmes. Instead of investing in programme research the local producers are inclined to outlay a large sum of money to hire famous hosts in order to lure domestic audiences.

Taiwan

65

Table 5.3 Examples of television programme formats Taiwanese programme

Foreign programme

Genre

Channel

Status

Wise Men Survive (Zhi Zhe Sheng Cun)

The Weakest Link

Game show

STAR

Licensed format

Super Sunday Various (Chao Ji Xing Ji Tian)

Variety show

CTS

Adaptation

Every Fight is a Victory Takeshi (Bai Zhan Bai Sheng) Castle

Game show

CTS

Licensed format

60 minutes (60 Fen Zhong)

60 Minutes

News magazine

CTV

Clone

Something to Ask (You Hua Yao Wen)

Meet the Press

Talk show

TTV

Clone

Hello Kitty Wonderland Hello Kitty Children Yo-Yo TV Re-produced (Hello Kitty Le Yuan) Wonderland programme Meteor Garden Fashion Guys Television (Liu Xing Hua Yuan) (manga) drama

CTS

Licensed script

Programmes from the USA represent another source of imitation. Most domestic news formats are heavily influenced by the USA. The news programme is much more culturally specific but the format can be easily replicated with a local host and domestic issues. As far back as the 1970s a CTV news programme called 60 Minutes mimicked the format of the American news programme 60 Minutes without even changing the name of the programme. Recently a TTV news programme, Something to Ask (You Hua Yao Wen), which invites senior journalists to discuss public issues, simulated the format of an American news programme called Meet the Press. In addition to news programmes quiz show formats are commonly influenced by the USA. In contrast US sitcom format adaptation is not so popular due to high production costs and a limited numbers of talented drama writers. Furthermore, differences in cultural background between East and West make the sitcom format difficult to translate. For example, the American way of expressing humour and making fun of others does not translate well in Taiwan. The format category ‘re-production’ is common in Taiwan. The production company or television station buys footage from abroad, and dubs this into Chinese. A children’s programme, Hello Kitty Wonderland (Hello Kitty Le Yuan) on YOYO TV plays the Japanese footages of Hello Kitty, a very popular kitten icon in Japan. In the footage the lyrics of the songs are dubbed into Chinese and the voiceover of the host is added to the dancing music. This programme is one of the most popular children programmes in Taiwan. Another travel programme Travel around the World

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Yu-Li Liu and Yi-Hsiang Chen

(Huan You Shi Jie) collects footage of foreign scenery, history, or mores from all over the world. The host and guests share their travelling experiences.

The unique television format in Taiwan Although most variety shows are now copied or adapted from Japanese formulas, there are some local productions that can be considered Taiwanese in origin. Iron Lion (Tie Shi Yu Ling Long) is a comical talk show, which draws on Taiwanese puns, slang, and vulgar songs. Viewers have been won over by lively improvisations and hilarious performances. Indeed this programme has become so popular that its road shows have caused a sensation in cities and on campuses with the show’s vulgar dialogue becoming fashionable among young audiences. Another successful example of a pure Taiwanese programme format is the so-called ‘restaurant show’. The origin of this format is stage-show restaurants where the performers take directions from guests. The host or MC plays the most important role and needs to be entertaining, quickwitted and have a command of repartee. Sometimes both host and singers engage in short skits combining scatological dialogue and amusing onstage antics. The popularity of the ‘restaurant show’ led to its re-versioning for cable television during the 1980s. The demand even extended to the videotapes market; it constituted the core business of video rental shops over a long period of time. Although Taiwan’s television programmes are ostensibly imitations of Japanese or US formats, there are locally originated programmes that have become exportable formats in other proximate markets. Two wellknown dating shows, I Love The Matchmaker (Wo Ai Hong Niang) and Special Man And Woman (Fei Chang Nan Nu), both created in Taiwan, have been influential, not only in Taiwan but in Mainland China (see Chapter 7). These shows feature several single men and ladies endeavouring to find the ‘perfect match’ through a series of quiz and games. Both shows have spawned numerous Mainland Chinese clones. Indeed, the practice of format exploitation by Mainland television stations, particularly in Hunan, Fujian, Anhui, and Shanghai, mirrors to some extent the Taiwanese appropriation of Japanese formats. To a much lesser extent Hong Kong and Singapore also imitate Taiwanese variety formats. The increasing numbers of imported programmes, high production costs, and market limitations, have led Taiwan’s production companies to move towards co-productions. Taiwan production companies have cooperated with stations in Mainland China in producing variety and drama programmes. The All-Round Production Company (Quan Neng Zhi Zuo Gong Si), owned by renowned producer Wang Chun, has cooperated with China Central Television Station and Shanghai Television station.

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Case study: Taiwan idol-drama Prior to 1992 the Taiwan government officially banned the importation of songs and television programmes from Japan. This cultural protectionism, a legacy of the imperialist occupation, meant that information about Japanese popular culture was limited. The television dramas that Taiwanese audiences viewed were primarily local productions. There were limited number of programmes imported from the USA and UK, and most of them were movies or miniseries. Two events changed the media environment in the early 1990s: first, the ban on Japanese television programmes was lifted at the end of 1992; second, the Cable Television Law of 1993 effectively rationalized the industry. From that point in time the supply of drama series diversified: they could be produced locally or imported from Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Mainland China. In 1994 CTV broadcast a Japanese drama in prime time. The phenomenal response to A-Hsin (A-Xin) created a competition for Japanese television dramas among terrestrial channels. The rush to imitate Japan’s success was further precipitated by the advent of idol-dramas (Ou Xiang Ju), a new genre with specific production conventions that made it in effect a format. Most Japanese idol-dramas are adaptations of well-known manga (comic stories). Target audiences are young working-women and students between the ages of 14 and 24 in metropolitan areas and within fashionable circles. Lead actors are popular culture icons of the day. With an average run of ten to twelve episodes Japanese idol-dramas can also generate good ratings when repeated, in contrast to traditional dramas, which do not have this ‘second-run’ appeal. Augmented by the hype associated with their stars and the merchandising of music and fashion, idol-dramas are an attractive commodity for audiences and broadcasters alike. According to Chen Yu-Shan, the executive producer of San-Lih television station, the Japanese idol-drama genre contains several fundamental elements: pop idols, pledged tokens, distinctive locations, fantastic occupations, sweet-sounding music, and brand commodities. The fashionable role models of young audiences – the stars of idol-dramas – are the key to the success or failure of a production. A token, which can be a ring, a bird, or a violin, is the symbolic medium to connect two lovers. A distinctive location, which might be a corner of an office, a church, or even a flower shop, is repeatedly used to symbolize the occupations of characters or to recall the feelings of lovers. Fascinating occupations (musicians, hairdressers, and flower girls) can stimulate audience imagination with characters and induce more romantic feelings. The music, usually a theme song or variations on a theme using different instruments – captures the moods and emotions of the main characters. Brand commodities, such as clothes, watches, and purses, are worn to attract the attention of young ladies and to promote merchandise.

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The idol-drama genre captured a dedicated youth following on satellite channels after Star TV broadcast Lady in Tokyo Elevator (Dong Jing Dian Ti Nu Lang), Adult Choice (Cheng Ren De Xuan Ze), and Romance in Tokyo (Dong Jing Ai Qing Gu Shi). In no time cable channels were rushing to broadcast Japanese dramas. A Thousand and One Proposals (Yi Ling Yi Ci Qiu Hun), Beautiful Life (Mei Li Ren Sheng), Nipponese Material Girl (Da He Bai Jin Nu), and Two Millennia Romance (Liang Qian Nian Zhi Lian), scored high approval ratings among young audiences. Identifying with Japanese popular culture suddenly became the fad among youth consumers (Lii and Chen 1998). At this juncture the question needs to be asked: what is the appeal of the Japanese idol-dramas in Taiwan? In the opinion of renowned producer Angie Chai (2002, personal interview),7 the idol-drama is very different to the ‘traditional’ Taiwanese prime time drama, the key conventions of which are local flavour, historical anguish, and moral exhortations. These ingredients reinforce existing social morals and established values. In contrast Japanese idol-dramas are simple artefacts, depicting romance or friendship, in synch with younger generations who strongly identify with the characters. Moreover, with the production of Meteor Garden, Angie Chai chose to use four good-looking young unknown male leads, adopting a different strategy to that of traditional drama in which the lead actors are established actors. The rights for Meteor Garden were purchased from a Japanese manga which tracks the lives and loves of four affluent highschool students. In keeping with its origin there was a distinctive Japanese feel: the major characters all used Japanese names and most of the scenes were shot in a Japanese style house. The format and production of Meteor Garden closely resembled Japanese idol-drama with Western pop as background music, sophisticated cinematography, and a quick-moving narrative. In order to accommodate local tastes some distinctive Taiwanese cultural elements were retained, such as the rustic flavour of certain elderly roles, aspects of family relationships, generational conflicts, and religious superstitions. In this process Taiwanese resources were integrated into a Japanese story in order to simulate the Japanese idol-drama genre. The end result was the creation of a Taiwanese style idol-drama. While heavily influenced by Japanese popular culture the Taiwan production of Meteor Garden mapped out new territory for local drama production. Meteor Garden was originally broadcast by CTS at 9pm each Thursday but when ratings took off it was decided to move it to a regular prime time viewing period. In addition to achieving spectacular ratings the four lead male roles became instant superstars and formed a pop group called F4. Their albums, posters, and VCDs were snapped up by young fans and they were invited to endorse numerous lines of merchandise and to host several television programmes. More importantly in the context of the local format, broadcast rights and related products found a market in Singapore, Hong Kong, and even

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Mainland China (where it was subsequently banned because of its powerful influence over youth). Meanwhile in Taiwan Meteor Garden had created a local template and other stations followed its lead, hoping to replicate the success at home and abroad. Following the achievement of Meteor Garden, Business Week nominated Angie Chai as the Asia ‘Innovator’ in July 2002 (Global Views Monthly 2002: 140). In addition to the nomination recognizing her achievements, the report acclaimed the Taiwanese idol-drama format. According to our research, from April to September in 2002, many stations in Taiwan produced local idol-dramas. Table 5.4 lists the local idoldrama produced by four terrestrial commercial stations (TTV, CTV, CTS, and FTV) and other cable channels. As indicated, Charming and Ruthless Teacher (Ma La Xian Shi) was the first idol-drama made in Taiwan. This production imitated the Japanese drama series GTO Charming and Ruthless Teacher (GTO Ma La Xian Shi). However, the popularity of local idol-drama can be attributed directly to Meteor Garden. Poor Aristocrat (Pin Qiong Gui Gong Zi), Peach Girl (Mi Tao Nu Hai), The Scars of Deep Love (Lie Ai Shang Hen), Turn-Round of an Ugly Lady (Chou Nu Da Fan Shen), The White Paper of Love (Ai Qing Bai Pi Shu) are all based on Japanese manga. Even FTV, which was renowned for producing local Taiwanese drama with an emphasis on the Amoy dialect, also attempted to jump on the bandwagon with its less than successful production of Blue Star (Lan Xing). The demand for idol-drama has had repercussions for the financing of production. In the past producers in Taiwan purchased story rights from Japan. However, due to the cost of copyrights, conditions on freedom of usage, and in a move to support local dramatists, San-Lih television station commissioned idol-drama scripts. Lavender (Xun Yi Cao) and MVP Lover were two examples of local scripts. Lavender is a typical local idol-drama: the script is a local product, the theme song is the work of a local composer, and the location is the ‘Flying-Cow Ranch’, a popular leisure farm in Taiwan. To accommodate the show’s narrative a greenhouse was constructed on the set from the budget of the television station. In addition to working with local scriptwriters producers may purchase rights to existing works. City Ladies (Se Nu Lang) was adapted from a well-known comic strip by a famous Taiwanese cartoonist, Chu Te-Yong (Zhu De Yong), while the script for The Search of Mr Right was adapted from the work of a local Internet novelist. In noting the rise of the idol-drama we have also identified a number of factors that have impacted upon the format of the Taiwanese idol-drama. They are: 1

Expediency: the simultaneous shooting and scripting of the production. This strategy is determined to some extent by a small domestic market, budget limitations, as well as a scarcity of qualified scriptwriters.

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Table 5.4 Local idol-dramas produced by terrestrial and cable television channels Television station

Idol-drama

Source and format

CTS

Meteor Garden

Adapted from Japanese comic with copyright Adapted from Japanese comic with copyright Adapted from Japanese comic with copyright Adapted from Japanese comic with copyright Adapted from Japanese comic with copyright Imitated Japanese drama ‘GTO Charming and ruthless teacher’ without paying copyright Local script Adapted from local comic story with copyright

Poor Aristocrat Peach Girl The Scars of Deep Love Turn-Round of an Ugly Lady Charming and Ruthless Teacher The Kiss of Toast Guy: II City Ladies CTV

Crystal Lover The White Paper of Love

Snow Star

Local script Adapted from Japanese comic with copyright Adapted from local network novelist with copyright Local script

TTV

The Kiss of Toast Guy Interactive Partner Curse of Love Rock and Roll Soda

Local script Local script Local script Local script

SAN-LIH

Lavender

Local script co-produced by TTV and SAN-LIH Local script co-produced by CTV and SAN-LIH

The Search of Mr Right

MVP Lover GTV

White Love Song Agreement on Aged Eighteen

Local script Local script

MUCH TV

Sunny Jelly

Local script

FTV

Blue Star

Local script

ETV

The Love of Sweet Lemon

Local script

Note The data were sampled from April 2001 to September 2002.

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3

4

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Viewer response is invariably factored into production, allowing the producer to adjust the number of episodes, the weight of a performer, and the plot of the drama based on daily ratings and audience feedback. Merchandising: to obtain support from advertisers and investors, products are integrated into the screenplay as a way of promotion. For example, a special ringing tone from the lead actor’s cellular phone has a commercial externality. During the planning stages the producer will inevitably consider the integration of the merchandise so that these product placements appear natural and appropriate. Spin-offs: pre-production also includes consideration of derivatives. This includes the sound track and its reproduction. In order to create a hit sound track the theme songs are repeated. The screenplay must be finely tuned so that the theme songs can be sung by the leading performers or played as background music. In the context of export the number and length of episodes of idol-drama need to be easily revisable or adjusted for overseas markets. Cooperation and co-production models: the production cost of an episode in Taiwan is generally less than US$17,000 whereas the cost of an episode of Korean drama can be as high as US$55,000. The tight budget provides limited room for the production of idol-drama in Taiwan. Due to the high cost of producing an idol-drama stations have recently initiated an alternative business model of joint investment. For example, TTV and cable station San-Lih jointly produced Lavender: the US$37,000 cost of each episode was shared by each party. The collaboration of terrestrial and cable channels not only influences the production format but it also changes the broadcasting format. By virtue of the higher viewing coverage of the terrestrial station TTV first broadcast Lavender on Tuesday while San-Lih broadcast the programme the following Saturday. Both stations achieved high ratings. Along with the success of this business model with Lavender, San-Lih and terrestrial station CTS jointly produced an idol-drama called MVP Lover.

With the diversification of television drama idol-drama has been recognized as a distinctive format in Taiwan. Idol-drama creates a unique production chain focusing on commercial profit along with ratings, plot, idols, marketing, and merchandising. A successful idol-drama can turn the leading players into super-idols. Furthermore, the format generates increased profits through associated commodities and broadcasting rights in the domestic market and sometimes overseas. With formats increasingly being incorporated into trans-cultural flows the Taiwanese idol-drama, itself a hybrid cultural form, provides an opportunity for local cultural industries to survive the challenge of trans-national hegemony. Moreover, instead of just copying the aesthetics of Japanese dramas or cloning the

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plots of Korean dramas the future direction of idol-drama production in Taiwan is to cover broader subjects and to enlarge the target age group (Chen 2002, personal interview).8

Concluding remarks In Taiwan television formats are a mix of Eastern and Western influences. News formats are distinctively Western while other formats are more Eastern, usually drawing on Japanese styles. During the early period of broadcasting in Taiwan (when there were only three terrestrial television stations), there were few ‘pure’ originated formats. Due mainly to economic considerations, as well as historical and cultural backgrounds, stations were strongly influenced by American and Japanese programmes. With the emergence of a large number of cable channels impacting on Taiwan’s limited commercial market many stations were unwilling to invest heavily in programme production and began to outsource television programming. A survey of drama programmes broadcast during prime time (8pm to 9pm) over 19 channels in 2002 (Tsai 2002) reveals that only 7 out of 19 dramas were produced domestically, while the other 12 dramas were all outsourced in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Mainland China. T.D. Lee (1998) has argued that the increasing demand for audiovisual content in Taiwan does not automatically transform into support for the domestic audiovisual industry. Contrary to expectation demand speeds up the importation of overseas dramas. The fierce competition that ensued in the 1990s as a result of the proliferation of cable channels had a number of positive impacts, including greater novelty, variety, and timely information. On a more negative note the average quality of programmes has suffered due to diminishing budgets. While the government of Taiwan is concerned about preserving national culture the Cable Radio and Television Act has only legislated 20 per cent as the minimum requirement for domestically produced programmes. Broadcasters will import programmes based on economic considerations rather than cultural concerns. It is easy for cable operators to meet the minimum local content requirements and still carry many imported channels (and ‘lower-cost’ programming) from the USA and Japan. Since the beginning of the 1990s Taiwan television stations have been endeavouring to produce more localized programmes. Themes and language have both become more culturally sensitive. However, when broadcasters use the term ‘localized’ they are invariably making a political statement, implying the production of more Amoy (Taiwanese dialect) programmes. Furthermore, with the impact of globalization threatening to weaken the local industry Taiwan began to imitate rather than succumb to foreign culture. Idol-drama, a format that is recognizable and distinctive from conventional dramas presents an opportunity for local cultural indus-

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tries to produce programmes of their own through modelling, imitating and mutual learning, although purchasing programmes remain much more affordable. Producers have recognized that locally originated formats are a key strategy in resisting the market presence of imported programmes. The popularity of Taiwanese drama over the past 10 years is an example of maximizing production strengths. With Taiwan now recognized as a modifier of East Asian television formats some of the modified programmes can look very original. Adopting a format or modifying a format at least can contribute to some local productions. The programmes can be exported to Mainland China, Hong Kong and other countries. Television formats have both cultural and economic elements. In a sense, they are like the basic blueprint of a construction. If broadcasters and producers exploit the blueprint they can be successful. If they are unable to adapt it and to accommodate local tastes, they will most likely suffer the consequences of market failure. In addition, formats will inevitably carry some of the values and ideology of their original source even if subject to adaptation. But as broadcasters’ concerns are ultimately economic rather than cultural they are compelled to adopt formats that will generate high ratings with less capital outlay, especially in the current competitive multi-channel environment.

Notes 1 Interview conducted on 3 January 2002 with K.J. Fang, section chief of Planning Section, Programming Department, CTV, Taipei. 2 Interview conducted on 19 December 2001 with Lee, manager of Programming Department, CTS, Taipei. 3 Interview conducted on 10 January 2002 with Wang Chun, producer of Every Fight is a Victory. 4 Interview conducted on 16 January 2002 with Tso Hung Shun, producer of Super Winner. 5 Interview conducted on 4 January 2002 with C. Che, deputy manager of Programming Department, CTS, Taipei. 6 Interview conducted on 26 January 2002 with T.S. Wang, reporter for MingSheng Daily. 7 Interview conducted on 2 August 2002 with Chai, general manager, Comic Production. 8 Interview conducted on 29 August 2002 with Y.S. Chen, executive producer of Programming Department, San-Lih E-Television Co., Ltd.

6

Coping, cloning and copying Hong Kong in the global television format business Anthony Fung

Hong Kong is famous internationally as a financial market, a shopping paradise, and Chinese film production hub, but notoriously (and perhaps even attractively for some) Hong Kong is also a hotbed of piracy of computer software, DVDs, watches and toys.1 While many cultural products such as television dramas and movies are original and quite reputable in the region, media critics argue that the copycat phenomenon, which includes borrowing, inserting and modifying other cultural texts to augment local production, is common in the media and entertainment industries (Fung 1998). Whenever a new form, style, or popular culture trend emerges in Hong Kong, market forces soon kick in to replicate it. However, this kind of reproduction, as shown by the history of cultural production in Hong Kong, does not necessarily lead to a degradation of programme quality. Reproduction is not only a savvy strategy to reduce the financial risks inherent to new products, but also aims at producing ‘improved’ versions which can reap more profits for the industry.

Types of copycat or format adoptions in Hong Kong A century and a half of colonial rule and a fortuitous East meets West geo-political location has made Hong Kong a melting pot where foreign cultures fuse with the local Chinese culture. In the realm of media and cultural production Hong Kong displays a high tolerance of foreign programming together with a long tradition of broadcasting foreign content on the English language channels of its two terrestrial broadcasters Television Broadcast Ltd (TVB) and Asia Television Ltd (ATV). The more popular ‘vernacular’ Cantonese channels of TVB and ATV respectively are equally receptive to foreign programmes; they translate imported programmes, mainly Western and Japanese cartoons, soap operas and situational comedy into the local Cantonese dialect. The desire to buy in ‘foreign’ programming is also based on practical reasons; it saves on production costs and helps fill the 24-hour schedules. From a cultural perspective the normalization and acceptance of copying practices reflect the attitudes of Hong Kong people who are

Hong Kong 75 intrinsically predisposed to consume modernity from Japan, New York, London and other modern cities deemed to have a higher place in the ‘cultural hierarchy’ (Fung and Ma 2002). Moreover, while socio-economic conditions constrain aspirational horizons, and while deeply embedded Chinese culture limits the extent of cultural renovation, the emerging practice of ‘borrowing’ television formats, content, or even entire programmes helps to satisfy cosmopolitan desires, and on a macro level enhances Hong Kong’s status as a global city. In many cases local producers generate new ideas for television programmes by modifying and cloning episodes of foreign programmes. The degree of adaptation and subsequent ‘variations’ can be described both in terms of the origin of the programme format and in terms of the locale of production. These two dimensions yield four types of adaptation. Programme translation and localization This occurs when local stations purchase programmes from overseas and ‘minimally localise’ by translating the content into the local dialect without any modification of the substantive meaning. The broadcast of these programmes with subtitles or dubbing can be regarded as the simplest and the most economical method of simulating localization. Obviating the requirement to produce more local programmes, this represents a fast and costeffective way of filling up timeslots. However, while translation helps minimize the cultural lacuna between the programme’s original target audience and the local Hong Kong audience, the minimal localization strategy (through dubbing or subtitling) fails to address elements of cultural incompatibility. The incompatibility of the foreign, which sometimes verges on cultural shock, is to some extent averted by judicious programme selection and by scheduling considerations. Aside from the Western programmes broadcast on the English-language channels, Hong Kong viewers commonly access Japanese programmes and Chinese programmes from the mainland or Taiwan on the Cantonese language channels. Japanese programmes, usually broadcast in the late evening hours, include some popular youth programmes such as Kinki Kids Music Broadcast (Kinki Kids yinyue fangsong, April 2001), V6 Trick and Joke Party (V6 zhenggu paidui, April 2001) and Iki Tokyo Express (Iki Dongjing sudi, January 2002). Other programmes emanate from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, or like Rain (qing shenshen yu mengmeng, May-July 2001), and Smartkid (jilin xiaozi, July-August 2001) are Hong Kong–China–Taiwan co-productions. The emergence of Greater China television co-productions and programme exchange points towards a future trend of bringing to the existing cultural mélange a distinct pancultural Chinese edge targeting Chinese audiences in all three communities. These programmes anticipate cultural proximity to audiences who in turn are familiar with faces of the actors, narratives, and production styles.

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Episode insertion This strategy involves the insertion of foreign programme episodes into a locally produced programme with the foreign content serving as the main viewing attraction. This is commonly observed in the adaptation of Japanese and other Western programmes in which local actors set the stage as hosts or moderators and introduce the programmes just as if they were locally produced. Examples are comedy video programmes and stories of crime investigation in which local actors act out games, perform short dramas, or simply front up as experts to introduce the Western episodes inserted within the local programme format shell. This strategy is also found in children’s programmes loosely based on the now popular Survivor theme in which children are asked to compete against each other.

Format hybridization As well as adapting foreign productions, either directly or indirectly, Hong Kong media are (in)famous for their propensity to ‘incorporate’, and ‘clone’ different elements and ideas from popular foreign formats and programmes, ultimately re-combining this material with local elements and creative ideas. The local ‘tuning’ is cultural and contextual and these programmes are therefore less culturally intrusive than translated programmes and foreign-programme-inserted local programmes. Nevertheless media critics often reproach the local media for a lack of originality and innovation, the implication being that such hybridization can be interpreted as a form of copying. Ironically, while a survey revealed that 52 per cent of the audience was aware of the copycat phenomena or similar plagiarism tendencies, ratings have showed that many of the ‘improved’ or ‘copied’ version are well-received, a fact that explains their relative longevity (Fung 1999). A case that illustrates the format hybridization model is The Wild (redai yulin miyue kuangben). Shown on TVB in February 2002, The Wild was a local production bearing close similarities to the global format Temptation Island (produced by Twentieth Century-Fox) in which couples are flown to exotic tropical paradises where they are separated from their partners and introduced to sexy, attractive and available members of the opposite sex. The Wild exploited many of the core elements of Temptation Island: for 10 days newly-engaged couples were asked to confront problems and surmount physical obstacles in the tropical wilderness of Queensland, Australia. Reducing the incompatibility of this new format with the local culture, the ‘mother’ format was stripped of its numerous overt sexual connotations on the grounds that sexual temptation is morally unacceptable within the Chinese cultural context. The Wild can also be regarded as a hybrid form incorporating elements of the globally recognized Survivor format. Both programmes feature city-dwelling participants who are trans-

Hong Kong 77 ported to remote wilderness locations to compete with and against each other. In The Wild the competition consists of games such as jumping from waterfalls and cliffs, parachuting, canoeing in open seas, a 45-metre bungee jump in a jungle location, and the tasting of weird food in the hopes of ultimately taking home a prize of HK$300,000 (US$1 = HK$7.8). Losers were duly punished in novel and exciting ways such as being forced to dash across a shallow pool infested with crocodiles. In November 2002 TVB also launched a student version of The Wild – incidentally also shot in Queensland – entitled The Mission (daxue qunying yueye kuangben). In this modified version college student ‘survivors’ were asked to work as both teams and individuals to demonstrate their perseverance, fortitude and stamina in outdoor activities including rock-climbing, hiking and other forms of healthy competition. Franchise format acquisition Whereas the above three variations of programme production and format adaptation have long been core strategies for local stations, the actual acquisition of the franchise (or licensed) format is entirely new to Hong Kong. This practice involves the purchase of the television format from overseas production or distribution companies with a foreign team supervising, monitoring and directing the production of the local version of the programme in a local setting (see Table 6.1). While the acquisition of these formats brings with it promise of success demonstrated in other locations, and while these formats sometimes introduce innovative and fresh programming ideas to the local milieu (thereby increasing stations’ ratings), a major problem is the integration of foreign elements into the new ‘host culture’. Buying new licensed formats represents a new strategy for Hong Kong broadcasters who have had to forgo the temptation to copy or clone – even in legal ways – and by doing so choose an alternative that is more expensive and culturally untested. These licensed formats often manifest as a kind of cultural mosaic in clear contrast with locally produced programmes. Table 6.1 Kinds of programme variations resulting from foreign programme adoption Format created overseas

Format created locally

Largely local production

Insertion

Foreign production involved

Franchise format acquisition

Hybridization and cloning Translation and localization

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Television structures and television format Compared with other developed and urbanized metropolitan markets the practice of purchasing format franchises in Hong Kong has until recently been negligible. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (baiwan fuweng), The Weakest Link (yibi OUT xiao), Russian Roulette (yichu jifa), The Vault (qunxiong duobao), and People Versus (gechu qimou) were among the few international formats to be licensed in the territory since 2000. For decades the stability of the television market and its industry structures made such acquisitions simply unnecessary. This necessitates further analysis. The first point to note is that Hong Kong has only two commercial freeto-air (terrestrial) stations – TVB and ATV, founded in 1967 and 1969 respectively. TVB maintains about a 70 per cent audience share. The dominant practice in the past was for stations to challenge each other by producing television dramas. This category of programming was, and remains, highly popular. Television drama became the most important source of entertainment for Hong Kong as it developed into a global city. The narratives and prime time intrigues of locally produced soaps were invariably hot topics for private discussion and the focus of public agendas. For example, a soap opera called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Wangzhongren), produced by TVB in 1979, attracted such attention that it galvanized negative sentiment towards mainland Chinese immigrants (see Ma 1999: 62–96). During the 1970s TVB’s prime time ratings often reached 40 points (1 point = around 65,000 people), capturing more than half of the territory’s population. The publicly funded government station, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) also produced its own documentaries but relied on broadcasting time on TVB and ATV. Prior to the 1990s when the government implemented the ‘open sky’ competition schedule there were few real competitors in the marketplace. Even in 1991 only a relatively small percentage of the population could view pan-Asia STAR Television as this required installation of a satellite dish. Wharf Cable, the local cable television system, was launched in October 1993 and delivered 57 channels but due to charges and access its penetration had reached only 600,000 household audiences (out of a population of 6.8 million) as of June 2002. As for competing services, border crossing signals from Mandarin-language programmes from the nearby provinces of China are not strong enough to penetrate to the former colony. Moreover, with the popularity of the programming of the two major terrestrial networks anticipated to continue long-term, there is limited incentive aside from internal competition to introduce new elements. From the mid-1980s television serial dramas ratings registered a loss of one quarter, signalling the decline of television as a source of entertainment (Chan 1990). Fung and Lau (1993a; 1993b) have suggested that the

Hong Kong 79 diminution in television’s popularity is a consequence of the structural changes in Hong Kong with other functional alternatives substituting as sources of entertainment. Back in the 1970s mass transit and highway systems were not well developed. The first tunnels linking the New Territories (the northern and major part of Hong Kong) and the crossharbour tunnel were built in 1967 and 1972 respectively; and only short non-cross-harbour subways – connecting central and western Kowloon of Hong Kong – operated in 1979. With less mobility in terms of transport infrastructure locals preferred returning home after work to pursue sedentary leisure activities such as watching television. But as Hong Kong developed networks of transport connecting the entire region people became more inclined to choose new leisure activities (Fung and Lau 1993a; 1993b). In terms of social and cultural development this represents a positive indication as it reflects greater social mobility. At the same time it was less beneficial to the local television industry. Nevertheless, despite the overall reduction in television’s popularity over the past two decades TVB still manages to enjoy an average rating of around 30 for most prime time programmes. Furthermore, TVB’s continued ascendancy helps to explain why new television formats were piloted by TVB’s major competitor ATV, which traditionally enjoys a smaller audience share. A second characteristic of Hong Kong is the predominance of in-house programme production. In-station teams are responsible for the bulk of programming. Years of experience in the operation of prime time production teams have established a very efficient and smooth operational schedule drawing on a skilled personnel pool, a strong organizational culture, and a high degree of autonomy.2 In effect this allows television stations to produce their own programmes for their own needs within a manageable budget. This represents a different way of managing the production chain than in most Western television systems where stations and production companies are operationally independent. When the new franchise format mode of production was introduced into Hong Kong the same producers and personnel were involved but were compelled to change their operational patterns to fit the production requirements of the franchise format. This in turn upset the routine and autonomy of the teams. Moreover, outside management was not exactly subtle in stamping its authority. It was reported that a four-member team representative of the BBC parachuted into TVB to monitor the production of The Weakest Link and to ensure that the lighting, audio, camera, and settings for the programme met the programme requirements. This invigilation included ensuring that the gestures, facial expressions, and hosting style were similar to that made famous by Anne Robinson, the original BBC host of The Weakest Link in the UK production (Chau 2001a). This attention to detail also prolonged the production time; on average The Weakest Link shooting time lasted 9 hours per episode.

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The purchase of a format is subject to a high degree of risk. The license fee for a top-rating format is extremely high. Reports estimated that ATV had to pay Celador, the UK franchising company a license fee around HK$2 million in total, and around HK$20,000–30,000 for each subsequent episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (hereafter Millionaire) (Chau 2001b). The success of Millionaire also had the flow-on effect of boosting the license fee of other ‘foreign formats’ including The Weakest Link, a programme that was so expensive that ATV left the table during the license negotiation. TVB finally outlaid HK$60 million to initiate the programme (Lam 2001). Of this amount HK$2 million was paid to BBC for the franchise and an additional HK$60,000 was paid for each subsequent episode of the programme (Chau 2001a). According to Chan Chi-wen, head of external affairs of TVB, a franchised programme incurs three extra costs on the station’s operation: the cost of new software, paid staff from overseas to ‘instruct’ the process of production, and the overall production cost (Chau 2001b). For the production itself TVB spent HK$4 million in constructing a specially designed ‘Walk of Shame’ and installed a 100-inch television monitor plus lightings, decorations and equipment (Sing Pao 2001). The stations also paid out sizeable amounts to recruit their programme hosts. TVB paid Do Do Cheng, the quizmaster of The Weakest Link a remuneration of HK$1.5 million (Anna 2001), while ATV paid HK$600,000 a season to Millionaire host Ken Chan (Cheung 2001).

The debut of the television format With huge investments required to acquire such franchise formats few media critics expected that Hong Kong stations would take the bait and exploit them. When ATV, Hong Kong’s lower-rating network, decided to challenge TVB with Millionaire, the latter reacted by simply calling on the old strategy of cloning quiz formats and produced a local version called The Happy Millionaire for Charity (kaixin baiwan wei gongyi). The production of this illegitimate offspring was so rapid and efficient that it was ready to be broadcast in April 2001, just before Millionaire was due to be launched. It was widely regarded by the viewing public as a market strategy directly targeting ATV’s Millionaire. When Millionaire eventually hit the small screen in May 2001 its popularity seriously eroded the ratings of TVB, with the audience skyrocketing from 580,000 to 1.42 million at its apex during the seventh week of broadcast. In some prime timeslots it exceeded the ratings of TVB. On 15 July 2001 ATV launched a special edition of Millionaire with celebrity superstars participating in order to combat TVB’s long-running (29 years) Hong Kong Pageant Show (Xianggang xiaojie xuanju). According to figures released by ACNeilsen (Ming Pao Daily News 2001a), Millionaire triumphed with a record-breaking 1.94 million audience (on average 61 per

Hong Kong 81 cent of the audience) with a peak reaching 2.52 million. Meanwhile TVB’s Hong Kong Pageant Show suffered the ignominy of a record low, down to 49 per cent of the audience (compared to its peak of 90 per cent in the 1970s). Millionaire also delivered to ATV considerable financial reward. ATV inserted 20 commercial spots, each about 30 seconds in duration, reaching the maximum limit legislated by the Broadcasting Authority (a 10 minutes commercial limit within an hour of programming). Based on a fee of HK$100,000 for a 30-second advertisement Millionaire was able to bring in HK$2 million every show. For the entire 104 shows (during its first season), the format reportedly delivered a total advertising revenue of HK$208 million (Express Weekly 2001). Independent reports from financial analysts have estimated that Millionaire seriously eroded TVB’s advertising base with further estimates establishing that TVB’s volume reduced from double digits to 6 per cent (Ming Pao Daily News 2001b). This translated into a loss of HK$30 million in advertising revenue up to July 2001, 2 months after Millionaire was broadcast. In response to the new challenge from its upstart competitor TVB was initially reluctant to acquire television formats from overseas. It decided instead to purchase the rights of a Chinese co-production, SmartKid, a programme where most of the actors spoke Mandarin. This was introduced to compete with Millionaire. However, SmartKid’s success was short-lived; it only out-rated Millionaire in its first week (rating 22 points). It began to slide in its second week (Anna 2001). TVB also found that ratings in other prime time programmes were in free-fall. The writing was on the wall when TVB finally purchased The Weakest Link from BBC. The widely recognized quiz show was bought in to go head-to-head with Millionaire. The selling point of the programme was the value of prizes or awards, over HK$10 million, trumping Millionaire by a factor of 10. In retrospect one might question why TVB would take this option and not use the conventional strategy of hybridization, that is, using similar elements and ideas to produce a local version of the programme. The hesitation may have been due to Celador’s ownership of the Millionaire format rights and the concern that hybridization of the format might constitute infringement (Kwok 2001). In short, the strategy of buying the format rights had the desired effect with reports estimating that The Weakest Link delivered TVB advertising revenues of HK$136 million (Lam 2001).

