Formatting and Change in East Asian Industries: Media Globalization and Regional Dynamics

Lim, Wei Ling Tania Patricia BSocSc (Hons), MSc (Media & Comms)

Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre Queensland University of Technology

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2005

Keywords

Circuit of cultural production, East Asian popular culture, Television industries, Field of broadcasting, Formatting, Local knowledge, Media capitals, Neo-networks, Regional dynamics, TV Formats, martial arts , teenage soap operas, game-shows.

ii Abstract

Television is increasingly both global and local. Those television industries discussed in this thesis in an extensive neo-network of flows in talents, financing, and the latest forms of popular culture. These cities attempt to become media capitals but their status waxes and wanes, depending on their success in exporting their Asian media productions. What do marital arts dramas, interactive game-shows, children’s and teenage idol soap operas from East Asian television industries have in common? Through the systematic use of TV formatting strategies, these television have become the focus for indigenous cultural entrepreneurs located in the East Asian cities of Kong, and to turn their local TV programmes into tradable culture.

This thesis is a re-consideration of the impact of media globalisation on Asian television that re-imagines a new global media order. It suggests that there is a growing shift in perception and trade among once-peripheral television industries that they may be slowly de-centring Hollywood’s dominance by inserting East Asian popular entertainment into familiar formats or cultural spaces through embracing global yet local cultures of production.

While TV formats like Survivor, Millionaire, Big Brother and have become profitable and powerful franchises globally, in East Asia, the size of TV format trade is actually eclipsed by the regional trade in East Asian popular cultural commodities from martial arts novels and films, manga and romantic fiction, to popular music. These commodities have become the source of remaking local television culture into tradable cultures as local TV programmes use formatting practices to circulate within their region. The many faces of formatting in television are explored through four case studies - from (TVB’s Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre), Singapore (Robert Chua Productions’ Everyone Wins, Peach Blossom Media’s Tomato Twins) and Taipei (Comic Ritz Production’s ). Conceptualised as Asian media productions, these TV programmes are sites for examining individual

iii agency, the network flows of popular culture and structural changes of their respective broadcasting fields.

This thesis argues that TV formatting practices can become a currency for neo- networked media producers to create a medium of cultural exchange that sets up the possibility for a common market for cultural trade in East Asia. However, the ease with which TV formatting practices and re-sale of TV programmes are copied lower barriers for competition and often this tends toward over production. Over-exposure kills many new genres of production and discourages investment in the research and development component of creating TV formats for trade. Change in East Asian television industries is also aided by media conglomeration, global access through satellite TV, the and increasingly digital entertainment, media de-regulation and pro- development policies.

A number of factors and conditions that accompany the rise of TV formatting in East Asia (such as the role of independents vis-à-vis big local players, the emergence of issues and marketing celebrities) contribute to the innovations that result from adapting formatting practices to local contexts, and suggest how each city’s television industry attempts to address the rise of tradable cultural commodities that are increasingly made for pan-Asian consumption.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF DIAGRAMS………………………………………………….………….vi

ABBREVIATIONS & NOTE ABOUT CHINESE NAMES..…..…….………. viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………….……………………….…………x

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………...1

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK………………………………………………..31

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY……………………...………………...66

CHAPTER FOUR: THE ASCENT OF HONG KONG TELEVISION AND MARTIAL ARTS SERIALS………………………….…………85

CHAPTER FIVE: THE CASE FOR SINGAPORE: NEW SINGAPORE, NEW MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES……………..…….….119

CHAPTER SIX: THE REACH OF – TAIWANESE TEENAGE /POP ………………..….….159

CHAPTER SEVEN: EAST ASIAN TELEVISION: IGNITING THE GLOBE?...... 192

CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSION………………………………………..….234

APPENDICES………………………………………………………………...…..254

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………...257

v LIST OF DIAGRAMS

Diagram 1.1: Destinations of Programs Exported from (fiscal 2001 survey)…………………………………...…….6

Diagram 3.1: Circuit of culture applied to TV and other fields of production…………………………………………..…………70

Diagram 3.2: Field of TV Broadcasting mapped on to a Value Chain of Broadcasting …………………………………....………..71

Diagram 3.3 – Ideal product life cycle of non-cultural consumer goods…………………………………………..……….…72

Diagram 3.4 Mapping the relationship between genres and formats in a circuit of cultural production ……………….….……..78

Diagram 4.1: Hong Kong’s Overlapping fields of cultural production (a broadcasting-centric view)………………………………88

Diagram 4.2: Circulation of ’s novels in the fields of Film and on …………………………....99

Diagram 4.3: Value chain of Hong Kong television broadcasting for martial arts dramas…………………………………………………….…… 107

Diagram 4.4: Comparison of TVB’s adaptations of HSDS……………….…...109

Diagram 4.5: Top Ten Rated Programmes On TVB In 2001…………..……...114 . Diagram 4.6: Circuit of cultural production – Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre………………………………………...... 117

Diagram 5.1: Article featuring Everyone Wins in Straits Times (2002)…...…131

Diagram 5.2 Structure/Crust of Everyone Wins in Singapore…………………134 5.2 (a) During NKF Charity show 2003…………………………134 5.2 (b) During regular season on in 2003-2004……...135

Diagram 5.3 Example of Narratives/themes used in Everyone Wins…….….…136

Diagram 5.4 Comparison of Everyone Wins to ‘East Asian Model’ checklist (Cooper-, 1993)………………….………...139

Diagram 5.5 Descriptive profile of television episodes of Tomato Twins (Series 1)………………………………………………………151

vi Diagram 5.6 Screenshots of Tomato Twins versus Powerpuff Girls….………...154

Diagram 6.1 Comparison of Commercial Terrestrial TV Stations……….…...166

Diagram 6.2: Inserting of ‘television moments’ into the Taiwanese field of broadcasting…………..……………………………………..168

Diagram 6.3 Value-chain of Taiwanese television broadcasting for teenage idol dramas …………………………….....180

Diagram 6.4 Licensed script & adaptation of Japanese comic Hana Yori Dango into Meteor Garden….………………………….……..183

Diagram 6.5: F4 Look-a-likes?...... 185

Diagram 7.1: Characteristics of Media Capitals derived from Curtin (2003)…………………………………………………..…..197

Diagram 7.2 Comparison of 3 East Asian cities along Curtin’s (2003) media capital…………………………………..…..198

Diagram 7.3 Innovations found in the 4 case studies……………………….…..225

Diagram 8.1 Billboard Advertisement of F4 promoting Pepsi in Taiwan….....248

Diagram 8.2 HYD manga & merchandise and related MG spin-off…….……249

vii

ABBREVIATIONS

MDA Media Development Authority Singapore Media Corporation of Singapore TV Television TVB Television Broadcast Limited (Hong Kong)

NOTE ABOUT CHINESE NAMES AND WORDS

Within the text, several different styles of Chinese have been used so as to realize correct of programme titles. In Singapore, we used the ‘hanyu ’ system of romanization, in Hong Kong, all romanicised Chinese names and words while in the Republic of Taiwan we used the ‘zhuyin’ system. Elsewhere, some romanized Chinese names have been cited selectively because of their relative importance to the thesis. Some romanized Chinese names are displayed by their traditional order of Family name and followed by the First name of the person. For example, Lee Ang or Chow Yuen-Fatt.

viii

Statement of original authorship

The work contained in this thesis was not previously submitted for a degree of diploma in any university. To the best of knowledge and belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due references are made in the thesis itself.

Tania (Patricia Wei-Ling) Lim

November 2005

ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Undertaking academic research after working for seven years in the media sector, was a great challenge for me. I am deeply grateful to my two supervisors, Dr Terry Flew and Dr Michael Keane, who have endured all of my rough edits, multiple drafts, and enabled me to grow mentally and analytically throughout the time spent in Brisbane, . I am also deeply appreciative of Professor Stuart Cunningham for his invaluable guidance and of the opportunities to work at CIRAC. I am indebted to my ex-colleagues at the MDA and my industry respondents from Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei, who have all given generously of their time despite their extremely busy schedules: Koh Tin-Fook, Keh Li-Ling and the ID team, Sung -Gun and the team at Peach Blossom Media, Robert Chua, Dr Janie To, Lee Tim-Shing, Sherman Lee, Sen Lee, Iris , Sharon Mao, Han Guang-Wei, Adrian Ong, Chong Gim- Hwee, Selena Ho, Michel Rodriguez, Jean Yeo, and Jiang Long. Many other people have contributed their views to this thesis which have made it a richer experience for me. They include all the postgraduate powerhouses and fellow PhD classmates, especially, those who occupied the previous room, X222 such as Marc Brennan, Bao Jin-Nu, Jinna Tay, Calum Gilmour, and Josh Green.

Although I have walked along a long road, but thankfully with God’s blessings, I was never alone. I have been blessed with loved ones, dear friends and concerned people who have not hesitated to help me both morally and spiritually as well. His blessings have made this all possible. Most of all, it would not have been possible without the unconditional and loving support of my husband, Ian Chin, as well as the love, generosity and concern of my parents, Lawrence and May Lim, my brother, Jeffrey, and extended family, Auntie Anne and Uncle Eric. My heartfelt thanks to Lim Shoo-Wen, Wu Jin-Feng, Mavi-Anne Glinoga, Sal Humphreys, Tan Tin-Hee, and Chesed Wong, who have inspired, fed, and encouraged me along the way. Finally, I would like to thank my newborn baby, Timothy Alex, for keeping me company when I was in the throes of writing throughout my pregnancy and has become a new source of strength and happiness.

x CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, we witnessed many changes across the media industries of Asia. The rise of transnational television; the importance of local appeal as a necessary industry factor in successful local and transnational television productions, the digitalization and convergence of both old and new information and communication technologies (ICT), and the concurrent forces of media globalization and localization (see Wang, Servaes and Goonasekera, 2000) are reshaping how television industries operate in modern Asian cities.

This sets the stage for a very crucial development in the new contours of media globalization – shaped by an ‘East Asian popular culture’ (see Chua, 2004) which includes music, television, film, fiction, stars, new media and fashion, that circulates regionally and internationally as forms of cultural businesses. The cultural output and flows of culture in Asia respond to policy shifts from cultural welfare to cultural and creative industries that are increasingly defined by a new ‘cultural geography of creativity’ (see Flew, 2002a: 137); the identity politics of youths as they move from basic to selective but highly sophisticated consumerism (see Chua, 1998; Chua, 2000a:13-14) and from elite to mass education (Flew, 2002b: 163); and the general rise in affluence of the region, driven largely by the Asian ‘middle classes’ in industrialised cities like , , Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, and recently, and (Chua, 2000a).