The proliferation of the quiz show format Hong Kong was the only Chinese city in the world that acquired the license for Millionaire – and apart from Singapore it was the only Chinese version (among the 56 versions in 40 different languages). The programme marked the debut of the franchise format in Hong Kong. Despite the strict

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rules that pertained to the original version designed by David Briggs in the UK, local variations were allowed, including use of the Cantonese dialect. ATV’s programming director contends that while the UK version is more academic, the Hong Kong adaptation is enriched by questions pertaining to local issues and entertainment news (Lo and Chu 2001). The success of Millionaire enticed ATV and its competitor to purchase other TV formats. TVB also acquired Russian Roulette from Colombia TriStar International Television in mid-2002. After the first series of Millionaire finished at the end of 2001 ATV brought Celador’s People Versus – one of the BBC’s highest rating programmes in 2000 – and Vault from an Israel production company in 2002. The success of Millionaire also contrived to set a trend and prototype for local quiz show productions. Many producers followed suit in the wake of its enormous appeal. In 2001 shortly after the launch of Millionaire the government television station RTHK produced junior-school quiz show contests. ATV also launched its youth version of Millionaire, namely Knowledge is Power I (zhishi jiushi liliang) and Knowledge is Power II at the end of 2001 and in early 2002 respectively. Then there was the quiz show Chinese Cultural Ambassador (zhonghua zhuangyuanhong), featuring a large representation of teachers and high-school students. This was broadcast on TVB and sponsored by the Global Foundation of Distinguished Chinese Limited, a semi-official organization founded by tycoons and patriots with its headquarters located in the Xinhua News (New China News Agency) building (Kam 2001). There was also the mobile phone version of Millionaire utilizing SMS (Short Message Service). In this virtual version players can either directly win gifts or choose to receive a participant candidacy in the real version of Millionaire. After the triumphant victory of The Weakest Link TVB subsequently decided to produce a new format – by incorporating, cloning and copying different ideas of existing quiz show formats. It launched a programme called Brainworks (zhi zai bide). Obviously production of these kinds of quiz shows reintroduced the legacy and strategy of cloning Western elements and utilizing hybridization with local cultural elements, rather than directly purchasing franchise formats from overseas. The quiz show fever lasted until the end of 2001 when the ratings of Millionaire and The Weakest Link dropped down to 1.03 and 1.23 million (October 2001 figures) respectively. The death of the quiz show format was no doubt due to its over-exploitation and the over-saturation of the concept during prime time television. Whereas such programmes might be broadcast once a week in the UK, Europe or Australia, quiz shows occupied all weekday television timeslots on both terrestrial stations in Hong Kong. TVB also terminated its format quiz show Russian Roulette in early October 2002, then ATV re-launched Millionaire in September 2002 when it found that no other programme could create so much momentum. (See Table 6.2)

Hong Kong 83 Table 6.2 Major quiz shows Title

Broadcasting station

Period of broadcasting

Happy Millionaire for Charity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?* People Versus* Vault* The Weakest Link* Chinese Cultural Ambassador Brainworks Russian Roulette* Knowledge is Power I Knowledge is Power II

TVB

April–May 2001

ATV

May–December 2001**

ATV ATV TVB TVB

January–March 2002 March–June 2002 August 2001–January 2002 June–July 2001

TVB TVB ATV ATV

January–May 2002 May–October 2002 October–November 2001 January–February 2002

* Purchased television format programmes. ** Relaunched in July 2002.

The cultural synchronization of the quiz show In the Hong Kong case what remains to be highlighted is that the popularity of the franchise format has to date been confined to quiz shows; other formats such as reality television programmes have not been considered particularly attractive. This propensity for quiz formats may be related to the local regulatory regime, as both government and the general viewing public observe a stringent standard in relation to television programmes, and to media representation in general. In 2002 the public censure of a photo of a naked female artist on the front cover of the magazine Eastweek resulted in government intervention and finally in the owner’s voluntary closure of the magazine. In this environment of moral conservatism local stations could not afford to take the risk of importing formats such as Temptation Island which, despite their appeal and titillation, would inevitably precipitate public outcry. By way of contrast with other reality formats the quiz show format is inoffensive. Quiz formats are not only associated with knowledge but also articulate into the cultural and socio-economic contexts of Hong Kong. A mature capitalist city, Hong Kong has continued to suffer from the economic downturn brought on by the Asian financial crisis that began in December 1997. By the turn of the millennium there was widespread sentiment that Hong Kong needed its economy and consumer confidence to rebound. During this period of economic uncertainty a huge volume of news space was focused on information about unemployment, salary reduction, the plunging stock market, and estate property values. Quiz show programmes that bestowed huge prizes seemed to give people a glimpse of hope.

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Knowledge is Power (zhishi jiushi liliang) – the title of one of the more popular quiz shows – reflects the attitude of many Hong Kong people that knowledge is a means to regain economic power. And power in the adult version of the programme is unequivocally linked to money. This money–knowledge correlation is also embedded within Hong Kong’s colonial past. As Chow (1995) has argued, by diverting people’s energy to the realm of economics the colonial regime enabled the complete containment of political ideals. In other words, suppressing the colony’s aspirations for democracy had a direct relation to the dynamism of market activities. In the realm of education, moreover, the colonial government promoted the ideology of economic prosperity over civic values. Before the transition back to mainland rule in 1997, a significant coverage of modern Chinese history was not included in an education syllabus that largely contained knowledge acquisition within the sphere of economics and markets. Against this background of mercantilism the linking of knowledge with financial gain is unproblematic. Arguably, if the knowledge–power–money formula were not so deeply embedded within the culture the local television stations would have been less drawn to purchasing expensive formats from overseas. They may well have persisted with lower-cost solutions without having to surrender autonomy in order to cooperate with the foreign format rights holders. In fact when Millionaire appeared featuring the connection between knowledge and money there was a great deal of public discourse. People talked about the programme at school, at work, and during leisure activities. Quick-minded and bold publishers rushed to edit and compile textbooks and reference books in a quiz-and-answer format. The first ‘half-million winner’ and the first quiz millionaire became front-page news stories (Ho and Cheung 2001; Apple Daily News 2001). Even from a cultural values perspective the programme was accorded respect and high standing. In 2001 Millionaire was once ranked as the top programme in the Appreciation Index Award organized by the public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong.3

Importance of television formats in Hong Kong The impact of imported television formats has also extended to practices and traditions within the cultural industries. The franchise television format was introduced into Hong Kong as a by-product of the competitive media environment; in other words television stations saw it as a means to attract viewers. The influx of franchise format television programming, despite having a short lifespan, inspired revolutionary and provocative schema and ideas as well as visions that local producers would not have otherwise contemplated. The purchase of these franchise formats forced producers to consider generating new television genres and formats, although most of these were soon terminated with stations returning to the

Hong Kong 85 normal practices of producing sitcoms and soap operas. When ATV’s Millionaire succeeded in diverting audiences from its competitor TVB’s major programme event, Hong Kong Pageant Show, TVB’s spokesperson announced that this was ‘a big lesson for TVB’ (Ming Pao Daily News 2001a). Responding to this lesson TVB was compelled to look outside and buy in new ideas, finally purchasing the format rights to The Weakest Link, and later Russian Roulette. Television formats also inspired ATV, the less successful of the two terrestrial networks. Soon after the success of Millionaire the promotional director of ATV, Lai Man-cheuk, said, ‘there is no invincible giant’ (Ming Pao Daily News 2001a). The success of Millionaire demonstrated that ATV could be a challenger in the marketplace by producing ‘alternative’ programmes, despite TVB’s strong hold over audiences (maintaining over 70 per cent) and the relative structural stability of the television industry in Hong Kong. In short, innovative and high quality programmes were the best formula for success. It can be seen that the television format experiments that have taken place over the past few years resulted in significant reform in local programming as well as reconsiderations of the taste and rationality of the Hong Kong audience (Fung 2001). When the import of new ideas and formats were most prevalent during 2001 and 2002, TVB and ATV strengthened their existing repertoire of programmes with new elements. They also created some original formats to increase the diversity of programmes available to consumers. TVB enriched its prime time infotainment programme The Starbiz (quanxian da soucha) with new episodes including the hidden camera video segment, ‘Human Reality Show’; the youth-targeted ‘On TVB New Trend’ which introduced trendy locations and commodities; the superstar interview session ‘Star Legend’; and a local youth survival story ‘No Difficulty For Kids’. In February 2002 TVB also created a new talk show programme The Feud Club (xiniu julebu) in which the hosts escorted the audience to visit their historical past, namely the old Hong Kong of the 1960s and 1970s. In December 2001 ATV broadcast a new programme called Love Paradox (shenggang qingqing nannü) in which the moderator acted as a matchmaker between single males and females from Guangzhou (the nearby city in southern China) and Hong Kong. These aspiring couples applied by sending their photos and personal information to ATV’s production partner StarEast. If we reason that these new and innovative programmes and formats were responses to the incidence of global formats, it can be concluded that the format business made a positive impact on the local industry – if not for the profit of the industry – for the diversity and variety of programming subsequently available to the audience.

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Adoption of television formats in Hong Kong: globalization or anti-globalization? As a global city Hong Kong illustrates a case study of ‘interim globalization’ in which the influx and appeal of the global television format has a limited life span. The short rise and fall of formats in Hong Kong is antithetical to the basic assumption of globalization: that globalization is universal and predominant, and perhaps irreversible (Featherstone 1990). The interim globalization of cultural formats in Hong Kong is prevalent but unsustainable at this point in time. The extent and duration of the globalization of formats depends very much on the alignment of interests between the transnational format distributors and the interests of local television channels and producers, who regard formats as a means of extending profit and influence. In Hong Kong we have noted that the television format strategy has been only appropriated in order to challenge in a form of head-to-head media competition (Straubhaar and LaRose 2002: 264). As such the adaptation of television formats in Hong Kong is instrumental and largely ad hoc. While transnational distributors of programme formats contend that commercial formulas are a guarantee of success, the local producers who are engaged in the process of adaptation understand that the global format can result in many different interpretations of meaning (cf. Liebes and Katz 1993). In a globalizing world it is often argued that citizens acquire homogeneous, capitalist, consumerist or even democratic values as a result of the globalization of cultural products. In this view adapting global television formats might result in cultural globalization while being at odds with local cultural values. In most instances cultural dissonance is inevitable and unavoidable. However, there will always be some degree of localization or modification of global elements to match the local culture and to cushion cultural shock (Wilson and Dissanayake 1996). The television format in its pure industrial mode of cultural exchange (see Chapter 1) is relatively fixed and static. The rules, production skills and specific settings incorporated in the industry bible, which are closely monitored by the transnational agents, preclude significant modification and localization. The very nature of the franchise format effectively reduces the scope in negotiating between the global and local. While it is true that in 2001–2002 TVB resorted to acquiring a licensed global format to combat the success of its local competitor ATV, we observed that opportunistic copying and cloning activities soon resumed when global formats lost their ‘sizzle’. In short, when the local market is relatively stable and stations enjoy the benefits of oligopoly, there is no reason why they would risk attempting to buy in more expensive formats. What is even more important is that adaptation of television formats and stations’ agendas may be at odds. The local Chinese stations nowadays have eyes for the tantalizing China market (Chan 1996). The ‘global

Hong Kong 87 format’ that is a franchise belonging to the transnational company may consume local financial resources thereby impeding further moves into the China market. Considering Hong Kong’s limited market size it is unlikely that huge resources will be spent on local production. For example, in 2002 TVB established a working relationship with China Central Television, the national network in Mainland China, as a stepping-stone to a much larger market. This constitutes a trend towards regional programming production for and among Greater Chinese communities. In order to understand why the globalization of television formats is only an interim and intermediary phenomenon we need to understand both regional interests and the internationalization of production.

Notes 1 See Fung (2000) for toy piracy. 2 Interview with a programming assistant of TVB, 18 June 2002. 3 See .

7

A revolution in television and a great leap forward for innovation? China in the global television format business1 Michael Keane

Unlike smaller nation-states in this study the People’s Republic of China has never really countenanced a scarcity of domestic television content. Supply has been constant, indicating both the importance and the sheer size of the sector. The nationalized broadcast media has for several decades churned out cheaply produced films, documentaries, dramas, and news programmes. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, however, audience demand for domestic content began to wane as more as more international programmes found their way into schedules, particularly in southern China. China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in December 2001 seemed to herald soul-searching among its media mandarins. What would happen? Would China be inundated by foreign content (the worst case scenario) or would China, as it has done over time, absorb and regulate foreign influences? The reasoning behind the latter proposition is important to acknowledge, as it indicates a belief that size does matter, and that culture, like water, seeks its own level. The essence of the argument goes something like this: China is ‘characteristically different’ from any other nation such that ‘foreign’ cultural influences are absorbed and transformed by (dominant) Chinese cultural genes. Many examples can be found in history. There was Genghis Khan, who invaded China in the thirteenth century; the subsequent short-lived Yuan Dynasty failed to have any lasting cultural impact upon China. There were the Manchus – Jürchen tribesman who invaded from across China’s northern frontiers in the seventeenth century – who agreed to uphold China’s traditional beliefs and structures in order to gain social cooperation (Spence 1990: 3). In the modern era there was Deng Xiaoping’s version of capitalism, which came to be cleverly recoded as ‘a commodity economy with socialist characteristics’. In speaking of the tradition of cultural borrowing and indigenization, the business analyst Li Conghua notes, ‘In the longer term China accommodates what it can, transforms what it can’t accept to its own needs, and that which is extreme, extraneous, or atypical, is ejected’ (Li 1998: 18). This historical legacy of localization supports the belief within China that cultural borrowing is an essentializing process. By virtue of this fact

China 89 issues of intellectual property are often obscured. The stock phrase ‘with Chinese characteristics’ (you Zhongguo tese) is more often than not associated with China’s embrace of things foreign. However, this cliché obfuscates rather than explains the nature of Chinese society and its ‘characteristic’ relationship with the global community. While China is certainly different, and while it maintains a long cultural tradition, it is by no means exceptional. Many of the changes occurring in Chinese society are predictable, rational, and in accord with global transformations. This is certainly the case in point when considering China’s uptake of television formats. The licensing, co-production, and adaptation of television formats provides a potent illustration of how cultural exchange is mediated across national televisual spaces. A qualification that needs to be stated at the outset, however, is that China is a transitional state where the creative element that one normally takes for granted when talking about film and television production has been stymied over time by the need to appease officialdom. Nevertheless, this is precisely where television formats provide a mechanism to move forward. Chinese television stations are actively pursuing viewers as they move towards self-reliance; as they evolve into commercial enterprises programmes are now viewed as intermediate products used to produce audiences rather than as the raison d’être of their existence. In describing the state of play of television formats in China in this chapter I will therefore look at how formats have assumed an important development role. To illustrate the changing television environment in the context of formatting I use the concepts of mimetic isomorphism and R&D. These two ideas capture two sides of format activity in China today. Isomorphism refers to the tendency of producers to mimic and even clone without due consideration of market flooding, while R&D describes how the format process contributes to ‘know-how’ and ideas, which are developed either internally within the organization or transferred from outside the system. As might be expected, the sheer scale and rapid expansion of China’s format activity makes any pretence of comprehensive mapping futile. What I will endeavour to do in this chapter, however, is to present a snapshot of format activity through several genres that have been amenable to licensing or cloning. They include game shows, children’s television, soap operas, and reality television.

Background In early 1999 I began to be interested in how international television formats were being replicated within the rapidly commercializing Chinese television industry. This interest was stimulated by my earlier research on television drama (Keane 2002b), which had led me to conclude that structural factors and organizational dictates predisposed Chinese producers

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towards wide-scale content mimicking. By the mid-1990s television delivery platforms were ample but programmes genres and formats were mostly prosaic, determined by decree rather than demand. Instead of a smorgasbord of choice, Chinese television viewers were being fed a limited buffet of cheap programming garnished with occasional delicacies from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or overflows from Western (usually American) schedules. In providing for potential abundance cable channel platforms had inadvertently exposed a deficit of quality domestic fare and in doing so had challenged the supply-side logic of a programmes distribution system founded on barter. The inefficiencies of this model, combined with the commercial aspirations of a number of prominent media organizations, led many to search for new ways of delivering entertaining yet inexpensive programmes. Formats have undoubtedly changed the television environment in China. Television formats, particularly soft genres such as variety, games, and quiz shows, are prevalent among Chinese television schedules – but such profusion is relatively recent. In 1999 the topic of ‘television programmes formats’ (dianshi jiemu xingshi) did not feature in scholarly journals or television tabloids. Programming at China Central Television (hereafter CCTV), the pre-eminent national broadcaster, was still being largely developed from within. Provincial, city, and cable stations selectively scheduled finished imported programmes, with minimal incidence of foreign format replication. The following year saw formats emerge as a programmes development strategy in China. To understand this transformation we need to factor in changes in the international television landscape as well as note the increasing maturity of Chinese television. As Albert Moran (1998) has demonstrated, international television networks had for some time recognized the economies of scale that formats offered, leading to substantial format franchising across national networks. The talking point in television trade journals and the popular press during much of 2002 was the popularity of reality formats such as Survivor and Big Brother. This hyping of reality television was also picked up in China. About the same time a disparaging expression ‘cloning’ (kelong) began to be used to describe opportunistic copycatting of programmes among Chinese broadcasters. To further underline this trend, there was talk of a great leap forward made in programmes innovation in Hunan – the very birthplace of Mao Zedong, the great icon of the Chinese Communist revolution. Here were developments worth following. Hunan Satellite Television had staked a position as China’s most commercially savvy broadcaster and was cleverly localizing programmes from Taiwan and Hong Kong. During the period 2001–2002 I witnessed a growing awareness of the transferability of formats within China, both from producers and academics. The former group were relatively pragmatic about the business ethics of using of other stations’ (and other nations’) ideas, while the latter

China 91 condemned format cloning as a sure sign of the inevitable dumbing-down of Chinese culture and the onset of cultural globalization. In addition to academic critique, popular recognition of the format phenomenon was steadily growing. During a focus group discussion I conducted at Beijing’s Qinghua University in July 2000 participants nominated Taiwanese and Hong Kong entertainment programmes as the source of many new ideas in Chinese television. Some were able to indicate Chinese programmes that were derivative of foreign programmes but were unable to actually identify the names of the original. In the space of a few years the television format went from being unsighted to being acknowledged, for better or for worse, as an important development in the Chinese television industry. The term ‘reality television’ (zhenren xiu) also entered into the Chinese industry lexicon in 2002 with the broadcast of Sichuan Television’s Into Shangrila (Zouru xianggelila), and Guangzhou Television’s The Great Survival Challenge (Shengcun da tiaozhan). The similarities went deeper than just titles. In June of that year I was tracking the origins of CCTV Channel 2’s The Dictionary of Happiness (Kaixin cidian). The Dictionary of Happiness was an enormously successful local quiz show that had cleverly re-fashioned the key elements of Celador’s global format Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? – including the ‘life-lines’ of ‘phone a friend’ and ‘ask the audience’ – into a domestic quiz format. During a conversation I had with the producer the term ‘format’ (xingshi) was used a number of times and the point was made that formats were playing an important role in programmes development. In response to the obvious question about origins, the response was almost predictable: the process of making The Dictionary of Happiness had begun with a provisional search of international programming for ideas that might be appropriate (heshi) for China. A CCTV research team had subsequently spent several months devising the appropriate format and carefully piloting before launching it on the national broadcaster (Zheng 2002, personal interview).2 Despite the producer’s claims that the Chinese version was unique, CCTV’s format was obviously a direct copy of the international version. In taking this example as a barometer of the format environment it is also obvious that many producers realise they are culpable but understand that there is no legal recourse available to the format rights holder if the copier makes minimal changes.

China within the format: isomorphism Television formats are undoubtedly a key element of television programming in China. But are television formats in some way indicative of social relations in contemporary China? Can their recent profusion been seen as a metaphor for China’s transition from a command to a commodity economy? Or conversely, to use a Marxist approach, does the nature of

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contemporary China reflect the high incidence of format cloning? These are two positions that are worth exploring. Let us take the latter first. Today in China residual elements of bureaucratic control co-exist uneasily with sporadic outbreaks of entrepreneurial activity. A combination of a legacy of state control and the influence of a great cultural tradition have led many writers and pundits to claim that China is the great localizer of foreign ideas, thus the description ‘Chinese characteristics’ referred to earlier. Rather ironically, as we shall discover, the presumption that foreign ideas are indigenized or filtered devalues the role of local ingenuity. In actual fact, it is not so much the hybridization of foreign ideas that is at play, but the copying of foreign ideas already localized within China. To explain what is in actual fact a domino phenomenon, I will use the term isomorphism. As used by institutional theorists isomorphism describes how organizations come to resemble one another in the marketplace (Guthrie 1999). Three kind of isomorphism can be identified in the Chinese economy: coercive, mimetic, and normative. Coercive relates to pressures to conform, particularly from policy directives; mimetic implies ‘follow the leader’ practices, especially in conditions of risk and uncertainty; while normative explains the process of businesses taking on institutional norms that have become ‘best practice’ within industries. While all three models help explain various aspects of the development of China’s media industries, mimetic isomorphism is the key to understanding the nature of formatting. The isomorphic nature of China’s media is reflected in the development of television. This ‘new’ media technology began in China on 1 May 1958 with the first broadcast from Beijing Television, which was renamed China Central Television (CCTV) in 1976. Television was controlled and administered by officials in Beijing with the Chinese Propaganda Department acting as the sole arbiter of taste. It was not until the 1980s that the medium was liberated and allowed to consider its audience. This coincided with the deregulation of administration and the expansion of four tiers of broadcasting: central, provincial, city, and county. During the period from 1984 to 1990 the number of terrestrial stations increased from 93 to 509 (Huang 1994: 223). By 1995 there were reportedly 2740 television channels including educational channels and cable stations. Television programmes were being beamed off 96,530 ground relay stations to China’s remote regions (Tu 1997: 4). Cable networks had begun earlier during the 1970s. Initially established to provide wired loudspeaker networks during the 1950s, the cabled signal transmission system was later applied to television signal distribution with master access television (MATV) distributing free-to-air signal transmissions (Harrison 2002; Shoesmith and Wang 2002). The first cable system was set up in 1974 in the Beijing Grand Hotel, and in 1982 the government decided that all new residential blocks would be equipped with ducts for

China 93 cable television. By 1998 China’s rollout of cable exceeded 1,340,000 kilometres and by 1999 there were 80 million subscribers to cable television (Tu 1997: 4). The deregulation of television and the rush to set up stations led to a supply-driven media environment in which cooperation between stations was a means of ensuring distribution. Of course, the legacy of state planning and the ‘iron rice bowl’ practice of lifetime employment also contributed to the lack of competitiveness. Television stations, in particular the big urban stations, employed many people; those who worked in such occupations were inclined towards conservatism such that keeping officials happy was as much a priority as satisfying the imagined viewer. To underscore this, the guiding principle underpinning state television – as espoused by the Minister of Radio, Film and Television (MRFT) – was that television served the ‘nation and the people’. Prior to 2001, and in contrast to privately owned and operated media systems in capitalist mixed economies, China’s nationalized broadcasters were not consolidated into competitive networks, but rather operated according to geographically determined logistics premised on the ideal of ensuring that information and propaganda reached all segments of society. This logic has created a system that rewards non-competitive behaviour. Under the planned economy, and particularly in the Chinese media, organizations were subject to coercive isomorphism: they were similar in terms of structure and administration and content production followed a pattern decreed by political mandate rather than popular demand. The role of propaganda department officials at the station level served to ensure that programming decisions were politically correct while the inhouse integration of production and broadcasting meant that there was no possibility for the development of independent production houses pitching ideas or formats to the marketplace. From the early years of China’s television industry to mid-1990s aesthetic boundaries were drawn by Ministry of Culture dictums with more than a little ‘guidance’ from Propaganda Department mandarins. In order to appease the requirement that television was in fact ‘serving the people and the nation’ the majority of television dramas produced were ‘mainstream melody works’ (zhuxuanlü), a term that by 1987 had been officially inscribed as broadcasting’s equivalent of socialist realism (Keane 1999: 254; Zhang 1994: 2). This genre paraded role models with progressive sensibilities acting out narratives of social change that were in effect redolent endorsements of the government’s reform policies. By 1998, following the success of CCTV’s costume epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi), Chinese television schedules witnessed a noticeable swing towards Royal Court costume dramas: this was a genre that China’s television producers have generally believed they understand better than their compatriots in Taiwan or Hong Kong (see Yin 2002; Keane 2002b). The most notable of these were Prime Minister Liu Luoguo

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(Zaixiang Liu Luoguo) (1996), Yongzheng Dynasty (Yongzheng wangchao) (1998) and The Eloquent Ji Shaolan (Tongzui tieya Ji Shaolan) (2001). In 1999 the hegemony of Royal Court dramas was usurped temporarily by historical recreations and celebrations of events surrounding the birth of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In effect, these trends underscore the structural dynamics underpinning Chinese economic reforms. Endowed with a massive but not necessarily affluent domestic market, China’s development has been a story of many small empires rather than national champions devouring all competitors. Reform, which began in 1978, has led to a commercial environment typified by miniaturization and duplicate construction (Gore 2000: 136). Miniaturization refers to the practice of multiple small-scale commercial enterprises unable to grow to become champions in their own right because of limited access to capital. ‘Duplicate construction’, on the other hand, describes the process by which enterprises replicate each other’s activities, even including infrastructure, resulting in a fragmented marketplace typified by a great deal of parasitic localization and little real innovation. Here the emphasis is on growing local industries rather than national or international networks. While essentially a neo-classical model of growth, this kind of duplication encourages ‘capital-less capitalists’ (Gore 2000: 136) who do not bear the whole risk of failure. This phenomenon can be observed in the Chinese television industry as it morphed from a centralized propaganda monolith under the great helmsman Mao Zedong to a thousand-headed flotilla of quasi-commercial stations under the decentralizing reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and his successor Jiang Zemin. Although business logic drives the thinking of many of the new breed of broadcasters such as Hunan Electronic Broadcasting (the commercial arm of Hunan Television in South China), the competitive ethic has not magically transformed China’s media into centres of innovation. Despite the consolidation in 2001–2002 of a number of larger provincial media operations into vertically integrated media centres such as the China Film, Broadcasting and Television Group (CRFT), the Beijing Radio, Film and Television Group (BRFT), and the Shanghai Media and Entertainment Group (SMEG), the flotilla effect of ‘un-networked’ broadcasters, particularly cable stations, had already created the foundation of mimetic isomorphism. The difference with coercive isomorphism is that television stations, rather than taking their lead from policy, follow the lead of other stations: if a station is successful in a form of programming, its success will be quickly replicated by its neighbours, even to the extent of copying what is in essence intellectual property. One station’s research is appropriated by other stations with the result that the marketplace is flooded by programmes that do not just look alike, but are similar in name, design, and duration. This strategy is evident in both large and small stations. The key point to be made here is that isomorphism and cloning do not necessarily lead to a more innovative media environment. The format, as a ready

China 95 made template for success, reduces the need for risk, but promotes a ‘follow the leader’ mentality.

The format within China: a great leap forward While format appropriation follows the logic of isomorphism that typifies the Chinese economy as a whole, formats do offer strategies for Chinese producers seeking to break away from stereotyped traditional genres. As the political boundaries that have insulated China become increasingly more porous, and foreign programmes make inroads into schedules, producers are receptive to ideas that have had proven resonance in culturally proximate locations. In applying these ideas the format becomes a vehicle for experimentation with producers taking the ‘crust’ and inserting local ingredients (see Chapter 1). Of course, there are the ethical issues associated with copying. The tactic of deliberately taking ingredients from programmes with established market success is now rife in China. This is not to suggest that Chinese television formats are in breach of intellectual property regimes. Despite well-documented incidences of piracy on the audio-visual blackmarket in China, television formats represent a different order of complexity. As we have indicated elsewhere in this collection, no legal mechanism currently exists to prosecute format content predators. Moreover, while the conventional wisdom about copyright is that it protects the innovation commons by ascribing value to original ideas (in turn developing a strong industrial ethos) in China the process of cultural borrowing arguably breaks down the rigor mortis of state control of ideas. For a long time programming had been commissioned on the basis of a public service model of broadcasting, a one-to-many model that served the interests of propagandists, stifled the creative intent of China’s television professionals, and ultimately delivered audiences a bland serving of politicized fare. The emergence of formats can therefore be linked to the growing liberalization and interactivity of content, and the genesis in China of creative content. The use of the term ‘creative content’ in this context refers to a greater appreciation of the feedback loops existing between producer and audience, the most obvious manifestation of which are the involvement of the audience in the ‘show’ itself or the provision of a vehicle for audiences to interact with production through cross-media platforms. Without doubt, in-studio live broadcasts are the earliest forms of interactive television and they have also been the most amenable formats for localization in China. They vary from genres such as variety arts shows and talk shows to more structured formats such as quiz and game shows. The growing influence of studio audience formats during the past decade has been described as the democratization of Chinese television, providing an increased role for ordinary people to participate, relegating

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the parade of politically approved celebrities to special event genres. According to the producer of The Dictionary of Happiness, the democratization of taste has occurred because ‘Chinese audience’s assessment of celebrities now varies greatly’: a sea-change induced about by the tendency for celebrities to dominate leaving little space for participation by audiences (Zheng 2002: 9). This is as much an indication of the increasing exposure of celebrities as an inditement of the envy directed towards ‘success stories’ in a society long accustomed to social equalization. Another commentator has referred to the evolution of the participant (jiabin – literally ‘honoured guest’) as indicating a general shift from television’s elevated status to a true medium of mass consumption. In this account those who were formerly ‘designated’ to grace the small screen were the bright shining national emblems: ‘politicians, heroic figures, models and stereotypes, the socialist vanguard, performers, expert scholars, and celebrities’ (Yang 2000: 16). The common person could not imagine a role except as a cipher in a live audience whose capture by the camera highlighted delight in the performance. In celebrating this democratization of taste, Yang writes, ‘the Chinese word jiabin had been formerly associated with activities and contact among people, but today it has become the favourite salutation in television programmes’ (Yang 2000: 4).

Variety, games, and quizzes: the road ahead? Just like master Lu Xun said: at first, there was no road in the world but when more and more people walk the same way, there is a road. . . . It is because there is the phenomenon of ‘follow the leader’ and ‘cloning’ that we see an early stage of diversification of television styles and genres of programming. (Yang 2000: 13) When Lu Xun, the great Chinese writer and revolutionary thinker, penned his famous reference to trail-blazing in the face of considerable social pressure during the 1930s he could never have imagined his words might be later used to describe the evolution of electronic game shows in China. Everyday life in China prior to the Communist revolution of the following decade was simple, with the local teahouse or opera providing the medium for social intercourse. Despite the obvious banality of comparing traditional culture to mass variety television, we can locate a common ingredient: live audiences. The first genre of television programming to make use of live audiences, albeit in a passive role of amused spectators, was the ‘evening party’ (wanhui), itself a sub-genre of the arts variety programme (zongyi jiemu). These kinds of programmes are heavily format-driven in the sense that a standard structure exists into which new content and performances are added.

China 97 While incorporating elements common to variety shows across Asia, the Chinese variants have been overtly politicized. The first variety show in China was Guangdong Television’s A Kaleidoscope of Colours (Wanzi qianhong). In 1984 CCTV introduced Weekend Arts (Zhoumo wenyi), followed by Variety Kaleidoscope (Zongyi daguan) and the Zhengda Variety Show (Zhengda zongyi) in 1990. While most of these shows can be classified as original formats drawing on traditional genres of performance, the Zhengda Variety Show can be considered as China’s first authentic variety-game show format. The show was a joint venture between a Thai-Chinese company (the Zhengda Consortium) and CCTV. Its success and longevity can be primarily attributed to an audience fascination with the world outside China and the rising prominence of celebrities at the time of its inception in 1990. Special guests engaged in a quiz format where content was drawn from footage of nature and foreign customs. Audience members, drawn from industrial work units and decked out respectively in different colours, engaged with the panel. By 1997 the Zhengda Variety Show format was beginning to suffer the fate of most successful programmes in China. It was being heavily imitated throughout China. In July 2002 the original quiz format was dispensed with and the programme took on all the visible manifestations of the global quiz challenge format Dog Eat Dog, distributed by ECM. In this re-fashioning there was no license deal with ECM, just a very expedient replication of the format ‘with Chinese characteristics’ added. However, the mutation and cannibalization of variety, game, and quiz shows occurs on a regular basis. There is often a sense of desperation at stake here. Hunan Satellite Television thought it was on to a winner in 1996 when it produced The Citadel of Happiness (Kuaile da ben ying), a musical variety show targeted at the youth audience. The format consisted primarily of apolitical entertainment content, based around social issues, youth lifestyle, and popular music. The station outlaid a great deal of money promoting the show, bringing in celebrities from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The pay-off was that advertising rates exceeded expectations, but with a short space of time its own format had been cloned into more than 100 local variants within China itself. None of its imitations attained the heights of the original – a fact attributed to its youthful hosts Li Xiang and He Ling and the producers’ savvy in keeping one step ahead of its imitators. However, the show’s executives soon attracted the displeasure of CCTV stalwarts who attempted to wreak collateral damage on the programme by asserting that it was a rip-off of Taiwanese formats. Called to defend the integrity of The Citadel of Happiness, the producer refuted claims that the programme was appropriated from Taiwan, citing a long pedigree of similar variety formats in the USA and Japan (Wang 1999). During the period 2001–2002 licensed game shows began to feature heavily on the schedules of China’s provincial broadcasters, if not on CCTV. In 2002 the Japanese network Tokyo Broadcasting System’s (TBS)

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format Happy Family Plan (Shiawase Kazoku Keikaku) was sold to Beijing Television and presented to Chinese viewers as Dreams Become Reality (Mengxiang chengzhen). This is a game format in which a family member is given a difficult task to perform within a limited time on television and 7 days to prepare. The camera tracks the preparation and the ultimate performance of challenges, such as memorizing all the stops in a dozen bus routes, or balancing a coin on one’s nose and allowing it to fall into a small receptacle held between the lips. In contrast to Japan these challenges are shared among all the family members, not just father. As Iwabuchi describes in Chapter 3, Happy Family Plan has been one of Japan’s most successful exports, so much so that TBS unsuccessfully sought a dispensation from China’s Ministry of Culture to prevent local ‘knock-offs’ off the format. The Chinese version offered individuals chance a chance to win prizes up to 5000 renminbi (US$600), while the successful family could take home as much as 20,000 renminbi (US$2400). In 2002 the BBC format, The Weakest Link, distributed by ECM Asia, introduced its ‘walk of shame’ to Chinese audiences. China’s version, entitled The Wise Rule (Zhizhe wei wang), was produced by Nanjing Television, with the provincial station gaining the franchise following reports that negotiations with Shanghai Television for a local production of Who Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? had broken down due to haggling over how the industry bible was to be interpreted. Meanwhile CCTV, in the context of media commercialization now a direct competitor of Shanghai Television, was busy localizing its own The Dictionary of Happiness, which effectively became the ‘take the market’ brand-name quiz show in China. As mentioned earlier, The Dictionary of Happiness producers were less concerned with the niceties of who owned the format rights and who devised the ideas for ‘ask the audience’ and ‘phone a friend’. In February 2003, the quiz format entered a new era of viewer participation with Everybody Wins (Jintian shei hui ying), produced by the Singaporean entrepreneur Robert Chua, the founder of China Entertainment Television (CETV). This was launched on Shanghai’s second network, Shanghai Oriental Television on New Years Day (18 February 2003). The key principle of this show is participatory greed, with everyone having a chance to grab a share of prize money if their personal home phone numbers, ID numbers, or car license plates matches with a seven digit ‘lucky number’ formed from the final digit of each players score. As Liu and Chen have pointed out in Chapter 5, one of Taiwan’s contributions to the format traffic between Taiwan and the Chinese Mainland was the television dating show, which achieved wide exposure throughout the Chinese speaking world with Special Man and Woman (Feichang nannü) and I Love The Matchmaker (Wo ai hongniang). Although the ‘perfect match’ concept of strangers meeting across a floodlit studio was standard television fare in almost every country by the 1990s, the Taiwanese format, which entailed a question exchange allowing a number of

China 99 couples to form a love-match, took participation to a new level with added moral support and barracking by a live studio audience. Phoenix Television (Hong Kong) began distributing the former to Chinese cable stations in July 1997. With the concept capturing the imagination of audiences desperately seeking release from pedagogic sermonizing, Hunan Satellite Television quickly produced a Mainland version, Romantic Meeting (Meigui zhi yue).3 The success of the group date format soon spawned a rash of clones (Luo 2000; Yang 2000).

Exchanging children’s worlds: Sesame Street We used adult programme formats and applied these mechanically to children’s content with the result that adults felt it was all infantile and children felt it was dreary. The reason for this is obvious: those who create children’s shows are adults and they are used to using adult thought processes to observe and regulate the world of children. (Chinacue Online 2000) Shanghai Television’s Sesame Street (Zhima jie) illustrates the R&D contribution that the licensing of television formats can make to the development of television industries. Produced under license to Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), Sesame Street premiered on the small screen on Shanghai TV Channel 14 on 14 February 1998. The Chinese version is one of many adaptations currently circulating. Sesame Street has been shown in over 140 countries, in some cases broadcast in the original English, other times being dubbed into the vernacular, and in many cases being completely re-versioned. In 1996 the Sesame Street idiom of ‘fun education’ was introduced to a production team at Shanghai Television. The actual re-formatting of the CTW ‘model’ was a complicated procedure, requiring extensive workshopping both on a technical and political level. The Chinese team comprised eighteen child education specialists, headed by the renowned physicist and head of Fudan University, Professor Xie Xide. New characters such as Xiao Meizi (Little Berry) and Huhu Zhu (Puff Pig) were added to accommodate local idioms. Part of the R&D meant sending the Shanghai Television producers to New York to work with their American counterparts. This exchange was funded by the US giant General Electric, which no doubt had its own commercial agenda. The outcome of the pre-production workshop and training was a reference volume outlining in detail the miniature of production. The programme is now syndicated throughout China, as are Sesame Street products and the CTW website. According to one enthusiastic report the sinicization of Sesame Street was in the same order of technology transfer as the Sangtana motor vehicle, which borrowed German technology, workmanship and standards and applied Chinese materials and labour (Chinacue Online 2000). The

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report further opines that Shanghai Television’s reputation, and Chinese pedagogic practice in general, benefited from the collaboration.

Soapy formats: Joy Luck Street Another problem was the form and content itself. Chinese audiences now demand distinctive tastes in their entertainment. English and Chinese tastes in entertainment are not the same. For instance, European people like to watch the subtleties in people’s relationships, the rich, psychological and emotional conflicts that occur. Chinese audiences appreciate more traditional narratives. (Han 2000, personal interview)4 The case of Joy Luck Street (Xingfu jie), a co-production based on the long-running English melodrama Coronation Street, provides a salutary example of an ambitious attempt to replicate the Western ‘never-ending’ serial soap drama into Chinese soil. In this case Granada Media, the English copyright owner of Coronation Street, provided production capital through a venture with the Hong Kong-based Beijing Yahuan Audio and Video Production, with production support also supplied by the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. Granada have invested heavily in this production over 5 years, hoping that the series, screened on ninety cable channels in a special syndicated timeslot called 6.30 Theatre will capture the hearts and minds of Chinese housewives (Saywell 2000). The localization of Joy Luck Street provides another example of how format licenses, particularly those that travel from afar – in this case from northern England to a modern Chinese city – require substantial reworking to embed them in the local cultural milieu. In order to make this production the Chinese team had to restructure many of their work practices to incorporate continuous script writing and shooting, working in rotating teams. Eugene Ferguson, the Granada link person who was responsible for the liaison between the Chinese teams and the English teams, commented that the Chinese team was introduced to techniques such as simultaneous plot lines (Ferguson 2002, personal interview).5 This was confirmed by one of the lead actors, who said there were a number of technological breakthroughs in comparison with Chinese soap operas such as Ying Da’s I Love My Family (Han 2000, personal interview). In the Chinese tradition the script was reworked and revised into its final form before finally going into production. With Joy Luck Street, however, the script was prepared while shooting, and then adjusted according to the popular response. The process was extremely complicated and created problems for many of the participants, particularly the requirement of writing the script, translating it into English, and sending it to Granada for confirmation and revisions. The Chinese Joy Luck Street experience has been far from a seamless

China 101 transfer of the original Coronation Street format into the Chinese environment. Difficulties were encountered in transferring the nuances of the English working-class milieu into the Beijing streetscape. The original Hong Kong director had to be replaced after eighteen episodes and the narrative of dysfunctional families had to be reworked to accommodate Mainland Chinese values. By the time the series had achieved fifty episodes, however, the Chinese team felt that the series had overcome its Western deficiencies and acquired a distinctive local feel (Han 2000, personal interview).

Extreme reality: Into Shangrila So we don’t think it is just about formats when we think of reality television programming. From a format perspective it is a very strategically commercialized television programme and a media commodity. It is in fact a particular format that is operationalized by media in a digital era. We have been the first in the Chinese television industry. We have used high technology and we have used the idea of new formats. (Chen 2002, personal interview)6 Reality television (Zhenren xiu) is arguably a genre tailor-made for Chinese audiences. Recent Chinese attempts to exploit the genre draw on a tradition of socialist realism, socialist ‘mock’ documentary, and myths of collective struggle. Without doubt the most innovative and ambitious reality programmes to hit Chinese screens in recent years is Into Shangrila (Zouru Xianggelila), produced by the Beijing Weihan Cultural Company in association with Sichuan Television, with the indirect contribution of more than 100 websites, 160 newspapers, 4 mobile phone networks, and 29 television stations nationwide. Drawing on the Survivor (Shengcunzhe) narrative of photogenic healthy people left to fend for themselves in the wilderness, Into Shangrila brings together eighteen young Chinese from different provinces, all pre-selected by participating stations to battle against the elements and nature in the Himalayan foothills at altitudes of 5000 metres. Divided into two teams, ‘sun’ and ‘moon’, participants cooperate to win the ultimate glory of success rather than merely seeking to outdo each other. Into Shangrila, while unlicensed, draws on many of the technical breakthroughs of international versions of Survivor. It was shot using DV format, itself an innovation in Chinese television production, allowing cameras to track the young adventurers as they struggled against the elements, their own failings, and their comrades. Unlike licensed international formats such as Joy Luck Street, Sesame Street, Dreams Become Reality, and The Wise Rule, which have been allowed entry via joint

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ventures with Chinese production companies, the producers of China’s ultimate reality format decided to go it alone based upon their experience in ‘cast of thousands’ documentaries. In 1992 Into Shangrila’s director Chen Qiang was a producer of an epic documentary series Ferrying the Yellow River (Duguo huanghe) that proselytized national unity through thirty-two short films each representing aspects of Chinese society along 5,646 kilometres of the legendary Yellow River. The making of the documentary was itself tracked by more than eighty newspapers and twenty television channels. In 1996 Chen was again at it with another epic multimedia production called Ardently Loving 2000 (Kuai 2000) that was broadcast on 127 channels including CCTV and Phoenix Television. Chen, who graduated with a media and public relations degree from New York University in the late 1980s, had learnt the lessons of Western marketing, even if his strategies contradicted the value chain of Chinese programming, where product is routinely exchanged on the basis of demand for a particular type or genre to fill schedules rather than on programme innovation. Into Shangrila was subsequently constructed as a media event. According to publicity reports approximately 230,000 people applied to be participants on the programmes, among whom 70 per cent were male and 30 per cent female. Also interesting was the reported publicity that 14,000 of the applicants had either a masters or a PhD. The actual process of choosing the people was conducted via the Internet with a 24-hour live coverage of the participant’s backgrounds. Finally, there was a pilot in February 2002, followed by the actual broadcast in August 2002. This promotional strategy is unsurprisingly analogous to the hype that has accompanied the Survivor and other reality formats in Western television industries. Chen maintained that ‘the selling of the event has implications for the advertising revenue. It is a public relations project’ (Chen 2002, personal interview). To get the programme up and running was a considerable achievement in China, where media innovation is not for the faint hearted. Part of the public relations strategy was enlisting the support of China’s cultural watchdogs, who had to be convinced of its social and pedagogical benefits. Moreover, to ensure that the programme was differentiated from the Western Survivor formats, a special symposium was arranged in collaboration with CCTV in which the specificity of Chinese reality television was debated (CCTV 2002). In contrast to media systems in the West, media distribution infrastructure and its administration is monopolized by state-linked organizations. The commercial considerations that apply to mounting an interactive reality format rely heavily on government being engaged in the operation. Chen managed to convince Chinese Communist Party officials that the format was a great leap forward into the digital revolution, enlisting the government’s support in using the Qianlong web portal to link 123 websites. Chen maintains that the initial rationale for this programme was a

China 103 technological revolution in communication that the innovation offered, not the aping of a particular Western format. He says that he only became aware of the ‘original’ Survivor late in the programmes development stage (Chen 2002, personal interview).

What do formats mean for Chinese television production? I have argued that formatting in China, as elsewhere in this study, is a means of replicating programmes that are successful in attracting audiences. The format is a recipe, a package, or even a combination of technologies. Formats impact upon television environments in terms of how they are produced, distributed, and bundled together with other services. However, host television environments (and local cultural sensitivities) also impact upon the manner in which formats are localized. China presents an example of the dual nature of formats. The tendency towards isomorphism illustrates many of the negative responses of the format turn. In short, the rapid cloning of other people’s intellectual endeavour in order to achieve instant ratings without the need for programmes development (R&D) is indicative of a tendency within China to view copyright as something that can be overlooked, except of course when one’s own programme is cannibalized. For foreign companies pitching their wares into the Chinese market the issue of protection is a significant one and in many instances it is expedient to make a programme sale, and aggregate value from associated advertising packages, ignoring domestic copycats. The problem of a deficit of hard currency in the Chinese market also poses problems for international companies seeking to sell formats. Advertiser-funded packages, a familiar mode of programme financing in China in which advertising time is bundled into the deal, provide an alternative strategy. For format owners prepared to go the distance in legal disputes, however, the pay-off is less certain as legal processes are convoluted and time consuming with no guarantee of success. The British distributor ECM was one of the more successful companies to pursue legal action. In October 2002 it forced Shenzhen Cable TV to pay costs over the pilfering of the ‘know-how’ of its Go Bingo format, elsewhere licensed in China as Lucky 52 (Xingyun52) (Stein 2002: 20). ECM, however, has been less successful at the time of writing in its pursuit of costs from other media institutions, including CCTV, which has ‘liberally borrowed’ from its Dog Eat Dog format. The process of research and development can be observed in a number of successful licensed formats. China’s adaptation of the children’s show Sesame Street, the Granada/Beijing Yahuan production Joy Luck Street, and the Nanjing Television The Wise Rule represent a degree of success, although the real pay-off for the franchiser is not so much the sale of programme rights as having a presence in the biggest television market in the world. As I have pointed out, many programme formats have dispensed

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with the compromises and costs required to license overseas productions. These include CCTV2’s Dictionary of Happiness, Zhengda Variety Show, and China’s ultimate reality show Into Shangrila. The decision here to bypass the formalities and costs of buying format rights is not unique within the context of Asian production. What it does mean, however, is that there are now precedents established for local companies to draw attention to if they are adjudicated to have wilfully exploited the creative ideas of others. But as I have also explained, by far the great bulk of format cloning occurs within Chinese networks. This is a direct consequence of the fragmented nature of television production and a distribution system based on programme barter. As China’s moves to tighten up its intellectual property regime and as the principle broadcasters begin to realize the value of copyright in the media marketplace, we may see a greater formalization of format exchange within China and between Chinese television stations and international format distributors.

Notes 1 I would like to acknowledge the help with obtaining sources given to me by Ran Ruxue and Yin Hong of Qinghua University in China. 2 Interview conducted on 21 June 2002 with Zheng Wei, producer The Dictionary of Happiness, CCTV. 3 The word meigui literally means ‘rose’. 4 Interview conducted on 25 September 2000 with Han Xiaolei, actor of Joy Luck Street. 5 Interview conducted on 15 October 2002 with Eugene Ferguson, Granada producer for Joy Luck Street. 6 Interview conducted on 25 June 2002 with Chen Qiang, producer of Into Shangrila.

8

Let the contests begin! ‘Singapore slings’ into action Singapore in the global television format business Tania Lim Why is the hit Singapore edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? must-see TV? 1. Watch it so that you can hold the ‘hottest topic’ with your friends. 2. So you can be encouraged by the courage of some contestants who are bold enough to brave national TV when apparently they have not read enough. 3. So you can judge for yourself if you are bold (and knowledgeable) enough to brave national TV for your possible 1st million. 4. So you can call the number on screen and make your 1st million. 5. Finally, watch it to see for yourself that Singaporeans are not as well read and as globalized as we all think we are. (8 Days Online Forum 2001)1

Television industries worldwide view formats – in particular formatted game shows2 – as the best shortcut to instant ratings success. As the various studies in this book illustrate, widespread commitment to formatting, primarily as a solution to content stagnation, has been an important ingredient in the reshaping of Asian television productions. During the period 2000–2003 almost every television industry in the Asian region has tried its hand at re-versioning game shows. The uptake of game show formats on Singapore’s terrestrial television networks provides a useful window to explore how ‘local knowledge’ articulates with global templates, giving rise to different strategies of format adaptation, customization, and translation of global trends. The trend of adapting formats from Europe and America, aside from re-activating the spectre of cultural imperialism, reshapes ‘the field of production’ of Singaporean television and enables local industry response to global trends. In the context of a changing international media environment, typified by intense competition across multi-channel platforms and volatile audience tastes, Singapore’s television industry is moving away from simply carboncopying successful international programming and towards customized formatting. In this chapter I explore Singapore’s response to the international

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formatting ‘trend’. I begin by touching briefly on the history of Singapore broadcasting services and relevant media policy changes. I follow this with an examination of how Singapore’s selective uptake of television game show formats is translated through three distinct segments of production: industry competition, circulation, and finally local consumption. In considering audience response to formats I examine reactions to successful overseas game shows through dedicated Internet discussion forums. Singapore’s online communities generate robust debates that interrogate the quality of foreign adaptations versus local television production formats. These sentiments embrace nationalistic sentiment as well as evaluating Singaporean television’s response to global trends. I aim to show that Singapore provides a unique example of how new technologies and formats are articulated into a cultural base, adding to rather than reducing the ‘essence of a national or ethnic culture’ (Ansah 1988: 18). Finally, I conclude the chapter with some remarks as to the success (or otherwise) of television formats in Singapore.

A Singaporean field of television production Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘field of cultural production’, a metaphor for ‘a set of possibilities . . . as the site of particular forms of capital and particular narratives’ (Webb et al. 2002: 68), delineates a hierarchy of power defining a network of social relations that impact upon cultural production and shape outcomes. In applying Bourdieu’s notion to the study of Asian media, Brian Moeran argues persuasively that different stages in the circuit of culture are equally important and related (Moeran 2001: 23). This provides several clues to our understanding of formats. First, the production of television programming is understood as the intersection of several related ‘fields of production’; in turn the increasingly competitive nature of Asian media industries can be seen as a ‘field of strategic outcomes’. In relation to television formats it allows us to examine each production within specific industrial and organizational contexts, noting interactions between social actors that condition the way ‘media forms and messages are produced’ (Moeran 2001: 28). Second, it illustrates a need to go beyond viewing cultural productions as merely the outcome of macro-economic realities dictated by corporate decisions and market forces; in doing so the notion of a field supports theoretical positions that examine cultural productions as results of everyday agency and the making of cultural meanings (Du Gay et al. 1997; Featherstone 1991). Finally, this integrative approach provides a useful way of explaining Singapore’s response to internationalization. It takes into account the manner in which media productions in Singapore have begun to move away from public service models towards more commercial principles. To underline how producers are pushing the frontiers of creativity and adding local flavour to Singaporean productions rather than just mimicking Euro-

Singapore 107 pean or Hollywood products I use the metaphor of the ‘Singapore Sling’. The ‘Sling’ was originally a drink created at the Raffles Hotel in 1915 by a Hainanese-Chinese bartender, Mr Ngiam Tong Boon. Since then it has become a concoction that is recognized internationally through its distinct colour and flavour – a combination of European liquors and local tropical fruits. In the context of the format business in Singapore I argue that the cultural translation of global formats are ‘Singapore Slings’: attractive concoctions of local knowledge and global templates blended with a unique Singaporean flavour. The question of hybridity therefore needs to be seen as more than just a serendipitous or opportunistic response to global flows. While the influence of Western culture continues to impact on the development of Singapore’s film, television and music industries, the process is extremely complex. In seeking to move beyond framing these trends as merely responses to cultural/media imperialism, I will utilize Geertz’s (1984) concept of ‘local knowledge’. First introduced in anthropology to stress the importance of understanding the local context, populations, and practices that define and measure changes in culture, this concept allows us to examine local adaptations of global templates such as television game shows and other light entertainment formats. The definition of game shows that I use to analyse television programming schedules is drawn from the work of Anne Cooper-Chen and Albert Moran. In her mainly descriptive account of game shows Cooper-Chen offers the following definition: A program featuring civilian, that is non-celebrity, contestants who compete for prizes or cash by solving problems, answering questions, or performing tasks following prescribed rules. The contestants may include celebrities, but these celebrities are ‘playing themselves’ while participating in the game rather than performing. (Cooper-Chen 1993: 16) In contrast Moran distinguishes between ‘short form’ television game shows (quiz shows which tend to have few national traits) and ‘long form’ television game shows (that combine games with a variety style of ‘light entertainment’). These two variants ‘register sufficient differences such that national audiences have responded to them as culturally distinct’ (1998: 83). This demonstrates a progression from description towards analysis, leading to an account of how game shows function both socioeconomically and culturally. In these shows the ‘psyche’ of a country’s television culture is shaped through the conflict and interaction of cultural policies, market realities, and audience preferences. This happens when audiences applaud, criticize and challenge the values of local productions. In particular, ‘sociality’ is reflected in the manner in which game shows such as The Weakest Link, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Wheel of

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Fortune and Tic Tac Toe are translated and adapted during special national events, themes, and cultural moments including National Day, World Cup 2002, Hari Raya and Chinese New Year. The use of local celebrities further demonstrates the range of everyday cultural meanings and narratives embedded in productions.

Beyond the cultural/media imperialism debate: the role of local knowledge The cultural/media imperialism thesis, initiated by Marxist scholars during the post-War decades (Schiller 1991; MacBride and Roach 1989; BoydBarrett 1977), and championed by Asian governments of countries like Singapore and Malaysia when promoting ‘Asian values’ (see Chua 1998), has suffered considerable collateral damage over time (see Tomlinson 1991; Fejes 1981; Tracey 1988; Reeves 1993). The most critical evidence bearing against the thesis is that audiences invariably prefer familiar local content to imported ‘canned’ programming. The core argument of Western values impeding local cultural sovereignty, while having some explanatory force, is too simplistic, under-estimating the strength of cultural flows within and across Asia. The limitations of cultural imperialism are further revealed in two assumptions. First, audiences are passive consumers who secure dependency on foreign content. Second, the postcolonial legacy of the West within Asia makes it easier for Western content to penetrate cultural borders, leaving little room for either the development of local cultural production or intra-Asian cultural flows in the region. In assuming almost hegemonic status such explanations have allowed critics and policy makers to accept almost fatalistically market forces rather than look for solutions within. These arguments fail to examine how market principles interact with local viewing habits and regimes of taste, and disregard the way national media policy and local industry structure interact to determine the success and popularity of local genres and formats. This is particularly evident in relation to light entertainment. Even though some studies have focused on the growth of trans-border television in Asia (Thussu 2000; Chan 1996; Lee 1980; Goonasekera and Lee 1998), these examples are usually framed as nationalistic and ‘negative’ responses to media imperialism. What has been largely absent to date from academic scrutiny has been a constructive engagement with the potential of industry development strategy as it pertains to film and television in national economic planning. Studies are beginning to indicate that particular Asian cultural formats and genres circulate more successfully within parts of Asia than Western cultural products (Carver 1998). This requires deeper investigation. The blending of local knowledge of tastes, cultures, and language with the higher production values that are found in globally successful productions are fast becoming the benchmark across Asia. This redrawing of the field of Asian media production is well

Singapore 109 illustrated by the circulation of Japanese anime and popular drama, Korean and Taiwanese dramas, music and pop-stars (Ng 2002; Alford 2000), and Hong Kong martial arts films and the new pan-Asian cinema (see Yeh and Davis 2002; Beals and Platt 2001; Kim 2001). This should not surprise us. Appadurai (1990) suggested that global trends intersect with local practices to create disjunctive local patterns of production and consumption. His key point is that simplistic centreperiphery models are inadequate to explain the impact of globalizing cultural flows, which he famously summarises as ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. Sinclair et al.’s (1996) ‘peripheral vision’ argument about developing ‘geo-linguistic’ television markets takes this observation further by suggesting that those who are able to harness local knowledge are better positioned to capitalize on global consumer trends both in Asia and the West. Sinclair et al.’s study and Appadurai’s globalizing ‘cultural flows’ are supported by other studies (see Chadha and Kavoori 2000) that challenge the simplicity of cultural imperialism by highlighting the articulation of local and global trends. In this sense of a radical disjuncture in the centre-periphery thesis, my chapter offers ‘local knowledge’ as a key ingredient in defining how specific cultural translations of global formats for television game shows are shaped not just by structural features of the Singapore broadcasting industry and ideological framework set by local media policy but also by the demands of local audiences.

Multiculturalism within the Singaporean television industry Singapore’s response to international television needs to be understood in the context of its geo-political location and population base. A small island state of around 4.13 million people (Department of Statistics 2002), Singapore actively positions itself as a forward-looking global city-state steeped in modernity with an ‘Asian’ twist. The structural features of Singapore’s history affect the nature of competition in the local television industry. In brief, Singapore is structurally based on a multi-racial population base, a highly literate and often bilingual workforce held together by a multilingual policy. Local television is at the crossroads of both economic and cultural life and multiculturalism impacts directly or indirectly on every facet of production. Singapore’s multi-racial population is composed of the descendants of immigrants from the Malay Peninsula, China, the Indian sub-continent and Sri Lanka.3 Singapore’s official languages are Malay, Chinese (Mandarin), Tamil and English. As a direct result of the multilingual and multicultural policies set out at Singapore’s inception, television broadcasting (like all other domestic media) is available in all four official languages in Singapore. In addition, Singapore is religiously tolerant. Religions practiced are diverse and include Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam,

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Sikhism and Taoism. Local television closely observes tolerance by erasing discourse concerning religion in domestic productions. Instead local programmes refer to nation-building themes that embody discourses of ‘Asian values’, multi-racial harmony, familial ties and multicultural representation. As English is the language of state administration and the vernacular of community interaction, such themes are most visible in English-language productions. However, Singapore’s television industry constantly faces the challenge of balancing nation-building with the more pragmatic requirement of competing in a multi-channel and multi-media environment. The domestic industry operates in a marketplace that demands novelty and diversity in order to attract increasingly fragmented and media-savvy audiences. In this environment domestic broadcasters are compelled to use local knowledge of audience tastes to blend, syncretize and concoct localized adaptations of international programmes. This may constitute a dilemma, such as when deciding which language to select for a local rendition. Meanwhile, adaptations have the capacity to draw on the global recognition acquired by more famous branded overseas productions to attract audiences. As in many other cases reported in this book, the customized (and translated) local version has a greater capacity to sustain audience attention.

Where the games began . . . With industry deregulation impacting across Asia, Singapore’s responsiveness to global cultural flows and regional market changes is affected by the structural strengths and weakness of the local industry as well as producers’ readiness to rethink strategies and be more innovative in ways that respond to and pre-empt viewers’ evolving needs. This readiness involves rethinking not only production, but also other ‘middle-range factors’ such as programme scheduling, promotions and publicity. To contextualize these challenges we need to examine the history of television in Singapore. Singapore television came into being in February 1963 with a pilot service launched by the Department of Broadcasting. By the end of the year two broadcast channels were operating. This was followed in 1967 with the addition of a third channel offering education programmes. In 1980 a statutory organization, the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), was formed with the mission of improving the quality of radio and television programming by applying the latest broadcasting technology. SBC was corporatized and revamped twice: the holding company was named Media International Singapore (MIS) in 1994 and Media Corporation of Singapore (MCS) in 1999 (see Ramanathan and Balakrishnan 1999). These structural factors, as well as changes to broadcasting, technology and information policies, shape the way that the ‘field of television production’ has developed in Singapore. An important dimension of the Singapore media landscape that informs

Singapore 111 industry practice is the current television ownership system. There are now nine free-to-air (or terrestrial) television stations controlled by just two large local media networks. MCS renamed its television networks as MediaCorpTV Singapore and MediaCorp STV12. MediaCorp TV Singapore manages Channel 5 and Channel 8, as well as MediaCorp News, which produces all the network’s news programmes and manages Channel News Asia. MediaCorp STV12 manages two channels Suria (the Malay language channel), and a three-tier specialty channel comprising of Kids Central (children’s programming belt), Vasantham (Tamil language belt) and Arts Central (culture and arts programming belt). The second and newest local terrestrial player is SPH MediaWorks, a subsidiary of Singapore Press Holdings, the nation’s monopoly newspaper and publishing group. Based on the market share of total household viewers (see SBA 2002), the main contenders for serious industry competition are the four mass entertainment channels. In 1999 two MediaCorp Singapore channels (Channels 5 and 8) dominated the television market with about 60 per cent of the population (on Channel 5) and 70 per cent of the population on the Mandarin-language Channel 8. This ascendancy has fragmented with the introduction of Media Work’s TV Works (now known as Channel i) and Channel U in 2001. Channel 5 competes with Channel i, both mass entertainment English-language channels. The mass entertainment Mandarin-language market sees Channel 8 lining up against Channel U. Examining ACNielsen and Taylor Nelson Sofres TV ratings’ weekly reach,4 we find that the overall television audience reach expanded from 77.3 per cent in June 2001 to about 90 per cent in March 2002. This increase can be attributed in part to the impact of competition, compelling the four channels to generate a great deal of programme publicity that has in turn stimulated audience interest. This dramatic increase in viewers appears to vindicate the media liberalization and competition policies directed at the terrestrial broadcasting sector. Cable television was introduced in 1995 with Singapore Cable Vision (SCV), spurring greater competition by offering up to 40 channels in English, Mandarin, Japanese, Bahasa Malaysia/Indonesia, French, Hindi, Tamil and German to accommodate the multilingual configuration of Singapore society. SCV completed cabling in August 1999 with extensive island-wide coverage and cable is now accessible to over 900,000 households. SCV’s monopoly license as a Pay TV operator ended in June 2002 and has since merged with StarHub, the third Internet service provider in Singapore to improve its competitive position in anticipation of rivals (see StarHub 2002). Singapore is also home to most of the key international satellite broadcasters and many production companies including HBO Asia, EPSN Star Sports, Discovery Asia, MTV South East Asia and BBC Worldwide. Singapore further solidifies her position as a global city by offering key

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broadcasting services to the region (see SBA 2002). The launch of the world’s first mobile Digital TV service by MediaCorp Singapore in February 2001 has meant that a buffet of mixed programming from MediaCorp Singapore can be viewed on public buses as well as those television screens in shopping centres, hotels and Changi Airport. The history of change in Singapore’s broadcasting services reflects rapid responses to global communication trends. This uptake of technology, often in the name of national progress, has implications for broadcasters. It allows local industries to compete internationally by extending beyond traditional television platforms to aggregate audiences that consume television with Internet use. Local television broadcasters and audiences embrace the use of new media (such as entertainment portals and internet forums) for their own commercial and personal aims. But at the same time the local industry also faces the challenges of a fragmenting domestic television market. The entry of Pay TV in 1995 and the launching of a second terrestrial network broadcaster, SPH MediaWorks in 2001 significantly reshaped the field of production in a market where local players have traditionally obtained their revenues through subscription and advertising (Ramanathan and Balakrishnan 1999). In this new environment local television industries are forced to explore new revenue models as well as strive to maintain a share of the fragmenting television audience pie. The ‘re-constituted’ field of television production had the effect of jumpstarting local production in 2001. At a time when media players were increasingly cautious and anticipated a huge drop in advertising revenue, the intense competition for audiences domestically and regionally became more acute. This prompted many national broadcasters in the Asia-Pacific region to seek cost-cutting measures – including regional collaboration and formats – to reduce the key cost centres of local production (Television Asia 2002a). From this perspective, a significant environmental condition such as the depressed regional economy has played a key role in the decision to embrace formatting as a local industry strategy. Movement occurred mostly in light entertainment genres, including the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (hereafter Millionaire Singapore). Originally broadcast in English on Channel 8, August 2001 saw the world’s first Chinese Mandarin version of the popular quiz game show. Prior to the global wave of game show formats beginning in the late 1990s, only one locally produced game show had been adapted from overseas formats – The Pyramid Game.5 It was shown leading up to the 7pm news on Channel 5. It is important to point out that broadcasters introduced game shows into prime time schedules when competition intensified. In effect, the increasingly competitive field of television production in Singapore, largely resulting from a combination of audience expectation and multi-channelling, has accelerated the scheduling of game shows, as well as other format adaptations, into prime time schedules. In the period from 2000–2002 other game shows like Wheel of Fortune and Celebrity

Singapore 113 Squares have been added to the slate of localization of Western television formats that are the rage now on prime time television.

Audience feedback on game shows Iwabuchi (see Chapter 3) discusses the concept of ‘cultural odour’ in relation to Japanese producers’ willingness to erase the visible manifestations of Japaneseness in order to secure advantage in foreign markets. Something similar occurs in Singapore although this has more to do with the multi-racial make-up of society and government language policy than any fear of offending cultural sensibilities. Ratings and audience feedback on quiz shows in Singapore tell us that local adaptations achieve a stronger following when articulated into ‘culturally odourless’ televisual spaces, in this instance the ‘neutral’ territory of English-language programming. As mentioned previously, the English-language vernacular reaches across the many linguistic and ethnic groups in Singapore. Certainly, the language policies in Singapore encourage the use of English as a cultural site for all language communities to converge for commerce and efforts to define a public space for national culture. However, game shows that are translated from Western formats into local English shows become successful because of their careful blend of familiar game show structures, celebrity hosts, local faces, as well as the use of the English language – accessibility to Singaporean audiences from many walks of life. Nevertheless, this linguistic policy is not without its problems. When examining the public’s feedback on English language programming on local television, even something as apolitical as a game show can become a site for grassroots political engagement. Interpretations of Singapore’s multicultural policy turned up on an online discussion thread concerning Channel 8’s Mandarin language version of Millionaire Singapore: Please can MediaCorp TV or the sponsors confirm if they will have Malay and Tamil versions of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? now that they are launching the Chinese version? If not, why not? It would not be fair to the non-Chinese speaking population of Singapore, as then the show should be called ‘Which Chinese Wants to be a Millionaire’. Otherwise they should keep the whole show in English only. (MediaCorp TV Singapore 2001a) Hey did you realize that there is no AngMo or Indian professionals participated in the English version though many of them are qualified per rules and regulations for the games. (MediaCorp TV Singapore 2001b) Such discussions on MediaCorp Singapore’s online communities have had results, testifying to the role played by online communities as an

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instrument of programme quality assurance. During the second season of Millionaire Singapore, a ‘Multiracial Special’ was featured on Sunday, 13 April 2002. This was the fifth most popular rating programme during that week.6

Game shows on the weekly television programming schedule: overall penetration of television game show formats on Singapore’s terrestrial TV schedule Reviewing the current schedules of the four key terrestrial channels (see Table 8.1), we can make several observations on the impact of game shows on broadcasters’ programming strategies. First, while MediaCorp Singapore’s strategy has always relied on scheduling 80 per cent of prime time with local productions such as current affairs and drama (Ramanathan and Balakrishnan 1999), the enormous success of English and Mandarin language versions of Millionaire Singapore, game shows, and local format adaptations means they are gradually being shifted from off-prime time schedules towards a greater prime time presence. Second, while there is an overall percentage increase in local format adaptations, MediaCorp Singapore is positioned as a market leader. It takes the biggest slice of the game show formats by acquiring format rights to the most prominent game shows including Millionaire, The Weakest Link and more recently The Wheel of Fortune Singapore. This explains the large percentage of game shows in its programming schedule. Third, the percentage of game shows that appear in each prime time schedule across all four channels increased substantially over a short span of four months. Channel 5, the English-language channel that produced and telecast Millionaire Singapore, has increased its total scheduling output of game shows from 8 to 20 per cent. This increase represents local awareness and responsiveness to global trends in format game shows, as much as a renewed ethic of industry competition. Finally, like most of MediaCorp Singapore’s local drama, substantial capital and labour investment ensured that Millionaire Singapore would secure a prime timeslot. The investment on the part of MCS included allocating a dedicated production lot, selecting and securing the involvement of local celebrities, and purchasing the format package from UK-based Celador Productions, including an extensive software system to control questions, lighting and music.

Agency at work While the field of television production is shaped by structural factors of the domestic market, broadcasters and producers actively utilize local knowledge of the industry, audiences, and viewers’ capacity access to

168.0

58.5

168.0

115.5

510

Channel 5

Channel i

Channel 8

Channel U

Total hours/week (%)

23 (13.7) 3.0 (5.13) 2.0 (1.2) 3.0 (2.6) 31.5 (6.2)

Apr 21.5 (12.8) 1.5 (2.6) 2.25 (1.3) 3.5 (3)

Jun 23 (13.7) 1.5 (2.6) 3.75 (2.2) 5 (4.3)

Aug

Total number of game show hours/week (%)

■ 0.0 (0) 0.0 (0) 4.3 (13.7)

0.0 (0) N/A

Apr

1.0 (1.2) 0.5 (0.4)

3.5 (16.3) N/A

Jun

3.5 (2.1) 1.0 (0.9)

3.5 (15.2) N/A

Aug

Number of local game show hours/total game show hours (%)

■ 2.0 (8.7) 1.5 (50) 2.0 (100) 0.0 (0) 7.7 (24.4)

Apr

3.0 (14) 1.5 (100) 2.0 (90) 0.5 (14.3)

Jun

4.5 (19.6) 1.5 (100) 3.5 (93) 1.0 (20)

Aug

Number of game show hours on PT**/total game show hours (%)

** Singapore Broadcasting Authority defines prime time (PT) as 7–11pm.

* This schedule is based on a composite of three selected weeks (4-10 April, 11-17 July and 24 July-1 August) in 2002 as published in the television schedules of 8 Days and You-Weekly magazines, two television guides published by MediaCorp Publishing Ltd (a subsidiary of MediaCorp Singapore) and Focus Publishing Ltd (a subsidiary of Singapore Press Holding), respectively.

Sources: Singapore television guides of 8 Days and You-Weekly, 2002.

Total transmission hours

Channels

Table 8.1 Weekly television programming schedule* of the four key channels covering a total of 90% of Singapore households

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access via technology. The following two examples demonstrate how Singapore broadcasters use formats to affect change in the field of television broadcasting. From cannibalizing to formatting television: positioning Channel 8 against Channel U During SPH MediaWorks’ (Mandarin) Channel U’s launch in May-July 2001 the station offered almost the same range of programming as rival Mandarin-language channel MediaCorp Singapore’s Channel 8, in effect making it difficult to position these two channels as different. This strategy proved confusing to advertisers and audiences alike. Channel surfing viewers tended to remark that switching between the two channels was like ‘deja vu’. Having first mover advantage, MediaCorp Singapore’s Channel 8 maintained a larger share of the total Mandarin-language viewing audience base given its long history starting from way back in 1963 (Birch and Phillips 2003: 53). Things changed steadily with SPH MediaWorks’ Channel U closing the gap in audience ratings from 55.8 percent in January 2002 to 56.4 percent in March 2002 (see SBA 2002). In 2001 Channel U’s early programme line-up had initially included a mixed bag of local original reality-style game shows such as Youth Quest (involving some 20+ year old students competing as rival teams to confront physical challenges), and Exchange Lives (a reality series about how Singapore families ‘house swap’ for one week with other families from countries in the Asia-Pacific like Papua New Guinea) to compete with the Chinese versions of Tic Tac Toe (Celebrity Squares) on Channel 8. These experiments were short-lived. In 2002 MediaWork’s offering of game shows remain consistent with MediaWork’s overall branding in their stated vision: WE ASPIRE • to create relevant and riveting content to entertain, enhance and enrich viewers’ minds and lives. • to create programs of international quality and standard that has worldwide appeal. • to provide intelligent choices and alternatives to what is currently available. • to create and invest in entertaining content that will work across all platforms – radio, TV and related broadband Internet. VIBRANT, FREE-SPIRITED, BOLD (SPH MediaWorks 2002) From late 2001 onwards, Channel U consistently used a strategy of creating original ‘long form’ game shows, the latest being Wow Wow West (an hour-long variety infotainment show that began in mid-July 2002) sched-

Singapore 117 uled on a Saturday slot. This reflects a desire by SPH MediaWorks to compete with MediaCorp Singapore Channel 8’s version of The Weakest Link, another hour-long game show broadcast on Sunday nights. However, SPH press coverage of The Weakest Link (which might be construed as competitive tactics), as well as some MCS’ online forum threads indicate that it lacks the appeal of Millionaire Singapore. The lesson in this regard is that adaptations may need to make significant adjustments. A hallmark of the UK original is the stern quiz-masterly tone of the host: THE WEAKEST LINK has got to be the unfriendliest TV game show. Nobody smiles – not the eight grim contestants, and definitely not the stern host Tsui Li-hsin. Even the audiences, who are seated around a circular set, barely applaud on this homegrown version of the syndicated game show from Britain. What is there to clap and cheer about, when the conniving contestants are plotting and voting against each other to be the ultimate winner? Dressed in sombre black without even a smile to brighten her outfit, Tsui has obviously been drilled by the same instructors as Anne Robinson, the original acerbic British host, and frosty actress Carol Cheng, who helmed Hong Kong’s Cantonese version. (Sng 2002) The host does use dialogue similar to the Hong Kong version; she does not even use the closing eye movement of ‘blink eyes’ [used by the Hong Kong host]. It is only telecast once a week, not like Hong Kong’s version which is telecast daily. Even the prize money cannot compare the Hong Kong version which gave out SGD 68,000, [the Singapore version] only gave out SGD 10,000. The host’s style is temporarily very serious. . . I think if the local audience reacts as negatively as the Hong Kong audiences have to the initially ‘serious’ style of the host, it will not be as [successful as] the Hong Kong version. (MediaCorp TV Singapore 2001b) Discourse analysis of press coverage of television game shows A feature of Singapore media is its regulatory environment that adjudicates over content. Institutional forces provide a public and often moralistic voice of concern over impacts that competition is having on local production quality. An April 2002 television report card released by the Program Advisory Committee (PAC), a government-appointed media watchdog that creates opportunities for dialogue between broadcasters and cultural gatekeepers to officially sustain the discourse of quality and diversity, noted:

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Tania Lim . . . having more competition among broadcasters here has lowered the standard of entertainment shows, as each station plumped for the ‘lowest denominator’ in its efforts to improve its ratings. . . . It also commended the stations by listing, for the first time, 40 programmes with the kind of ‘quality’ it would like to see more of. (Goh 2002)

The media watchdog attempted for the first time to list programmes that they assessed as ‘hits’ or ‘misses’. Those elevated to the status of ‘hits’ included Judging Amy (a Channel 5, acquired American drama series), Art Factory (a Kids Central, English-language children’s art and craft show), Wayang – The Final Curtain (an Arts Central, English language documentary about Chinese opera), Vannangal (a Vasanthan Central, Indian arts documentary), You’re OK, I’m OK (a Channel U, Chinese-language social documentary), Makansutra (a Channel i, local English-language food show), Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (both Channels 5 and 8’s local version of the game show format). These criticisms are met head-on by broadcasters concerned to enhance their status among local audiences, as well as serving a role as a public service and a unique space for local audiences. Whether rebutting the report card or commenting on the performance ratings of their game shows, their promotional materials conclude: MediaCorp has not lowered its standards. We produce and acquire a wide range of programmes to satisfy the public at large. (Spokesperson for MediaCorp cited in Goh 2002) When an industry becomes more competitive, it’s a learning curve for the players. We must learn faster and keep sub-standard shows to a minimum. We want to lift up the standards of the industry instead of engaging in hostile competition. (Man Shu Sum cited in Goh 2002) MediaCorp TV Channel 8’s viewership ratings last Sunday (May 19, 2002) was no accident and was anything but the weakest. In fact, the debut of The Weakest Link, attracted up to 17.3% or 659,000 viewers (people aged four and above). . . . At Channel 8, we constantly strive to provide the best of both local and international programming to our viewers. (MediaCorp TV Singapore 2002) While local translations of these format game shows initially attract strong audience support due to the global brand names and promotions associated with these shows, what ultimately sustains viewer numbers is the creative use of local knowledge, interspersed with general knowledge about the world.