Such synergies of marketplace, technological developments and changing state policies towards popular culture are aided by what Harvey (1990: 240) explains as the instantaneous power of media communications that create a ‘time-place compression’, where the world as we know it is getting smaller and what happens in one place often has instant impact on others economically, politically, technologically and culturally.

General objective of research: With the impact of media globalization leading to increased localisation, regionalisation and possible globalisation of local media industries in East Asia, it is

1 timely to examine the role that TV formats and formatting practices play in Asia’s developing television industries. This study is important to the contribution of applied and theoretical research as it seeks to demonstrate how the television landscapes of East Asian cities are reshaped by new practices of production and new synergies of distribution. In doing this, the research will provide a detailed picture of how these once-peripheral industries respond to the globalisation of media and new patterns of cultural consumption.

To scope out the project, I have two specific research objectives:

1. To conceptualise the changing dynamics of television production and distribution as part of international flows of culture; responses to cultural entrepreneurship; new patterns of regional television; and industry development strategies. A series of four case studies that feature television formatting will be analysed in-depth to show how cultural entrepreneurship, local knowledge and industry development strategies play transformative roles in the cultural economies of the three cities.

2. To explore through a study of formatting the potential of these television industries to develop lucrative, appealing, exportable and tradable television content. In doing so, this thesis will revise existing paradigms and approaches that fail to account for the complexity of the television industry and business of making internationally appealing content in East Asia.

This involves an identification of change factors that affect the development of television industries, and formatting practices in East Asian television industries, and a close examination of the TV production process and textual properties of case studies that employ formatting or are industrial TV formats.

The central research questions are:

What are the factors and pre-conditions that enable or hinder the development of viable Asian television production centres, and their ability to develop, trade and export TV content successfully regionally and internationally? To what extent is

2 format trade contributing to the internationalisation of Asian television productions?

These questions will be the basis for the exploratory research on formatting and change in East Asian television industries, as they face the dynamics of media globalization locally and internationally.

TV formats and formatting in East Asian TV industries

While my research topic is about impact of media globalization on East Asian TV industries, the focus is on TV formats, format trade, and the broad phenomenon of formatting culture that is currently sweeping across TV landscapes from West to East.

The definition of formatting is linked to the uses of formatting that I will describe in Chapters Two and Three. However, overall, for the purpose of this research, formatting refers to the systematic repetition of social and material practices that are used by people in various fields of cultural production to organise and create media productions into cultural commodities that can be sold and consumed in the cultural marketplace. The most disciplined kind of formatting is the most visible one, which is the TV format, an industrial step-by-step guide to producing successful TV programmes (i.e. achieves high TV audience ratings).

The most recent examples of successful TV formats have come from the West in the form of re-invented gameshow formats like The Weakest Link and Who Wants to be a Millionaire or new hybrid reality TV formats such as Survivor and Big Brother. The rapid uptake of such imported TV formats has also given rise to small experiments in ‘made-in-Asia’ TV formats such as Discover Australia (Singapore’s answer to Survivor), Enter Shangrila (’s epic multi-provincial reality TV gameshow), Everyone Wins (Singapore/Hong Kong’s answer to Millionaire), and more perennial variety show formats like Super Sunday (Taiwan’s landmark variety show modelled after Japan’s variety entertainment shows). There has also been a wide range of formatting activity in Asia including everything from interactive game-shows or Single Message Service-linked (SMS) game shows galore, to classical martial arts drama serials from Hong Kong, to the first-ever East-West

3 children animation show in Singapore, to teenage pop-idol drama serials in Taipei. These TV industries are just beginning to explore the possibilities for developing tradable formats and leveraging on formatting activities within their own TV industries so as to capture new and perhaps regional/global audiences and new revenue streams. Thus, this project is really a qualitative and exploratory effort to document change in these TV industries. It is situated in such unlikely locations as small island-cities which are highly technologically-driven and economically competitive, with their own young audio-visual industries.

The study examines media globalization against the backdrop of the cultural and media imperialist theses. Proponents of these imperialist theses, especially Schiller (1991), offer a compelling but alarming portrayal of American culturalisation as the dominant force in cultural and media globalization. However, instead of focusing on how American transnational firms homogenize cultures by exporting en masse the cultural commodities, from TV programmes to popular fashion, Robertson (1995) and Appadurai (1990) believe that global developments are uneven in their impact on the local industries and cultures. While imported western TV programmes and popular culture are indigenized and transformed into local productions (Robertson, 1990), the production and consumption of culture is no longer confined by national boundaries but exists in ‘imagined worlds…that are constituted by historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe’ (Appadurai, 2000: 325).

Trends in Asia

What has motivated some media producers in Asia to internationalize their television productions are positive climatic and structural changes to the television industries. The key challenge of any local television industry is about competing for attention, and media globalization. This competition translates into imports from overseas television industries, content offered by other media platforms and changing consumption activities. Asia’s television marketplace is huge according to the recent CLSA/CASBAA 2004. The Asia Pacific cable and satellite TV market already rakes in annual revenues of US$14 billion (Tanner, 2004), excluding the advertising

4 expenditure on networks across the region. Thus, cultural entrepreneurs in their roles as TV producers, programmers or distributors who can tap these cultural markets will be those who are best able to engage with the trends in Asia to produce, distribute and circulate Asian media productions.

Some general trends identified by policy-makers and local industry watchers have been making a strong case for developing cultural businesses in Asia, and particularly, East Asia. Firstly, Asia makes up more than 50% of the world’s population, and the region’s rising affluence is attributable to the growing middleclass in these markets. With the growing expenditure carved out by urbanised and youthful demographics of an affluent East Asian region, the demand for more sophisticated productions and services will similarly increase, thus driving these markets to offer better quality TV productions and broadcasting services. Pricewaterhouse Coopers estimated Asian media markets would grow on average about 5.6% per annum1. This modest projection is expected to accelerate in future as some East Asian governments have included media communications into the centrepiece of their economic policies.

Therefore, demand for local content is growing. For example, Wang (1993) found that the percentage of local productions among the top 20 most highly rated TV programmes was 90 percent (the , Singapore, and South ); 95 percent (); and 100 percent (Hong Kong). Also, Asia’s television, film and music industries are producing more local content to meet this demand. Not surprisingly, recent studies show that audiences prefer to watch television programmes that are locally appealing yet globally relevant and are set in the world in which they live (Sinclair, 1998: 211-212; Chadha and Kavoori, 2000: 423-424).

Secondly, great regional opportunities for trade in made-in-Asia music, TV programmes and films beckon local industries despite the global economic downturn over the last few years. The regional dynamics of cities linked ‘geo-linguistically’ to

1 See Speech by Mr David T.E. Lim, Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts at the Opening of the Forum, Asia Animation and Asia Film Market and Conference 2002 on 3 Dec 2002. Website: http://www.mita.gov.sg/pressroom/press_021203b.html.

5 potentially lucrative markets like China, Japan and have already begun to see results. For the music industry, Chua (2000b) indicated that the big 5 global music players (EMI, Warner, PolyGram, Bertelsmann and SONY) decentralised their operations in Asia during the 1990s to cater to regional taste, which encouraged a rise in the regional circulation of and Mandarin pop music. For example, in 1995, arguably Asia’s largest independent music label, Taiwan’s Rock Records, chalked up estimated sales of US$85 million in Asia alone. In television, the trickle of Japanese TV drama exports in the 1980s has given way to huge waves of new kinds of idol dramas from TBS and Fuji TV in the 1990s and Korean TV drama tearjerkers in 2000.

Undoubtedly the most visible examples of Asian media enterprises creating new markets are the Japanese, from the SONY group to television players - Fuji Television Network, Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) and Tokyo Broadcast Systems. The success of Japanese creative industries provide a good working model for other Asian countries seeking to develop content and reaching alternative and niche markets for cultural products and services. These cities aspire to move beyond merely ‘peripheral’ consumption spaces to become production centres that can capitalise on, and ultimately export into, lucrative overseas and regional markets in the East and the West (see Ng, 2002; Herskovitz, 2000). For example, see Hara’s NHK Broadcasting Culture Institute’s 2001 survey of the inflow and outflow of Japanese TV trade in the region and around the world (Diagram 1.1): Diagram 1.1: Destinations of Programs Exported from Japan (fiscal 2001 survey)

6 Source: Hara (2004). These figures do not reflect audience reached but the volume of Japanese television programmes traded.

In film, the higher international profile and circulation of Asian films in Asia, Hollywood and Europe of such recent films like the Oscar-winning Crouching , Hidden Dragon (2000), and the Cannes International Film Festival winner In the Mood for Love in 2000, as well as the multiple global winner of the San Francisco, Hong Kong, Berlin and Nippon film festivals of 2002 Japanese film Spirited Away (2002) by the anime master Hayao Miyazaki provide clues to alternative strategies that Asian media producers can use to create tradable media content.

Thirdly, economic regionalisation has been occurring in manufacturing but is also becoming apparent in service industries of major regional hubs such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Banking, and entrepot trade are attracting the presence of transnational firms, including those from media industries, like ’s NewsCorp purchase of Star TV in 1993 (Langdale, 1997). While institutions like Star TV made significant inroads across regions like East Asia and the Indian subcontinent through attempts at pan-regional programming and retrofitting smaller territories into regional markets, these external enterprises face many uncertainties. These include limited local knowledge of environmental and human resource limitations and constraints, banking idiosyncrasies and the complexity of building good business and social ties in these markets.

Complementing this is the range of free-trade agreements, and the of regional themes in future planning exercises by governments in East and South-East Asia. There are significant shifts in Pan-Asian TV experiment projects like Friends (a six-episode Korean-Japanese-Hong Kong co-production telecast in 2002). There is also the acceleration in Asian-made animation from non-traditional sources - South- East Asian and small east Asian countries – which previously shifted from government-endorsed filmlets in the 1950s to contracted labour for foreign animation studios from Hollywood or Japan in the 1990s. Now, a few commercialised made-by-Asian (excluding Japan) TV have become exportable (see Lent, 2000).

7 While there is an observable global trend of diversifying yet homogenizing tastes, bringing with it the continual worries of economic globalization and cultural domination of the richer G7 nations over the rest of the world, it is interesting to note that Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have begun to take steps to engage in defining how globalization is impacting them by adopting a two-pronged strategy. Firstly, some of them have begun to form regional blocs already connected by an existing flow of East Asian popular culture, using such tools as Free Trade Agreements2. Secondly, their governments have adopted an economic imperative over their cultural, technological and social capital, mediated by globally circulating cultures of media production. Taking on economic challenges that combine the notion of developing the traditional creative arts into media businesses to build a viable creative industry has become common parlance among city governments such as those of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei.