Singapore 119

Future of game shows on Singaporean television Game show formats have stimulated a wider public interest in the genre with the industry engaging and experimenting to produce a suite of local game shows. This expands the creativity frontier for the local production industry by leveraging on global templates with the aim of blending ‘concoctions’ that are more tradable across national borders. An example is the co-production of game shows by MediaCorp with Singapore’s veteran Singapore comedian Jack Neo co-hosting with Taiwan’s famous variety show host Jacky Wu. The suitably entitled The Jacky Jack Show was broadcast in Singapore and Taiwan in 2002. While Media Corp Singapore and Media Works continue to cautiously deploy television game show formats, we witness a general shift from ‘short form’ quiz shows to ‘long form’ variety-cum-game shows, such as MCS’ Weekend Delight, a variety show featuring a karaoke competition and lucky draws. Another longform format is MediaWork’s Open Sesame, a home décor programme that awards prizes to the ‘best acclaimed home’ (see SPH MediaWorks 2002).

Conclusion The Singaporean television industry’s format-driven production initiatives converge with an acknowledgment of greater customization of audience tastes within an increasingly competitive domestic field of production. The concoction of game shows as ‘Singapore Slings’ capitalizes on audience appetite for globally successful interactive game shows and reality programming. However, in order to woo audiences, broadcasters and producers are increasingly locked into, and reinforce a Singapore-style ‘circuit of culture’ (Negus 1997) that reflects a multi-cultural ethos and the island’s consumerist culture. Using local knowledge, Singapore producers and broadcasters tap into a cultural register of knowledge that allows a matching of audience tastes with specific genres, languages, stars, scheduling and broader institutional discourses linked to television’s cultural role in sustaining a distinctive cultural identity. This cultural specificity reflects a Singaporean ‘utopian imagery’ of the nation-state in a manner analogous to European, American and Asia- Pacific adaptations of drama and game show formats (Moran 1998: 83). But do audiences buy it? The brief analysis of discussion forums suggests that while audiences are actually quite fragmented, they are sophisticated in their tastes. United by knowledge of how a local production compares to similar adaptations from overseas (in terms of hosts, questions and timing), viewers articulate knowledge within political discourses concerning national identity, ethnicity, as well as contemporary issues such as the use of foreign talent in Singapore. Hence, this case study further supports a critical view of cultural translation and customization of

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imported media content in Asian global cities. It is not simply a reaction to cultural imperialism. The globalization of culture is heavily mediated by the inflections of local economic, cultural and economic conditions. Licensed game shows formats are a site of cultural contestation where television economics seeks to standardize production and consumption. Success is ultimately determined by negotiation among local industry players, taking into account specific regulatory constraints applied by the state and the agency of audiences. In Singapore Western formats such as The Weakest Link embody values and cultural themes that are not easily transposed into the Singapore consumption space. Singapore’s game shows articulate into particular ‘game worlds’ with distinctive cultural elements and values embedded (see Cooper-Chen 1993). In comparison with the foreign scent of The Weakest Link, formats such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Wheel of Fortune present themselves as ‘culturally odourless’ (Iwabuchi 2001), allowing the successful marriage of the format with national flavours. Further in-depth studies with other formats and genres including drama and soap opera may reveal comparable dynamics operating within the field of Singaporean television production. Moreover, as countries confront issues of deregulation and global competition, accumulated local knowledge of ‘what works’ will increasingly facilitate the process of translating across cultures.

Notes 1 This comment was submitted by a person named Liz on the Internet forum pages of the online version of MediaCorp Publishing’s English-language television and entertainment guide, 8 Days, issue no. 551, 28 April–5 May 2001. 2 Formatted game shows are used in the sense described by Moran (1998) to define industrial formats: those licensed or adapted from well-known licensed television programs using a fixed ‘recipe’ and series of production stages, schedules, expertise and software. These are exportable and exchangeable across national borders for a fee. 3 According to the Department of Statistics’ latest available figures (2002), persons of Chinese origin accounted for 77.2 per cent of the population, Malays 13.9 per cent, Indians 7.9 per cent, and other ethnic groups 1.5 per cent. In addition, there were about 812,000 foreign citizens working in Singapore as of June 2001. 4 This is according to figures released on Singapore Broadcasting Authority’s March 2002 online press release of local television ratings. While this release was originally accessed from SBA’s website at , the organization has restructured in 2003 and all SBA releases are now archived at . 5 The Pyramid Game is a Singaporean version of a famous 30 year old US game show (known as The $25,000 Pyramid) that became a television format and board game. The American game show debuted on US network television in 1973 and travelled to ITV in the 1980s.The objective of the game is that two teams of players, each comprising two persons, competed to describe items from a related category to their partners within a 30-second clock, with the ultimate

Singapore 121 goal of reaching the Pyramid to play for the grand prize of $25,000. See . 6 See MediaCorp Singapore’s corporate website for the Top 50 Chinese programs in 2002. Monthly listings of the top rated Chinese-language programmes from mid-2001 to mid-2002 were available on when accessed in April/May 2002. Since then only the most recent top-rated television programmes are available online at MediaCorp Singapore’s ratings webpage.

9

Copied from without and cloned from within India in the global television format business Amos Owen Thomas and Keval J. Kumar

Television programme format adaptation is becoming an increasingly significant phenomenon in India as it is in many other countries with an active domestic television industry. Some obvious successes stand out in recent years, such as Kaun Banega Crorepati, the licensed adaptation of Celador’s global format success Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and C.A.T.S., a licensed Hindi version of the US detective series Charlie’s Angels. However, sensitivity to local cultural nuances has been critical to their popular reception by Indian audiences. Yet despite a few high-profile licensed adaptations or copycatting, there are far more instances of unlicensed adaptations or cloning, sometimes subtle, other times not. The practice of imitating globally successful cultural products – such as Hollywood movies – in India predates the current trend worldwide to adapt high-rating television programmes for local consumption. There also exist clones of local adaptations of foreign format programmes as well as clones of other locally originated formats, if one treats India as a unitary state despite its immense cultural diversity. Thus any investigation of ‘copycat’ television in India, as in many other developing countries, needs to be done with consideration of its rich cultural and economic context. Knowing the context is critical to understanding both the apparent divergence and convergence of practices of the television industry as well as of reception by audiences, as compared with those in the developed world. As the world’s seventh largest country geographically and second-most populous country, India represents a market that can support an immense and complex domestic television industry, as the recent years of economic liberalization and media policy of access to transnational broadcasters have demonstrated (Thomas 2000: 135–150). Dominating the South Asia region geographically, politically, economically and culturally, India is flanked to the east by Bangladesh, to the north-west by Pakistan, to the north-east by Nepal, to the south by Sri Lanka and the Maldives. All of these countries are subsidiary audience markets for television originating from and/or targeting India. However, apart from the official languages of Hindi and English, there are seventeen major languages including Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, some of

India 123 which are spoken in neighbouring countries or have sizeable diaspora globally. India has a population of 1 billion, that is, 16 per cent of the world’s population, but occupies only 2.4 per cent of the world’s land mass (Viswanath and Karan 2000: 84–85). It is this large potential market that drives the growth of the new commercial television broadcasters, both transnational and domestic.

Metamorphosis of Indian television As with most developing countries, television in India began as a social experiment, a tool for economic development and as an aid to national integration. Over two decades it expanded from a local channel catering to audiences around the capital New Delhi to a nation-wide broadcaster with two channels. Quite remarkably it functioned without direct competition in the form of commercial television due to the socialist policies of successive governments, right up till the arrival of transnational satellite television in the early 1990s. In 1991 the pioneering satellite broadcaster in Asia, StarTV began broadcasting five television channels via the AsiaSat1 satellite and soon claimed audiences in over fifty countries Asia-wide under its footprint. StarTV had considerable impact in India in its early days since a small but influential portion of its 880 million population was capable of comprehending its predominant language of broadcast, English. All but one of StarTV’s initial four English language channels was soon available on India’s unregulated local cable networks. StarTV was subsequently bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in the mid-1990s and began diversifying its programme offerings for national/ethnic markets. In 1992 a group of local and overseas Indian investors launched ZeeTV, a Hindi-language channel able to cater to both urban and rural areas of India, the latter relatively untouched by StarTV. In 1993 News Corporation purchased a 49.9 per cent stake in the parent company of ZeeTV, though by the end of the decade the latter had bought back News Corporation’s stake. Since 1996 the former partners had been in ‘collaborative competition’ for market share, but the break-up prompted intensified competition between ZeeTV and StarTV. The ZeeTV programme staples of Hindi films, variety shows, games shows and talk shows provided Indian viewers with a refreshing alternative to the staid programming on Doordarshan (DD), most of them made by its own subsidiary Zee Telefilms. Months after its launch ZeeTV challenged DD channels for its share of the higher socio-economic segments of Indian television audiences. In keeping with its regionalization strategy, in late 1994 StarTV increased its collaboration with ZeeTVand UTV, a local programme production house, both also partly owned by its parent company News Corporation (APT-C 1995: 38–39). The de facto ‘open-sky’ policy which came about with transnational

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satellite television spelt the gradual decline of DD’s dominance, especially in urban areas, although rural regions still had little choice but to watch its channels (Sinclair and Hemphill 1997: 13–21). The monopolistic public broadcaster, which previously was politically dominated, complacent and inefficient, reacted strategically by re-launching all the metropolitan-based DD2 channels as a nation-wide Metro channel in January 1992 to cater to an urban, middle-class, youthful, upwardly-mobile audience similar to ZeeTV’s (Interview producer05). By the mid-1990s in a determined bid to combat the growing sub-regional ethnic-language satellite, DD reorganized itself once again. This time it formed ten ethnic language channels in addition to the National Network, Metro Channel and Enrichment Channel, each up-linked from the regional station where that language was dominant and made available via satellite antennae throughout the country (Prasar Bharati 2000: 15–28). In October 1996 the Star Plus channel introduced locally-produced Hindi-language programmes serials, soap-operas and game-shows into its evening prime time, displacing the English-language programming of similar genres for which it was famed. This surprise move pitched StarTV not only against its affiliate ZeeTV but also DD, SonyET, and a host of new Indian commercial channels in the intense battle for advertising revenues. Soon afterwards News Corporation gained approval from the Indian government for direct investment in News Television India, paving the way for it to gain domestic broadcaster status (Boulestreau 1996). In 1998 the flagship channel Star Plus was re-launched as Star World, targeted specifically at the Indian market and offering a number of programmes made within the country in both Hindi and English (Adweek Asia 1998). These developments, together with the runaway success of its copycat programme of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? symbolize the completion of StarTV’s transformation from a global, pan-Asian upmarket broadcaster to a quasi-domestic one dominating the Indian massmarket. Meanwhile in linguistically diverse southern India the advent of subnational channels broadcast via satellite in 1993 was critical to the growth of audience markets. The world’s first Tamil-language television was provided by SunTV based in Tamil Nadu state and soon was finding crossborder markets in Sri Lanka and Singapore. Similarly, Asianet begun in Kerala around the same time and also targeted expatriate Malayalamspeakers in the Middle East. In neighbouring Andra Pradesh state, Gemini and Eenadu channels in the Telugu language commenced in 1995. A similar trend soon developed in northern India where new satellite/ cable channels in Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi and Bengali were established by existing and new broadcasters by the late 1990s. Thus at the time of this research in the early 2000s there were approximately 100 channels in India though not evenly distributed throughout the country.

India 125

Mapping the phenomenon The first step in tracking the incidence of format copycatting and cloning was to ascertain how much programming was local and how much was imported, and furthermore which were local programmes and which were transnational productions. It seemed initially that this might provide a useful guide to establishing the origins of programmes. But the difficulty of this task was compounded by the lack of a comprehensive television guide of all channels available in the Indian market and in any Indian city. Many guides that were published did not survive financially and the only one which was reputed to be still in business at the time of the fieldwork was said to be sold by neighbourhood cable operators to subscribers and unavailable to the general public. Some of our informants even claimed that no such programme guide existed any longer and that audiences simply found their programmes by surfing across the scores of channels (Interview producer 11). Only a rough estimate of the incidence of imported versus domestic programming could be made and was made by the second author who resides in India. Table 9.1 demonstrates the results using a limited programme schedule available in a daily newspaper in Bombay (Mumbai). It should be noted that while there are scores of channels, only a select few appear in such a schedule, reflecting in part consumer demand but more so sponsorship by the channels of the schedule. A note must be added concerning the many complications with estimating domestic versus foreign productions. Quite clearly notions of domestic or foreign programming are inadequate in a world of increasingly globalized cultural industries. One trend has been the filming of Indian movies in foreign countries to provide novelty for the audiences and tax benefits for the producers. Some of these ethnically Indian producers and actors are residents or even citizens abroad and the production houses are incorporated abroad for tax purposes. Do the programmes they produce count as domestic or foreign? On the other hand there are foreign-owned corporations such as CNN, Table 9.1 Estimated programme sources on central Indian prime time, 2001 Channel

Cloned programmes per week

Percentage of programming

DD1 Natnl DD2 Metro ZeeTV SonyET Star Plus

Nil Nil 30 min 300 min 240 min

0.0% 0.0% 2.4% 28.6% 19.0%

Note Based on a continuous week in January 2002.

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StarTV, SonyET and Discovery, which source programming from within India for broadcast to the country as well as internationally. They sometimes use their own foreign crews and at other times they commission local production houses, and still other situations use a combination of foreign and local personnel. Should their programmes be classified as domestic or foreign? Then there are magazine-style programmes which range from those which utilize segments of foreign production to those which are essentially foreign programmes simply topped-and-tailed by local presenters. All this is irrespective of whether the programmes are format adaptations, licensed or otherwise, or have been variously ‘inspired’ by foreign formats. A cursory examination by the first author of serial synopses on the website <www.indiantelevision.com> and other sources seems to indicate clones of foreign programmes and these suspicions are reported in Table 9.2. Table 9.2 Adaptations of foreign programme formats – apparent, acknowledged or alleged Indian programme Status

Foreign programme

Genre

Channel

C.A.T.S. Licensed

Charlies’ Angels

Police drama

SonyET

Movers and Shakers Unlicensed

Jay Leno

Talk show

SonyET

Hello Friends Unlicensed

Friends

Sit-com

ZeeTV

Family Fortunes Licensed

Family Feud

Game show

StarPlus

Tanha Unlicensed

The Bold and the Beautiful

Soap opera

StarPlus

Hotel Hindustan Unlicensed

Fawlty Towers

Sitcom

StarPlus

Mastermind Licensed

Mastermind

Game show

BBC

Kaun Banega Crorepati Licensed

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Game show

StarPlus

Sawal Dus Crore Ka Unlicensed

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Game show

ZeeTV

X-Zone Unlicensed

X-Files

Police Drama

ZeeTV

Amul India Show Unlicensed

Oprah

Talk show

StarPlus

India 127

Perceptions of industry The next step was to gather industry opinion and anecdotal evidence about the actual incidence of format imitation, in contradistinction to the initial juxtaposition of domestic versus imported, which had turned out to be less useful in this analysis. In pursuit of the industry logic behind the format adaptation activity in India, interviews were conducted personally with industry executives during a fieldwork trip to Bombay and Delhi in late 2000. Bombay is the prime headquarters location for the television, film and advertising industry with Delhi being a secondary one. In order to gain a multi-faceted perspective on the phenomenon of copycat television we conducted interviews with industry executives and these were constituted from programme producers, channel operators, market research organizations and advertising agencies. Identifying informants, gaining access, obtaining appointments and simply the logistics of getting to the interviews is far more of a challenge in metropolitan cities in a developing country like India, especially when one of us is based in another distant country. In other words, this kind of research is far more challenging in India than doing so within a developed country. Nonetheless twenty-three interviews were carried out within a month, each averaging an hour in length and semi-structured to allow for the differing relationships each executive had with the phenomenon of programme format adaptation. Although there are no definitive figures, the incidence of cloning and copycatting was estimated by these industry executives to be quite minimal, especially as local production comprises a high percentage of all programming on air on Indian channels. The following is a sample of opinions on the matter: Cloning percentage is in single digits. Only KBC, Mastermind, C.A.T.S. – among the 80-plus channels . . . Family Fortunes on StarPlus but probably not licensed. (Interview policy-maker12) 99 per cent of production is of local creative origin. (Interview producer13) Less than 5 per cent is cloned. (Interview producer15) Others answers confirmed the difficulty of estimating the incidence of programme adaptation from programme schedules: It is impossible to map incidence of first-run clones against total programmes . . . hard to know the status of programmes. (Interview analyst15)

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Amos Owen Thomas and Keval J. Kumar The percentage of cloning in total local production is unknown. (Interview analyst13)

The most recognized format adaptation was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati), a franchise of the Celador format production centre in the UK (see case study below). Besides KBC, there are few known licensed programme format adaptations or copycats as per the table above. A programme called C.A.T.S. was clearly an adaptation of the US ‘female’ detective serial Charlie’s Angels but represented an interesting case of the transnational transfer of rights. Although produced in India by UTVI (United Television India), it was commissioned by Sony Entertainment TV, which also owns Columbia Pictures, which in turn holds the rights to the original US television programme. Hence, according to its independent producer the question of licensing never even arose. On the other hand an assistant producer stated that of the fifty-two episodes shot, not many of the narratives were taken from the original series. There was no training of the production team abroad or consultants on the set from the original programme, only a regime of watching all the US programmes. Moreover, no adverse reaction was expressed by the actors or directors on C.A.T.S. towards adapting the US programme rather than creating an Indian original (Interview producer13). Quite predictably, interviewees from the industry were able to cite other examples of Indian programmes past and current that were apparent adaptations of foreign ones, although few were known for certain to be licensed clones. There is a short programme on MTV called Bakra [Goat], which is a bit like Candid Camera. (Interview analyst12) The Oprah Show has also been copied as Preya and Zamida Kom. (Interview producer11) The Price Is Right was produced by Fremantle Delhi as Yehi Hai Right Price . . . Star Struck became Super Stars in Hindi – a talent hunt: dancing, acting, singing . . . Bol Baby Bol is similar to Cosby’s Kids Say the Darnest Things. (Interview producer14) Nonetheless, there was acute awareness among industry executives that some copycat and cloned programmes had not worked in India for a variety of reasons, some unknown: Family Fortunes was done here before and failed . . . Wheel of Fortune also failed – the prizes were not attractive. (Interview producer13)

India 129 Cincinatti Babla Bo – copy of Are You Being Served? did not work because Hindi language was not able to have the nuances and innuendos as in English. (Interview producer17) Family Feud was adapted here and was successful. (Interview producer17) In a critique of the way in which Indian television distorts Indian culture, Chandra (2000: 107–138) documented a number of other serials that have similar themes to imported ones. Swabhiman, which concerns a wealthy family involved in a complicated family feud, appears to resemble Dallas. Campus, a serial depicting the extra-curricular life of students appears rather similar to Beverley Hills 90210. But it remains unclear if such programmes were unlicensed clones or simply imitations of their predecessors. Furthermore, there were also clones of popular Indian programmes adapted from one regional language into another across the eighty-plus channels available nationally. In one instance a successful crime serial first created in Tamil was the basis for programme clones in Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand, before being cloned in Hindi (Page and Crawley 2001: 211). Yet despite these examples there was much denial by industry executives that programmes are being cloned or copycatted. In one instance, on learning the researcher’s country-of-origin was Australia, an independent director proudly announced that he was working for an Australian investor in Indian television: I’m making a programme called X-Zone – it’s about the supernormal. (Interview producer12) Quite evidently this had shades of The X-Files, but its director went on to deny that it is a clone when asked. It is the same genre, not a copy . . . Hindi audience will not have seen the original. (Interview producer12) Another producer rationalized that there were only limited narratives for television production and that there is considerable cloning even within US television: Some film critics would argue that there are only six plots in the world. . . Saturday Nite Live is itself a rip-off of Johnny Carson. (Interview producer15)

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One means whereby industry executives absolved their industry from the suspicion of unlicensed cloning of foreign programmes lay in the strategy of pointing out that it was common practice to clone domestic programmes as well: There are clones of popular Indian-created programmes on rival channels. For instance, the popular film-songs quiz show Antakshari on ZeeTV was copied by all other Indian channels. (Interview producer11) SAB-TV is cloning for different slots like afternoon women’s audience. (Interview analyst12) SunTV has cloned a game-show for two weeks now, and it is popular. But there are high ratings for all programmes because there is a history of heavy viewing in the South. (Interview analyst14) SunTV has a successful quiz show – used a star as well and appeals to Tamil audiences. (Interview producer14) The southern Indian broadcaster SunTV did acknowledge to the authors of a book on satellite television that many of their programmes imitated US ones. Nerukku Ner simulated Face to Face while Marmma Desam copied The X-Files. But the managing director was quick to argue that copying is not cloning, but simply taking a cue from the original, adding ‘It is a very thin line that divides learning and cloning. I maintain that thin line and will defend it very carefully’ (Page and Crawley 2001: 210). On the one hand there was much resistance to admission of cloning due to the negative perception of stealing or being uncreative, as well as the risk of legal action for breach of copyright. However, on the other hand there was the claim that programme cloning was a learning experience, even an inspiration, made available by the established markets for television in the developed world, or even other parts of the developing world.

Success of KBC The most widely acknowledged format adaptation is Kaun Banega Crorepati or KBC – a licensed version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. KBC was launched to coincide and signal Star Plus’ repositioning from a global-regional channel offering foreign English-language programming into a fully sub-regional Hindi entertainment-oriented channel taking on market leaders ZeeTV and SonyET. Produced in-house by StarTV, KBC

India 131 became an absolute ratings winner – achieving the highest ratings currently among all channels and the highest-ever ratings in India (Interview advertiser 14). As a consequence it spawned unlicensed quiz-show clones among its rival channels such as ZeeTV’s Sawal Dus Crore Ka, and SonyET’s Chapar Phadke, both of which have failed miserably to rival KBC. Franchising Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? was first suggested by the Hong Kong-headquarters of StarTV which sent a video of the original programme to Bombay. Quiz shows have a long history on Indian television, dating from the 1980s on DD and then other channels. Still, producers seemed baffled at the recent success of KBC and the consequent proliferation of game-shows when the genre had been in existence for a long time on Indian television: Four years ago many quiz-shows existed on Indian television but were not popular. This [shows such as KBC] is a sudden trend. (Interview producer21) KBC is the only programme to cross language boundaries in India. (Interview advertiser15) According to an executive of StarTV, the secret of KBC’s success was both the prize money and compere Amitabh Bachchan (Interview producer17). It was indeed a local StarTV executive who selected Bachchan. Likewise, many other interviewees also attributed KBC’s success largely to Bachchan who was the leading Hindi actor in India for some decades. He had mass appeal across generations and was admired for different reasons by different generational groups: for instance, by older groups for his genteel ways, by younger adults for his ‘angry young man’ portrayals, and by children as an action hero. He was reputed to be paid Rs 15 lakhs or US$37,500 per episode for the first series. In turn KBC itself was said to charge Rs 1 lakh or US$2500 per minute of advertising time (Interview producer 11). Bachchan’s debut in game-show hosting after some years of absence from the film screen and failure in politics was part of a larger attempt to reinvent himself later in life, which included acting in advertising commercials, music recording, event management, and television production (Vachani 1999). From the first author’s observations of the programme, Bachchan has an impeccable command of the spoken Hindi language, perhaps comparable to John Gielgud in English films and Gerard Depardieu in French films. Informal comments by acquaintances suggested they were drawn into watching KBC for the sheer pleasure of listening to him speak Hindi. Furthermore Bachchan adopts an avuncular style, speaking gently to quiz participants, enquiring warmly after their families, allaying their fears, and looking kindly at them. This manner is attractive to his large fan base,

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which is practically much of the Indian population. His style of speech and diction on KBC has entered into popular culture and everyday conversation. For instance, the phrase ‘lock it in’ spoken in ‘Hinglish’, the local patois, is borrowed directly from English-language versions of Millionaire. The Hinglish phrase has entered public parlance in India where it has come to imply absolutely certainty of decision or commitment (Interview analyst 12). To ensure that the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? format was seamlessly transposed, three staff from Celador UK travelled to India to train the local production team, and later a team of four travelled to the US for further familiarization with the concept. The questions were designed by Siddharta Basu, who is producer for both KBC and Mastermind, with the help of a team of researchers. Less than 3 months after its launch the overwhelming success of KBC was already causing considerable upheaval in the industry. SonyET’s advertising revenues were down 40 per cent from its earlier projection of Rs 800 crore (US$20 million), and while Zee had not been forthcoming with its revenues, its share price had plummeted. One response of the rival stations was cloning look-alikes of KBC. Kerry Packer’s Channel 9 Gold planned to launch Greed, SABe TV negotiated another game-show format from overseas, and Sony planned a 24-hour game-show channel. But the success of KBC has been the result of the full formula – compere, set, questions, prize, etc. – as demonstrated by the failure of the ZeeTV clone (Interview producer14). Regardless of the final outcome of its plagiarist, as a licensed and hence quality-controlled adaptation of a foreign programme format KBC has been responsible for raising the expectations of viewers for high production values in Indian programmes. Hence programme production and sourcing budgets were expected to rise, not only for game shows, but other programmes as well by a factor of three to four (Rao 2000). A ZeeTV clone Sawal Dus Crore Ka (SDCK) used two actors as comperes, but they were much less known and admired and also appeared ill-matched. This may be an extension of the tendency to use multiple stars in Indian movies due to pressure from producers and distributors to almost guarantee success (Vachani 1999: 199–232). Nevertheless, the programme was perceived by audiences as an uncreative imitation whereas KBC was seen as the original even though many knew the latter was itself the Indian adaptation of a foreign programme. As is typical of ZeeTV, SDCK was produced in-house and even though it used the director of its most successful programme, the film quiz Antakshari, this gameshow still failed. One television producer interviewed believed that this was because it did not have a star and the audience hated the fact that it was a copy (Interview producer 11). The first author’s own observation of the programme was that it struggled to match the production values and the electricity of KBC. By December that year, within months of its launch, SBCK was taken off air, the senior management at ZeeTV was

India 133 reshuffled, and the comperes were threatening the channel with legal action over their termination. Meanwhile SunTV, a South Indian channel, also cloned KBC; its version has been popular most probably due to the fact that it was the only such show in the Tamil language (Interview analyst 14).

Response of audiences In order to understand just the depth of awareness of formats and format adaptation amongst the general population we convened focus groups in three different locations – Delhi, Pune and Trichy. Delhi is the capital city located in northern India and here the group was half male, half female and comprised two administrators, an army officer, a housewife and two teachers. In Pune, a mid-sized industrial city located on the Deccan plateau in central India and within an hour’s flight from Mumbai, the group of four males and one female comprised two television executives, a lecturer, and two graduate students. Trichy is a small city in southern India about an hour’s flight from Chennai. This final group, almost all female, comprised two teachers, two housewives, two working women and two school students. The facilitators were from the cities themselves and were supervised by the second author in India who also served as facilitator of one of the groups. We decided to use locals to convene and lead the groups to promote ease of communication in an attempt to obtain insights that might not have been obtainable by a foreign researcher. However, as everyone was local, including the facilitator, there were many assumptions made about knowledge of programmes. Still it was possible through this process to gain a fair representation of audiences around India and their views on the phenomenon of television programme format adaptation in their television channels. There seemed to be a general awareness of cloned game-shows on local television with all focus groups across India being able to name at least a few such programmes, as demonstrated by the sample of comments below: KBC is copy of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. (army officer, Delhi) Horlicks Super Kudukbam is one such copy [of Family Fortune]. (working woman, Trichy) I tell you the programme which was Whose Line Is It? – that is Zabaan Sambhal Ke. (graduate student, Pune) However, there were varying degrees of awareness of the phenomenon of television programme adaptation ranging from vague suspicion to

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certainty that a programme was a clone or copy. Participants could name talk-shows, soaps and sit-coms that were based on foreign formats, demonstrating knowledge that it took place across genre. It seems that those in the Delhi and Pune groups, which were generally more educated, had greater awareness of the phenomenon of copycatting or cloning: Movers and Shakers is also a copy of something . . . Mantriji [clone of Yes, Minister] is another. (school teacher1, Delhi) Yes, we tried Neighbours in Hindi; we tried our own ‘Hinglish’ version of Friends. (news producer, Pune) They [Candid Camera clones] are shown on Tamil channels. (student1, Trichy) Ignorance was displayed in the Delhi group about what the pedigree for KBC was and where the original concept was first made. But understandably there was considerable knowledge of the pedigree of programme clones, among the group in Pune, which included graduate students, a lecturer and professionals in communications: I heard these programmes are UK-based. (Trichy TA) For example . . . Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. It started in Britain actually . . . went across the Atlantic to US, then Germany. . . (news producer, Pune) There was also familiarity with clones of copycats within Indian television, particularly by southern Indian channels that use different languages, while those in the North use primarily Hindi. While the southern clones of KBC came readily to mind, a few other examples in other genres were cited. As expected most such responses were from the Trichy group, which was more likely to watch both sets of channels, northern and southern: In Tamil, Kodeeswaran a quiz programme . . . is a copy of Crorepathi [KBC]. (teacher 2, Trichy) Same programme is there like KBC, same KBC concept, everything is the same in Tamil. (graduate student, Pune)

India 135 It [Kadi TV] is imitating as well as criticizing the Crorepathi [KBC] and Kodeeswaran [KBC clone] programmes. (teacher1, Trichy) There was quite a sophisticated understanding by university students and working people, particularly in the Pune and Delhi groups, of just why cloning or copycatting was done by television programme producers in India or elesewhere. This was seen in terms of being general industry practice to identify, replicate and market a successful formula in programmes, those which attract audiences and thus advertising revenue: So copycat I think is a concept which is designed by marketing people to get attention of large number of customers and it has spread over the world. (educational video producer, Pune) Well, from what I perceive is copycat TV is . . . like okay. One programme is popular in the West or any other country in case of marketing perspective, which is straightaway copied to make money in India or for a regional channel. (news producer, Pune) So producers copycat to explore more variety and they can catch the viewers’ attention. (project officer, Delhi) Participants in the Trichy and Delhi focus groups believed that there were varied motivating reasons for viewers to watch game-shows. Some thought it was the prize money, others the actors who served as game-masters. But the prognosis for further programme format adaptations in India was not good. Basically, it is the money. The large amount of money is the major attraction. (teacher1, Trichy) Actors are involved to attract lots of people. (housewife2, Trichy) I think people get bored . . . The same format being repeated over and over. (administrative officer, Delhi) Further analysis of the focus group responses confirm that television viewers in India seem to take ownership of any format adaptation as their

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very own cultural product, particularly those viewers unaware of its original form. Therefore, should a producer or channel conceal from audiences the fact that a programme was adapted from a foreign original or advertise that fact? Does it matter to audiences either way? Even despite knowledge that it was a clone of a foreign programme by some viewers, a popular programme in any market appears to develop a cult following which identifies so closely with it as to ignore its origins and popularity elsewhere.

Issues to ponder Imitation of ideas both from the West as well as from other parts of the country appears to be a commonly accepted practice among Indian cultural products such as movies and television. There are clones of Indian movies into serials or soap operas and many of these have typical local characteristics such as living in extended families, arranged marriages, musical interludes and high melodrama. As far back as the 1980s the success of a Mexican telenovela in promoting social/ educational themes in Latin America was replicated in India in 1984 with the development of an indigenous soap opera called Hum Log. The series ran into 156 episodes and enjoyed ratings of up to 90 per cent in Hindi-speaking North India or an average of 50 million viewers (Singhal and Rogers 2001: 88–91). Hum Log spawned numerous other local soap operas created by India’s film industry and co-opted by the advertising industry because of their popularity with audiences (Khanna 1987: 26–7). Is being cloned by another producer a source of flattery for the original creator – recognition of innovation and excellence by the wider fraternity? Cloning of cultural products was so commonplace in India that Bandhu (1992: 41–2) reported that Indian producers and directors attended international film festivals for the express purpose of ascertaining what could be copied or cloned. He cited examples of the cloning of classic Hollywood movies such as The Guns of Navarone and The Sound of Music, and claims the list is extensive. The motivation for copying is a fetish for the high technology and creativity of foreign films, which Indian directors cannot compete with nor adequately imitate, only aspire to. Unfortunately, Bandhu argues, this aspiration has meant a dearth of films that deal with significant themes in Indian post-colonial history. Instead the only films that have had some international market success are those which pander to the Western perceptions of the exotic orient or to migrant Indians nostalgia for their homeland. The influence of foreign cultures may be more insidious when cloaked in a veneer of local culture. It is made to seem progressive, not foreign but a modernized local culture. This may well be the case with television programme format adaptations. It has only been with the unprecedented growth of television channels in the 1990s that there has been a boom in Indian programme production,

India 137 original, cloned or copycatted. Programme format adaptation might be one means of coping with the need to fill the programme hours and compete for advertising revenue. Television industry executives recognize that cloning and copycatting gives some hope of achieving a ratings winner, but also that it is by no means guaranteed. Yet the temptation to imitate is very high especially when a rival station has a licensed clone which is decimating one’s ratings and raking in the commensurate advertising and sponsorship revenues. Lack of stringent copyright laws, the immense difficulties of copyright owners enforcing them or the high costs involved in collecting copyright revenue versus the potentially low income stream are all factors that add to the attractiveness of cloning rather than copycatting by programme producers in India as in other developing countries. Furthermore game-shows and talk-shows are relatively cheap to produce and the cost differential between production and purchase of an imported programme is lower for such programmes than for a drama series. Thus game-shows and talk-shows are a staple of most channels’ local programming in developing countries, and there is a greater chance that new ideas in game-shows will be cloned, regardless of their origin. An attitude that reared itself periodically among audiences researched and social commentators was that adaptation of foreign cultural products undermines the purity of Indian culture and corrupts the minds of youth, less educated women, the poor, etc. But should one classify globalregional channels like BBC, Discovery, Cartoon Network and MTV as foreign when their programming has been adapted with Indian markets primarily in mind? Should one classify some domestic channels and their programming Indian when their primary markets are expatriate and migrant Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Nepalis in other parts of the world? Is a clone of another Indian copycat still a clone of the foreign original? Which is any more Indian – the northern Hindi version of a programme ‘inspired’ by a foreign programme or a southernlanguage clone of the Hindi version? Given its language and cultural diversity, the Union of India is better compared to the European Union than to a market like the USA or even China. Thus should an Indianlanguage clone or copy of an Indian original programme be a non-issue simply because it is neither global nor strictly trans-border? The jury may be still out among producers and audiences on when exactly a programme is an unlicensed copy, licensed clone or inspired use of a genre and whether it is relevant in an increasingly globalized television market of hybridized cultural products.

10 Closing the creativity gap – renting intellectual capital in the name of local content Indonesia in the global television format business1 Philip Kitley Saturday night quiz fever From time to time certain television shows ‘stop the nation’. In 2002 the localized version of the Celador licensed format2 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? glued over a third of Indonesian television households to their screens at 7pm on Saturday nights.3 Is it the vicarious thrill of winning undreamed-of riches in a country which has been the slowest to recover from the Asian economic crisis of 1997 that attracts the audience? Circuses without bread? Perhaps, but this phenomenon is probably not profoundly related to local matters. We need look no further than the thin, phosphor coated screen. Millionaire, as it is referred to in television circles in Jakarta, is entertaining television. As other chapters testify, it has wowed viewers in countries in very varied economic circumstances. Millionaire is just one of a number of quiz and game show formats screening across all channels in Indonesia and is representative of the core business of international format providers in Indonesia which has been growing steadily since 1994 (see Table 10.1). Millionaire was produced by Jakarta’s RCTI channel, the first and most experienced commercial provider. In late 2002 RCTI followed up the ‘localized’ Millionaire with an hour-long episode of the sinetron (sinema elektronik) Dini’s Wedding (Pernikahan Dini), a locally written and produced serial. Locally produced programming continued until 1am next morning. Saturday 5 October 2002 on RCTI was a night filled with a rich array of entertaining, local programming. On another Saturday night 25 years earlier, Jakarta audiences had also enjoyed a quiz programme on the sole, state owned channel TVRI (Televisi Republik Indonesia). But Smart and Accurate (Cerdas Cermat) was not a glitzy, high powered international format programme with a huge prize. It was a simple, nerdy kind of quiz, followed by World News, an episode from the American series Me and the Chimp, and the feature film Three on a Couch starring Jerry Lewis and Janet Leigh. In 1977, Saturday night television, apart from the quiz, was more American than Indonesian.

Indonesia 139 Table 10.1 Licensed format programmes screened in recent years on indonesian television Station

Format programme

Original

TVRI

N/A

N/A

RCTI

Belahan Hati

Tebak Gambar Who Wants to be a Millionaire

Sons and Daughters/Forbidden Love FM Chain Reaction I Guess (Columbia Tri-Star) B Pyramid Games (Columbia Tri-Star) B Catchphrase (Action Time) Who Wants to be a Millionaire C

SCTV

Indosat Galileo Kuis Berburu Emas Kuis Bulan Madu Cepat Tepat Dapat Kuis Detak Detik Kuis Roda Impian Serunya Masa Balita

Dentsu, Japan Gold Quest Newlywed Games B Run for the Money Every Second Counts Wheel of Fortune Look Who’s Winning

TPI

GoGo

ANTeVe

Komunikata Komunikata Junior Famili 100

GoGo’s Adventure with English FM Hot Streak FM Hot Streak FM Family Feud FM

Indosiar

Celoteh Anak Famili 100, Hollywood Square

Small Talk FM Family Feud FM Celebrity Square

MetroTV

Touch the Car

Touch the Truck FM

TransTV

Date Express

Date Express (Columbia TriStar) B Russian Roulette (Columbia TriStar) B The Price is Right

Kata Terkait Kontak Piramida

Russian Roulette Tebak Harga

Source: Interviews conducted between 23 September and 6 October 2002 with Helmi Yahya, Triwarsana; Ratna Mahadi and Alex Kumara, TransTV; Indriena Basarah, Fremantle Media, Greg Petherick, Becker Entertainment; Lanny Ratulangi and Stephanus Halim, SCTV; Pingkan Warouw and Andy Rustam, UMN Broadcast Management; Anis Ilahi, TPI. Note Becker Entertainment (B); FremantleMedia (FM); Celador (C).

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These two Saturday nights, both anchored by quiz shows at the prime time 7pm slot reveal both continuity and change in Indonesian television. Imported programming had been part of audience experience long before commercial television arrived, and even though the contrast between the two quiz shows is stark, it is clear that the genre has been popular for a long time. With the arrival of commercial television, however, there has been a major shift in the content and the gratifications that the quiz shows offer. In the 1960s and 1970s, the first 10 years of Indonesian television, quiz shows were part of the 21 per cent of educational programming that TVRI was required by charter to deliver. Quizzes and a range of other infotainment and more conventional educational programmes were an expression of the high hopes TVRI’s founders had that television would contribute to building a new nation of progressively minded citizens (Kitley 2000). Quiz shows Quick and Accurate (Cepat dan Tepat) and Smart and Accurate, on air from 1963 to 1999, were home grown and showcased the acquisition of knowledge in an Indonesia committed to boosting education as part of a profound shift towards modernization. Rewards for the winning team were nothing more than applause, and the consumerist desire that quiz shows typically play up was completely absent. Indonesian audiences have enjoyed a wide variety of quiz shows since TVRI went on air in 1962. The genre enabled both children and adults to share the excitement of answering questions about the imagined nation emerging out of the chaos of years of occupation, revolution and poverty. In one of the most ‘collectivist’ societies in the world, quiz shows in those early days typically involved teams of adults or children, never individuals (Hofstede 1980). Some of the quizzes were probably copies of international programmes. The much loved TVRI musical quiz, Race for the Tune (Berpacu Dalam Melodi), coordinated by Ani Sumadi since April 1988 and screening on the commercial channel Metro TV since April 2002, was copied from, or ‘inspired by’ (depending whom one talked to), Grundy’s Name That Tune. With such a depth of local experience and content, why did RCTI decide to buy the rights to localize the imported Millionaire? Why did TransTV buy the format license for Russian Roulette? And what did Roda Impian, localized from the Wheel of Fortune format, offer SCTV on which the programme was screened Monday to Friday in 2001? More broadly, how can we account for the fact that since 1993–1994, international format quiz and game shows have become a part of most channels’ weekly programming? The answer is complex and reveals major changes in Indonesian television’s internal and external relations and its increasingly voracious appetite for local programming. It suggests that Indonesia has moved away from a view that information is more public than private to a more commodity-based understanding of knowledge and intellectual capital. Before exploring these dynamics, however, we

Indonesia 141 need to flick around the channels and learn something about television in Indonesia.

A snapshot of television in Indonesia Television in Indonesia has experienced three different growth spurts: an exponential rise in television households after the domestic Palapa satellite was launched in 1976, the commercial television spurt in the early 1990s underwritten by crony capitalism, and the reformasi (political reform) spurt boosted by the heady dynamics of political and cultural reform following former President Soeharto’s resignation in 1998. Television began with the establishment of the state owned TVRI in 1962. TVRI’s mission was to contribute to the union and unity of the nation. News, educational programmes and a range of locally produced series concerned with ‘development’ tended to be didactic and unpopular, prompting those who could afford it to look for alternative sources of televisual entertainment. Satellite dishes, permitted under Indonesia’s progressive ‘Open Skies’ policy, offered alternatives for wealthy households, while the less well-off had to make do with rented, and often pirated, videos. In the 1980s the perceived threat these external sources of entertainment presented prompted a reappraisal of television services. In 1989 the New Order government issued the first of five licenses to establish free-to-air commercial television channels. Three of these stations (RCTI, SCTV and TPI) were owned by close relatives of President Soeharto. The other two stations were owned by business conglomerates with close relations to the Soeharto family. The commercial stations supported the government’s political and cultural aspirations in return for access to the lucrative advertising market. From 1993 to 1999, the percentage share of advertising expenditure on television rose from 44.4 to 61.5 per cent (PPPI 1996–1997: 59; 1999–2000: 33). With limited facilities, no inventory and very few trained staff, the commercial stations all began broadcasting with a large volume of imported programming. Critics joked that the ‘I’ in RCTI stood for ‘Impor’ (Imported [programmes]) and not ‘Indonesia’ (Kitley 2000). The ratio of local to imported programmes has shifted slowly in favour of local production (see Table 10.2). In September 2002 the percentages showed a rise in local programming which informants attributed to audience preferences and expectations of a legislated shift to a higher ratio of local to imported productions in the 2002 Broadcasting Law (Mahadi and Kumara 2002, personal interviews; Ratulangi 2002, personal interview).4 When President Soeharto resigned in May 1998 the New Order government was succeeded by a government of similarly conservative views. Somewhat surprisingly Information Minister Yunus Yosfiah put five new free-to-air national television licenses on offer. The Wahid government, elected in 1999, went further and abolished the Department of

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Table 10.2 Percentages of local programmes and imported programmes Station

1994 Import Local

ANTEVE IVM RCTI SCTV TPI TVRI

NA NA 70–90 NA 60 40–20

■

NA NA 30–10 NA 40 60–80

1997 Import Local 48.7 53.4 41.1 48.4 35.2 NA

51.3 46.6 58.9 51.6 64.8 NA

■

1998 Import Local 35.2 30.0 33.9 43.5 31.6 NA

64.8 70.0 66.1 56.5 68.4 NA

■

Jan–May 1999 Import Local 36 26 33 33 37 11

64 74 67 67 63 89

Source: ACNielsen (personal correspondence) and KPMG Peat Marwick (1994).

Information, which had been responsible for the general activities and performance of the television sector. By 2002 Metro TV, TransTV, TV7 Lativi, and TV Global were all on air, offering Indonesian viewers eleven channels of programming. Pay TV has hardly penetrated the Indonesian market. Operators and their reported subscribers are listed in Table 10.3. Regulation of the sector has been equally turbulent over the last few years. The first Broadcasting Law, enacted under controversial circumstances in 1997, satisfied no one and was never finalized (Kitley 1999). Broadcasting Law No. 32 enacted on 28 December 2002 has not satisfied media commentators or the industry and there are calls for a judicial review of the Act (Kompas Online 2003). Cross-media rules are vague and subject to the notorious process of further deliberation by the government and the newly established Indonesian Broadcasting Commission – ‘notorious’ because in the past these regulations have either not been drafted or have been subject to intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by interested parties which makes the regulatory process subject to considerable distrust and scepticism. The new Broadcasting Law has relaxed older style, industry-specific legislation and introduced newer, more market oriented legalities of intellectual property and competition law. The restriction on competition evident in the ‘privileged family’ oligopoly has been addressed and five new competitors have been licensed to start up. Local/imported content ratios have been revised down from 70/30 in the 1997 Act to 60/40 local/import in the 2002 Act. Direct foreign investment of up to 20 per Table 10.3 Pay TV services in Indonesia Cable operators

Subscribers

PT Cipta Skynindo (Skynet) PT Indonusa Telemedia (TelkomVision) PT Broadband Multimedia (Kabelvision) PT Multimedia Nusantara (Metra)

30,000 NA 80,000 8,000 outlets (apartment rooms)

Source: Television Asia (2002b).

Indonesia 143 cent is possible in the post-establishment phase of station development, a major departure from the 1997 Act which prohibited the investment of foreign capital. Cross-ownership rules, while unsatisfactory in their lack of specificity, may work towards a more open supply environment. As part of a wider process of the decentralization of governance, the Broadcasting Law permits the creation of regional commercial television stations and not-for-profit community stations. Regional stations are planned for Bali, Lampung, Riau, Surabaya and Ujung Pandang. The most recent expansion of the television sector has been welcomed by reformist commentators for the increased diversity it is assumed will flow from the larger number of providers and for the competition the new stations will present for existing stations which were not established under conditions of market competition. The rapid development of the sector has contributed to the rise of adjunct industries such as production houses, media publications, and marketing, public relations and advertising agencies. Professional and technical training and tertiary level media studies and journalism courses, however, have lagged far behind the boom in television capacity. Rapid, unplanned growth has strained the creative capacity of the sector beyond its limits and has led to a greater degree of dependence on international content under arrangements which tend to advantage the supplier rather than the receiving sector. The expansion of the television sector has been driven more by politics than commerce and the demands on a still developing pool of creative talent and facilities have become almost intolerable. Jakarta’s eleven stations scheduled 1,369 hours of programming in the last week of September 2002. The relentless, insistent demand for content in the suddenly expanded sector has pushed leading stations into presenting a higher quantum of licensed format programming. The increase in licensed formats can be understood as satisfying four entwined objectives: the need for programming, the need for high quality, high rating local productions, the need for greater security in delivering audiences to advertisers, and the need to reduce the risk of being locked out of the imported programme market. These four objectives have tended to reduce the amount of illegal copycatting and have boosted the presence of globally distributed formats on Indonesian television. For many stations, formats perform the tactical functions of shield and front line attack.

Format production in Indonesia The localization of licensed formats in Indonesia is in the hands of two international companies: the Australian Becker Entertainment and the European CLT-UFA affiliate FremantleMedia which are responsible for the shows listed in Table 10.1. Production practices are varied and have developed since representatives of these two companies established offices in 1993 and 1998 respectively. Formats may be produced entirely by

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production houses in joint venture with Becker and FremantleMedia, or they may collaborate with television stations, using their studio facilities at a bare minimum, or using studios and television station crews, something the stations prefer as it has a training spin-off for their production teams (Ilahi 2002, personal interview).5 We can construct a continuum of legal localization practices which ranges from minimal modification of original productions by subtitling and dubbing, the adaptation and re-production of scripts written originally for other markets using Indonesian actors and settings (the Raam Punjabi and Indosiar/TVB cases, see below), and finally the localization of formats under licence with as much or as little modification to the format contract as local directors are able to negotiate. FremantleMedia was very strict with the localization of The Price is Right licensed to TransTV, and would permit almost no departures from the format bible produced for the original programme almost 28 years ago. Such rigidity, Vice President of TransTV Alex Kumara believes, counts against successful localization. Greg Petherick, Senior Vice President Southeast Asia at Becker Entertainment has had happier experiences with Columbia. ‘They understand that this is a Muslim country’, Petherick reported, ‘and are flexible on modification to suit local sensitivities and circumstances’ (Petherick 2002, personal interview).6 With Date Express, for example, because Becker Entertainment believed that a dating show was likely to be controversial, they arranged with TransTV to build in a musical segment and extend the show from 30 to 60 minutes. The show now opens with live performances by Indonesia’s most popular bands and has attracted its own loyal audience. Illegal localization practices include the translation of scripts of Chinese dramas from DVD originals and subsequent localization in Indonesia, the production of ‘copycat’ shows ‘inspired by’ overseas originals, a phrase which includes more or less direct plagiarism of foreign programmes, and productions said to be ‘modifications’ of originals which become a close or distant model for a local production. Examples of programmes which fall into one or another of these categories are listed in Table 10.4. Table 10.4 Indonesian programmes allegedly ‘inspired by’ or adapted from international formats Indonesian adaptation

Inspired by or adapted from

Format owner/distributor

Aksara Bermakna Berpacu Dalam Melodi Siapa Berani Spontan Siapa Dia?

Blockbusters Name That Tune Who Dares Wins Candid Camera To Tell the Truth and What’s My Line Meteor Garden

FremantleMedia Sandy Frank Mason Brant Becker Entertainment FremantleMedia

Siapa Takut Jatuh Cinta

N/A

Source: Confidential interviews conducted between September and October 2002, Jakarta.

Indonesia 145

The appeal of formats Television formats appeal to Jakarta television stations for two main reasons. First, they provide a ready means for established stations to boost their local programming without the risky and time-consuming task of developing the content domestically. Industry executives were adamant that the pool of local talent was not sufficient to meet the programming demands of the industry. Formats, with their proven track record, bundled with advice and related services, offer television stations high quality programmes that lend themselves relatively easily to localization. The quiz and game show format is popular with Indonesian audiences and relatively uncomplicated to localize – though that may have changed since Millionaire, which involves expensive and complicated software. The one drawback is that the quiz and game show genres do not build audience loyalty in the way that drama series and serials do (Kumara 2002, personal interview).7 Drama productions require such extensive re-production, however, that they may not be worth doing, at least under the rigid production conditions insisted on by format owners. The talented director Raam Punjabi’s localizations of Indian scripts, however, produced without restriction, have been outstandingly successful and are accepted by audiences as Indonesian dramas. Indosiar/TVB’s collaboration on drama has been less successful, with only Takhta, a series centred on the fortunes of a wealthy Chinese family, attracting a real following (Kumara 2002, personal interview). RCTI’s experience with Broken Heart (Belahan Hati), localized by FremantleMedia from Forbidden Love, was also disappointing.8 External factors such as changes in RCTI management combined with two changes of government were hugely distracting for the station and audiences, and made it very difficult for Broken Heart to establish itself in the market. The demands of adapting the format for Indonesia were great and the series did not run its full length. Second, for new stations which may be lacking in inventory and production skills, formats deliver ‘instant’ local programming, putting them in a better competitive position against their longer established and more experienced and highly skilled competitors such as RCTI, Indosiar and SCTV. With local programming at a premium in terms of ratings and popularity, informants believe a station which simply attempted to survive by screening imported programming was fighting a losing battle. That strategy, which served stations well in the first few years of commercial television, is no longer possible – ‘the industry has changed’ (Warouw and Rustam 2002, personal interview).9

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The tension between localization and identifiability Format producers prefer to keep as much control of the production of their licensed formats as possible. As Greg Petherick of Becker Entertainment put it: We like to control production because we take the risk. I don’t want to put anything out there that is not up to our standard – sets, cameras, everything. It’s like a McDonald’s chain. I want to make sure that wherever you watch the programme you can tell it’s a Becker format because it has not lost any gloss. (Petherick 2002, personal interview) Petherick’s comment about identifiability goes to the heart of the regulatory tensions in the format business. Format producers and sellers rely on the identifiability of their products in offering them for sale, and rely on licensing agreements to exclude competitors who seek to exploit the resource rent without paying for rights of access to the intellectual capital represented in the programme. With intangible assets such as television programmes, however, it is very difficult to exclude others from exploiting the creative element of a programme once it has been broadcast. The fashion industry’s practice of branding to underline distinctiveness is not an option in the format business where the imperative for re-producing formats as local content requires that origins are erased, not marked. Licensed re-production, and particularly cross-cultural localization, inevitably diminishes the claimed distinctiveness of the format, its ‘aura’ to use Benjamin’s term (1969: 217–251). Licensees subject to the rigid production demands and standards of format owners find themselves caught in a fundamentalist tug-of-war between the constructed ‘auratic authority’ of the original, mummified textually in the resonantly named producer’s bible, and their own understanding of what appeals to contemporary audiences in a different television culture. Format licensing is a contradictory practice in contemporary media production, which is premised on the mass circulation of copies of originals. Format owners typically counter the ‘always already’ loss of identifiability inherent in licensing by bundling their prime asset, low excludability, with other assets which possess high excludability characteristics and are designed ‘to lock in customers and lock out competitors’ (Granstrand 1999: 338). Bundling involves supplying licensees with any relevant software, a manual which sets out detailed production advice, costings, a standard operating procedure, details of set design, production advice, and supervision and quality control, all of which are assumed (futilely) to reinforce and project the aura of the original. In Jakarta, format owners’ preference for on-the-ground representation, high levels of control and for producing as much of the localized format as they can is a recognition of

Indonesia 147 the inherently low level of excludability of intangible assets such as television programmes, the difficulties in enforcing excludability and the leakage of intellectual property values once others become involved in reproduction.

Formats, risk and security: the stations’ views Indonesian television executives admit with embarrassed smiles that illegal copying of foreign programming, including formats, has been going on for a long time, and that it was common practice on TVRI. They claim that they are often unaware which productions they purchase from production houses are copies of others, especially in the case of dramas, and have been caught out. Informants display a somewhat studied puzzlement as to whether the very successful dramas produced by local producer Raam Punjabi from Multivision Production House are legal or not. Most people in the industry believe that Raam purchases scripts for his shows in Bombay and produces them in Jakarta, often with input from Bombay writers. Raam’s shows rarely acknowledge their provenance, however, and that is a cause for mild concern in the industry. In 1994, in a much more transparent case I have written about elsewhere, Indosiar used its contractual arrangements with TVB in Hong Kong to bring a team of writers to Jakarta to assist in the localization of 800 Chinese television dramas drawn from the TVB library (Kitley 2000: 288–295). The reaction to this story was excessive and tinged with racism. The main target was not the legality or propriety of localization, but the infiltration of foreign workers and mediation of foreign culture in the idealized Indonesian television culture world. A powerful subtext of the critical discourse was that the sheer volume of material gave Indosiar an unfair advantage over other stations relying on local writers and occasional legal or illegal adaptations of foreign programmes (Republika 1994; Nugroho 1994; Abar 1994). As I understand this rather tawdry industry spat, it was the professionalism and systematic approach to the generation of content which alarmed Indosiar’s rivals. It is possible that the high profile discussion of localization practices may have been an important watershed in a greater readiness for other Jakarta stations to localize imported content more systematically. My research in 2002 certainly suggests that it was in 1993–1994 that the legal format production business began in earnest. But even today, the ‘don’t want to know’ attitude and acceptance of illegal copying or ‘adaptation’ of foreign programmes in Jakarta is often implicitly acknowledged in purchase contracts between stations and production houses which attempt to absolve the broadcaster from liability concerning copyright and seek to push all responsibility for those matters onto the producers (Kumara 2002, personal interview). Station executives reported that production house executives often use circumlocutions to

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describe the provenance of their programmes, saying that the show was ‘inspired by’ or ‘adapted from’, or a ‘mixed salad’ (gado gado) made up from bits and pieces of other programmes. Helmi Yayha, the dynamic young director of production house Triwarsana, took the view that it is almost inevitable that in developing a new quiz or game show, he would unintentionally incorporate elements of other shows. He showed me his key reference, the Encyclopaedia of TV Game Shows (Schwartz et al. 1995) which provides details of 3,000 formats. ‘How can I escape!’ Yayha exclaimed, arguing that some degree of adaptation or modification of published formats was, however, always necessary to make the show rate well in Indonesia. ‘It is an art’, he said, ‘adapting programmes for the local market, and the only people who can do that successfully are Indonesian people.’ This challenges the rigidities of the format production system and the assumption that the ‘aura’ of the original will always deliver ratings success in cross-cultural settings (Yayha 2002, personal interview).10

The regulatory environment: piracy and institutional reform Indonesia has an unfortunate reputation for piracy and infringement of intellectual property and copyright regulations (Kitley 2000; Rosser 1999; Uphoff 1991). Like many first-world countries in the nineteenth century, and like many developing countries in the twentieth century, Indonesia made little effort until the mid 1980s to regulate the production of counterfeit goods and was ‘indifferent’ to the protection of intellectual property rights (Rosser 1999: 100). Indonesia’s lax attitude toward the protection of intellectual property began to change when aid repayments matured towards the end of the decade and its oil revenues began to shrink, gradually in the early 1980s and sharply after 1986 (Hill 2000: 16–17). With increasing external indebtedness, Indonesia became more dependent on investment flows from abroad and these circumstances provided foreign countries, particularly the USA, with the lever they had lacked in pushing for greater protection of intellectual property rights, especially for the sound recording industry. Even so, as Uphoff (1991: 29) details, change was grudging and reluctant until Bob Geldof criticized Indonesian pirate operators for ripping off his ‘Live Aid’ charity album, and the 1985 arrest in the USA of a high-profile Indonesian businessman for misusing official facilities and attempting to import pirate music cassettes into the USA. With the threat of trade sanctions looming at a time of declining revenues and exports, the Indonesian government made considerable efforts to demonstrate a change of heart. As Ganley and Ganley report, in the pirate videocassette market, Indonesia made ‘one of the most strenuous and sweeping efforts of any country to control videocassettes’ (1986: 144). In 1987 the 1982 Copyright Act was amended, extending the period of protection for authors and dropping the requirement for publication in Indonesia. The Act makes no specific refer-

Indonesia 149 ence, however, to protection for television programming. Copyright Act No. 19 of 2002 replaced the earlier Acts and offers copyright owners protection more in line with contemporary global regimes. Once again, however, apart from one mention of ‘broadcasting’ the Act is silent on protection offered in the field of commercial television and pays little attention to the possibilities and complexities that media convergence has introduced into the field of digital communications. Maskus notes that ‘Indonesia’s reforms have progressed to the point where legal systems provide moderate coverage of IPRs [Intellectual Property Rights], though administration of the system remains in its infancy and there are endemic enforcement problems’ (Maskus 2000: 94). Importantly for my argument about the turn to formatting after 1994, it is clear that institutional reform in the field of intellectual property regulation was an outcome of structural pressures in Indonesian political and social contexts driven by the increasing integration and intensity of Indonesia’s external market relations, particularly with the USA. Similar market pressures, this time arising out of the global trade in television programming, best understood as a complex exchange of intellectual capital and more tangible assets, construct the parameters for the tactical use of formatting by Jakarta stations. In de Certeau’s terms, a ‘tactic’ is a practice or set of practices of dependent partners in a relationship; ‘the place of the tactic belongs to the other’ is a description which fairly describes Indonesia’s status in the world of international property rights (1984: 489). I understand the developing practice of licensing formats as a tactic which opens up the possibility of renting intellectual capacity. It is worth noting that in this exchange between format owner and licensee, the tactic delivers to Indonesian television stations benefits beyond the bottom line of monetary exchange. The licensee is able to satisfy domestic demands for local programming, derives a training or educational benefit from the arrangement, and builds an improved status and relation of trust with international providers. These are tactical benefits in de Certeau’s sense, produced from the rent exchange without capitalization and are entirely consistent with the position of Indonesia as a dependent player in the international exchange of television content. These intangible benefits flow to the dependent user and serve, marginally perhaps – it is difficult to measure – to empower the licensee. The tactical use of formats is a source of social and cultural profit to the licensee and a mode of resistance to the corporate enclosure of the information commons that has been overlooked (Frow 1997; May 2000). The Broadcasting Law brought down in December 2002 gives some attention to intellectual property matters, requiring broadcasters to be in possession of broadcasting rights for programmes screened and to declare ownership and their right to broadcast at the time of screening (Article 43, 1–4). This Article is designed to protect the up to 40 per cent of total programming that may be legally imported (Article 36.2). Beyond that, there

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is no attention given to the niceties of ‘adaptation’, ‘modification’, or ‘inspired copying’ that shift imported content into the category of local programming, defined simply as programming ‘which originates’ within Indonesia (berasal dalam negeri) (Article 36.2). Richard Becker, Managing Director of Becker Entertainment, Melbourne, recalled that from the mid 1960s through to the late 1970s when his father Russell Becker sold programming into Indonesia and other Asian territories, and from the late 1970s through to the 1980s when he himself dealt with Indonesia and other Asian markets, piracy and copying of imported television content was ‘unabashed’. Becker suggested that throughout the region, the idea of paying for intangible intellectual property such as a television format was not understood at all except in commercially more advanced countries such as Japan and Singapore. For that reason, Becker Entertainment in those days specialized in selling children’s programming in Asian territories. Children’s programming, an official requirement in Indonesian and other Asian television schedules, was held in relatively low esteem, and for that reason local producers paid it little attention and it was less subject to illegal copying. Becker Entertainment sold Romper Room together with props and sets throughout the region very successfully, but offered no formats for sale as they were convinced the contracts would not be honoured. Richard Becker recalled seeing an illegal copy of Newlywed Games in production in Taiwan during one of his visits. The producers had simply copied the show on a visit to the USA and were attempting to produce it without the benefit of the format owner’s bible. The copied programme was flat and failed to rate well. Becker commented that the show failed because the producers had copied it without understanding the ‘basic philosophy of the show’. He understood the show as a humorous, fun show about how much new couples were willing to disclose to each other. The Taiwan producers, building up their localized version by slavishly copying the questions that were asked, missed the comedy and assumed it was a show where couples told each other what colours they liked! (Becker 2003, telephone interview).11 Despite these trials Becker Entertainment hung in as the company was sure that in time there would be a shift to local programming and they wanted to be part of that. Attitudes changed in Indonesia with the advent of RCTI in the early 1990s primarily because RCTI employed American consultants who were used to licensing formats and were aware of the advantages of working closely with format owners. Becker Entertainment struck an output deal with RCTI in the early 1990s and worked with the station to produce licensed shows using the RCTI studios. In September 1993, with a burgeoning commercial television market and a different regulatory environment, Becker Entertainment established its representative office in Jakarta, creating a joint venture production company PT Putri Diversa Sarana to assist in producing sensitively and cleverly localized

Indonesia 151 programmes. Richard Becker disclosed that Perfect Crime, their most recent production in Jakarta set to go on air in February 2003, had attracted international attention and China and Vietnam had expressed interest in bringing their crews and talent to Jakarta to localize the format for their domestic markets. If this happens, it will be the first export of an Indonesian adaptation to the region.

Soft touch regulation The reform in institutional regulation of intellectual property piracy has had a macro effect but it would be wrong to assume that the tough measures which have been effective in controlling the illegal copying and distribution of audio and videocassettes have had a flow-on effect in the field of television production. While television is a mass medium, ownership of programming and illegal or barely legal reproduction practices are not something most viewers are aware of. These are largely insider concerns. Indonesian audiences are, however, better informed than they once were and take the trouble, faced with a flagrant violation of copyright, to contact the broadcaster and criticize the station, even to rub in their knowledge of upcoming episodes and how particular scenes should have appeared (Ratulangi and Halim 2002, personal interview).12 And in a principled display of professionalism, a director and his crew walked off the job when they learned that the programme they were working on was a copycat version of the Japanese show My Teacher Naomi (Personal interview Indriena Basarah, 25 September 2002).13 When format representatives become aware of illegal copying, the matter is usually sorted out by negotiation rather than litigation. Indriena Basarah, Director of Business Development, FremantleMedia in Jakarta, reported that from time to time she and her team became aware of local productions which were copies of FremantleMedia properties. Her response was to contact the station in the first instance and point out that the programme in question infringed fair practice. Usually broadcasters need little further encouragement to take the programme off air. At times Basarah sat down with producers of programmes which infringe FremantleMedia’s rights. Her approach, given the uncertainty of international copyright protection and Indonesia’s corrupt legal system, is to go softly, advising that if the programme is stopped then ‘all will be forgiven’. Basarah said that it was risky for a multinational company to be ‘nasty’, and that ‘bullying was counterproductive’ (Basarah 2002, personal interview). In an environment where international providers have made great efforts to institute and extend copyright protection globally, these comments, suggestive of a greater tolerance for illegal practices than might be expected, require further analysis. In the current communications market the control of content, which used to be managed by copyright and other

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intellectual property instruments, has become harder and harder. Points of circulation ramify in a globalized digital environment where online technologies have made possible a fluidity in content delivery that was not part of older, nation-based terrestrial or even satellite systems. Thus while library is still important in the international television trade, it is less so than it was and services and security have become the crucial (intangible) stock-in-trade for multinational information/communication companies. In an increasingly open market, where market dominance is under WTO scrutiny, multinational companies must temper ownership with service delivery, as it is service and the speedy, reliable flow of content which can become the most stable foundation of new market relationships. In the new ‘space of flows’ (Castells 1996) where small providers can compete with market leaders, multinationals need to keep these spaces open by building good customer relations to guard against any reversion to the national, industry-specific legalities which characterised many developing countries’ communications and broadcasting environments and formed barriers to global selling agendas. A further complication, as Arup (2000: 256) notes, is that jurisdiction is difficult in globalized communications where the point of attachment, whether country of origin, country of emission, country of reception or country of infringement, cannot be localized. These considerations are reflected in Basarah’s view that the best way of handling disputes was, first, to advise producers that they were under observation, second to educate television stations, and third to point out that sister companies would withhold programmes from offending stations if they took no notice of the format owner’s concerns. Multinationals’ readiness to walk away and not supply a market was demonstrated very dramatically in Mexico in the pharmaceuticals industry where drug companies forced the Mexican government to back down over royalty payments issues (Frow 1997: 191). From time to time copyright infringements are reported in the Indonesian press, a change from the past when, as Richard Becker suggests, there appeared to be no awareness of copyright issues. The headline to a story in the leading daily Suara Pembaruan on 12 November 2001, for example, directly accused the well-known director and producer Arswendo Atmowiloto of plagiarizing the Japanese cartoon Crayon Sinchan in his sinetron Incen (Suara Pembaruan 2001). But apart from reporting Arswendo’s defence of his story-line and why he had named his lead character Incen, which in Indonesian sounds very like ‘Sinchan’, the article offered no opinion on the alleged offence and ended by detailing forthcoming RCTI programmes. Extensive review of Indonesian press clippings after the advent of commercial television produced very few articles on intellectual property, and those that were found were hardly in-depth analyses of the rights of foreign owners. The acceptance of intellectual property principles seems patchy at best, and even as late as 2002, FremantleMedia and Becker

Indonesia 153 representatives reported a general willingness by a few local producers to try to get away with barely legal localizations whenever they could.

Reflections It is tempting to invoke culturalist arguments in accounting for the widespread acceptance of both legal and illegal adaptation of foreign programming on Indonesian television. Indonesia’s history provides many examples of cultural borrowing and adaptation. But as Alford (1995: 6) states in his study of copyright in Chinese traditional society, ‘approaches rooted in portrayals of culture as essentially impervious to change’ are unhelpful and, I would add, Orientalist. Linking copying practices in television to long established patterns of cultural borrowing is not convincing. Television is not a traditional practice. It is a creature of rapidly changing commercial practices and domestic and international political economy. The recent rise in the format trade is best understood as an outcome of Indonesian audiences’ preference – like audiences worldwide – for local productions, and of an industry that has developed over two distinct time frames. Format programmes offer Indonesian television stations a ready supply of what audiences accept – and the new regulatory regime promotes – as local programming. The production values, well worked out scripts and track record of formats offer stations security, not only in the sense that formats are tested products and have a good chance of success, but also in the sense that buying formats aligns the stations to the norms and practices which shape the international industry. The trade in formats is a manifestation of a patchy ‘legal revolution’ in Indonesia (Rosser 1999: 95) and a global shift towards intellectual capitalism, which is an economic system characterised by private ownership of the means of production where intellectual capital dominates as a means of production. A television format is an intangible asset and is just one expression of the way informational or knowledge resources may be accumulated as intellectual capital. A growing trade in intangible, intellectual assets such as intellectual property, corporate know-how, customer loyalty, distribution networks, and consultancy services has led to the creation of intellectual capitalism as a viable economic system that displaces the dependency on tangible, fixed assets as a means for commercial success (Granstrand 1999: 10, 322). In Indonesia, television formats can be understood as a mode of renting intellectual capacity. The intense pressure on creative talent in Indonesia, where writers write as individuals and not in teams, quickly leads to burnout and uninspired works. Format programmes offer a way of closing the creativity gap without capitalization and also offer a training programme for local crews, although the benefits are probably overestimated given the rigidities of format production and format providers’ preference to produce programmes themselves wherever possible.

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Michael Keane (2001) and Albert Moran (1998: 169) argue persuasively for theorizing television formats as involving the transfer of cultural technology. This approach fits well with my positioning of the television industry as an exemplary site of intellectual capitalism. But the terms of the transfer need careful examination, for as I have suggested in emphasizing the practice of renting intellectual capital, transfers are conditional, not gifts, and are structured with the provider’s profit as the prime consideration. It is instructive to situate cultural technology transfers in the complex texture of the political economy of intellectual capitalism. Doing so focuses our attention on the directions of flows, ratios of intangible to tangible investments, wages related to human capital, and imports and exports of intangible assets which characterize different nodes of the industry. In short, it draws attention to differentials in intellectual capitalization, and at present Indonesia is definitely on the debit side of the ledger (Granstrand 1999: 324). Is the format trade another mode of media imperialism, where recipient countries are unwittingly complicit in diminishing local cultural values by tying themselves to international providers (Schiller 1969; 1976)? The wide range of source countries supplying Indonesian stations suggests that the imperialism is not the unidirectional, hegemonic flow that Schiller described in his early work (Chadha and Kavoori 2000; Sinclair et al. 1996; Sreberny-Mohammadi 1991). The layout of the entertainment tabloid Bintang shows how much foreign content has become an established and accepted part of the weekly line-up. Bintang presents regular double-page spreads of synopses and profiles of Bollywood, Mandarin (mostly Hong Kong and Taiwan programmes), Telenovelas and Western films and serials along with profiles of their stars. September issues nos. 596 and 597 featured half page profiles of Japanese television actors Kyoko Fukada and Takashi Kashiwbara. I have also argued, against the media imperialism thesis, that renting intellectual capital is tactical and offers licensees benefits over and above the commodity exchange. Indonesian stations are not unwitting about their practices and resist the enclosure of cultural technology and knowledge. But it is true that Indonesia remains dependent on international suppliers. Although these relationships are nuanced and provide evidence which counters the media imperialism thesis, this theoretical insight should not be accepted with complacency, for as Foucault argued, ‘power relations are immanent in economic relations’ (1981: 94). The gap in Indonesian capacity to deliver high-quality local programming, in part an outcome of a politically driven decision to establish more stations than the market and current resources can cope with, is best not closed by renting intellectual capital. Far better to build commercial, cultural and intellectual capital in Indonesia so a large part of local programming is locally produced, or at least a productive hybridization of borrowed intellectual capital (Bhabha 1994). This preference is not an endorsement of cultural nationalism, but a recognition that the ownership and distribution of intel-

Indonesia 155 lectual assets can become easily skewed and entrenched. The round embrace of the term global-ization masks all sorts of real world imbalances and inequalities (Sassen 1998). Globalization ideally entails a circulation of information and intellectual assets drawn from tributaries far and wide, not a pattern of flows which submerges local traditions and creativity leaving them gasping for air. But intellectual capital, unlike many tangible, natural assets, is not found; it is an unpredictable outcome of a wide range of complex, long term cultural practices, institutions and investments in human capacity. Ignored or undervalued for long, capacity slips behind the threshold for competitive engagement and entrenches dependency, encouraging tactical moves but rarely profound, creative work. It is naïve to think that format producers can take charge of this important responsibility. Any training or educational benefit they pass on is incidental, not central, and consultants spend very limited time with their licensees. Indonesia needs to invest urgently and seriously in education and training for its people who can drive its information and communication industries and mediate the aspirations and concerns of civil society, not simply entertain its audiences with mimicry which comforts risk-averse advertisers and television stations.