A fourth trend in Asia is digitisation and technological innovation. Asia is quickly adopting digital technologies in media productions. Their involvement ranges through radio, digital cinema and basic interactive companions to TV format game- shows such as SMS technology; to mini-cinema and broadcasting services for content on 3G mobile phones, recently launched throughout East Asia. Broadcasting services via satellite, cable and now internet-enabled broadband services offer, potentially, the experience of a ‘1000-channel’ media environment where viewers can access the Internet, satellite and cable communication channels that offer multiple online TV services, 3G-enabled news, weather, fashion, and other entertainment bulletins, surf-able websites and on-line gaming portals, to the hundreds of pay TV, radio and free TV and radio channels.

Special effects have altered audience expectations and tastes for television animation, gaming and film-going experiences, while setting higher benchmarks for media producers to follow. While Hollywood continues to dominate the special effects arena in film and some television productions, Japanese and other smaller East Asian

2 See Singapore’s Free Trade Agreements at website:http://www.fta.gov.sg/ as well as industry comments about the intensification of regional free trade agreements in East Asia at website: http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=1035. [Accessed: 12 May 2005]

8 producers hailing from Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore and Taipei are beginning to make their presence felt by offering the latest technical online and offline services as well as diverse content in Asian animations, films and television programmes. For example, the latest Hong Kong blockbuster to climb up the Asian region’s film charts is Kungfu Hustle (2005), which relied upon similar special effects-aided martial arts stylistic conventions set by Hong Kong choreographer, Wo Ping-yuen of The Matrix fame. In 2004, two years after being the first to launch mobile TV services in Asia, Singapore recently signed a co-production output deal to produce five High Definition TV telemovies with China’s (MDA, 2004a). Meanwhile, Taipei’s variety shows and new breed of idol dramas continue to promote Mandarin-language pop stars on Taipei-based satellite TV channels, and resold substitute Chinese-language programmes on foreign terrestrial channels.

With the globalization of media services and delivery platforms, new consumer markets and audiences emerge which influence and encourage greater trade across national borders. Asian media entrepreneurs who form close alliances with major satellite or international television players are better placed to capitalize on global consumer trends both in Asia and the West (Iwabuchi, 2000). However, they need to harness local knowledge about changing audience and markets, while reconfiguring traditional programmes into new formats that seek out or cater to new combinations of ‘taste cultures’ where:

…there have arisen international services which stratify audiences across national boundaries not just by class and education, but by ‘taste culture’ and age – the ostensible international youth culture audience for MTV, for example…. Of more interest… are the imagined communities of speakers of the same language and participants in similar cultures which form the geo- linguistic regions exploited by media entrepreneurs, especially the diasporic communities of émigrés on distant continents. (Sinclair, Cunningham and Jacka, 1996: 25)

Such observable demographic trends offer new cultural sites to investigate the rise of Asian media productions. For the first time, Asian media producers can envision a future of potential overseas commercial success, buoyed by regional dynamics. This is not to say that Hollywood films will no longer be popular. On the contrary, it remains a vital part of the circuit of culture that mediates our daily lives today.

9

Conditions for internationalising Asian television industries

The conditions necessary for internationalizing Asian TV industries can be derived from the existing literature, the case studies in my study and some interviews with industry personnel. Firstly, the industries which enjoy Porter’s (1998) competitive advantages are prime candidates for internationalisation -- a healthy domestic market for Asian productions, a steady labour market for pooling talent and skills, available supporting industries, and competition in the local industries. Some examples include television and film industries based in Hong Kong and Mumbai. Similarly, conceptualising the conditions for enterprises to flourish, Mintzberg and Quinn (1996: 624-25) argue that for any entrepreneur to succeed in a new venture, some common “early mobility barriers” needed to be overcome. These are proprietary technology; access to distribution channels; access to raw materials and other inputs (skilled labour) of appropriate cost and quality; cost advantages due to experience, made more significant by the technological and competitive uncertainties; and risk, which raises the effective opportunity cost of capital and thereby effective capital barriers. These apply to cultural entrepreneurs such as transnational TV companies like Star TV, MTV Asia and TVBS. These companies do enjoy such advantages when they enter new markets in South-east and East Asia.

While studies (see Ito, 1990; Leung and Chan, 1997; Hagiwara et al, 1999) have shown that in Hong Kong, Taiwan, The Philippines, India, Japan, and China, domestic cultural commodities enjoy a strong advantage over imports. Domestic productions enjoy a closer affinity to their audiences as they use familiar language and cultural context. Indeed, some authors believe that the importance accorded to foreign media influence on local culture is overstated (Lee, 2000: 193) and that protectionist measures are no longer relevant in the present global marketplace. As Asian television industries mature alongside their increasingly consumerist audiences, local channels can tap on non-English languages, accents, cultural and ethnic identities, and idiosyncrasies that define the everyday life of their respective Asian audiences to create locally appealing programmes that are more culturally proximate than foreign programmes. For example, Hong Kong TVB’s channel, Jade,

10 usually commands more than double the viewership ratings of its sister English channel, Pearl (Wilkins, 1998)..

Secondly, the TV industries enjoy the convenience and synergy of cities as nexus points for emerging media-savvy consumer groupings, global capital flows, skills, technology, cultural trade, and platforms (Curtin, 2003: 203-204) which enables TV and multimedia content to become converted into tradable cultures. Hence, these cities become ‘media capitals’ (Curtin, 2003) that provide access to a multi-channel universe through multiplatform TV penetration, mobile, PC, broadband, a cosmopolitan lifestyle that offers diversity and everyday exposure to different cultures, peoples, and other cities that operate as regional, if not global, centres of power.

Also, cities that are sites of naturally-occurring networked clusters for industries (see Cooke, 2001) and which have a robust legal infrastructure where (IP) developments advocate the protection of audio-visual goods and services (Grantham, 2003), represent good conditions for attracting the presence of transnational media corporations with their research and development of new content and services to locate there. For example, Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore all have significant presence of international media broadcasters who do some local production work from these locations (see Chapter Seven). Singapore academic- turned-entrepreneur like Kwok (2001) believes that if creativity drives the economy of the future then Singapore can be at the forefront once more if its leaders and communities refashion Singapore’s economic status by moving away from ‘hub’ into a ‘creative crucible’. Making original contributions to the economy and developing a rich cultural life are intertwined. This resonates with writers such as Leadbeater and Oakley (1999), Flew (2002c) and Cunningham and Hartley (2001) who champion the ‘creative industries’ model of economic development.

The ‘creative industries’ model is premised on how a nation in the post-industrial age is able to fuse creative arts, business and technology into creative businesses with exportable products and services. These creative businesses would then collectively become a powerful engine of economic growth, as the owners of these businesses developed intellectual designs that could be resold as intellectual . It was

11 born on the back of the decade of the internet and satellite TV, an era of media globalization facilitated by technological advances in communication technologies. Hence, the nations that seek to encourage the growth of ‘creative industries’ need to have strong technological foundations and infrastructure, and be location-friendly for the convergence of talents, finance and ideas. This model has been championed by governments in the British dominion nations (see CIFT online, 2001; New Zealand Trade and Enterprise homepage, 2004) to elevate the status of the individual creative worker and the output of cultural industries alongside the information- communication industries, both as having economic value and intellectual property value worth protecting legally. Its recent emergence in 2000-2003 from Asian government policy deliberations in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore also includes inserting a cultural value component, which echoes the arguments for protecting the cultural rights of many post-colonial nations (see Goonasekera, 2003). Developing a healthy economy was fundamentally a precursor to the proliferation of technological, cultural industries and media services. Those Asian cities that were able to rely on strategic geopolitical locations for growing industries and services, by circumstance or policy, also attracted the best talents and financing that creative industries need to flourish.

Thirdly, countries like Singapore and hope to encourage a greater exportable marketplace for their productions via encouraging multilateral cooperation like the FTAs and co-production agreements. They hope this will encourage a shared cultural technological transfer, and forge geo-linguistic or geopolitical markets (Quek, 2001). Moran’s study of the adaptation of European and Australian TV formats in dramas and variety shows indicate the importance of cultural translators in ensuring these cultural technological transfers are successful (see Moran, 1998). However, without the necessary skills and knowledge to make the transfers successful, the recipient or co-producing countries may not gain much expertise.

The cultivation of conditions requires people with sufficient local knowledge to hone their craft, network and cooperate on TV projects that cross national borders and break into regional and international marketplaces. Andersson (1985) has pointed out that basic original knowledge and competence is one of the key ingredients for a ‘creative milieu’ to flourish in the new economy. For media capitals to develop they

12 must welcome the growth of creative industries that nurture local knowledge. This is made possible to some extent by local articulation of global interests in Asian content and the creation of distinctive local content that serves niche markets and regional interests.

Cities that aspire to be media hubs or media capitals must be characterised by a vibrant locally-based production industry, an industry capable of becoming a key economic driver for the country. Thus, the premise of this study is that to become a creative industry, Asia’s TV industries must internationalise. By internationalizing, they will need to use strategies, policies, ideas and capital to create environments that can encourage success or overcome the early mobility barriers of developing industries.

The existing academic and industry literature suggests that this may result from the opening up of lucrative cultural markets in the Asian region and by increasing value placed on local knowledge of global industry trends and technologies in Asian media productions. As a result of satellite communication and open skies policies, which encourage greater media globalisation, some Asian media producers exhibit an increased willingness to conduct new cultural experiments based on certain formulas, and to take calculated risks on their success potential in selling overseas, beyond previously domestic and closed TV borders.

Such research on Asian media productions is timely. Traditionally, Asian media and communication studies have mostly focused on the role and response of Asia’s as reactions to perceived threats posed by cultural/media imperialism and the destruction of local industries. But Moeran (2001), Iwabuchi (1998, 2001), Teo (1997, 2003), Curtin (2003), Yau (2001) and Bordwell (2001) join a growing number of writers who discuss the changing nature of Asian media productions as Asia develops economically with new ‘taste cultures’ demanding new kinds of content.