Notes 1 I am grateful to Michael Keane, Albert Moran and Robert Dixon for helpful discussions in writing this chapter. Thanks also to my informants in Jakarta and Melbourne who gave freely of their time and knowledge. 2 Following Moran (1998: 14; 23), I understand a television format as a cultural technology which governs the flow of programming ideas from place to place. The format in industrial terms is best thought of as a package comprising elements such as a written description of a game (show) and its rules, catch phrases used in the programming, notes on how prizes are to be assembled, copies of art work, set design and the like. The package will also usually include the bible – information about scheduling, demographics and so on, as well as services to be provided by the format owners which are designed to maintain quality control. 3 In 2001 Millionaire ran for 52 episodes and its share of the total audience across seven channels was 34.6 per cent. In 2002 the share was 32.2 per cent. Rating point was 11.1 (Irawati Pratignyo, Nielsen Media Research, personal correspondence February 2003). 4 Interviews conducted between 23 September–8 October 2002 with Ratna Mahadi and Alex Kumara, TransTV, and Lani Ratulangi, SCTV. 5 Interview conducted on 24 September 2002 with Anis Ilahi, TPI. 6 Interview conducted on 2 October 2002 with Greg Petherick, Becker Entertainment. 7 Interview conducted on 2 October 2002 with Alex Kumara, TransTV. 8 Belahan Hati ran for 49 episodes and its audience share across seven channels was 16.5 per cent, with a rating point of 4.4 (Irawati Pratignyo, Nielsen Media Research, personal correspondence February 2003). 9 Interview conducted on 23 September 2002 with Pingkan Warouw and Andy Rustam.

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10 Interview conducted on 1 October 2002 with Helmi Yayha, Triwarsana. 11 Interview conducted on 30 January 2003 with Richard Becker, Becker Entertainment. 12 Interview conducted on 30 September 2002 with Lanny Ratulangi and Stephanus Halim, SCTV executives. 13 Interview conducted on 25 September 2002 with Indriena Basarah, FremantleMedia.

11 Reformatting the format Philippines in the global television format business Josefina M.C. Santos

From jeepney to format In the eyes of many observers the Philippine cultural icon that is synonymous with travel, as well as being the subject of numerous advertisements is the jeepney, a public-transport vehicle assembled in the style of the US military jeep but lengthened to accommodate from fourteen to twenty-two sitting passengers. What distinguishes the jeepney from run-of-the-mill public transport however is its artistic décor: a clutter and kaleidoscope of various artefacts from miniature steel horses dotting the hood, to massive, jazzy plastic or steel billboards announcing the name of the jeepney, to murals painted in fiesta colours at the sides, to a bizarre combination of items in the front windshield juxtaposing conflicting images of the Sto. Nino (the baby Jesus Christ) and stickers with sexually risqué messages. It is the sheer variety and cacophony of art forms and cultural trends displayed in the jeepney that is most conspicuous to both the ordinary commuter and tourist. This façade is distinctively hybrid, aiming to satisfy the tastes of a mix of interested parties: the poor and middle-class passengers, the better-off jeepney owners, and members of the elite driving by in their limousines. During the past decade, however, deteriorating economic conditions have taken a toll on the artistry of the jeepney with its owners deciding to forego artistic expression in favour of budget management, resulting in plainer-looking jeepneys. But alongside the creeping demise of the jeepney emerges a newer but even more powerful cultural embodiment expressing much the same colourful and diverse qualities: Philippine television and television programming. This chapter explores the polymorphous nature of Philippine broadcasting media and argues that the presence and manifestations of television programme formats – ‘a core of production ideas and techniques’ (Moran 1998: 9) – contributes to the creative milieu of programme development. In the following discussion the term ‘format’ is used broadly to define localization practices. Adaptations in the Philippines are fundamentally of two types: minimal adaptation and format re-versioning. The first type describes the process by which the narratives of foreign

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genres and programmes are minimally altered such as where programmes are dubbed into the lingua franca or are minimally transformed by the addition of a local host. The second and more important in the sense of new content generation is the format adaptation, whether licensed or cloned. This is where a new local version is refashioned from the foreign programme.

The Philippine television environment and the local-foreign content continuum Reviewing terrestrial television fare in Metro Manila, the country’s leading metropolis, we find a common pattern among the higher-rating channels. Channel 2, which is owned by the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Company, sits at one end of the local-foreign continuum and is dominated during weekdays by locally produced programmes that account for 15.5 hours or 77.5 per cent of every 20-hour airing day. Programmes range from news and public affairs, game and vaudeville-variety shows, to talk shows, movies, sitcoms and soaps, capped by a midnight Christianevangelist programme. A total of 4.5 hours or 22.5 per cent of daily airtime is allotted to several Latin American telenovelas and foreign children’s shows in the morning and afternoon schedules. The channel’s weekend menu exhibits the same wide-ranging choice spectrum with programmes broadcast by the Catholic Church 1 hour apart from that of a rival religious sect along with offerings including a gossip programme and a sport show. Foreign programmes take up only one to 1
 hours of airtime. The second channel in terms of audience ratings success is the fastrising Channel 7 of GMA Network, Inc. It also has a wide variety of locally produced programmes across similar genres, effectively competing head-to-head with Channel 2’s schedule with its weekdays presenting slightly higher foreign content at 6 hours or 30 per cent. The local-foreign mix does not end here with the two dominant channels, which together capture the bulk of the Philippine terrestrial television market. Other channels also provide a mix of local and foreign programming with equal or much greater foreign content. Channel 4, a government-owned channel, broadcasts 2 hours of Fox News for 5 days of the week, together with 2 hours of a locally produced news programme, plus 5 hours of Fox News on Saturdays. Daytime programming is mostly info-commercials. However in 2003 Channel 4 won the franchise for the most popular sports show, the Philippine Basketball Association, which has frequently topped ratings in the past. Channel 5 allocates a roughly equal amount of airtime for foreign and local programmes. Half of its prime time programmes are foreign syndicated shows, a wide variety ranging from sitcoms to sci-fi and game shows. The other half comprises locally produced programmes, half of which again are broadcast on weekends. These include licensed local adaptations

Philippines 159 of foreign programmes, namely, Family Feud and The Price Is Right. Channel 13, sequestered by the Philippine government after the fall of former President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, is similar to Channel 5 in two aspects. First, in terms of airtime foreign programmes roughly equal locally produced programmes. Second, Channel 13 hosts the two most popular licensed local adaptations of foreign programmes – Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (hereafter Millionaire) and The Weakest Link. Also sequestered by the government, Channel 9 lies on the other end of the programming mix with 15.5 hours or 78.5 per cent of the total 20-hour week day devoted to foreign canned programmes, many of these being drama and reality genres.

Television yesterday and today Philippine television began in 1953 as DZAQ-TV Channel 3, broadcasting 4 hours a day of programming. Owned by Antonio Quirino, the station was essentially a re-electoral vehicle for Quirino’s brother, Philippine President Elpidio Quirino. In 1956 the Lopezes, one of the richest sugar baron families in the Philippines, bought and operated Quirino’s television station with the assistance of government loans and began what Alfred McCoy has called a tradition of rent-taking and political brokerage (McCoy 1994). Along with its political content Philippine television first served as a channel for predominantly foreign programming; importing ‘canned’ shows was substantially less expensive than producing local counterparts. Unlike most other Asian television systems that were owned by government, however, Philippine television was chiefly private, commercial and entertainment-oriented at the very onset to the detriment of ‘developmental’ and public-service programming. A local media critic has even cited this particular origin and character of Philippine television as a major factor responsible for the oft-mentioned ‘colonial mentality’ or Americanized culture among Filipinos (Tuazon 1999). During the 1960s local television production came of age with the emergence and growing popularity of entertainment-oriented programmes: sitcoms (Buhay Artista), vaudeville-variety programmes (Oras ng Ligaya), live-variety shows (Student Canteen, Darigold Jamboree), and musical contests (Tawag ng Tanghalan) thriving on local folk and street humour. The live-variety show genre was in itself an exercise and study in eclecticism and cultural diversity; it featured distinct sub-genres such as slapstick skits for a general audience, games with prizes allowing for general audience participation, and quiz segments catering to college students and young professionals. During this decade local sports television (specifically, basketball, horse-racing and jai-alai) also appeared, capturing large audiences and developing an association with street gambling. Another locally produced genre which became a hit during the late 1960s was the local gag

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show, the first Super-Laff-In, an obvious take-off from the US programme Laugh-In. During the 1970s and early 1980s local soap opera (Flor de Luna) also began to attract wide viewership, the characters becoming household names in lower-income and middle-class communities, while the genre fast eclipsed the radio soap as a central object of folk consumption. With the eruption in local activism and a subsequent rise in lowerincome-group interest in media-circulated issues in the early 1970s, news (edited and live) programmes (Radyo Patrol) and public affairs talk shows (Straight from the Shoulder) also began to develop a following. This growth was cut short by martial law when the Marcos dictatorship clamped down on dissent. In 1986 following the fall of President Marcos news returned to a prominent place in the local psyche and media market, although critics have observed that news and public affairs programmes tend to be superficial, sensationalist and entertainment-oriented, rather than substantive, illuminating and educational. This panoply of programmes, all using local languages, established the power of programming oriented to the grassroots (the C, D and E market). Driving this trend was the spread in the ownership of television sets and the transformation of the television set from an appliance confined to the elite during the mid-1950s to a consumption item increasingly available to the middle classes and the lower-income majority beginning from the 1960s. During this period original foreign, and especially American television programmes such as sitcoms, soaps, movies, and in particular cartoons (dubbed Japanese anime arrived from the late 1970s onwards) did not lose their early audiences, essentially upper-class and uppermiddle-professional markets. However, foreign programmes did lose out to locally produced programmes in terms of ratings and profits for the local networks as grassroots viewing markets quickly expanded and widened the gap over other markets. Cable television was introduced in the Philippines in 1969 at the time that terrestrial television was rapidly gaining audiences and markets. But cable did not prosper due to a 1978 Marcos martial law presidential decree (P.D. 1512) granting an exclusive franchise in the cable television business to Sining Makulay, a firm owned by Roberto Benedicto, a Marcos political crony, and summarily blocking out other, more capable investors (Tuazon 2000). In 1986 and 1987, following the removal of Marcos and the lifting of the decree, cable television quickly acquired a strong foothold. While cable grabbed part of the terrestrial television market it has also popularized programmes locally produced by the big networks chiefly for the terrestrial television market. Most subscribers of cable television outside Metro Manila and even within Metro Manila, where television terrestrial signals are weak and fuzzy, have patronized cable television to gain clearer access to locally produced programmes, which remain their main preferred viewing fare yet which remain poorly supplied by producers catering solely or principally to the cable market. In 1991 the introduction of satellite in

Philippines 161 turn spurred cable television. The new technologies have allowed the two biggest networks to reach 90 per cent of Philippine households. ABS-CBN reaches the cable operators and direct-to-home markets through the PanAmerican Satellite Network while GMA 7 has thirty stations to maintain its reach. In 1992 the first commercial stations broadcasting in the UHF band emerged, expanding the horizon of programmes available to terrestrial television viewers. Philippine television has grown considerably in reach and structure over the past few years, ballooning to 143 television stations nationwide: 71 of these original, 48 relay, and 23 UHF (KBP 2001). Cable television has further eaten into the terrestrial television market and its audiences, accounting for shares of total television audiences in 2000 to the extent of 28 per cent in Metro Manila, 20 per cent in Metro Cebu (the country’s second largest metropolis, located in Central Philippines), and 12 per cent in Metro Davao (Southern Philippines’ largest metropolis). By the year 2000 it surprised networks with a 57 per cent penetration rate in Dagupan City, a busy urban centre in Northern Philippines. The major change in support of cable television, as with terrestrial television during the 1960s, has been the increasing accessibility of cable television to the lowermiddle-class and grassroots markets.

Programmes and genres The wide variety of genres that exemplify contemporary Philippine television can be said to be the outgrowth of those that first gained prominence during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. One can identify the most popular genres with the prime-time programming of the largest networks. A prime time staple occupying the choicest Sunday prime time is the local-language sitcom, with one programme still starring the now-aged Filipino comedian, Dolphy, who popularized the genre in the 1960s. Another prime time fare is the locally produced Filipino movie, depicting current folk and street culture. A third prime time genre, which dominates weekday viewing, is the locally produced soap opera. During weekdays the two leading networks each present four 30-minute back-to-back soaps in the most widely watched timeslot from 6.30pm to 9pm. Three of these directly compete with soaps of the rival channel. A fourth genre of programming is the local-language local news, now with a tabloid flavour. Producers have endeavoured to raise ratings by packing news programmes with crime stories featuring gory scenes of bodies of murdered victims. The core strategy has been to package news as entertainment. Fortunately for the networks Philippine politics is so replete with scandals that there are new controversies involving government officials or agencies for the public to feast on practically every week or even every few days. A fifth category is the musical contest genre with one programme focused on singing technique and the other on the ability to memorize song lyrics.

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Outside prime time programming there are several popular and enduring genres. One is the noontime variety show, which carries on and expands the game and quiz format found in the variety shows of the 1960s. The most outstanding of these shows has been without dispute Eat Bulaga, hosted by the country’s most popular live-performance comedians since the late 1970s and already running for 25 years. In 2001 its popularity was eclipsed by Magandang Tanghali Bayan, which succeeded largely by offering jackpots of one million Philippine pesos or more to lower-income contestants in quizzes that were based on chance rather than on stock knowledge, as with the traditional quiz show format. The appeal of Magandang Tanghali Bayan was traced to its affinity with gambling, fatalist attitudes and the promise of instant non-productive wealth. Eat Bulaga however was able to regain its top rating and market domination with new gimmicks that did not require large capital outlays but were effective in recapturing audience interest. Sharply boosting its ratings were the Sex Bomb Dancers, whose provocatively choreographed chanting and singing appealed to audiences of all ages and income brackets, and dangerous or bizarre contests mimicking the US programme Fear Factor. With the popularity of programmes based on local languages and on local folk and street culture, the strategy of the leading network, ABSCBN, since 1987 has been to prioritize local production and transfer foreign syndicated programmes to a secondary channel (Channel 23). To a slightly lesser extent GMA Network’s strategy is to give prominence to local production, while sidelining foreign formats to less important and profitable timeslots.

Minimal format change: dubbing ABS-CBN and GMA 7 have only allowed two categories of foreign formats to be aired on its primary channels Channel 2 and Channel 7 respectively. These are the Latin American telenovela and American or Japanese cartoons or children’s programmes. While these are more accurately genres (rather than formats in the strict sense described in Chapter 1), the process by which they are subsequently localized simulates the adaptation of formats. In short, whereas a licensed format such as Millionaire (see below) is subject to a range of modifications, these telenovelas and children’s shows are only minimally linguistically altered to make them understandable to local viewers. Telenovelas From the 1980s up to the mid-1990s local television soap operas had become so popular that the medium was able to create its own superstar, Judy Ann Santos, whose popularity rivalled superstars from the film world. In 1996 the Mexican soap opera Marimar broke this pattern, attain-

Philippines 163 ing sensational ratings by a combination of mestiza (largely Caucasianlooking) stars, a highly dramatic plot attuned to folk culture, high production values, and a fast-paced script. Since then local soaps, especially those produced by ABS-CBN, have regained their premier position by raising production values through location shooting and improved script editing, planning and supervision. As a result production costs have risen sharply. Whereas previous programmes involved 1 day taping per week, taping now entailed 3 days per week. To entice the participation of stars they were no longer paid by episode but by shooting day. More production equipment, special effects, fuel and electricity driven by location shooting and more production time boosted costs even further (Barreiro 2001). Despite the higher costs the leading networks have carried on with high-budget soaps as advertising rates for prime time are attractive enough at more than PhP130,000 (US$2400) per 30-seconds to cover costs and generate hefty profits. This constitutes the major reason why local soap production and programming dominates evening weekday and Sunday afternoon viewing. It is the existing wide differential between prime time rates and non-prime time rates (usually 50 per cent or less than prime time), however, that discourages the network from going all out for local production. And this is where the Mexican telenovela comes in: importing and adapting it for local consumption is less expensive, and while its ratings and advertising income are not huge it does generate a larger profit for the broadcaster than producing expensive local productions. A critical aspect of the adaptation of the Mexican telenovela for local consumption is that the localization occurs through dubbing. Although the Philippines was colonized by Spain for more than 300 years, colonization led to no more than 5 per cent of Filipinos being conversant and fluent in Spanish. Therefore a key process in the adaptation of the Mexican telenovela is its dubbing into Filipino, the country’s lingua franca, a factor behind its continuing wide popularity among both middle class and grassroots, compared with formats that do not replace the foreign language audio of the imported programmes. Children’s programming A second genre that has undergone minimal format change is the American or Japanese cartoon. In fact, only the children’s programme Sesame Street, which is licensed by GMA 7 from the New York-based Children’s Television Workshop remains in its original form, earlier attempts to translate the programme quickly fizzling out. This development can be traced to two seemingly contradictory qualities of the programme: its highly visual and musical language, which allows it to transcend language barriers and deliver messages just the same to children, and yet the highly nuanced and cultural-specific nature of its humour, which renders translation both difficult and ineffective. However the same cannot be

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said of the other cartoons, which are highly dependent on specific narratives and oral communication. Together with Sesame Street the Japanese anime and US narrative cartoons shown on the two leading networks form the bulk of Philippine children-oriented programming in terms of total airtime. It is in this genre and only in this genre where television format adaptation can be said to reign supreme in the Philippines. Only in the cartoon genre do format-adapted programmes – in this case, of the minimally adapted type, dubbed into the lingua franca – achieve higher ratings than either their non-format-adapted locally produced or foreign syndicated counterparts. Although this hegemony is limited to a single genre, the nature and the type of audience – Filipinos in their formative years – makes this hegemony a particularly significant one. For the foreign exporters of programmes that can be minimally reformatted, this represents a highly strategic and advantageous position because they are in a position to shape and influence the life-long viewing habits of Filipino audiences. Cartoons are an extremely expensive product prohibitive to a thirdworld producer such as the Philippines (Santos 2001a). Producers based in the developed world are in the position to engage in the cartoon business because of their market power and reach, and thus their ability to practice and realize economies of scale. While imported cartoon programmes were already popular in the 1960s, the change in the class composition of the Philippine television audience in favour of the lower-income social groups has also resulted in a change in the preferences for cartoons according to language. In recognition of the new market changes ABS-CBN began to dub cartoons in the lingua franca at the beginning of the 1990s, resulting in higher ratings in general for the genre. While the Western colonial cultural influence has remained strong in the Philippines, cartoon format adaptation reflects the recent surge in the influence of Japanese cultural formats particularly Japanese anime. A large component of the added appeal of Japanese anime that gives it an advantage over other cartoon genres is its medieval themes in which hightech versions of samurai and knights battle the fictional forces of evil – a theme highly adaptable to the folk and pre-modern nature of Philippine culture (Santos 2001a).

Licensed format adaptations: re-versioning The format adaptation is a more recent addition to the programme mix. This is most evident in the licensed format with a local host as well as the use of the local language. As mentioned earlier the standout examples are: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (2002), The Weakest Link (2001), as well as the longer-running formats of Family Feud and The Price is Right. The most outstanding from a commercial perspective have been

Philippines 165 Millionaire and The Weakest Link, both capturing the imagination of Filipino audiences and achieving almost overnight success. The local version of Millionaire broadcast on Channel 13 of the governmentsequestered Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation adopted the same game design, snappy graphics, and quotable stock responses (‘Is that your final answer?’) found in the original version. The Filipino Millionaire slightly adapted the set, however, producing a cheaper and smaller replica to save on costs but one that was nonetheless extremely effective in attracting audiences. What it did change was the language – from English to the lingua franca, Filipino – even though the English language is wellunderstood among Filipinos, albeit admittedly at a high level of functional literacy only among the upper and upper-middle classes. According to its producer the UK company selling the format had wanted the local version to proceed using English. Only when the local buyer, Viva Productions, insisted on using the lingua franca did the seller finally concede. This policy reaffirmed lessons learnt by large networks in programming strategy: that local-language programmes tend to attract more audiences and profits than foreign-language ones. Another fine-tuning practiced by Viva was the formulation of questions on facts particular to Philippine conditions and experience, and more familiar to Filipinos. To long-time observers of Philippine media the popularity of Millionaire and The Weakest Link can be partly traced to the appeal of quizzes among college students and professionals. However, the more general popularity of the programmes among even the grassroots lower-income classes suggests that there are other factors involved. Among the viewers interviewed many mention the large prize up for grabs – the symbolic power of the million pesos and the promise of being an ‘instant millionaire’. The raising of the stakes to seven-digit figures was a first in Philippine television. As the leading network ABS-CBN felt the greatest pressure with the phenomenal success of Millionaire. Following a general reactive strategy of coming up with its own version of whatever programme manages to rival or surpass it in ratings, on the basis that it is the richest media company, ABS-CBN instantly designed a counter-programme, Are You Ready for the Game? (Game Ka Na Ba) utilizing smart graphics as visual aids for viewers, a modernistic set as impressive as Millionaire’s, and what turned out to be the key advantage, prizes and jackpots exceeding those of Millionaire. Within 1 to 2 months Are You Ready for the Game? would defeat Millionaire in ratings. The size of the jackpot and the power to attract maximum audiences through prizes became the essence of the competition. More so than Viva Productions, ABS-CBN, owned by the Lopezes who also own a monopoly-oriented conglomerate embracing the fields of energy, water supply and media, was in a far better position to up the ante in financial costs and prize stakes. However, although the Lopezes

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succeeded in brandishing their short-time financial power, recent events have put their long-term financial capacities in doubt. In 2002 their holding company, Benpres Holdings, technically defaulted from its foreign debt. Meralco, the family’s power retail firm that holds a monopoly over Metro Manila and surrounding towns is on the brink of default, especially with a recent Supreme Court decision to refund customers on the grounds of overcharging. Much of the financial troubles of ABS-CBN lie in its effort to upgrade technology by purchasing imported expensive hi-tech equipment, especially at a time when creeping foreign trade deficits are depreciating the Philippine peso and therefore jacking up loan amortizations (Santos 2001b). What this has meant is that local media producers deriving income in Philippine pesos but dependent on increasingly expensive foreign exchange and technology have a built-in disadvantage compared to foreign direct media investors in achieving global and even local competitiveness. Currently only a constitutional provision blocks foreign investors from fully and openly investing in Philippine television production. Local media companies have sought to either circumvent this provision to access foreign funds or to support the campaign to amend the constitution. ABSCBN in particular has accessed foreign funds in the New York stock market through American Depository Receipts. Observers have noted that GMA Network, Inc. may already be dominated by foreign investors through various layers of investment. Ironically, however, if these stumbling blocks are removed, the full direct investment by foreign media firms in the Philippines will also remove the need to sell their formats to independent producers. At the most they will charge service fees for formats to their local subsidiaries, or virtually to themselves, as accounting exercises. Nevertheless the lesson of Game Ka Na Ba? is that local media companies with adequate financial power can match and compete favourably with local companies buying licensed formats. In fact, ABS-CBN has the added advantage of not paying license fees for the formats and using this instead to beef up their production budget, including prizes. The license fees are a prohibitive factor, unless buyers of formats are able to ensure that their competitors cannot replicate the format adequately to draw away their viewers. The fact that the format buyers are not the largest networks but secondary players in Philippine television, and that these are limited so far to only two genres demonstrates that such licensed format adaptations (apart from the minimally formatted Mexican telenovelas, American or Japanese cartoons and children’s shows) will not be a dominant force in Philippine television. The question of cloning television programmes is a tricky one since there is lack of definite and clear-cut criteria to judge whether a work is cloned or not. This brings up the question of programmes that are identifiably format clones. Filipino viewers interviewed for this study, especially

Philippines 167 students familiar with Western programmes, were of the opinion that a number of Philippine programmes are clones of Western counterparts. Among these are Munting Paraiso (meaning ‘Little Paradise’ adapted from Seventh Heaven) for family drama; Subic Bay (adapted from Baywatch) for action-drama; Takot ka ba Dilim (translated as the title of its model Are You Afraid of the Dark); Saan Ka Man Naroroon (meaning ‘Wherever You Are’ adapted from the Mexican television Lazos de Amor) for soap drama; and Wow, Mali (adapted from Just Kidding) for practical-joke and prank shows. Although some titles tend to betray an effort to copycat, a television network official argues that while these programmes are inspired from foreign originals, the local version has enough local adaptation – in effect ‘indigenization’ – to declassify these programmes as clones. One indicator of this indigenization process is illustrated in Munting Paraiso where we see a progressive mutation of the programme away from its inspiration Seventh Heaven. Furthermore, an argument in support of the description of these programmes as ‘indigenous’ is the reality of the difference of cultures between those of third-world countries and those of industrialized countries. As the spokesperson for Munting Paraiso mentioned, it was oriented toward reaffirming traditional or pre-modern cultural values prevalent in the Philippines, values that have been ‘enshrined’ as ‘Filipino’. The appropriateness of such traditional values as themes for local production immediately discourages local media companies from simply copying Western productions, lock, stock and barrel. Moreover, the effort to launch and project the new programmes as obvious and blatant local versions of the foreign originals has backfired on the marketability of the programmes. Interviews with Filipino students for instance indicate that they are sensitive to whether a programme is an effort to copy a foreign original and look negatively at such efforts or objectives. In other words, any attempt to enhance the value according to the standards of colonial mentality – that is, a resemblance by imitation to foreign models – in the end devalues the creative process and product. This is reflected by the fact that these ‘clones’ in contemporary Philippine television do not generally last long or tend to fold up quickly. The small number of ‘clones’ identified by Filipino viewers indicates that these type of formats are not as numerous as thought to be, especially in view of the much-recognized colonial mentality in Philippine culture in the form of a blind reverence and emulation of American phenomena. The five programmes identified above are comparable in number and total airtime to the four licensed programmes. A cursory scan of the programmes show that airing of foreign syndicated shows in their original, unmodified English-language format still enjoys a captive and steady market, appealing mostly to the upper and upper-middle classes who desire to view their foreign programmes in the original form. However, as

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mentioned, given the relative smallness of their main class market, they are not and will not be dominant in the ratings and profits game. Format adaptation in its various forms is here to stay in the Philippines, but it will be present in a form defined by its built-in limitations and the parameters of Philippine culture and economy.

12 Distantly European? Australia in the global television format business Albert Moran

On a warm summer’s evening in early 2000 our family settled down to watch The Mole on the Seven Network. For weeks beforehand television spot commercials, radio talk shows, newspapers, and magazines had been full of stories and publicity about this new ‘reality’ programme. We were told that the programme had been devised in Belgium and had been enormously popular there and elsewhere in Europe. Now Australia was finally to have its own version of the programme filmed in the wilds of Tasmania. The first episode of the series proved The Mole to be a highly entertaining, thoroughly absorbing adventure series. The programme was hosted by Grant Bowler and featured ten strangers thrown together in an isolated environment to form a team that had to undergo various physical and psychological challenges. The more challenges they passed, the more money their team was awarded. But adding to the intrigue and the drama of the series, someone on one of the teams had been engaged to sabotage their efforts. Neither the strangers in the programmes or the audience at home knew whom to trust. Hooking us completely as compulsive viewers and adding to the tension was the fact that after the challenge of an episode, the players had to offer their guess as to who was ‘the mole’. The player who was furthest from the truth was eliminated. The last two episodes caught the imagination of the nation as Australia tuned in to discover, first, just who was to be the winner, the loser and, most especially, ‘the mole’ and the following week just how he/she carried out their various acts of sabotage behind a cloak of secrecy. For the 10 weeks it was on air The Mole was the object of endless talk and gossip in schools, workplaces, pubs and homes across the nation. As a public story of mystery and intrigue, everyone guessed at the identity of ‘the mole’ and was almost invariably proved wrong when their suspect was eliminated from the programme. The revelations of the last episodes were worthy of a great crime story and public interest was at its peak. The Seven Network was enormously pleased with the enormously high ratings achieved by the programme. Subsequently, they again licensed the format and produced a second series, filming this time in Victoria and screening the following year.

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In the wake of The Mole Australian television became more focussed on the possibilities of format-driven ‘reality’ programming. The audience rapidly acquired the rules of this new genre – the reliance upon an artificially generated group or individual and their typical situation (marooned/isolated, ‘traitor in our midst’ and so on) in which members of the group were eliminated one by one, either by attrition, a panel of judges, or at the decree of their fellows. Despite their external situation all possess the common thread of contestants vying for an ultimate prize. For the most part, rather than broadcasting programmes produced elsewhere, the Australian television industry has preferred to adapt overseas formats, producing their own local versions of such ‘reality’ series as The Mole, Treasure Island, Popstars, Australian Survivor, Australian Temptation Island, Big Brother and The Fear Factor. Even as brief a sketch as this about The Mole and other ‘reality’ series highlights the extent to which international television programme format trade encourages a television system to look both inwards and outwards. An Australian producer once described the effect of format flows as ‘parochial internationalism’ and the phrase nicely suggests the complex web of domestic and global linkages in which television systems find themselves embedded when they devise, produce and market television programme formats. Such an observation is a useful starting point for understanding how formats operate in the Australian television landscape, looking within before looking without.

The Australian television setting Serving a small English-speaking population of approximately 20 million inhabitants, mostly dispersed along the coastline of the largest island continent in the world, one that is only a little smaller than the land mass of the USA, Australian television was inaugurated in 1956 with the commencement of service in the two largest centres of population, the state capitals of Sydney and Melbourne (Moran 1985). Initially the service was provided by two independent commercial stations and one public service station in each state capital cities. The system has since grown to the point where currently four distinct components can be identified (Moran 1997). First, a cable service which began in 1995 and consists of two providers, Foxtel and Optus. These operators offer a total of thirty different channels that specialize in such genres as movies, entertainment, children’s television, sport, lifestyle and documentary. Although the great bulk of programming on the cable system consists of films and television programmes imported from overseas, a small amount of format adaptation is certainly taking place in the system, noticeably in low-cost ‘live’ production formats such as game shows and chat shows. However, the audience for any particular programme on the cable channels is so small as to be negligible in the present context and consideration of this system is therefore put to

Australia 171 one side here. The free-to-air service is composed of three further components – community television, the public service networks, and the independent commercial networks. As its name implies – and following the example of community radio – Australian community television is organized around the concept of participatory management and programming. Such programming bypasses the mass audience model followed by professional broadcasters in the other two sectors in favour of a form that targets particular minority audiences, thus attempting to represent and mediate the interests of specific communities and interests. Television programme format adaptation, most especially where this involves licensing, is well outside the interests and practice of this sector. In this context this study of the Australian format trade has concentrated on the other two elements in the free-to-air sector. Historically these two elements – public service broadcasting and independent commercial broadcasting – constituted the ‘dual system’ of Australian television that existed intact for almost 40 years (Moran 1985; 1997). The key features of this pattern were: a twin structure consisting of private, commercial television broadcast networks as well as a public service television broadcast sector; a heavy reliance on American-style programming practices; and initially at least, equally heavy reliance on imported programmes from America to fill the television schedule; the start-up of local programmes on the commercial networks, which when coupled with imported programmes guaranteed the overall viewing popularity of this sector; and a relatively weak public service sector, perpetually caught in the dilemma of attempting to hold its traditional minority audiences with innovative, local programmes and attracting larger, entertainment-oriented audiences with more mainstream programmes, often imported. While this pattern has been generally true for Australian television, it has not, however, been static. In particular Australian television has followed a classic economic tendency of ‘import substitution’ whereby after an initial high noon of imported American programmes, locally produced popular television programmes soon appeared that displaced imported programmes in the prime time schedule (Sinclair et al. 1996). In other words the economic foundation of Australian television production involves several elements that defray its full cost. Three can be mentioned. The first is the fact of programme importation. Historically the Australian television networks have imported considerable amounts of finished programmes made available from the USA, the UK, and Western Europe and elsewhere, markets where such programmes have already cleared their production costs so that rates in Australia can be adjusted to suit finances available locally. In turn this has sponsored a system of cross-subsidization on the part of these two sectors whereby the savings achieved can help offset the higher costs of domestically produced programme material. The second element that has alleviated some of the costs of this production has

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to do with the emergence of a system of state subsidy whereby part of the development costs of television programmes have been offset by a system of grants and low-interest loans sponsored by government at both the federal and state levels, beginning in 1972 with the establishment of the Australian Film Development Corporation. A third element supporting local television production is the on-going importation of television programme formats to serve as the basis for local production. Of course, ignoring a large raft of general borrowings generic imitations and cultural quotations that might for example see links between such Australian productions as Homicide and overseas programmes such as Highway Patrol and Z Cars (McKee 2001: 51–67), we can claim that a great many Australian programmes have been originated locally, most especially in the area of drama. Equally though, many other formats in genres such as light entertainment, game shows and children’s programmes have been imported. In this latter instance the costs of evolving the programme, its R&D (research and development) has already been paid for elsewhere. Thus savings achieved through the employment of this practice has meant that proportionately more money is available for production. Indeed, the historical germ of this situation of copycat television can be seen in the second television programme transmitted on the opening night of regular television broadcasting on 16 September 1956. Name That Tune was an Australian adaptation of the format devised by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman of the game show of the same name that had first appeared on the American NBC television network in June 1953.

Australian formats to the world Although there are signs that it is now flattening out since around 1980 Australian television producers have enjoyed significant licensing success overseas of programmes first made for local broadcasting. This sales surge occurred mainly in drama and was for the most part principally confined to English-language markets and to Europe (Cunningham and Jacka 1996). Piggy-backing on this popularity Australian television programme formats also enjoyed a good deal of success in many of the same markets. Broadly speaking these remakes of Australian formats fell into three categories. First, mostly occurring as licensing one-offs, there have been adaptations of such disparate Australian formats as the children’s Hi-5, two ‘reality’ formats – Pop Stars and Single Girls – and a ‘reality’ hybrid – Undercover Angels. Second, there has been a stream of remakes of the game show, Sale of the Century. Although originally a US-devised format, first appearing on NBC Network between 1969 and 1973, the Australian Reg Grundy Enterprises bought the format, revamped the programme, and proceeded to remake it in Australia (1980–2001), the US (1982–1988), Hong Kong (1982), the UK (1989–1991, 1997), New Zealand (1989–1993, 1995), Germany (1990–1993), Greece (1995) and Paraguay (since 1996).

Australia 173 However, the most extensive and financially rewarding international licensing of Australian formats has occurred in the area of fiction. The sitcom Mother And Son, itself a kind of very loose reworking of the BBC’s Steptoe and Son, has been adapted in Chile (1995), Quebec (1998), Sweden (1998), Denmark (1998) and Turkey (2001). Even this round of adaptations, though, were fleeting in their success compared with the more substantial and enduring international impact of three Australian soap opera formats (O’Donnell 1999). The first of these, The Restless Years, had followed the emotional and relational trials and tribulations of a group of senior school leavers, their families, friends, teachers, and significant others. It was broadcast in Australia from 1978 to 1983 and proved to be moderately successful. However, it had been almost forgotten when it was adapted as Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden (Good Times Bad Times) in The Netherlands in 1990. Its immediate success there soon triggered a second European remake in Germany. The latter, deriving its title from the Dutch adaptation, Gute Zeiten Schlechte Zeiten, went on air in 1992. Both serials have proved to be enduringly popular and are still on air at the time of writing. This set of remakes was soon followed by another cycle, again based on a format that had been only moderately successful in Australia. Sons and Daughters had been aired between 1982 and 1986. A family melodrama, the serial began with twins, brother and sister, who meet and fall in love before discovering their relationship. Forbidding this love draws other domestic, romantic and social elements into play and the serial tracked an ever-multiplying set of centres of narrative interest. A German version, Verboten Liebe (Forbidden Love), began in 1995 and its continued popularity has kept it on air up to the present. In turn this prompted further remakes – Skilda Varlder (Separate Worlds) appeared in Sweden from 1996 to 2001; Apagorevvmeni Agari (Forbidden Love) began in Greece in 1998 and continues on air at the time of writing; and Belahan Hati (Divided Hearts) was broadcast in Indonesia in 2001/2. The final group of Australian-originated soap format adaptations relate to Prisoner, a continuing drama set in a women’s prison (cf. Curthoys and Docker 1997). Running from 1979 to 1986, the Australian version of the format acquired cult status not only in its home territory but also in the UK and the USA. Three remakes subsequently appeared. Dangerous Women was broadcast on a US syndication network in 1992/3, an unauthorized adaptation, Vrouwenvleugel (Women’s Wing), went to air in The Netherlands from 1993 to 1994 while a German version, Hinter Gittens (Behind Bars), screened between 1998 and 2001. As suggested elsewhere (Madsen 1994; Moran 1994) these three formats helped change the generic landscape of television in Western Europe. However, the Australian origins of these formats have mostly been forgotten and there has been no recent format licensing to match that of the first half of the 1990s. Indeed the past 6 years have not only

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seen a downturn in the volume of overseas sales of finished Australian programmes but also a complete cessation of the export of Australian originated soap formats (cf. Zalcock and Robinson 1996; Moran 2002). Helping to underline this point about Australian television’s recent shift from sometimes exporting to almost solely importing formats is the attribution of the reality series, Pop Stars, as Australian when in fact the format was devised and first produced in New Zealand (see Chapter 13). It was only after its New Zealand success that it was acquired by an Australian producer, Screentime, and subsequently licensed to other parts of the world.

Overseas formats to Australia Meanwhile Australian television has maintained, perhaps even increased, its reliance on programme formats brought in from other parts of the world. News and current affairs, game shows, children’s television, infotainment/talk shows and commercials have long been among the types of imported formats appearing in the television schedule. Recently, however, the reliance on overseas format sources has been even more evident in such generic newcomers (at least as far as the prime time schedule of the commercial television networks is concerned) as lifestyle/magazine and ‘reality’ programmes (cf. Roscoe and Paget 2002). How important then in the Australian television schedule are formats? In terms of the total number of television channels, both free-to-air and pay cable stations, the presence of formats is insignificant. However, although the pay service is now almost 10 years old, the great majority of the Australian viewing public continues to watch the free-to-air networks and these are more important so far as format traffic is concerned. Even so, further distinctions must be made. Overall in the free-to-air sector the use of imported programme formats amounts to very little. For example, across the six free-to-air channels, four of which are on the air a maximum of 168 hours a week while the second public-service network has only a slightly more reduced output of approximately 140 hours a week, format adaptation or programme remakes only amounts to 1.59 per cent of the total television schedule. Instead, the bulk of programming at such a level consists of imported and repeat programmes. Obviously all 168 hours a week are not of equal value so far as first-run, advertising rates, production budgets and audience size are concerned. A different picture emerges when analysis concentrates on peak viewing time, the programming zone running in Australia from 6.30pm to 10.30pm weekdays and weekends. In such a time zone the audience is at its peak size and expenditure on advertising and programmes is also at its highest level. In other words, because this zone helps to fix much of the market position, revenue and viewer loyalty across the whole schedule, there are strong grounds for suggesting that the pattern revealed in the 28 hours making up this time zone

Australia 175 offers a more accurate indication of the overall significance of television programme format adaptation in Australian television. Accordingly, I surveyed peak viewing time in the week beginning Monday 13 October 2001 as a means of assessing Australian television’s dependence on overseas formats. Detailed programme guides were checked and this was supplemented with interviews and communication with network executives, publicity officers, production personnel, and independent researchers. Of course, adaptation is easy to track if a licensing fee has been paid. However, even when there has been no fee, remaking has often taken place so that there is some degree of subjective judgement in the survey results that are reported here. What then are the findings? There was no doubt that imported formats have provided the basis for several programmes in different peak time genres including news, current affairs, game shows, infotainment and lifestyle/magazine. In addition, although it does not show up in this survey, the translation of different ‘reality’ or docu-drama formats has also provided the basis for all Australian production in this area. The details of the survey have been discussed elsewhere (Moran 2002) but its principal results can be summarized here. The free-to-air sector consists of three groups of channels. The most recently inaugurated and the least important of these so far as this analysis is concerned, is the single community channel in each of the state capital cities. Programmed on the basis of a block schedule that caters to the interests of different community groups, these channels screen a mixture of very low cost material, often that which is available in the public domain, and low cost live-to-air content. Clearly, this sector falls outside the area of licensed television programme format adaptation. The second group of channels are public service broadcasters and consists of two national networks, SBS TV (Special Broadcasting Service) and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). SBS TV relies heavily on a programming mix of international news, documentary and subtitled films. The breakdown of its programming was 14 hours of imported content and 14 hours of locally produced programmes with adaptations of one kind or another accounting for up to 50 per cent of the latter. On the other hand, remakes do form the basis for some of the programme production screened by SBS TV. Historically the ABC’s frequent and unlicensed cloning of programme formats first developed by the BBC could be seen as a form of flattery or tribute. However, within the past decade, the advent of a Format Licensing Unit within the BBC’s marketing arm, BBC Worldwide, seems to have resulted in fewer formats finding their way to the Australian broadcaster. Nevertheless, some older format adaptations were still present in the schedule. In the week surveyed the ABC broadcast 8.5 hours of imported and 19.5 hours of locally produced programmes with format adaptations totalling 7 hours, thereby constituting 35.9 per cent of local production.

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The third group of broadcasters in the free-to-air sector is the independent commercial networks, Network Ten, the Seven Network and the Nine Network. This sector is the most important in the Australian television industry. Not only do these networks have the largest budgets for programme import and the commissioning of local production but they also have the largest collected viewing audience. Of the three, Network Ten was most reliant on imported programming which amounted to 19.5 hours while only 8.5 hours was locally produced. On the other hand, none of the programmes that were Australian-made happened to be based on imported formats but were instead of local origin. But this latter situation had little to do with a desire for independence from foreign format sources. After all, elsewhere in its schedule Network Ten does rely on imported formats including Axn Action TV, Pets Behaving Badly, The Pepsi Chart, It Happened On Holidays and Entertainment News. In addition, as will be discussed below, from 2001 the network has also been responsible for the making and broadcast of successive series of Big Brother. However, bracketing the latter, the pattern at Ten highlights the tighter budgets available for the production of local programming. Second, less strapped for cash, the Seven Network has historically tended to locate itself at a mid point between the public service broadcaster, the ABC, and the greater market orientation of the other commercial networks. This continues to be the case even in the era of heavy programme format import. In the survey week, Seven continued to originate a significant amount of local production even in the more expensive area of drama, with many of the network’s programmes directed at a family audience. But like its major competitor the Nine Network, the Seven Network also emphasized magazine and lifestyle programmes in its prime time schedule. Format imports helped bolster its local productions in this genre. Altogether, Seven screened 10 hours of imported material, which included theatrical films and series produced for television. Nonetheless, it surpassed this figure with locally produced programme material, amounting in total to 16 hours a week. Of the latter 6 hours was based on imported formats. In other words, for the Seven Network the amount of locally produced content that was based on programme format imports constituted 37.5 per cent of its prime time output. Further along this continuum in terms of promoting the ‘headlining’ function of local production was the leader in the Australian commercial television marketplace, the Nine Network, which flaunts its ratings dominance in its slogan – ‘Still the one’. The Nine Network ran a total of 20 hours of locally produced programmes in its schedule as against the use of 10 hours of imported material. In turn, 42.5 per cent of the programming was based on imported formats. Summarizing this survey we can say that although from the point of view of the total national television programming environment, adaptation based on imported formats seems to be insignificant, this picture changes

Australia 177 markedly if we concentrate on the prime time scheduling of the two major sectors. Here formats take centre stage, helping to underwrite the economic risk of local production of the ‘headline’ programmes that will dominate the output of the networks. In other words Australian producers are crucially dependent on a constant supply of new international formats as the basis for a good deal of locally made programmes. Given this situation, it is hardly surprising that the domestic industry has taken certain steps to help ensure this supply and it is to these elements that we now turn.

On the international main street of formats In addition to what we can glean from network schedules there are other signs of the extent to which Australian television is part of an AngloAmerican/European mainstream in the format trade. Unlike the situation in neighbouring television industries elsewhere in Asia, as reported in this book, there is no piracy or plagiarism between producers – although there are certainly occasional disputed claims about format copyright infringement. Two of these might be cited. In 1999 the Seven Network licensed the format rights to UK’s Action Time’s game show Million Dollar Chance of a Lifetime while Nine licensed the format of the comparable Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? from the UK company Celador. Nine briefly threatened legal action on the basis that Chance infringed the Millionaire format but dropped this when it became evident that their adaptation was proving to be more popular with viewers. Similarly in 2000 another dispute flared around two lifestyle/gardening formats: Seven’s remake under licence of Endemol’s Ground Force and Nine’s Backyard Blitz. The latter was remarkably like the imported format but Nine defended itself claiming both that its programme was a spin-off from another of its programmes and that, in any case, no copyright existed in the Dutch format anyway. These two disputes demonstrates both the general industry reliance on imported formats and also the extent to which companies normally play by the rules rather than resort to piracy or plagiarism. Yet another sign of the format’s importance to Australian television has been the speed with which in the period 2000/1 a dozen local television producers and broadcasters joined a new international trade body, FRAPA (Format Registration and Protection Association), established in Cannes early in 2000. This point about the extent to which the industry sees itself as part of a European/Anglo-American trade network is further confirmed if we turn to an examination of the national sources for Australian programme format imports. The USA has been the traditional source. This is especially the case with game shows (Wheel of Fortune, Catchphrase) as well as others in the general areas of entertainment and current affairs (This Is Your Life, Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, 60 Minutes). More recently, Australia has looked to Western Europe, particularly the UK and The

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Netherlands, as sources for format adaptation. Of course, ABC TV has always taken careful note of programming innovations at the BBC and has over the years adapted many formats first developed by the British broadcaster. It is no surprise to realise that the ABC’s Four Corners began as a re-versioning of the BBC’s Panorama while The 7.30 Report had its origins in the latter’s Today Tonight. However, what is relatively new in Australian television is the increased willingness of the commercial networks to look to UK television for formats. Recent adaptations include Pets Behaving Badly (Network Ten), The Weakest Link (Seven Network) and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (Nine Network). The fact that the formats of the first two of these came from the BBC suggests in part that Australian commercial television is tempering its traditional dependence on US programme imports in favour of a heavier emphasis on the UK as a source of scheduling ideas. In addition, The Netherlands has become a key source of television programme formats, most especially through the consolidation and expansion of the Dutch company, Endemol. The latter’s formats have been adapted for programmes appearing on Australian television in past months, including Ground Force (Seven Network), The Pepsi Chart (Network Ten), Changing Rooms (Nine Network), Chains Of Love (Nine Network), Fear Factor (Nine Network) and, especially, Big Brother (Network Ten). An even more decisive development in this pattern has been the establishment of linkages between Australian production companies and international format specialists. This ensures that the former handle or have guaranteed first option on catalogues of television programme formats developed elsewhere in the European/Anglo-American mainstream. Thanks to a 1995 takeover Grundy Television is now part of the UK based conglomerate, Fremantle Media. Meantime Beyond International has also secured a deal with IDtv in The Netherlands so that they have first access to each other’s formats in their respective territories. Yet another development closely linked to this emerging pattern has been the establishment of an Australian arm of the British production company and broadcaster, Granada Television. However, the most important link has been that brought about by a joint venture agreement Australian Southern Star entered into with the Dutch company Endemol in 1999. This joint venture helped to guarantee that the Dutch hit format Big Brother would be remade in Australia. Indeed, this latter adaptation has been sufficiently important in the local television setting, both in confirming international linkages and importing new marketing arrangements, to warrant more attention here.

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Big Brother as case study History At least part of the reason for format adaptation has to do with the importation of new television genres. As I have mentioned at the beginning of this chapter this was certainly the case with the arrival of a new cycle of ‘reality’ television both in the form of finished programmes produced in the UK and the USA and in the form of formats to be remade locally. In fact, recent examples of ‘reality’ television that have appeared on Australian screens are better regarded as a still-developing genre that is nothing if not mixed. Big Brother belongs to the most current cycle of this ‘reality’ series, which first appeared in the mid-1990s with such titles as The Mole, Survivor, Hell House, Temptation Island and Treasure Island. Again, as discussed above the characteristic situation of this kind of programme frequently focuses on a small group of ordinary people brought together as contestants in a situation where they are gradually eliminated until only one remains. Frequently set in an isolated situation, the ‘narrative’ of these series turn on elements of competition and sport (who will survive until the end and win?) and/or secrecy and mystery (who is lying about themselves and what they are?). At the same time these programmes verge towards a documentary style of presentation with viewers allowed to draw their own conclusions about possible winners, nice guys and so on, although omniscient narration is also frequently used to shape opinion. The Dutch company Endemol has grown rapidly in the European television marketplace after its establishment in 1993. The development of a format catalogue containing over 400 different items has been an integral part of that growth. The Big Brother format was in part the brainchild of one of the company’s two principals and was completed in 1998. A first version went to air in The Netherlands in 1999 and was an immense ratings success. Hard on its heels a German version went into production in 1999, using the same house and again proving immensely popular. By the time that the first Australian series of the programme had been produced in 2001 national versions had already been produced and broadcast in Spain, France, Portugal, UK, USA, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, Greece, Cyprus, and Poland. In other words Big Brother travelled this European/Anglo-American mainstream to Australia rather than coming through Asia. In 2000 Southern Star Endemol (SSE) invited bids from Australia’s three commercial networks and accepted Network Ten’s bid for the first Australian series. The licensing fee was reported to be as low as $13 million and as high as $18 million. In any case SSE’s decision was based not only on Ten’s willingness to pay the asking price but also made sense because of the close fit between Ten’s general programming for its target

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audience, the 16–39 year old demographic, and Endemol’s preferred audience for the programme. Work began on a Big Brother house at the Dreamworld theme park on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Meantime Network Ten screened two promotional trailer programmes to promote the up-coming series. This was supplemented by billboards, on-air promotions and extensive news stories in magazines and newspapers. Immediately after the end of the Easter holiday in 2001, the first Australian series of Big Brother began. Altogether the series ran for a total of 13 weeks, achieving the same phenomenal success that it had scored in other territories. Network Ten witnessed a large jump in its viewing public not only for the programme but for many other programmes in its schedule. In addition the programme was also reported to have earned $18 million in revenues through multiple platforms although tax and interest would shave $5 million off that. The network secured a second series which was broadcast in 2002 and proved to be almost as popular as the first series. Meantime, Network Ten signed a deal to produce three further series of the programme, beginning in 2003. Similarity and difference As a format the Australian adaptation of Big Brother was both similar and different to other versions of the programme produced in different territories. Detailed comparison is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is possible to briefly suggest how this version was indigenized and thereby rendered ‘different’. By the time the programme was made in Australia the format had been adapted under licence in eleven different countries in Western and Central Europe. It was to the British version of the format that the Australian producers most consistently turned. Three brief examples illustrate the connections. First was the fact that the Australian producers used graphic ideas derived from the Channel Four version, most notably a close-up of a pair of eyes, in the programme’s title and billboard advertising whereas the Dutch originators wanted them to use a specially designed logo. Additionally, the Australian producers used a director who had been employed on the British version of the programme as an early consultant. Third, based on the eviction arrangements and filming in the Channel Four version, the Australian producers developed the idea of making the Eviction night programme a kind of live televised outdoor event. In other words, an ‘Australian’ version was produced principally through a negotiated adaptation of the ‘British’ version of the format. However, this is not to suggest that one was a direct imitation of the other. Instead, Network Ten producers could point to many ‘touches’ that they had introduced, thus varying the pattern of what had been received. For example, in the UK Channel Four production crowds of fans had tended to gather in the surrounding car park near the Big Brother house for the Eviction Night programmes. In turn Network Ten and SSE decided

Australia 181 to stage the Australian Eviction Night programmes as televised public events at Dreamworld where the theme park management sold up to 12,000 tickets for each eviction. Similarly, the Australian producers innovated with the introduction of the ‘Beyond The Grave’ tapes. These were diary-type individual addresses to camera prepared singly by each of the three last housemates leaving messages for the other two in the event of that one’s eviction. One of these tapes was then played on the second last night of the programme when the third last housemate was evicted. Big Brother also exists within broader industry patterns of similarity and difference. Take for example, its connections with the televising of global sporting events. Late in the previous year, 2000, the capital city of the Australian television industry – Sydney – was also the host city for another major television event, the 2000 Olympic Games. These programmes, Big Brother and the Olympic Games, form two different examples of what might be called international diasporic television. The events at their centre are ‘global’, in that a cumulative series of national audiences watch them. In both instances (The Olympic Games telecast and Big Brother) there is no such thing as a single international or global audience. Instead national audiences actually watched versions of the programmes that were similar but not identical. In other words, just as the Australian Seven Network’s televising of the 2000 Olympic Games differed in terms of coverage, focus, commentary and so on from the version televised by US network, NBC, so the Australian version of Big Brother diverged from the US CBS version or, for that matter, from the UK Channel Four version. More generally repetition and variation can be seen as the dynamics of the broadcast scheduling of these two different kinds of programmes. Competition is obviously a major sequencing element in their individual episodes. The televising of a world sporting event with its successive individual rounds leading to finals and ultimately a single winner or group of winners is closely replicated by a Big Brother with its weekly rounds of housemate evictions finally saving one housemate who thereby becomes the winner. In turn both a Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and a Big Brother work according to saturation programming. With the Games this involved broadcast programming of up to 18 hours a day on the official Olympic network for 2 weeks in September 2000. This was amplified by further coverage on cable television, the Internet, radio and in the press. In the first half of 2001 the programming coverage of Big Brother was similarly intensive with coverage extending to broadcast television, the Internet, radio and the press. On broadcast television on Network Ten the programme ran for a total of 85 days across 13 weeks with an episode being broadcast every night of the week. Weekday broadcast episodes were half an hour in length and were put to air at 7pm. An additional adults-only one hour special was broadcast at 9.30pm each Thursday while a one hour ‘Eviction’ special went to air on Sunday nights at 7.30pm.

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In turn these patterns were amplified within a commercial context. Central here was the process of Big Brother’s branding, a complex activity that aimed to confer uniqueness and popularity on the Australian version of the format. Of course, while strong brand names do exist in audiovisual industries, these are mostly located at the level of companies (such as a Disney or a BBC). More rarely they can also exist at the level of an individual title such as Big Brother where elements such as logo, design, and name combine to create a strong brand. The programme’s logo was formulated by Endemol in 1998. It consisted of a purple oval with the title of the programme contained therein. Network Ten regarded this emblem as ugly, but it is an easily recognisable symbol, ‘like Coca Cola to the Dutch’ (Clucas 2001, personal interview)1 so it appeared in the corner of billboard promotion and on the programme’s titles. As a major replacement SSE and Network Ten adopted a graphic design, first developed in the UK. The Australian variation was an extreme close-up of two eyes (actually those of a security officer at Network Ten), accompanied by the slogan ‘Big Brother Is Coming’. This became the basis for Australian billboard and other advertisements. The design also became the foundation for the programme’s on-air titles. Television formats are often indigenised through name change. Such a fate did not befall the Australian version of the format which, instead traded on the fact of being a local version of an international diasporic television brand name. Even before the first Australian series was licensed the public had already been informed through media report that Big Brother was an internationally circulated television programme that would, at the same time, be customized for Australian audiences. Simultaneously the brand name was both local and global. Even beyond these central elements the local branding involved economic and cultural drives to further extend the value of the programme name. This occurred in several ways. Most obviously, merchandising included such standard elements as video, music CD, magazines, T-shirts and bunny ears. More important was the fact that a second Australian series of the programme was promised for 2002 with more beyond. In addition, there was a cycle of spin-off programmes. The format also conferred at least a temporary celebrity-hood on the housemates who in turn made ‘star’ appearances on such programmes as Sale of the Century, The Weakest Link and Neighbours. Another former housemate was involved in product endorsement. Even the Big Brother house basked in this glory, being opened to the public as an attraction at its Dreamworld theme park site. Big Brother also briefly pervaded the world of Australian commerce where it coupled with brand names for other commercial products and services. For instance, various television commercials such as those for Pizza Hut were consciously moulded in terms of such elements as camera style and situation in order to obtain a close fit with the programme content of the programme. This kind of link was consolidated and extended by other

Australia 183 marketing strategies such as on-screen product placement and phone line voting facilities. Finally, within the same pattern of repetition and variation the Australian versioning of Big Brother constituted a kind of mega-formatting that warrants the name of franchising. Of course, television programme formats always have the potential to lead on to franchising operations. But whereas a format licensing usually involves only the programme rights the arrangements concerning the Australian version of Big Brother, like those adopted elsewhere with the format, entailed an assortment of commercial rights relating to various platforms including broadcast television, advertising, radio, telephone, billboards, merchandising and personal management. Again the parallels with a televised global sporting event such as the Olympic Games are clear. Both constitute a type of business arrangement where a package rather than an individual right is managed, thereby ensuring the generation of profits from a series of ancillary operations that are not normally licensed but rather exist in the area of publicity. The term franchising relates to the licensing control of such a package of rights. It also relates to the kind of business operation whereby one firm, in this case SSE on behalf of Endemol, grants the rights to distribute a local version of its format across a series of outlets to several local companies, in this case led by Network Ten. Here the total package of rights, together with the supporting vehicle that was Big Brother, is the product. Like the television franchising of an Olympic Games or a Soccer World Cup format franchising involves the buying of a package of services that virtually guarantees profitability for the broadcasting network. However, Endemol, through SSE, did not use this as a means of leveraging the highest possible price from the three independent commercial networks who originally competed for the first Australian series. Instead like any franchising parent Endemol was disposed to build its product to maintain and strengthen the overall international commercial reputation of Big Brother and to secure an Australian licensing fee that was compatible with this objective.

Conclusion This discussion of Big Brother in Australia highlights and confirms what has been argued in the rest of the chapter. First is the fact that television format trade is of central importance in producing many of the ‘headline’ programmes in the Australian television schedule. This is not surprising given the fact that there have probably been more networks on the air than the Australian economy could sustain and the consequent permanent need to take much of the guesswork out of local television production. In this environment Australian television producers and broadcasters have consistently looked offshore for programme templates that would underwrite the success of local television production. Big Brother is merely one of the latest overseas formats to be adapted here. Second, looking at the

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ledger account between programme format imports and exports, one would have to say that current Australian television is predominantly an importing industry rather than an exporting one. As I have shown above several Australian soap opera formats have had a decisive impact in Western Europe but this moment of glory is well and truly over. Instead most formats come in rather than go out. Where they come from is the Anglo-American/European main street of international television. The Australian television producers and broadcasters almost universally draw their format imports from the USA, the UK, The Netherlands, Germany and one or two other European industries. Television formats do not come from Asia to Australia. Given the fact that the country’s economic foundations, political institutions, and cultural patterns mark it as part of an international Anglo-American diasporic formation, one of the many sites of a global English geolinguistic configuration, it might be predicted that the industry would look well beyond the television infrastructures of its geographically close neighbours, ranging from Indonesia to Japan for the television ideas and techniques that can help underwrite the start-up of new programmes. Certainly so far as this area of cultural and economic trade is concerned, Australia is part of a different ‘cultural continent’ whose geographical centre is located in the Northern Hemisphere. As I have shown in this chapter recent traffic in television programme templates between Australia and the rest of the world bears this out. When Big Brother was licensed to Australia it had not yet been adapted anywhere else in the region. Instead its Australian licensing can be seen to be part of a first licensing round to mainstream European industries, Australia being merely the most distant of these. Further stressing the cultural interval between Australia and its Asian neighbours is the fact that the Australian format for what had begun as the soap opera Sons and Daughters could only reach Indonesian television by first being remade for Germany. In the area of television programme format adaptation Australia should therefore be seen as an English-speaking extension of Europe rather than as part of either Asia or even Oceania.

Note 1 Interview conducted on 15 November 2001, Tim Clucas, senior executive, Network Ten.

13 An export/import industry New Zealand in the global television format business Geoff Lealand

In her recent analysis of reality television programming on New Zealand screens, University of Auckland academic Misha Kavka (2003) makes the following assertion: ‘New Zealand is fertile territory for reality television. As a crossing point for popular programming from both the UK and the US, New Zealand television is uniquely positioned to pick up and reflect the going trends of television production and development in the West.’ If we proceed from the assumption that ‘reality television’ is largely equivalent to ‘format television’ (together with game shows and news bulletins the most replicated categories of programming around the world) then New Zealand provides a valuable site for study. The most prevalent format programmes on New Zealand fall into the loose category of reality television with only rare examples from other genres. There have been very few successful New Zealand-made sitcoms and no attempts to rework imported sitcom formats. There have been more examples of locally produced formats in the broad category of variety/light entertainment. In the early decades of New Zealand television (1960s and 1970s) prime time schedules were dominated by local music shows such as C’mon and The Country Touch, and celebrity-fronted cooking shows. The star of one of the latter shows (Graham Kerr) went on find success on American television. In recent years, however, gardening programmes have replaced cooking programmes and examples which might fit the variety/light entertainment categories are far fewer. They now tend to fall into the youth television category fronted by young presenters like Mikey Havoc out on the road looking for adventure. Lifestyle programming is another possible category but this can be subsumed into a very broad ‘Magazine/Information’ genre. Examples of such programmes could include the long-running New Zealand rural programme Country Calendar and the consumer rights programme Fair Go. As I have argued elsewhere (Lealand and Martin 2001: 164) the ability to assign television programming to tidy categories has become very problematic as a result of the proliferation of genre mixing in contemporary television. Reality television, which comprises the most visible format television

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on New Zealand screens, can be defined as a documentary sub-genre of two main varieties; one strand which uses live (but usually edited) footage of surveillance or unobtrusive filming of the Candid Camera variety, and another strand where participants are aware they are being filmed in commonplace or unusual circumstances (Big Brother, Survivor). In addition to muddling the tidy categories of television genres (a great deal of reality television crosses genres, creating new hybrids) such programmes also provide a conundrum about the nature of television ‘reality’. They often appear to be ‘like life’ with a high modality value but in fact are usually transformations or distortions of what the participants might normally regard as their reality. It would not be too outrageous to suggest that such engagements with shifting notions of reality have greater resonance in those places where identity (national and personal) is still in a process of being formed and refined. New Zealand, ‘The last land mass in the world to feel the tread of a settler’s foot’ (Calder 2002: 81) has always been open to experimentation and change. National engagement with notions of cultural identity has been shaped by shifting paradigms: from mono-culturalism to biculturalism, and to multiculturalism. There has also been a series of particular experiments with television schedules. Indeed this small South Pacific Island nation has been described as the ‘social laboratory’ of the nineteenth century (the first country to give women the vote and a leader in social welfare legislation). In the late decades of the twentieth century, however, politicians transferred much of New Zealand’s reforming zeal to the pursuit of economic deregulation, leading the world in removing tariffs and protective barriers and opening up the country to the free market. In earlier decades broadcasting had been state controlled (1936–1961), followed by a more corporate style of government-appointed boards (1961–1989). Television began in the early 1960s and was funded by a mix of licence fees and advertising revenue. Market-led, openly commercial television began in earnest in the late 1980s as part of broader free market reforms and deregulation. Television New Zealand, the two-channel state-owned network, became a state-owned enterprise (SOE), obliged to return regular dividends to its shareholder, the government of the day. Foreignowned private broadcasters entered the market (assisted by the removal of any restrictions on ownership of television), and Pay TV was launched. The resulting mix was characterized by fierce competition for income and viewers and by the middle of the 1990s it could be argued that, ‘with ample justification New Zealand’s broadcasting environment is now the most deregulated in the world. The regime which now operates is extremely permissive by world standards’ (Screen Producers and Directors Association 2000: 6). In addition to removing any constraints on overseas ownership this ‘permissiveness’ extended to no limits on advertising level or sponsorship

New Zealand 187 intrusion, few special provisions or incentives for local programming (except for the funding role of New Zealand On Air), and limited monitoring of broadcasting standards (through the Broadcasting Standards Authority). The ascendancy of commercial imperatives, such as maximizing audiences, removing cross-subsidization of less-popular programming, and the siphoning off of taxation and dividends resulted in a domination of ‘down-market’, populist genres across the schedules during the 1990s. But this did not necessarily result in the predictable fears of a flood of cheap imports. Television schedules in New Zealand have always borrowed heavily from outside sources with local content usually only providing between 20 to 35 per cent of total broadcast hours. The Local Content 2001: New Zealand Television Report records New Zealand content at 23.6 per cent of total broadcast hours on the three main FTA channels (TV One, TV2 and TV3) in 2001 (37.2 per cent in prime time). These annual surveys have been compiled by the funding agency New Zealand On Air since 1988; in the intervening years, the highest level of local content was 31.8 per cent in 1989 and the lowest level was 19.2 per cent in 1996. American, British and Australian programmes have dominated television screens in New Zealand since the earliest days of transmissions. There have been few regulatory or structural impediments in the way of New Zealand sharing the pleasures of global television hits like Coronation Street, ER, Seinfeld, Friends, and Walking With Dinosaurs. In recent years New Zealand television has also reached an interesting accommodation between international trends in television programming and a desire to keep making local television through the rapid development of certain genres of TV whose boundaries are somewhat fuzzy and which have grown in number in many countries. These include: ‘reality TV’ shows, which shine the spotlight on the ‘everyday’ lives of ordinary people and, especially, embattled professionals and ‘lifestyle shows’, which encompass the spectrum from the highly constructed home or garden or beauty ‘makeover’ show (still steeped in narrative conventions of drama, suspense and resolution), to the shows basically offering footage of ‘street culture’ and amateur sports set to music, with intermittent narration (skate-boarding, hip-hop music and ‘extreme’ or dangerous sports are popular subjects in New Zealand). (Goode and Littlewood 2002: 54) Goode and Littlewood also argue that this emphasis on ‘everyday TV in New Zealand’ effectively blends the templates of international formats with local content so that ‘both aspects (form and content) bear the imprint of local and global influences’ (Goode and Littlewood 2002: 54). Such is the nature, however, of the relationship between television and politics in New Zealand that another change is sweeping through Television New Zealand in wake of the Labour Government’s continuing efforts

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to redirect (some say ‘forward’, some say ‘back’) to clearer, public service objectives. Although the motivations and need for change are not always clear they appear to originate in a distaste for the more overtly commercial aspects of television, and favour a ‘new, inclusive style of television that caters to children and people with minority tastes with a directive to move away from the dead-hand conservatism that pigeonholes audiences into neat demographic segments’ (Drinnan 2003: 23). Ian Fraser, who was appointed CEO of Television New Zealand in April 2002, cites research that records New Zealand viewer dissatisfaction growing from 48 per cent to 65 per cent between 1992 and 1996. Although these figures are 6 years old, Fraser argues that change is still desired (and desirable), insisting that TVNZ can change and not lose viewers (Drinnan 2003: 23) The pace of change is slow, its mechanisms not always transparent, and the outcomes not yet clear. It is possible that changes will be more cosmetic than a transformation of the shape and purpose of New Zealand television, given that there is no clear consensus on what ‘public service broadcasting’ might mean these days. Even less clear is how strongly change is desired. The politicians and senior executives leading the charge are adamant that they need to control and dilute the commercial imperatives that have governed Television New Zealand (and New Zealand television in general) for over a decade. Despite early alarms advertisers have not fled television; in fact in the last quarter of 2002 television advertising on New Zealand television screens increased by 11.3 per cent, following on from a 6.6 per cent increase in the preceding quarter (New Zealand Herald 2003: C4).

Format television and New Zealand viewers Even though television viewing levels have remained stable with no dramatic shifts up or down, what the New Zealand viewing public think about the matter is largely unknown. One crude measure of their response is displayed in weekly audience ratings, which show consistency in viewing preferences. Television ratings for week ending 7 December 2002. National viewers aged 5 and over. 1 Dream Home [format: NZ] 2 Coronation Street [drama: UK] 3 The Zoo [format: NZ] 4 One News [prime time news bulletin: NZ] 5 Holmes [current affairs: NZ] 6 McLeod’s Daughters [drama: Aust] 7 Treasure Island Extreme [format: NZ] 8 House of the Year 2002 [information: NZ] 9 Holiday Airport Lanzarote [reality/travel: UK] 10 My Hero [sitcom: UK] (New Zealand Herald 2002: A22)

New Zealand 189 The above is typical of the weekly choices of the mainstream of New Zealand viewers, as determined by Peoplemeter constructions of the audience. Other categories of the audience (the 18 to 49 demographic, for example) display some variation favouring local serial drama such as Shortland Street or US sitcoms including The Simpsons and Friends, but a preference for local versions of imported formats is consistently displayed across all sectors of the New Zealand television audience. Format-based programmes are also amongst the most popular locallyproduced programmes on New Zealand television. Such programmes, with examples, fall into the following categories: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Real estate programmes (Carter’s My House, My Castle; Going, Going, Gone; Location, Location, Location). Home improvement/make-over programmes (Mitre 10 DIY Rescue; Dream Home). Law enforcement/‘reality’ programmes (Motorway Patrol; City Beat; Police Ten 7). Animal/environment programmes (The Zoo; Park Rangers). Medical programmes (Kid’s Hospital). Castaway gameshows (Treasure Island). Infotainment (The Panel).

Some of the above examples are variations (or ‘re-versions’) of imported formats (Mitre 10 DIY Rescue, Treasure Island) whilst some are locally developed formats (Location, Location, Location, Park Rangers). More notable global successes, such as Big Brother and Survivor, have not been re-versioned for New Zealand; the closest experience for New Zealand viewers was the Australian version of Big Brother 2 (2002) when New Zealand viewers were able to telephone-vote contestants off the show. Such programmes add to the considerable presence of Australian programmes on New Zealand, a trans-Tasman trade flow which favours Australia, despite an Australian High Court ruling of 1998 that permitted New Zealand programmes to be counted as local under the Australian content requirements. The considerable cost of ‘big event’ programmes such as Big Brother is the primary reason they are not replicated in New Zealand. Instead they are borrowed from their closest neighbour. The local television industry is better able to cope with smaller-scale formats – the kinds of formats which illuminate ‘the everyday lives of ordinary people’ at work or play in familiar settings from hospital-based reality series such as Middlemore (medical daily dealings from the serious to the mundane) or compilations of police or security footage, in Highway Patrol (stories of drunk drivers, un-roadworthy cars, badly-secured loads). One series that exemplifies the modest ‘can-do’ nature of such programmes is The $20 Challenge, the winner of the Best Entertainment Show in the 2000 New Zealand Television Awards. It was devised by

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producer Amanda Evans of the Pacific Crews production house and based on her own experiences of travel: Everyone I know has a story of being caught somewhere foreign with only twenty bucks left to get them back through London and home for Christmas. I thought – what would if we dropped people into just that situation – give them $20 and get them to find their own accommodation and food for a few days – and then sit back – and see what happens. (Pacific Crews 2002) The format records the adventures of four young New Zealanders as they attempt to survive in a mystery foreign city with just $US20 to last them 3 days. In addition to these limited funds they are expected to get by on their natural guile and the kindness of strangers in their pursuit of food and lodgings as well as assistance in a series of challenges. These have included ascending to the top of the Eiffel Tower (Paris), having their photo taken with someone famous (London), earning money telling fortunes (Amsterdam), and getting a bunch of locals to perform a Mexican Wave in Barcelona. Rating very healthily in New Zealand, the format seemed to touch on familiar experiences with the participants displaying the mix of ingenuity, inventiveness and naivety that is sometimes claimed as the ‘New Zealand character’. Following its New Zealand success the format went into production in Australia (Network Ten) with world rights being sold to Pearson Television (now Freemantle Media) in 2000.