Following recent global trends for interactive productions, Asian television productions which now readily combine culture, technology and business, reflect compelling and alternative strategies to internationalise Asian media productions. For example, in 2003, simple levels of interactive TV have emerged with the rapid

13 uptake of SMS technology – content aggregation in which new media (SMS via mobile phones) and old media (e.g. watching terrestrial TV) are interfaced through the blank spaces of the VBI lines (vertical blinking intervals) is being implemented at high-speeds in Singapore to obtain revenue broadcasters have lost from advertisers. The traditional models of advertising-supported television content are gradually being challenged by consumer-supported television content as the main driver of revenue generating models. Ownership and exploitation of ideas for programmes is increasingly an area of contention between producers and owners of delivery platforms. These opportunities and threats have recently emerged most visibly in the rise of TV format trade, and sale of highly formulaic Asian media productions that use recognised genres, stars and styles that perform the function of brands (see Chapter Seven; Adair and Moran, 2004).

Why Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei?

I have chosen to compare these three smaller television industries because of their similar structural, linguistic (pre-dominantly Chinese) and historical backgrounds as post-colonial cities, and the close network of intra-cultural flows of East Asian popular cultural commodities. In the Asian region, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei pose three real scenarios for developing exportable television industries in spite of their limited size. They are among the earliest in East Asia to themselves successfully from colonial outputs to post-colonial economies in the 1970s and have extended this practice to cultural commodities like television programmes from the 1980s. These cities are recognised as smaller ‘world cities’ compared to larger ones like Tokyo, London and Paris (see Friedmann, 1995). They enjoy a reputation of being production centres in non-cultural industries. All have invested in technology and with aggressively promotional governments focused on building info- communications industries. Furthermore, each television industry’s output has circulated as incumbents and are linked to audiences’ cultural biases that consume these TV programmes as culturally dominant future expressions of modernity (see Curtin, 2003). They reflect a taste culture of urban populations that desires to establish a co-valence with their neighbouring urban counterparts, such as the case of simulcast of the Japanese ‘trendy drama’ series, Romance 2000, in Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore (Chua, 2004: 206).The influence of East Asian popular

14 culture is most visible in their respective local television industries and therefore these industries can arguably be termed East Asian.

The following two dimensions explain the structural, linguistic, historical and/or geographical similarities that these three cities have to each other. Firstly, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei share similar small-island politics where their national/state sovereignty are contained and often shaped by interference/dialectical relationships with hinterland geopolitical countries (like for the case of Singapore and China for all three cities). However, all three have moved consciously into the global political system, offering variations of moderate democracies with weak to strong communitarian ties to their populations (see , 1998; Chua, 1995; Rawnsley, 2000).

Secondly, they share similar physical and urban geographic limitations/possibilities. Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore are modern, urban cities with global aspirations. Each of them have rapidly developed infrastructures and made large public funding commitments to developing high-value economic sectors from science to multi- media sectors. They have done so with a conscious awareness of the physical limitations of their market size, high population density in concentrated urban spaces and yet relatively small population size compared to their bigger neighbours China, Malaysia and .

Despite their commonalities, each city has its own economic strengths and different modalities of audio-visual production and distribution. Each city has distinctive cultural characteristics, which are reflected in the production and consumption of cultural goods and services. The unique economic, technological, political and cultural factors that shape the ‘rules of engagement’, or what Giddens calls the ‘norms’, are embedded in the ‘forms of life’ (cited in Ryan, 1992: 18-22) that affect cultural producers differently in each of these cities. These differences can be seen in the production and consumption of cultural goods and services like television programmes, film and music.

While Hong Kong’s TVBI global reach is an example of how an East Asian city broadcaster was able to go international, many terrestrial broadcasters in the region

15 would need to develop core competencies before they could hope to profit from the demand for local programming. Nicholas James, an industry veteran who has worked for Media Asia (a Hong Kong distribution company), TVB and STAR TV in the past comments:

People, resources, creativity. Those elements take time to develop…You can’t just go to a school and clone 14 different TV producers… [Most Asian markets] didn’t begin to develop competitively until 1990, and some not until 1993….That’s why it will be well beyond the year 2000 before we see mature local television markets. (Berfield, 1996)

Since 1996, other factors, such as the spread of Internet and computer gaming, the regional financial crisis in 1997, and the rise of mobile entertainment that intersect the field of broadcasting, have shifted the focus of customizing TV programmes by language, content and scheduling beyond TV to other new media services. Given the closer networking of different creative industries offered by interdependent media services, independent production companies who leverage on new media are better positioned to capture a larger portion of the markets for Asian media productions.

In relation to TV formats and the concept of ‘formatting culture’, there is a lot of rich tension within the literature (which I will explain in greater detail later when categorising the different types of formatting that is identified in the academic and industry literature). To explain industry changes as creative responses and tradable cultures, we need to move away from a large body of work that views ‘formatting’ as simply the reproduction of mass culture -- such as the work of Adorno and Horkheimer (1977).

While keeping in mind the political economy perspectives that corporations and global capital determine what gets made, circulated and consumed by audiences globally, a more fruitful avenue to examine the robustness and sustainability of media/cultural industry developments is in examining new ‘hybridities’ in cultural production.

Audience research on media consumption by writers Ien Ang (1994), John Hartley (2001) and others put the negotiating power back in the hands of the audience.

16 Cultural theorists place globalisation as the key driver for cultural hybridity, creolization, and syncretisation in film and TV, which provides a springboard on which this project examines formatting. In addition, unlike the fragmented nature of the film industries in Asia (except Korea) — which encourage the rise of ultra-small and often -meal or craft-like entrepreneurial moments where producers or directors produce “prototypes with little continuity of personnel or experience from production to production” (Ellis, 1992: 189) — TV producers who are format producers or creators tend to assemble ‘packages’ with reduced risks to themselves, and extend revenue streams, since TV schedules often need to obtain quick turnover of cheap or easily produced content.

Finally, recent work by scholars in Hong Kong (Ma, 1999; Fung, 2004; Chan, 1996), Japan (Iwabuchi, 2001), Australia (Sinclair, Jacka and Cunningham, 1996; Stephen Teo, 2000; Moran, 1998; Keane, 2004) and North America (Bordwell, 2001; Ong, 1999) suggest the possibility for regional media entrepreneurs to join the race for dollars. In light of the opening up of cultural borders across Asia, and the promise of greater regional cultural trade in new and lucrative cultural markets here, it is useful to examine the different pathways that these Asian entrepreneurs take to overseas markets, which are unclear as yet.

Yet, when it comes to trade in TV formats, there are marked differences between genres that are popular English-language adaptations and genres that are more suited for Asian-language adaptations. Often this is mediated by Asian media producers’ local knowledge of which genres appealed in certain languages. Across East Asia, where the flow of trade in TV formats is still mainly from West to East, with the exception of Japan, it is clearly in the realm of live or studio-based game shows that appeal to local broadcasters. International sale of TV formats to Asia in genres like dramas or are less visible because of a fundamental belief that Asian drama or productions need to be culturally sensitive and are therefore less ‘culturally odourless’ than game shows.

Television genres that are ‘culturally odourless’ (Iwabuchi, 2000: 55) are more easily formatted across nations. Culturally odourless programmes are defined by their adaptability and lack of distinct cultural markers. Instead, these programmes are

17 easily inserted into any other territory as they often embrace universal themes, styles, and stories that appeal to more than one cultural or ethnic grouping. Genres like game shows, news programmes, competitions and children’s animation offer, in their structure and organisation, an inherent neutrality to insert culturally specific narratives, familiar faces, voices, local nuances, themes and stories - a space for flexible accumulation of cultural capital (Yeh and Davis, 2002).

This partially explains why the majority of international TV formats which have circulated rapidly across Asia tended to be game-shows. Observing the buying trends into international formats for studio game-shows, the English language channels tend to focus on Western formats. For example, in 2002-2003, MediaCorp’s English language produced Wheel of Fortune Singapore and The Weakest Link, while Who Wants to be a Millionaire Singapore and the latest BBC format Singapore’s Brainiest are on-going. Industry observers suggested that the renewal of the Wheel of Fortune was not possible because the audience share did not justify the high costs of these format rights when there were so many alternatives to choose from.

In contrast, most of the regional format experiments appear on the channels, which also produce Chinese language versions of a select few Western formats. For example, MediaCorp’s Channel 8 telecast the short-lived Jacky Jack Show, a co-production of a variety-gameshow format from Taiwan, created for Taiwan’s reigning king of variety shows, Jacky Wu and featuring Singapore’s as co-compere in 2002. While in 2004, the World of Kitchen II, a cooking gameshow format (resembling the Japanese format The Iron Chef) was renewed for another season on Channel 8 with returning hosts Moses Lim, Singapore’s latter-day funnyman, and Zeng Guocheng from Taiwan (MediaCorp TV Channel 8 homepage, 20043). This is partly due to the fact that the largest domestic television viewership remains the Chinese-language programming in Singapore, with the largest financial investment brokered by the broadcasters for Chinese programming. ACNeilsen ratings show that the Chinese language channels

3 There is striking similarity between the variety shows on Singapore’s Mandarin-language channels and those of Taiwan, such as in MediaCorp TV Channel 8 Homepage: World Kitchen II. [Online]. Available: http://ch8.mediacorptv.com/shows/variety/view/385/1/.html [Accessed date:10 Jan 2005].

18 consistently outpace their other sister language channels on terrestrial television (Lim, 2004: 111). Many of the newer format transfers are created and driven by cultural entrepreneurs and corporations.

Arguably, compared to the routes for global television, Singapore’s film industry has ‘travelled’ much further ashore despite its shorter trajectory, restarting in 1995. The first Singapore-made film picked up for Hollywood distribution was Glen Goei’s Singaporean answer to Saturday Night Fever – Forever Fever/The Way We Like It (1998), sold to Miramax Films. While the latest critical accolades continue to decorate this small industry, from Royston Tan’s art-house, controversial, teenage- gangster docudrama, 15 (2003) which continues to win awards overseas,— best fiction awards at the 2003 Tampere Film Festival to Asia New Force 2003 Critics Award for Short Film, Best international Short Film at Thai Short Film Festival 03 — to Megamedia’s Singapore- war film co-production Songs of the Stork (2002) which won the Best Feature Film award at the 2002 Milan International Film.