The New Zealand invention of Popstars The $20 Challenge is not the only example of New Zealand producers pioneering format television series where ‘ordinary’ people have been removed from their customary environments and placed in extraordinary circumstances. One of the major international television successes of the late 1990s was Popstars and its variations UK Popstars, Popstars: the Rivals, Irish Popstars and Pop Idol. Following in a long-established popular music tradition of manufacturing and marketing pop bands (The Monkees, The Knack, Spice Girls), and indeed making the process more transparent, these variations on a format spawned all-girl or all-boy or mixed groups all over the globe, from Sugar Jones in Canada to Bardot in Australia and Hear’Say in Britain. Before they passed into obscurity or the indignity of the remainder bin these groups sold an estimated 10 million plus albums around the world (McKessar 2002: E3). The very first Popstars was conceived of and made in New Zealand by producer Jonathan Dowling, who has been described as ‘a smart guy with a great TV idea’ (McKessar 2002: E3). Popstars was developed in partnership with co-producer Bill Toepfer,

New Zealand 191 who ‘came up with the idea of a manufactured band show Popstars after watching his 10 year old daughter sing along to the Spice Girls’ (Simpson 2000: 25). It was originally pitched to Television New Zealand as a documentary following the making of a band, as Geoff Steven, Head of Production at TVNZ recalls, ‘I did a lot of work with Jonathan turning it from a straight documentary into a TV2 show, along the way, without realizing it, turning it into a format’ (McCarroll 2001: 22). Programme manager Julia Bayliss, who was Steven’s colleague at TV2 in 2001 agreed that they failed to anticipate the format potential of Popstars, commenting that it ‘was our loss, I suppose, long term’ (McCarroll 2001: 22). There certainly was a lost financial opportunity. Shortly after Popstars screened in New Zealand (beginning in April 1999 at 8pm on TV2), the Australian based production company Screentime purchased the international format rights from Dowling and fellow-producer Bill Toepfer and went on to sell and co-produce versions of the format to the UK, USA, Canada, Italy, Germany and more than thirty other countries. Screentime continues to benefit from its ownership of Popstars. In November 2002 The Guardian reported that Screentime was earning 20 per cent of the considerable income generated from Popstars: the Rivals (2002) (Media Guardian 2002). The pioneering New Zealand Popstars series won the New Zealand TV Guide Award for Best Entertainment Series in 1999. One promotional New Zealand website cites it as ‘[A] formula [that] has become a unique New Zealand export success’ (New Zealand Edge 2002) while a 90-minute New Zealand documentary Popstars: A Worldwide Story (TV2, 5 May 2002, 7.30pm) made a special claim for the band which evolved out of the New Zealand series, ‘unlike all the other Popstars bands that were formed around the world, TrueBliss were the trailblazers and had no role models – they were the first’. Dowling and Teopfer were also trailblazers in that they were the first producers to uncover and mine a very valuable vein of contemporary popular culture. Unfortunately, they also failed to appreciate the full value of their creation. According to global format developer (and self-confessed ‘format tart . . . I’ll sell to anyone’) Mark Overett, the Australian production company Screentime immediately recognized the ‘cash cow’ potential of Popstars, as well as buying into the New Zealand production house Communicado in order to further benefit from the future creative potential of New Zealand producers (Overett 2002, personal interview).1 There are many examples of versioning of imported formats in the decades of New Zealand television which pre-dated Popstars, from the pre-school series Playschool, which ran to the late 1980s as the premiere pre-school series, to the current affairs programme 60 Minutes (currently screening on TV2 with all-New Zealand stories following the original US format structure of three stories per episode). It was Popstars, however, which began to reverse this long-established inward flow, to provide

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opportunities for New Zealand producers to become exporters of New Zealand-developed formats. It was also Popstars that opened the floodgates for myriad look-alike format programmes with an emphasis on youthful participants and targeting young audiences across the free-to-air channels in New Zealand, to capture this all-important demographic with disposable income. Format television with young participants, or projected to the interests of youth, became the new imperative, modelled on the success of Popstars.

Developing New Zealand formats for the global market It was the increasing prevalence and popularity of imported formats such as Big Brother and ‘versioned’ or locally originated format television from 1999 that rapidly split the New Zealand viewing public into two opposing camps: enthusiastic fans and antagonistic critics. The focus of attention was increasingly Julie Christie, the inspiration behind Touchdown Productions, the primary production house of format television in New Zealand. In December 2002 she gained the ‘They’re Watching Our Crap There’ Award in the annual Dubious Achievement Awards 2002, awarded by Auckland city magazine Metro, which explained the award in the following terms: Julie Christie and Touchdown Productions Thinking of the balance of payments and all, you’ve got to be grateful for the export earnings brought in by the unstoppable Christie’s burgeoning television production company. The Chair alone has sold in 20 countries, including the world’s biggest television markets. And, you know, it’s not like anyone’s being forced to watch it. We’re into, er, celebrating success, naturally, but please can we just be allowed the faintest smirk when the term ‘intellectual property’ is applied to the Touchdown canon? (Metro 2002: 54) Readers could attribute such views to the jaundiced prejudices of a disenchanted journalist (the text is attributed to Bevan Rapson), one in a lengthy list of dubious awards bestowed on a mixed bunch of New Zealand politicians, personalities and sportspeople. Nevertheless, Metro does represent a sizeable constituency of middle-class, middle-brow attitudes that are consistently opposed to popular culture enthusiasms beyond their own cosmopolitan tastes. It is not just the commercial successes of Christie’s company that rankles; it is the widespread belief that it is Christie who is solely (or most) responsible for filling New Zealand television screens with cheaply made clones of imported, low-brow formats. The usual clichés of ‘dumbed-down television’ or ‘lowest common denominator television’ are employed in such criticisms. In reply Christie might well argue that she is making televi-

New Zealand 193 sion for the largest common denominator, a significant shift in semantics whereby audience demand is the over-riding consideration. Giving ‘the people want they want’ is her raison d’être, rather than some prolonged, deliberate policy of cultural degradation or programming vandalism. Christie describes her intentions in the following terms: All the successful formats ever since the beginning have been based around ‘let’s take one type of TV, put in some rules and turn it into the format’. The great thing is the broadcaster knows he doesn’t have to worry about it because he knows exactly what he is getting, the viewers knows exactly what they are getting – what to expect. I think format TV enables people to have familiarity – and they like familiarity; they like it like their favourite pair of jeans. They don’t necessarily always have to be shocked or challenged. (Christie 2002, personal interview)2 Christie positions her philosophy of television production within a broader vision of television as a democratizing populist medium: [Where] I grew up television was our one and only form of entertainment and that is the way it is for a lot of people. So, especially in family situations where television may be an escape, the humour, the fun and the emotion of television is very important for your overall understanding of life. I’m talking about the situations where a lot of people don’t have a choice . . . that’s where I came from and that’s why I think I understand mass audiences so well. It is because I understand the place television plays for probably two-thirds of this country. (Christie 2002, personal interview) Christie also has a clear vision of the role of formats in New Zealand television schedules: There must be 20 or 30 format programmes on New Zealand television at any one time. I don’t think this given enough recognition. In my opinion the greatest formats in the world are This Is Your Life and Changing Rooms, the latter because it totally changed the way we think about television. The thing about Changing Rooms is that it took a lifestyle show and information show – about how to fix up your house – and added a game show element, with very specific rules. I was the first one in the world to do it; then Peter Bazalgette in England did it, and everyone else has followed since. All the successful formats since have been based around this – let’s take one type of TV, put in some rules and turn into a format – and that was first successfully done with Changing Rooms. (Christie 2002, personal interview)

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Touchdown produced the New Zealand version of Changing Rooms, with rights purchased from the BBC/Endemol. Several seasons of this programme have been very successful in New Zealand and have spawned a relentless wave of home improvement/garden make-over clones. Such domestically oriented formats do appeal to New Zealand viewers but Christie also believes there are particular opportunities and constraints in making format television for New Zealand audiences: In New Zealand there is not the pressure to go to extremes that there is in the rest of the world. All our reality TV is for prime time whereas overseas they’re making a lot of shows that show at 11 o’clock at night, so they get more and more outrageous – because this is a small country and I don’t think New Zealanders like to see television as exploiting people. We tend to self-regulate. It’s just about human decency. (Laxon 2003: A13) As the leading producer of format television programmes in New Zealand, Touchdown has effectively built a very strong presence on local screens. Mark Overett gives support to the importance of Christie and Touchdown Productions in the Australia/New Zealand television market: Julie Christie is an incredible talent. Not only running her own company, she’s also set up her own distribution company to distribute her own formats. She is probably the major mover and shaker in this neck of the woods. She’s the ideas person as well and that’s the strength of her convictions, that she knows she can create winning shows that are going to be hits everywhere around the world. She has the capacity not only to get them up but also to sell them internationally. (Overett 2002, personal interview) Overett also sees unique aspects to Touchdown’s (and New Zealand’s) open embrace of format television. He argues that ‘it’s less of an “old boy” network in New Zealand’. The doors are more open in contrast with the conservative Australian production industry. He regards New Zealand television production as being ‘much more healthy . . . particularly in the light entertainment area’ (Overett 2002, personal interview). Touchdown Productions now has offices in London and Sydney and even set up a temporary office in Los Angeles for the development of The Chair. It has also become a significant player in international markets, as Christie explains: We are in a situation now where I think 70 percent of our business is offshore. We produce in Australia, we produce for Ireland, and now in America. Nearly all this is formats or we licence other people to make

New Zealand 195 our shows. For example, the licence fee I get from the BBC [for a Touchdown format] is more than I could ever hope to get for the same series in New Zealand and for a lot less effort. I guess the term they would probably use is that we punch outside our weight (whatever they say in boxing). Certainly, with The Chair on ABC in the USA (and coming up on the BBC) and in another 22 countries, we are in a situation where everyone knows about us. Sometimes they refer to us as ‘the new Endemol’. (Christie 2002, personal interview)

The Chair takes on the US Networks The international ‘break-through’ format idea for Touchdown in 2002 was The Chair, a game show that hooked contestants up to a heart monitor and displayed their heart rate fluctuations as they answered a series of multi-choice questions. The accumulation of cash prizes depended on a cool demeanour and a heart rate kept under control. The show was developed by Touchdown in 2001 with an initial four New Zealand-made pilots forming a pitch to the American network Fox (and other US networks) in November 2001. According to Christie, ‘Fox indicated they would do anything to get it’, but this ‘anything’ included developing an unauthorized, ‘knock-off’ programme called The Chamber. This action resulted in Touchdown filing court papers in the US District Court in Los Angeles on 4 January 2002 seeking a halt to Fox’s production plans and ‘unstated punitive damages’. The court injunction argued: If Fox’s The Chamber is aired before The Chair, Touchdown will forever be deprived of the opportunity to produce its first-of-a-kind programme. Instead, Fox will receive credit for a new genre of television game show using Touchdown’s concepts. (The Evening Post 2002: 3) In January 2002 The Chair, hosted by former tennis star John McEnroe, was in pre-production in Los Angeles and had been sold to Australia, France and Germany. By late January Fox had axed The Chamber in the US because of low ratings and a court settlement had been reached between Fox, Touchdown and ABC. The Chair went to air on ABC in the USA the same month and initially out-rated The Chamber but did not last out its full 13 episodes. In May 2002, a 10-episode version (again hosted by John McEnroe) began screening on BBC1. The history of The Chair/The Chamber highlights in a very vivid fashion the importance of the format trade in contemporary television and how small players can sometimes occupy a central role in the complex world of the international format trade. The local and international activities of Touchdown Productions now receive some positive recognition in New

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Zealand and Julie Christie is receiving particular attention as a role model entrepreneur. In 2002 she was appointed to co-chair the governmentinitiated Screen Industry Task Force with Jim Anderton, the Minister for Economic Development which reported, in March 2003, on the future of the state of film and television production in New Zealand. The international success of Touchdown also suggests that formats can be developed in sites outside the major industry centres and can introduce counter-flows into the usual long-established trade routes of international television. Even though the control of the format trade is likely to increasingly concentrate in the hands of the big players (such as Endemol and Screentime), there is also a sense that profitable spaces remain for smaller companies in smaller companies – and most especially for individual producers who can come up with the Next Big Thing, or the terrific breakthrough idea. Reality television has been the driving force of the format trade for the past 4 or 5 years, and according to a British report ‘if you thought the reality TV craze was running out of steam think again, there’s plenty more to come in 2003’ (Deans 2003). In the UK and USA at least sixteen new reality shows were launched in January 2003 or were in the offing. New Zealand viewers will doubtless get to see many of these (such the second series of American Idol, the US version of Pop Idol) but also many more local versions of formats developed in the major television markets. Meantime, Julie Christie and her colleagues are busy developing their next assault on the world of international television, having learnt from the experiences of both Popstars and The Chair, whilst the shape of New Zealand television changes around them.

Notes 1 Interview conducted on 16 October 2002 with Mark Overett, independent television format advisor. 2 Interview conducted on 21 May 2002 with Julie Christie, Touchdown Productions, Auckland.

14 Joining the circle Albert Moran and Michael Keane

Although the preceding chapters take stock of particular national situations across the different television industries of Asia – from Japan and South Korea in the north to Australia and New Zealand in the south, their conceptual value lies not only in particular findings but also in their capacity to stimulate further ponderings about the conjunction of Asia, programme formats, television industries and globalization. Here in this epilogue chapter we join the circle, reflecting further on each of these concepts in the light of the different national discussions of formats. Let us take each in turn.

Asia The uptake of television formats within the Asian countries in this study demonstrates a number of important points that build on existing studies of media in Asia. The first observation is that domestic television content in Asia, at least in the countries canvassed in this study, is in a relatively healthy state. Programmes and genres are diverse, while interactivity is on the ascendancy with value-added services such as SMS further consolidating advertising revenues. And for the most part local programmes are well appreciated by audiences. In some notable instances these have become the source of export earnings within proximate countries. This points towards a new growth spurt in the region, as a number of authors have suggested, a second stage of expansion that supersedes earlier reliance on imported or syndicated programming in many countries (Lee, Liu and Chen; Santos; Kitley). This content-driven recovery refutes the problematic claims by Olsen (1999) that the USA ‘has little serious competition in the production and distribution of television programming’ (xi). The hyperbole of Hollywood Planet confirms the blind spot of film and television statistics. Based on gross income it may be the case that Hollywood has no serious competitors but if one examines relative expenditure on local content based on currency market values (cf. O’Regan 1992) or actual screen-time, the picture is completely different. In fact the resurgence of local content is confirmed by the increasing marginalization

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of US content as new ideas, often format-driven are taken up and localized, in many instances in the context of competition among networks (Kapner 2003). A second point to note is that there is no Asian standard; that is, there is no ‘transparent’ Asian text in the sense that Olson argues the case for the American media. This transparency – a generic capacity to be read across cultures – supposedly forms ‘a fairly unique bond between text and audience’ (xi) leading to the comparative advantage that Hollywood accrues in world markets. While a lack of transparency appears on the surface to support Olsen’s argument about US dominance, it also provides a clue to how Asian media systems are developing. Within and across the countries researched we find active debates about localization from domestic producers, and from international companies such as StarTV, CNN-Time Warner, and Disney seeking the magic solution for success. In fact, the strength of local content testifies to a different, more flexible business model reasserting itself against Hollywood’s push to force open global markets. By selling formats – rather than finished programmes – into proximate (and sometimes distant) markets, smaller second and third tier production industries can derive economic rents from their ideas without having to worry about how the programme content will be ‘read’. After all, the responsibility for the content of formats ultimately falls to the licensee. Alternatively, licensee networks use the know-how that comes with the format to effectively regenerate industries, in effect borrowing intellectual capital as well as cultural capital (Keane; Kitley). A third point is that while many breaches of the ethics of format business have occurred, there is now a growing recognition of the protocols of format exchange in Asian countries. In the chapters on Korea and Taiwan we find a gradual tightening up of indiscriminate copying, partly due to the fact that markets are now more open, making the foreign text more visible. This visibility has also resulted in widespread condemnation of opportunistic copying practices. In Japan, a country that has set the pace for formatting, both in popular culture and in television formats, we find a mix of vigilance and ambivalence towards its format imitators. Of course, the bottom line is economics. Where a ‘copied’ format is blatantly inferior or just an attempt to exploit a trend, the chances are it will sink without a trace. When a format idea is exploited within a new market before the initiator has had a chance to move, it is a much different matter. Of course, this may be construed as just good business sense or seizing the moment, as in the case of CCTV in China moving quickly to localize Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? while Shanghai Television were procrastinating over the licensed rights with Celador. As a number of authors have commented, threats of litigation are usually enough to ensure mediation wins out over bitter recrimination (Kitley; Liu and Chen; Iwabuchi; Moran). In other cases, and in some on-going disputes in locations such as the People’s Republic of China and India, these issues are less clear-cut. It seems the

Joining the circle 199 larger and more fragmented the media system, the more temptation there is to take advantage of copyright uncertainty.

Formats and change in systems A final point that comes through all the studies concerns the kinds of formats that ‘take’ in various Asian markets, and the kind of narrative and aesthetic changes that have occurred as a result of the boom in formatting. Why for instance, have quiz and game shows dominated the Asian landscape while reality television formats such as Big Brother failed to make the grade? A simplistic explanation might suggest that moral values constrain what might be portrayed. Game and quiz shows provide innocuous yet educational content for consumers and are enthusiastically supported by governments. The risqué adventures and egotistical grandstanding celebrated in the Western Survivor and Big Brother do not translate into some Asian contexts, although as Iwabuchi points out in relation to Japan, there are any number of gratuitous game shows featuring on Japanese television. In Thailand, a country that was not covered in this study, a localized version of The Weakest Link (Kamchad Jud Orn) was dumped after almost a year. The Thai version, launched in February 2002, resulted in controversy over its impact on Thai culture and values. Changing the format, including such innovations as the inclusion of a panel of eight transsexual and transvestite contestants, failed to prolong the series’ life. In the Philippines the mundane quiz show has been embellished by a choreographed troupe, the Sex Bomb Dancers, adding a bizarre new dimension to the knowledge acquisition game (Santos). In China the sour demeanor of the Anne Robinson quiz-mistress has been transformed into a smiling and witty MC while still retaining a cutthroat element in the game. In making the transition into new territories formats need to assuage threats to cultural values, and as Kitley notes, the best ‘guides’ here are local. For instance, a special symposium convened at China’s CCTV in June 2002 to investigate the differences between Chinese reality television and Western formats such as Survivor concluded that the Chinese versions were ‘anthropological and sociological’ while the inferior Western versions were about commercialism and voyeurism (CCTV 2002). In terms of what new formats add to the narrative repertoires of local industries, we note first the democratization of performance. In some countries visited in this study ordinary people can find their ‘15 minutes’ of fame on the small screen as ‘honoured’ contestants. In other instances viewers play an active role in deciding who wins and who loses, creating ‘a new relationship between participants and viewers’ (Roscoe 2001: 12). The democratization of participation, however, is not consistent across all countries: the People’s Republic of China celebrates the ‘common person’ (Keane) while Japanese producers feel that the ‘layperson’ does not make ‘good television’ (Iwabuchi). In Taiwan public exposure has a longer

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legacy in the form of ‘restaurants shows’ (Liu and Chen). Questions of authenticity are also fore-grounded in reality-based formats, as is the presence of the camera. As Jane Roscoe comments, new formats are ‘hybrids’ that ‘breathe life into prime-time slots’, enabling a shift from third to first person narrative styles (Roscoe 2001: 9). In this sense the format can act as a Trojan Horse, bringing about change in genres and presentation conventions that have stood the test of time. This is particularly evident in authoritarian regimes such as China where what is said in the media, and how it is said, remains heavily formalized according to socialist realist aesthetics and pedagogical conventions.

The programme format For the most the part authors in this study have been content to adopt an industry perspective so far as understanding the operation of formats in national settings. However, it is worth emphasizing again just what formats actually are and what effects they achieve. Fundamentally, formats constitute processes of systematization of difference within repetition, tying together the television system as a whole, national television industries, programme ideas, particular adaptations, and individual episodes of specific adaptations. It is conceptually useful to realize that formats are in homological relationship with a series of other entities located at a set of crossroads where principles of difference intersect with principles of repetition. Alongside the phenomenon of the format and its adaptation we can include langue (/parole), genre (/text), and globalization (/local). All of these pairs appear to be loci par excellence of repetition and difference, sameness and variation. Formats intervene between two instances of production process within television institutions: that of mainstream programming and the specific adaptation that finds expression in an individual text or programme episode. As several of the chapters in this book have demonstrated, formats establish a regulation of the variety of mainstream programming across a series of individual programme episodes, organizing and systematizing the difference that each episode represents, filling the gap between the episode and the format as system. Formats are directly related to the textual economy of mainstream television programming in that they systematize its regime of difference and repetition. In this way they function to move the subject from episode to episode and from the level of the episode to the level of the programming system, binding these together into a constant coherence that is part of the television institution. In doing so formats themselves are marked by difference within repetition – from one element of a format package to another, from one national adaptation of a format to another, from one series of a national adaptation to another series of an adaptation of the same format, and from one programme episode of the format adaptation to another.

Joining the circle 201 In other words, formats are not so much systems as processes of systematization in which a rule-bound element and an element of transgression are equally important. In this respect there are clear analogies with genres and how they operate. Indeed, in stressing the multiple levels contained in an element such as genre (or, for that matter, format), Lotman (1990) has coined the useful term ‘incomplete equivalence’ as a means of designating the necessary relationship between particular instances of the phenomenon or that obtaining between the level of the instance and the general level of the phenomenon. No adaptation can ever constitute the only possible or correct rendering of a particular format and neither can any single adaptation ever constitute the range of possible renderings of any format. This is an important conceptual point. Instead, format adaptation always lies along a continuum ranging from the radically similar to the radical different although we also need to recognize that such a spectrum also lies along an axis of difference-within-repetition. In effect, with formats we are confronted by the paradox that although they seem to be a system, nevertheless, apart from the development of a methodology of empirical observation deliberately employed in this book, formats mostly appears to defy analysis. For example, a specific format is knowable by producers, audiences, and even researchers only as a memorial master text or meta-text: a single continuous text imagined through a mental assemblage of its individual instances and embodiments (paper format, bible, pilot tape, production knowledge and expertise, and so on). Each adaptation retrospectively helps to constitute and confirm the imaginary object that is the format.

Television industries We can further canvass the action of television formats in tying together different television industries across Asia and across the world. Here the idea of the television format as a cultural technology is especially useful. Although the term technology is an elusive word, recent analysis within the social sciences and elsewhere has emphasized that the term has much wider application than the designation of a physical piece of hardware. Rather, technology is a social creation whose various elements are brought together by individuals or organizations to solve a particular problem or to achieve a specific practical end (MacKenzie and Wacjman 1985). Obviously then, it requires little imagination to see a television programme format as a cultural technology. In turn, the adaptation of a television format from one television industry to another constitutes a specific instance of technological transfer. While it is tempting to view such a transfer as an instance of technological dependence, a more recent and useful perspective insists that such exchanges are inevitably complexly determined such that their effects cannot be necessarily postulated in advance. According to this view technological transfer must be viewed

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within a far broader context than the transfer of physical hardware – or in the case of formats – bodies of ideas. Rather, whole societies and their institutions have to be ready to receive a technology and crucial resources must be available for successful transfer to occur. Without the social, political, and economic conditions to create an effective demand for it, and the human, financial, and infrastructural capacity to put the technology into productive use, its potential will be unrealized. This is a richly suggestive framework for thinking about the dynamics and effects of format trade and adaptation across different television industries in different parts of the world, most notably Asia. The theoretical value of this approach lies in the fact that it sees technology as an outcome of a specific social environment or system. Because technology arises in a particular time and place, it embodies the characteristics that suit it for use and survival in that environment. Technological transfer is the process of transporting and relocating the technology in a new environment. Whether the technology will function effectively in the new setting will depend on a range of factors to do with the total system where it is transplanted. In other words, this model is a communicative one in which one national system acts as an encoder and the foreign system functions as decoder, while the particular technology that is transferred is the message that is communicated from one system to another. This model of a communication between two systems is drawn from Lotman (1990) although his theory is schematic and he does not elaborate on the factors affecting the transmission and reception of communicative messages of this kind. However, technology transfer studies have done just that. Todd (1995) emphasizes that a technology is a complex entity consisting of functionally interdependent parts, having characteristics different to those of its isolated components and existing in a social, political, and economic environment which is outside its control but which may influence its course. Elements of a technological system are the physical items such as machines and pieces of hardware; organizational components can extend from factory layout and internal management procedures to include such things as supplier firms and financial institutions; related knowledges comes in both intellectual and institutional forms, and includes books, articles, university teaching, and research programmes; legislative factors such as patent laws, product standards, and regulation of working conditions represent social attitudes and values. Because a technological system is shaped by a particular national environment, consisting of various social, political and economic factors, the process of technological transfer to a new national setting, a new environment, will involve adaptation to new political, legal, educational, cultural, social and economic institutions, as well as geography, and resource conditions. It is possible, therefore, to think of national systems of technology shaped by a unique set of historical factors, reflecting certain national characteristics, institutions, values and goals. Clearly then, this bricolage

Joining the circle 203 drawn from Lotman and technology transfer studies offers a flexible and subtle instrument for investigating and understanding the practice of television programme format adaptation. One general example of the value of this perspective will suffice here. Why do format adaptations from one television landscape to another sometimes fail? Why does The Weakest Link work in Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, and not in Taiwan? Inside a television business parameter, the only explanation for failure lies in contingent events and circumstances. However, by understanding formats as cultural technologies being transferred between highly organized television institutions in different national settings, we begin to set up the opportunity for a more nuanced and richer analysis of the processes in question.

Globalization Finally, and inevitably we return to the idea of formats in relation to globalization. Until the recent explosion in international traffic in television programme formats to which the different chapters of this book attest, much of the local television production occurring within national boundaries was based on ideas, no matter how derivative, originated inside that same mediascape. However, as author after author demonstrate here, this nexus has been considerably weakened, if not broken, in recent years under the impact of global trade in formats. The growth and formalization of format movements across the world leads to a situation where a broadcaster in India looks to use a format first devised and developed in the UK as the basis for a new programme, even while a New Zealand devisor licenses a format to a Brazilian television producer as the basis of a new, Brazilian-produced programme. Obviously this phenomenon is one of the many elements that have been recently bracketed together under the general label of globalization. While it is increasingly impossible to maintain that the media are American, nevertheless the globalizing experiences of different television industries vary considerably, although taken overall global format trade tends to run down a series of one-way streets. The cultural implications of this situation are many-sided and need considerable thinking through. Elsewhere, as well as in these chapters, we have rejected the idea that formats constitute a medium of cultural imperialism (Moran 1998), preferring instead to adopt a more agnostic point of view that emphasizes that both the sending and the receiving television environments can be highly determinative of the shaping and effect of the format. However, there is an industry dimension to this movement of formats that is also worth considering. This concerns the enhancement or run-down of the research and development (R&D) capacity of a particular national television industry under the impact of this global movement of formats. Of course, it has to be immediately added that the particular experience of specific television

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production industries is likely to vary considerably. The chapter on Japan has shown what a powerhouse that television industry is, not least so far as supplying many of its own formats as well as that of a trade flow to Taiwan, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China, and Korea. Similarly, as the chapter on Australia has revealed, the balance of imports and exports can shift over time such that an industry can swing from being a powerhouse of format R&D for other television industries to becoming dependent on the R&D of television industries elsewhere. Nevertheless, it would seem to be the case that where a particular television system is a net importer of formats, this means in effect that the local production industry is being reduced to a kind of branch-plant function on behalf of programme formats devised outside the country or territory whose intellectual property is held elsewhere. Unlike the situation where much local television production is based on programme ideas that were locally developed, the net import of formats means that there is a constant reduction in R&D capacity so far as idea origination is concerned. Under the impact of format import, whatever local ability and knowledge that do exist are likely to lack replenishment. Structural neglect of this capacity over time is likely to lead to its eventual disappearance. In summary then, as this book has shown, formats are a vital part of Asian television in the recent present and in the foreseeable future. Where once television industries in the region were mostly national affairs, often cut off and isolated from each other, now they are increasingly related to each other and to a global traffic flow. Coronation Street comes to China, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan; Pop Stars to Australia. . . the list goes on and on. As this book has shown, while it is easy (and misleading) to assume that Asia is becoming one place so far as television is concerned, the astonishing and multiplying phenomenon of format flows across the region as a whole challenge us as television scholars to both track this phenomenon and continue to ponder its meaning.

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Index

authenticity 33, 200 bible 5, 14, 21, 24, 32, 86, 98, 144, 146, 150, 201 bricolage 52, 202 Celador 80, 81, 82, 91, 114, 122, 128, 132, 138, 177, 198 cloning 10, 14, 16, 38, 41–3, 44, 51, 54, 57, 71, 74, 75, 80, 82, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 96, 103, 104, 122, 125, 127–30, 132, 134, 136–7, 166, 175 co-production 5, 12, 14, 41, 66, 71, 75, 81, 89, 100, 119 collaging 44–6 consultancy service 6, 153 consultant 128, 150, 155, 180 content requirements 60, 72, 189 copyright 7, 49, 64, 69, 95, 100, 103, 104, 147, 152, 153, 199; breach 10, 130; infringements 152, 177; law 9, 18, 137; regulations 148–9; violation of 151 creativity 9–11, 48, 106, 119, 136, 138, 153, 155 cultural: borrowing 9, 14, 15, 23, 28, 56, 88, 95, 153; continent 9, 10, 17, 184; discount 26, 29, 36, 37, 50, 57, 58; homogeneity 3; identity 12, 19, 48, 119, 186; imperialism 11, 15, 36, 105, 108–9, 120, 203; industries 10, 15, 34, 71, 72, 84, 125; odour 21, 23, 27, 29, 33, 113, 120; proximity 58, 64, 75; technology 6, 8, 14, 15, 154, 201, 203 domestic: market 22, 57, 69, 71, 94, 112, 114, 151; producers 64, 198; production 5, 39, 62, 110;

programmes 36, 40, 57, 62, 130; programming 22, 125; television content 88, 197 ECM 97, 98, 103 Endemol 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 194, 195, 196 format: borrowing 10, 17, 64, 75, 172; business 7, 9, 11, 15, 21, 23–4, 26, 29, 31, 33, 34, 85, 107, 146, 198; definition 5–6, 16, 54, 56, 60; export 15, 20, 21, 26–31, 33, 66, 73, 98, 151, 164, 174, 184, 185, 191–2; hybrid 60, 71, 76, 172, 186, 200; import 6, 19, 22–3, 36, 37, 40, 47, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 66, 67, 72, 73, 74, 84, 85, 108, 141–3, 149–50, 164, 171–2; interactive 14, 95, 102, 119; paper 5; sales 13 franchise 77, 78, 79–80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 98, 103, 128, 158, 160 FRAPA 6, 177 GATS 13 global localization 28, 34 globalization 2–3, 14, 16, 20, 21–2, 26, 33–5, 36–8, 72, 86–7, 120, 155, 197, 200, 203; cultural 3, 23, 33, 86, 91; interim 17, 86 globalizing cultural flows 109 glocal 22, 35 glocalizing 29 Hollywood 3, 13, 14, 18, 23, 107, 122, 136, 197, 198 hybridization 17, 28, 52, 76–7, 81, 82, 92, 154 hybridized programme see collaging

220

Index

innovation 9, 54, 76, 88, 90, 94, 95, 101, 102, 103, 136, 178, 199 intellectual property 9–10, 20, 89, 94, 95, 104, 142, 147, 148–152, 153, 192, 204 isomorphism 17, 56, 89, 91–5, 103

85, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145, 149, 150, 153–4, 176, 187 localization 9, 14, 16, 18, 21, 28–9, 34, 37, 54, 62, 75, 86, 88, 94, 95, 100, 113, 143–6, 147, 153, 157, 163, 198

know-how 14, 15, 16, 18, 24, 40, 56, 64, 89, 103, 153, 198

manga 16, 67, 68, 69 modelling 14, 15, 16, 73 modernity 2, 10, 14, 16, 17, 34, 36, 44, 75, 109; ubiquitous 15, 17 mukokuseki 15, 27, 28

legal: action 6, 58, 103, 130, 133, 177; conflicts 48; recourse 91; system 149, 151 license 13, 24, 31, 46, 55, 81, 97, 99, 100, 111, 140, 141; fee 59, 64, 80, 166 licensee 18, 146, 149, 154, 155, 198 local: audience 13, 24, 36, 38, 39, 40, 48, 52, 54, 117, 118; content 9, 12, 13, 14, 19, 22, 72, 108, 138, 146, 187, 197, 198; cultural values 86, 154, 167; knowledge 12, 14, 15, 105, 107, 108–10, 114, 118, 119, 120; producer 7, 16, 57, 58, 62, 64, 75, 84, 86, 147, 150, 153; production 4, 13, 14, 39, 50, 52, 62, 66, 67, 73, 74, 76, 87, 98, 107, 112, 114, 117, 119, 126, 127, 128, 132, 141, 143, 144, 151, 153, 162, 163, 167, 172, 175–7, 204; programming 18, 19,

outsourcing 14 plagiarism 6, 9, 10, 14, 33, 34, 40–1, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 76, 144, 177 R&D 17, 89, 99, 103, 172, 204 scripts 6, 57, 58, 60, 64, 69, 100, 144, 145, 147, 153, 163 structures of feeling 14, 16, 19, 39, 49, 50, 52 video game 27–8 WTO 12, 19, 88, 152

International television formats and programme titles index

animation 15, 26–8 anime 109, 160, 164 children’s television 76, 150, 172 Hello Kitty Wonderland 65 Sesame Street 99–100, 163–4 dating show 98–9 Date Express 144 I Love the Matchmaker 66 Special Man and Woman 66 game show 18, 31, 97–8, 105, 106, 107, 112–20, 137, 138, 145, 172, 177, 199 Chair, the 192, 194, 195, see also Chamber, the (US) Chamber, the (US) 195 Dog Eat Dog (China) 97, 103 Dreams Become Reality (China) 98, 101 Every Fight is a Victory (Taiwan) 64, 65 Family Feud 129, 139, 159 Iron Chef 30 Price is Right, the 23, 128, 139, 144, 159 Roda Impian (Indonesia) 140 Russian Roulette 78, 82, 83, 85, 139, 140 Takeshi Castle 29, 64, see also Every Fight is a Victory (Taiwan) Wheel of Fortune 107, 112, 114, 120, 128, 139, 140, see also Roda Impian (Indonesia) idol-drama 16, 67–72 Lavender 69, 70, 71 Meteor Garden 65, 68–69, 70, 144 infotainment 44–5, 85, 116, 189

Paradise for Curiosity (Korea) 44–6 Power! Thursday Special (Japan) 44, see also Paradise for Curiosity (Korea) Zhengda Variety Show (China) 97, 104, see also Dog Eat Dog (China) lifestyle programme 174, 176, 185, 187 Backyard Blitz, see also Ground Force (Australia) 177 Changing Rooms 178, 193–4 Ground Force (Australia) 177, 178 quiz show 15, 18, 24, 41, 81–2, 83, 107, 140, 199 Are You Ready For the Game? (Philippines) 165–6 Brain Survivor 2 (Japan) 47, see also Sunday, Sunday Night (Korea) Chapar Phadke (India) 131 Dictionary of Happiness (China) 91, 96, 98, 104 Everybody Wins (China) 98 Go Bingo 103, see also Lucky 52 (China) Kaun Banega Crorepati (India) 126, 128, 130–5, see also Chapar Phadke (India), Sawal Dus Crore Ka (India) Knowledge is Power 1 and 2 (Hong Kong) 82, 83, 84 Live Show, I Love Quiz Show (Korea) 49 Lucky 52 (China) 103 People Versus 78, 82, 83 Sale of the Century 172, 182 Sawal Dus Crore Ka (India) 126, 131, 132 Sunday, Sunday Night (Korea) 47

222

Formats and programme titles index

quiz show continued Wakuwaku Animal Land (Japan) 29, 31 Weakest Link, the 14, 18, 24, 64, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 98, 117, 118, 120, 164, 177, 182, 199, 203, see also Wise Rule, the (China), Wise Men Survive (Taiwan) Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? 23–4, 34, 80–3, 84, 85, 105, 113–4, 138, 164–5, 177, 178, see also Dictionary of Happiness (China), Live Show, I Love Quiz Show (Korea), Kaun Banega Crorepati (India) Wise Men Survive (Taiwan) 64, 65 Wise Rule, the (China) 98, 101, 103 reality/docu-soap 26, 29, 83, 91, 101–3, 174, 175, 179–84, 185–6, 187, 189, 194, 196, 199–200 The $20 Challenge 189–90 Big Brother 1, 25–6, 90, 176, 178, 179–84, 186, 189, 192, 199 Dating Experiment, the (US) 31 Future Diary (Japan) 30–1, see also Dating Experiment, the (US) Happy Family Plan 30, 32, 34, 98, see also Dreams Become Reality (China) Into Shangrila (China) 101–3 Mole, the 169–70 Popstars 170, 174, 190–2

Survivor 25–6, 76, 90, 101–3, 189, 199, see also Into Shangrila (China) Temptation Island 76, 83, 170, 179, see also Wild, the (Hong Kong) Treasure Island 170, 179, 188, 189 Wild, the (Hong Kong) 76–7 soap opera/drama: C.A.T.S. (India) 122, 126, 127, 128 Charlie’s Angels 122, 126, 128, see also C.A.T.S. (India) Coronation Street 14, 100–1, see also Joy Luck Street (China) Joy Luck Street (China) 100–1, 103 Prisoner 173 Restless Years, the 173 Sons and Daughters 173, 184 X-Files, the 23, 126, 129, 130, see also X-Zone (India) X-Zone (India) 126, 129 telenovela 19, 136, 154, 162–3 variety show 24, 26, 29, 32–3, 62, 64, 66, 90, 96–9, 119, 159, 185 Citadel of Happiness (China) 97 Eat Bulaga (Philippines) 162 Samma’s Super Trick TV (Japan) 43, see also Seo Sewon’s Making a Good World (Korea) Seo Sewon’s Making a Good World (Korea) 43–4