Recently, there is even a little format trade occurring in Asian films, showing a reverse flow of trade from East to West. For example, Hong Kong’s independent Media Asia Films’ , a Hong Kong mafia-police film trilogy helmed by Hong Kong heartthrobs and , saw the rights sold to Warner Brothers. It is rumoured to be directed by Martin Scorsese in a Hollywood remake starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt (‘Hollywood to remake Infernal Affairs’, 5 March 2004). Meanwhile, , MediaCorp Singapore’s film arm and the company with the largest output of Singapore-financed films here, recently sold the English-language remake rights of supernatural film The Eye to Tom Cruise’s production company, Cruise-Wagner Production in 2003. It was the biggest grossing Singapore film in Hong Kong when it opened in May 2002, prompting Raintree CEO, Daniel Yun to say:

The days when Hong Kong drives the movie industry are over. The next lap is the Asian movement, with countries like India, Thailand, Korea and Japan. As long as we’re part of this movement, we’ll be okay. (cited in Ho, Straits Times, February 2002)

19 Of course, while Hong Kong’s leadership in commercialised Asian filmmaking appears less certain, the economics of a film industry, from production to exhibition, is slightly different from television. Trade and spin-offs between Asian films and Asian television productions are becoming commonplace. This may due to the fact that the field of broadcasting of such industries like that of Hong Kong and Singapore are relatively small (compared to the PRC, Japan and South Korea) and therefore these smaller industries stimulate overlapping careers for individuals to traverse between becoming filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors and television producers. Singapore’s television comedian-turned-filmmaker, Jack Neo, who was host of Singapore’s most popular variety show Comedy Night in the 1990s, has already directed four movies for Raintree Pictures, including his debut film (1998), which was ranked the third highest-grossing film shown in Singapore after Titanic (1998) and The Lost World (1997) in 2002. He also carried his television comedic act of impersonating an old lady from the small to the big screen with his next film, Liang Po Po/Grandmother Liang (1999).

While Asian films can travel around film circuits and film festivals around the world, Asian television programmes from less mature television industries like Singapore do not often travel as far overseas as Hong Kong or Taipei productions. Most productions are tailored to terrestrial television schedules living off large volumes of cheap local programmes for local audiences, interspersed with acquired popular American television dramas, sitcoms or game-shows. However, the recent surge in Korean and Japanese television dramas on television networks across Asia show that their fields of broadcasting are amenable to rapid change and popular ‘K-dramas’ or ‘J-dramas’ that have high production values, regional linguistic similarities and strong financial networks. They can close the gap between local production for domestic consumption and local productions for exports (Fifield, 2004; Yeh and Davis, 2002).

Like many countries in East Asia, importing foreign ideas for the local television landscape has expanded to include ‘renting of intellectual capacity’ (Kitley, 2004: 153) of global brands to create hybridised local productions that feed local audiences’ tastes for local and global programming. Strategies like buying high quality linguistically similar programming, and adapting international TV formats

20 are now commonplace positioning tools in the increasingly competitive field of terrestrial broadcasting in Asia in general and in Singapore in particular (see Fung, 2004: 84-85; Lim, 2004). It is no longer sufficient to simply buy acquired programmes but to localize them as well through local format adaptations.

Many of the possibilities for regional experimentation shown here tends to be conducted via the local terrestrial broadcasters. There are some independent producers who have also gone through the routes of international broadcasters. Others have moved quickly into securing a link with international resellers. It is perhaps foolish for independent Asian producers to attempt to produce and sell game show formats or formatted animation, if they do not already enjoy the benefits of being affiliated with brand names in the form of media conglomerates or agents with established positions in the global field of broadcasting. Broadcasting is, then, a field of strategic possibilities where branding properties is one of the most valued currencies sought after by media producers, broadcasters, resellers and audiences alike. In the age of it is all the more rampant for animation genres (see Larson, 2003; Sandler, 2003) as well as game shows for increasingly competitive satellite and terrestrial television systems (see Moran and Keane, 2004).

Cultural Divide in format sales for Asia

However aggressive the marketing and promotions used to sell formats into different cultural markets, when discussing imported TV formats, there are clear differences in how those developed in the West are received by local industry and audiences, compared to those created in the Asian region. In Asia, for ‘franchise television’ or ‘industrial TV formats’, American and European formats that are well-received fall into 2 broad genres: news and talk show genres like 20/20 and Larry King live!, and variety show genres like game shows, competitions, and talent contests.

Although acquired soap dramas like Dallas and Days of Our Lives were exported successfully across Asia, Western-based drama genres form a tiny part of TV formats into Asian television fields of broadcasting. For example, a brief glimpse at the format trade activity in Asia from 2001 to 2003 will show that high activity in format sales was concentrated in game-shows such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and

21 The Weakest Link (see Moran and Keane, 2004). Very few drama formats were sold such as Divided Hearts, the Indonesian format for BBC’s Sons and Daughters (Winstone, 2001). This appears common to Western format trade as well where ‘television fiction’ from ‘drama series and serials…situation comedy and children’s drama’ which require a heavy local investment in narrative and performance construction (Moran, 2003: 8). In East Asia, my case studies suggest that the exception appears to be Japanese manga and Chinese martial arts fiction, which are formats that are consumption-driven; demand is increasingly driven by youths who share common consumption interests and develop an enduring fandom for certain cultural commodities.

However, the hybrid genres of reality TV formats do have subtle impact as they stimulate local broadcasters to attempt their own hybrid reality game shows, spilling over into news, current affairs and docudramas. In Hong Kong, the short spell with formats have continued only with game shows like Russian Roulette and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, as other American formats like Temptation Island and Survivor have been adapted and hybridized into such local shows as The Wild, while some reality TV matchmaking-and-dating shows have emerged such as Love Paradox (Fung, 2004: 76, 85). Local TV schedules introduced barely clothed contestants in muted but suggestive kissing shows like The Bachelorette, Singapore audiences saw the launch of Singapore’s first local reality dating programme, An Eye for a Guy on Channel 5, in 2004. Taipei’s field of television saw a proliferation of talk- entertainment shows that borrowed from CNN’s Larry King show, and E! Entertainment celebrity news programme packaged in almost an MTV Asia style for their local television channels, like Dong Feng TV’s Showbiz, which features the latest gossip on Taiwan’s entertainment scene.

Meanwhile, Asian broadcasters regularly adapted their local drama and variety shows from their Asian neighbours. These were mostly copycat television practices or ‘cultural borrowing’ (Keane, 2004a/JAMCO) with little actual franchise or TV format sales. For example, Lee Dong-Hoo (2004a) notes how producers often closely followed the narratives from Japanese dramas (i.e. doramas) such as the Korean adaptation, Yojolady (A Lady of Fine Manners) from Fuji TV’s Yamatonadeshiko). Japanese producers are aware of how Taiwanese producers often

22 copy their variety productions but seem less concerned by their copying practices (Iwabuchi, 2004). It is difficult to ascertain when copying becomes intellectual property infringement if the cultural adaptations involve hybridization strategies that eliminate the ‘cultural discounts’ of the original productions.

A good example is Super Sunday, where the Taiwanese producers had bought the rights for a Japanese variety show format segment to develop their own variety show. Over time, they created more than ten segments that were better received by audiences, including unique ones such as Harlem Entertainment Night and Super Diaries (Interview with producer Liu De Huai, 24 January 2003).

From importer to net exporter of Asian formatted productions: Japan and Others

Exportable Asian formats in terms of translating into format sales have only recently begun to gain prominence and circulate in East Asia. Iwabuchi (2004: 31-33) argues that while the Japanese began exporting TV formats in terms of variety and game shows since the 1980s, Japanese format distributors found it difficult to penetrate Asian markets because of uneven developments of their broadcasting industry and markets, weak intellectual property regimes, and lack of a regional television marketplace to trade equitably. Although Japan has been an active exporter of TV formats globally, their destination markets have always been Europe and North America.

Meanwhile, as the Japanese economy boomed throughout the 1970s and 1980s, some culturally proximate Asian neighbours like Taiwan and Hong Kong began to incorporate elements of Japanese television shows into their own local productions. They often did so without acquiring format rights or signing format license agreements with the Japanese producers. This meant rampant copying and little revenue for the Japanese format rights holders. Thus, Japan concentrated on format sales to Europe and North America, where the broadcasting climate and intellectual property regimes ensured profitable returns for the Japanese cultural entrepreneurs.

23 Japanese producers tried to penetrate Asian markets in other ways. One alternative was through co-productions like Asia Bagus, a weekly Asian singing talent contest in studio that was regionally broadcast, complete with Japanese and Malaysian co-hosts for (Iwabuchi, 2000: 142). But this was difficult to sustain in the long-term and closed after a few years. Another route was created by the arrival of new recoding technologies for the VCD and DVD format, which provided a fast and easy mode of cultural reproduction. It quickly became an alternative media platform for circulating short-run Japanese drama series (i.e. doramas) outside the non-Japanese television markets. Many of these doramas featured good looking youthful actors and singers playing an array of characters from rebels who broke social conventions to self- sacrificing family members.

By using the services of Taipei-based subtitling services and distribution networks (for instance, Sony Film Partner Services Ltd, Co Co Film Services Company, Shin- Yin Video and Audio Ltd), the Japanese could export their Japanese dramas for the larger Chinese-language markets. Subsequently, these doramas proved so popular that they were also re-distributed and repackaged into other languages like Bahasa Malaya by local post-production and distribution companies like Dragon Planet Sdn Bhd and Video Box Sdn Bdn in Kuala Lumpur. Accompanying Japanese’ direct VCD sales into non-Japanese Asian markets was the spread of video piracy, making it difficult to differentiate copies from originals sold in various shopping malls and night markets.

Japanese dramas circulated aggressively in this throughout the East Asian region during the late 1990s to 2002 and led to their popularity in individual cultural markets. At the height of their popularity, many Hong Kong-made Chinese films like Tokyo Raiders featured Japanese actors made popular through doramas (Yeh and Davis, 2002: 5) Several Japanese horror films like The Ring/Ringu (1998), Battle Royale(2000) and Ju-On (2000) entered Southeast Asian’s cinema circuits to compete alongside Hollywood and Hong Kong films. Meanwhile, Japanese music videos began to enter the satellite channels regional programming schedules for MTV Asia and . This combined influx of doramas in local video shops, films and music programmes led Chinese-language broadcasters to pick up the broadcast rights for dramas and music variety shows for their weeknight late night or

24 weekend morning slots. These overlapping activities virtually created a regional circuit of culture that allowed Japanese films, music and television programmes to flow across Asia. This circuit is now followed closely by the (or Hallyu) with South Korea’s equally huge domestic output of television dramas, music and films. It created the possibility of a regional cultural marketplace for Asian-made media productions.

Other smaller television industries in Asian cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur used neighbouring models of production to mimic, adopting Taiwanese production styles and formats which were copied off the Japanese and those from the West. Whether as opportunistic copying or licensed copying, this was seen as a learning vehicle to develop their own unique local productions. For example, Taipei’s CTS acquisition of the rights to a Japanese variety show segment led to their development into one of their own longest-running variety shows entitled Super Sunday (Interview with Liu De-Hui, 24 January 2003). Meanwhile in Hong Kong, Robert Chua had created Hong Kong’s first and longest running variety-music show, Enjoy Yourself Tonight (歡樂今宵) for TVB’s Cantonese Jade channel, which still remains on TVB’s programming schedule today.

My case studies will reveal some distinct differences, in industry ‘habitus’ about creating exportable TV among television producers in three cities. For example, leading TV programme-makers in Hong Kong such as TVB assumed that making TV programmes relevant to urban and demanding Hong Kong audiences would ensure they were also exportable (Interview with Janie To, 24 October 2003). In contrast, Singapore producers believed that customising their TV shows to the tastes of external communities with geo-linguistic similarities to Singapore (Interview with Sung, 2 October 2002) was more effective. Meanwhile, Taiwanese producers believed that what made Taiwanese popular culture exportable was their ability to be the alternative window to the modernist Chinese world (Interviews with James Wong 4 , 30 October 2003; Cheung Wei-Shiung, 3 Dec 2002) by recombining

4 James Wang is CEO of Cuckoo’s Nest Studios, the largest animation company in Taiwan, based in Taipei. According to John Lent (2000), his company is a Taiwanese pioneer for Taiwanese animation and he has done a lot of contract work for Hana Barbara and Disney Studios. Lent (2000) is available: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1100/jlfr11c.htm. [Accessed: 14 May 2004].

25 traditional Chinese content and regional star-making system global forms to create a pan-East Asian popular culture.

Therefore, the current wave of format trade throughout Asia is the backdrop for the wide spectrum of formatting activities that are emerging in East Asia television industries in cities remaking themselves into media capitals.

Outline of Chapters

In Chapter Two, I will introduce a list of inter-related concepts which are used to help classify the range of formatting activity that occurs in a mature TV industry that is attempting to reinvent and repurpose itself to compete in a global and multichannel and multimedia environment. In the new economy of a global era touching on , internet and borderless world of communication, the media players that survive will need to find ways to harness the old media and adapt them to new conditions. I will identify four hypotheses that emerge from the literature review which could be used to answer the two research questions of the study.

Chapter Three explains how the methodological approach used is a response to the call of Moeran (2001) for a closer examination of Asian media productions as a field of inquiry in their own right. Du Gay et al (1997: 3-5) developed a 'circuit of culture' as a model of culture (where social and material practices, and objects reflect a particular way of life that has certain meanings and values) that has been applied to the study of Asian media productions (see Moeran, 2001). We can examine an object within this circuit of culture in a holistic manner. It is most suitable for the case study of three East Asian television industries so I have focused on the production-end of local TV programmes but want to remain attentive to the fact that production is closely interrelated with other aspects of a larger television culture. To reflect the inter-relationships at work, I have modified the framework slightly into a circuit of cultural production. It serves the same purposes of identifying where industry, popular culture and societies meet, as well as the links between 'moments', where culture is mediated, or what Stuart Hall (1996) defined as a process of ‘articulation’. As a process which generates meaning along five different 'moments' - representation,

26 identity, production, consumption, and regulation, each moment is interlinked with the other in an on-going process of cultural encoding and dissemination.

This process of meeting and mediation is about the 'articulation' of one set of ideas by creators and TV producers who interact with others during the process of production, distribution, circulation, representation and consumption. Each of the ‘moments’ are linked to one another by gap-minders or what Pierre Bourdieu (1984: 359) refers to as 'cultural intermediaries' – people involved not only in advertising, and design but also anyone involved with cultural production or reception as in the example of the SONY Walkman (see Du Gay et al, 1997). In this thesis, these ‘cultural intermediaries’ are people within the publicity complex (Ryan, 1992: 235).

While each industry is located in a globally connected city with a television culture or ‘television-as-culture’ (Fiske, 1987: 1) unique to its people because of its history and development; the unique features of a television culture are created by people’s interaction with their television industry as audiences, regulators, reviewers, advertisers, distributors, and re-sellers. As the political and potential economic value of television increases, these people bring their television culture across national boundaries. The ‘circuit of cultural production’ maps the flow of culture within a ‘television culture’ where television programmes are the most tangible objects to circulate within it. The television field is a field of cultural production where a matrix of power relationships that compete for scarce and valued resource emerges when this culture is located in a geographic space.

Moeran (2001: 6) notes that increasingly with the rise of regional and global markets, Asia media productions are cultural products that intersect with moments in a larger circuit of culture that have economic, social and cultural consequences – that is, production, consumption, identity formation, regulation, distribution/circulation and representation. As the case studies in this thesis (Chapters Four, Five and Six) will demonstrate, formatting can occur along any of these moments in the circuit of culture. Focusing on television production, regulation, circulation and consumption of the selected TV programme series, the study examines the resources, people and activities involved in formatting practices. Chapter Four will focus on Hong Kong television’s love affair with classic formats such as the martial arts drama serial for

27 Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre (HSDS) and the conundrum created by TVB’s third edition of the series, HSDS2000. Chapter Five features two cases of made-by Singapore productions that rely upon a dispersed mode of cultural production in order to internationalise – a TV gameshow format called Everyone Wins created by Robert Chua Productions, and Tomato Twins (TT), a pioneering children’s series by a young but enterprising production company called Peach Blossom Media(PBM). The final case study in Chapter Six features Taipei-based Comic Ritz Production’s pioneer idol teenage drama serial, Meteor Garden, which has started a new economy of idol teenage dramas never seen before in a Chinese television marketplace.

Some surprising things I discovered while researching the four case studies were linked to the premise of what made these TV productions travel overseas to foreign cultural markets. For HSDS2000, what surprised me was that audiences were so uninterested in Jin Yong novels adapted by TVB for the small screen and yet there was such a renewed interest in HSDS online games and in the comic book formats. This finding indicated that the production team (including the scriptwriters) were not in sync with the tastes of their viewing public circa 2000-2001 as they miscalculated a new inter-textual reference that repositioned the female as the heroes and anti- heroes. and Gigi Lai, Hong Kong’s leading ladies in the TV industry have sufficient celebrity appeal to overcome another adaptation of the classic novel against the overarching male-dominated narrative. HSDS’s fundamental appeal lies with the chivalry aspects of the novel and its main target audiences — young males. Furthermore, I was puzzled that HSDS2000 was reviewed poorly and considered a weak version (compared to earlier versions) but still managed to be ranked among the 10 most watched TVB programmes in 2001. The positive comments made were from female fans while the negative ones came from the male fans of HSDS. This second finding suggests the power of scheduling, promotion and marketing often outweighs internet and informal ‘word of mouth’ reviews. Also, the brand appeal of HSDS the novel ensured that audiences would at least follow the series to find out how far they have strayed from the original.

As for Tomato Twins, what surprised me was that the producers aimed so high – the North American market – and adopted similar models of production as Hollywood.

28 This finding indicates a level of confidence among producers from small television producing cities in certain genres of production. Their rationale was that animation was easily formatted to different territories, but they believed that most money would be made in the richest TV market in the world – the USA. Also, without much animation portfolio and expertise in-house, they managed to prospect knowledge and talents sufficiently to obtain purchase from an American cartoon network – Nickelodeon, which the producer said was linked to pure luck but also by using a good grasp of local knowledge to co-opt international broadcasters for greater credibility and distribution opportunities. This suggests that PBM was connected to many sources by a network enterprise model that is very much compatible to the Hollywood production model of a global division of labour and post-Fordist mode of cultural production that defines capitalist societies today.

For Everyone Wins, what surprised me was that despite the selling point of TV game show formats as a conservative strategy to boost audience ratings, especially with their non-political guise (see Cooper-Chen, 1994)., Asian formats (excluding Japan’s) were not as saleable and was a costly and prohibitive strategy for Robert Chua Productions to export his expertise as content. Instead, Chua relied upon his professional and personal reputation and his grasp of the local political reading of the fields to create ‘media spectacles’ (designed to draw public attention) by engaging in political rhetoric that favoured the uptake of his formats in those territories. This suggested that selling TV formats is only a systematic practice for big format creators and traders in Western countries and Japan.

What surprised me in Meteor Garden (MG) (2001) was the fact that the higher production values of Meteor Garden II (MGII) (2002) could not match the audience’s heavy engagement with MG, with all its flaws in lighting, backdrop and effects. The success of MG was culturally more significant and financially less successful in comparison to MGII. The success of MGII was less culturally significant/engaging and financially more rewarding and successful for the producers. Compared to MG which was resold in entire sets of the series, MGII was resold during the simulcast of the broadcast version in shops by episodes or blocs, time- release action (in the way that Vitamin C is released for effective absorption by the

29 body), which is also a Hollywood mode of controlled distribution5. Also, I was surprised by the strong initial negative reaction from the Taiwanese industry to the first Chinese closed adaptation of a Japanese manga, MG, which was quickly replaced by a new found optimism. However, the vicious cycle of production budgets being cut have pulled the independent production sector into the doldrums after this initial high (TV Asia Satellite and Cable Annual Guide 2003/2004 ; Lin, 2002). This reflects residual hostility towards Japanese influence over a very Taiwanese cultural and creative industry, especially when dramas in Taiwan (as well as most indigenous TV industries) are potent signifiers of local identity. The shift from the cultural to the economic fields that MG created broke down these barriers and a new industry habitus was formulated on championing the exporting of Taiwanese made productions as an assertion of the potency of its identity.

There is a complex interplay of political, cultural and economic factors that shape how successful Asian media productions circulate in the region and internationally. However, the case study chapters will focus more deeply on the TV programmes unique to East Asian television broadcasting, TV formatting practices’ role in creating opportunities for exportable television and the problems that producers encountered in their fields.

Finally, Chapters Seven and Eight summarises the key findings, revisits the research questions and assesses the four hypotheses proposed in Chapter Two, to see to what extent each could be applied to the East Asian television industries selected.

5 See some interesting discussion in Levison, Louise (2001) Filmmakers and Financing, 3rd edition, Focal Press and Miller et al (2001).

30 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The shift to new players in cultural entrepreneurship, cultural and creative industries policy regimes and the rapid uptake of new media technologies in East Asia calls for a re-examination of change in East Asia. The recent articulation of creative industries policies amongst East Asian governments in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan is also a change in government policy that recognises the inadequacy of controlling the flow of information along media and communication channels. There is noticeable state policy shift towards influencing the flow of culture via promoting content development. Individuals and companies operating out of Asian media systems that offer leadership in converting information and local entertainment into tradable culture create content that circulates the globe as forms of ‘East Asian Popular Culture’ (Chua, 2004: 202-203). Such popular culture refers to ‘the developing production, exchange, flow and consumption of popular cultural products between the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.’

This chapter maps the existing literature across various disciplines from media and communication studies, cultural geography, cultural studies, and business studies. I propose a theoretical framework to categorize, describe and analyse the pathways that different East Asian television industries and related popular culture take in seeking to internationalise while remaining relevant to local audiences. Four hypotheses are extracted from the literature to suggest how the processes of media globalization affect media producers’ ability to reach their audiences when these producers are located in cities that aspire to become media capitals’ (Curtin, 2003).

Part of the theoretical framework involves introducing the concept of ‘local knowledge’ (Geertz, 1983: 213-217) to examine change in East Asian television industries. While Geertz uses the concept loosely to refer to a contextual exercise in gathering knowledge based on beliefs, views, ‘common sense’ and even art as anthropologists go about translating customs, and daily activities they observe across cultures (1983:10-11), ‘local knowledge’ is used here to refer to knowledge acquired

31 by individuals through everyday encounters and daily interaction between agents in the field in which they compete and struggle to translate their ideas into successful productions. Local knowledge is a key factor for any media industry to change as industry responds to various processes of media globalization, as I argued elsewhere (see Lim, 2004: 109). Such knowledge becomes articulated as industry rules, values and norms that are distilled into a tacit and unconscious industry ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1977, cited in Webb et al, 2002: 36) from which change may occur to create new industry practices. This line of reasoning also finds resonance in literature focused on explaining new forms of economic activity that has given rise to the knowledge economy where tacit knowledge (Howells, 2000: 50-62) is a key ingredient for knowledge entrepreneurs (Leadbeater and Oakley, 1999: 101-7) to profit from cultural and informational business opportunities.

Increased media competition, the rise of multinational capitalism (Hamelink, 1983) and network enterprises (Castells, 2000) aid both cultural homogenization and diverse consumption practices that derive from the compression of time and space (Harvey, 1989). Any developing media industry now faces a new global cultural economy that is full of overlaps and ‘disjunctures’ (Appadurai, 1990). It could possibly serve different social groups from villages to families who may identify with one set of popular culture in very dispersed locations around the world.

Since East Asian media industries are asserting themselves in the larger cultural economy beyond their national borders, this chapter offers an alternative explanation for change in Asian television industries, and how formatting practices are manifest responses for creating and extending the life-cycle of individual Asian television programmes beyond indigenous borders. Finally, I will briefly chart the history of the phenomena of formatting in cultural and media studies so as to derive a taxonomy of TV formatting that demonstrates how a range of formatting practices enable media producers to circulate their media productions across time and place.

Literature Review

Perhaps there are specific epochs of growth that characterize change in television industries. However, they only emerge when we examine the local context and the textual forms that cause change in these industries at close range or use ‘middle

32 range’ theories (Sinclair, et al 1996) or theories that explain broader social phenomena that occur within a short timeframe, such as the current global take-up of and related format trade. It is equally important to place current changes in selected television industries in the larger context of global flows and media globalization. Over the long-term, we may see emerging developments and changes in the relationship between media industries like television, institutions, texts and audiences that seem to converge across specific regions in the world.

This thesis is situated in four research areas and, as the literature review also impacts upon the research design and methodology (see Chapter Three), I will elaborate on a theoretical framework that will link up these research areas with a taxonomy that can be used to describe and examine formatting and change in East Asian television industries that generate a possible East Asian popular culture. The fields are: Asian media and communication studies; the rise of tradable (audio-visual) cultures as media industries develop; cities remade into media capitals in the global flow of cultural production; and finally, the articulation of local knowledge as formatting in television industries. The study has derived four general hypotheses from the literature review in order to seek answers to the research questions listed in Chapter One.

Asian Media and Communication Studies

Much of the research on Asian media and communications has focused on three areas. Firstly, on the ideological function of Asian media in reproducing systems of political and ideological domination by political elites or the parties who collude with them (see Curran and Park, 2000). Secondly, on the forms and practices of cultural ‘warfare’ that Asian nations use to respond to Western cultural and media imperialism (see Goonasekera and Holaday, 1998). And finally, on the disjunctive pull of cultural consumption. Their changing socio-cultural and institutional environments are a response to the push of technological modernization (Appadurai, 1990; Wang et al, 2000). Despite this rich vein of literature, Asian media research largely ignores the industrial perspectives, with the obvious exception of general press, trade and industry journals (see Berfield, 1996; Television Asia’s Satellite and

33 Cable Annual Guides 2003/2004) and opts to examine the power relations between media institutions, audiences and nation-states.

Many similar studies predict the powerlessness of nation-states in the context of global free trade developments. Under cultural threats from dominant neighbours, or the far-reaching influence of their ex-colonial masters, some Asian studies (see Karthigesu, 1994; Hong and Hsu, 1999) frame responses as ideological and moral issues facing economic pressure from the markets. It suggests that Asian media markets are remaining static and are ignoring the fact that audiences’ consumption practices have become more sophisticated, with their own unique tastes and interests.

Meanwhile, others have documented the growth of trans-border television in Asia (Thussu, 2000; Goonasekera and Lee, 1998; Chan, 1996; Lee, 1980) although their growth is usually framed as a negative response to media imperialism. Where the impact of foreign channels like Star TV translate into competitive ideological and commercial threats for local television channels, the literature describes local resistance - increased national gate-keeping policies or ‘local protectionism’ such as government-controlled import quotas in Vietnam and Korea (see Lee and Joe, 2000; French and Richard, 2000), censorship policies for local television stations in South East Asia (Chan, 1994), and restrictive landing licenses in India and China (Thomas, 2000; Kumar, 2000; Keane, 2002). However, even these institutional bans have not stemmed the flow of regionally popular content into restricted television fields (see Moran and Keane, 2004).

Notably, most of the negative response is directed at ‘pure’ imported media content rather than at TV formats. Moran (1998: 22) notes that TV formats often enter foreign markets by the ‘back door’ as local production. This adds complexity to the usual critique of the Westernization of Asian media systems, as imported TV formats are designed to allow for flexible local adaptations of imported ideas to national settings, and offer benefits like work for local industry (Moran, 1998: 23). However, with the recent international success of some TV formats like Millionaire, Survivor, , American Idol and The Weakest Link, TV formats have entered the space of ‘public fictions’ (McKee, 2001) in which certain TV programmes have become icons of popular culture and inspire mixed public and trade press feedback.

34 Not surprisingly, TV formats are also criticised for contributing to the ‘dumbing down’ and lowering of TV standards (see Goh, 2002).

Despite a continuing discourse regarding the negative impact of media globalization on Asian media landscapes, recent studies highlight how some countries that have gradually attained self-confident nationhood respond proactively beyond cultural imperialism by the West (Ang, 2001). Many Asian countries are adopting differing models of media liberalization regimes that encourage local industry development. Relaxing bans on foreign imports in the early 1990s led a late developer like South Korea to start off with an expanding range of local content through cultural hybridization with Japanese and American formats (Lee DH, 2004a; Liu and Chen, 2004). Also, lowering cultural barriers towards television programmes and films helped stimulate the ambition of regional players in Japan and Hong Kong, who have massively exported their Asian television and films since the 1980s (Iwabuchi, 2004; Chung, 2003; Curtin, 2003). Some have drawn attention to the growing domestic use of ‘geo-linguistic’ or regional programming in countries like Greater China (Sinclair et al, 1996) and circulation of Asian productions to diasporic south-east Asian communities settled elsewhere (Cunningham et al, 2000).

Regional dynamics are crucial in reordering cultural flows. Cooper-Chen (1994) noted the emergence of different game-worlds in her global study of television game- shows and in Yu and Davis’s (2002) study of pan-regional Hong Kong film and television productions. Meanwhile, consumption-focused studies suggest that there are limits to the unbalanced flow of culture that the globalization of television brings from West to East or North to South (Straubhaar, 2000) as consumer preferences for local programming over-imported programmes when local alternatives are available (see Chadha and Kavoori, 2000; Straubhaar, 1991; Tracey, 1985; Wang, 1993).

In contrast to the nation-centred account of cultural gate-keeping as a typical Asian media paradigm, Chua (2000b: 27-29) highlighted that consumption in Asia itself cannot be viewed simplistically as a unilateral flow where East Asian consumers merely absorb culturally-inscribed products from the West. While consumption drives new forms of cultural production and reproduction in Asia, the thirty-year economic growth of East and South East Asian countries has created a middle-class

35 lifestyle momentum in which consumption patterns are the product of ‘ideological contests across generational and national divisions within these countries in Asia’ (Chua, 2000b: 29). However, these contests are part of the discourse on values in these nations, characterised as a contest between ‘Asian’ versus ‘Western’ values.

These studies reveal a gap in explaining change wrought by cultural imperialism (see Tomlinson, 1991). A complex disjunctive media landscape of overlapping culturally- defined markets afford possibilities for circulating Asian media productions and re- patterning television programming across Asia. This avoids the conundrum of stereotyping ‘Asian’ and ‘Western’ media as diametrically opposed and in exclusive categories. Additionally, viewing Asia as one entire bloc is problematic in itself (Said, 1978).Yet other Asian media studies (see Curran and Park, 2000) suggest the homogenising power of globalisation is overstated and hides an ulterior local dynamic. By championing the cultural imperialist thesis, governments and industries can be co-opted to enable an empire-building ethos to flourish, which further consolidates the hegemony of existing cultural and political elites.

Global media giants eager to infiltrate Asian markets also rely on this local dynamic, extending regionally where there are similar cultural links. Kevin Robbins (1997) illustrated how American TV channels like MTV and CNN have had to adapt their programming to local settings in order to produce new hybrids, either jointly with local businesses or by mixing locally-sourced programmes with imported American ones. Following their European counterparts’ concern with safeguarding their cultural borders by strengthening their own audio-visual producers (see Collins, 1998; Galperin, 1999), many Asian communication studies often examine the impact of Western media on technological change and global communications in the Asia Pacific. Regionally adapted, Western television channels are sometimes viewed as mixed blessings (see Robbins, 1997). New hybrid cultural forms are created with the intention to market to Asian audiences. Learning from these new forms, local industries have adapted to both protect their cultural identities and develop a strong domestic industry.

Other studies have charted the market penetration of Asian content from anime to Japanese television drama (Iwabuchi, 1998, 2001; Lee, 2002). Rather than treating

36 Asian media productions like film and television programmes as pretexts for identity formation, which traditionally fuels the fears of cultural imperialism linked to Hollywood’s domination, Yeh and Davis (2002) have demonstrated how cultural texts such as Japanese movies and television, circulating in Hong Kong, have helped to transform that city’s film and television productions into exportable Asian media:

We might profitably think of Japanese media in all its forms – theatrical, VCD, and broadcast media …as a relatively small, but important fracture in the foreign market, a divide that may not enable Hong Kong films to conquer, but at least to catch their breath in the fight to win back audiences…. Sometimes ... Japanese motifs, talent or other elements can be used strategically by Hong Kong cinema as a kind of typhoon shelter from Hollywood storms. (Yeh and Davies, 2002: 10)

Media productions from strong neighbouring Asian countries like Japan can counterbalance the influx of Western media in ways that do not support the thesis of complete domination of local culture and productions. Over time, the local Asian media industries learn from each other. As Yeh and Davis (2002) noted, pan-Asian strategies of Hong Kong filmmakers, are referred to as ‘Japan Hongscreen’. Local industry players develop templates or abilities to harness imported media, skills and talents as ‘value-added, flexible elements’ to create pan-Asian cinema and other types of pan-Asian productions that rival Hollywood’s offerings. Chapters Four, Five and Six will show how producers that create exportable productions readily adopted such a flexible accumulation of cultural capital by installing regional stars and directors and importing music into their productions.

Becoming media capitals

Besides the study of change in Asian media and communication systems, this study also intersects with a second field of inquiry. It examines the different processes which enable and connect material and social practices, in cities aspiring to be globally connected, through engaging in de-territorialised networks of media production, distribution and consumption. These typically involve an urban studies or cross-disciplinary geographical approach (Harvey, 1989; Huang, 2001) towards understanding changes in cities, or how cities serve as financial and communication hubs. A limited number of studies make the leap of connecting these cities as

37 incubators for cultural or creative industries (Myserscough, 1988; Leadbeater and Oakley, 1999).

I will briefly survey the existing literature which indicates that natural affinities, derived from their location on the global map, and various governmental policy initiatives to establish their cities as windows, urban centres, hubs or nexus points, enable cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taipei to grow beyond peripheral cultural economies into media capitals that centre around building vibrant film and broadcasting industries. This link was not always self-evident but has become more apparent in recent years, especially with the push towards creative industries in the Asia Pacific (see Hartley et al, 2003).

Some theorists suggest that globalisation and technological imperatives of global information infrastructures favour the international flow of culture from Western- based media production centres (mainly Hollywood and Europe) to the rest of the world with limited, if any, cultural flows back to the ‘centre’ (Wallerstein, 1992; Vernon, 1979). ‘Middle-range’ theories suggest that Asian and Latin American broadcasting industries have begun to expand their operations regionally in a bid to capture a part of the global television market (Sinclair et al, 1996; Chan, 1996; Sinclair, 2000; Langsdale, 1997).

Moreover, some urban centres are remaking themselves so as to become perfect sites for hybridization of culture, and to incubate hybrid cultural products and services that reach into wider regional markets and cross cultural borders. New forms of work and innovative modes of production are especially prominent in emerging globally- networked cities as they attract a convergence of capital, talent and market logic. As change gradually penetrates East Asian cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei, television industries in these cities may become production centres for creative industries. Scott (2004) argues that even small towns are ‘flourishing sites of cultural economic development’, but these are most visible in metropolitan areas such as Malaysia’s capital city Cyberjaya, Hong Kong and South Korea’s Seoul.

38 Moving the analysis of cultural flows from nation-states to cities, Curtin (2003: 203) introduced the concept of ‘media capital’ to highlight the mediation of global flow of culture described in recent Asian media and communication studies. A media capital is a site of ‘mediation’, much like an airport where mobile communities transact in an open flow of people, goods and services. Curtin describes media capitals as ‘nexus or switching point(s)’ that are ‘centres of media activity that have specific logics of their own’. These media capitals grow because of their ability to transcend physical barriers to network with other cities and reach communities that re-arrange production and distribution activities around ‘neo-networks’. These networks build linkages with industries across other locations such as the case of Global Hollywood and Hong Kong television (Miller et al, 2001; Curtin, 2003: 211-213). Some examples of these media capitals are Bombay, Cairo and Hong Kong, which enjoy a regional financial or business centre in their own right.

Media capitals are sites where tradable culture is built by companies developing distribution and regulatory practices that enable profitable networks to flourish in these locations:

Unlike the network era when the control of a few national channels was the key to profitability, neo-network television firms focus on marketing, promotion and the control of intellectual property (Curtin and Streeter, 2001). (cited in Curtin, 2003: 212)

Meanwhile, Chua (2004: 205) suggests that this geographical advantage is a given in the example of Japan, which emerged not only as a financial centre in the 1970s but also became a prime dispenser of East Asian popular culture across geolinguistic locations. Where consumers can forgo their actual nationalities and identify with the ‘foreign characters on screen, a foreignness that is, in turn, potentially reabsorbed into an idea of (East) 'Asia'’ they can assume an abstract ‘East Asian identity’ based on consuming East Asian popular goods, fulfilling a ‘displaced Confucian East Asian project’ (Chua, 2004: 2000) when they consume Asian media productions. This trend allows Japanese and South Korean popular cultural materials to be produced, circulated and readily consumed in the East Asian region. Similarly, we can see a

39 rich flow of cultural products and services to and from other East Asian cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul and Taipei. These cities’ audiences share cultural icons and pop stars that became familiar household faces through film and television programmes. For instance, Hong Kong’s Home Box Office King, Andy Lau (who started his career in TVB7), or the first Asian boyband in two decades, F4, to garner a regional fan-following as a result of their debut in a new of teenage idol drama in the Taipei case study of Meteor Garden 2001 (see Chapter Six).

Small media capitals can flourish with the aid of a pro-development climate. Having learnt from the arbitrary risks of the 2001 dot.com meltdown of American companies, Asian governments took either a direct promotional approach or a pro- market approach to rationalize the fitness of their media industries by shifting towards promoting a knowledge-based and creative economy. Much like Europe’s push for info-communication development in broadcasting (see Collins, 1998), early industry development policies in Asia began with the dual aims of nurturing local communications industries and shortening their learning cycle by attracting global media companies - international satellite broadcasters like Discover, MTV Asia, and National Geographic to Singapore and Hong Kong. Preston (2001: 150-151) elaborates on the premium that policymakers placed on foreign global media companies. As transnational corporations, they contribute directly to the grander information technological vision of building ‘core info-intensive and communication industries’ from media to producer services (business information services, management and public relations services), education services, and more.

In fact, many Asian governments view these services not simply as infrastructural developments but also as commercial industries. Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan developed ‘place competitiveness’ (Ho, 1998: 295) so as to attract or develop global talent and capital critical for the growth of creative industries. Their governments also openly compete to be nexus points for specialised global circuits for economic activities, even while their respective media producers collaborate with each other in

7 See The Internet Movie Database – Andy Lau [Online]. Available:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0490489/, [Accessed 24 Apr 2005].

40 a bid to be more than nationalistic. All three governments’ recent grand visions8 have expressed commitments to IT and infrastructural development projects, reflecting political desires for the cities to become media capitals (The Nation, 2002; Taipei Review, 2002; Gillmour, 2001).

Commercial television industries are largely forced to make their own way, such as Hong Kong’s TVB (Television Broadcast Limited), Japanese television format exporters like TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting Systems), and Taipei-based satellite television provider, Azio TV. To some extent, demographic and social trends associated with greater economic affluence is leading to changed patterns of media consumption in these cities (Chua, 2000a; Sinclair, 1998). These cities develop exportable cultural products and distribution services because of the intensity of local competition for audiences and economic returns.

Earlier, I explained how Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei can be examined using Abu-Lughod’s (1995) closest comparisons approach. They are economically developed with marked technological progress. Their media industries face the momentum of change, as they are situated in cities geared increasingly towards a global economy. Curtin (2003) suggests that television and film companies operating in these small cities, compared to their bigger neighbours like Chinese Mainland (or PRC), Malaysia and Indonesia, do so successfully because they are located in cities that ‘culturally proximate’ (Straubhaar, 1991). These cities naturally form a geo- linguistic region with population bases of predominantly overseas Chinese communities chasing, creating and living ‘ideal’ Asian modernities. They also share similar historical trajectories as post-colonial cities.

As postcolonial cities in East Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei are able to draw upon the political will to become pan-Asian centres while incorporating elements of Western modernity and progress. This creates a more flexible ‘hybrid’

8 See Hong Kong’s vision ‘Hong Kong 2030, Chief Executive Policy Address 2005’ (available at: http://www.info.gov.hk/hk2030/hk2030content/home_eng/2030_e.htm), Singapore’s Media 21, Design 21, Global City of the

41 response to globalisation and change in Asia, whether in multicultural Singapore (see Ang and Stratton, 1996) or cosmopolitan Tokyo (see Iwabuchi, 2001). These cities are poised to become production centres that feed newly affluent cultural markets at home and in the region.

Tradable (audio-visual) cultures

A growing body of literature focuses on trade in culture between nations and, in particular, the trade in audio-visual products such as television, music and film. This thesis can be situated within this field of research which is concerned with the dynamics of local industry protection, the flow of TV programmes across cultural continents, and cultural proximity and centre-periphery relationships between traditional and emerging centres of cultural production. As O’Regan (1990) and Chadha and Kavoori (2000) suggested in their critique of the power of Hollywood and Western media imperialism in other parts of the world, peripheral cities’ television industries clearly produce a huge volume of indigenous and regional television programmes for domestic audiences, which many people prefer over Western imports if these local or regional programmes have high production values.

In fact, some research indicates that many peripheral television industries have circulated their indigenous productions in overseas marketplaces and cities. North American writers such as Acheson and Maule (2001) and Galperin (1999) present overviews of economic characteristics and general organisational responses to globalization by Canada’s cultural industries in ways that offer deeper insight into the complexity and potentials for developing trade between Canada and other countries.

For example, Acheson and Maule (2001: 115) highlight this complexity in, for instance, the international music trade. Internationally sold music is subject to high tariffs or transportation costs. Trans-national corporations from Canada, Japan and Europe counteract these barriers by producing or distributing through subsidiaries, or

Arts (available at http://www.mita.gov.sg), and the Taiwanese government’s: ‘Challenge 2008, Cultural and Creative Industries’ (http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/glance/2003/ch11.htm).

42 they license items from their catalogues to firms in foreign markets. Furthermore, for film and television industries, they maintain that there is more benefit for the domestic industry to produce goods that sells in many markets than goods that only have limited success in the home market.

While there have been robust and sometimes emotive debates about the effect of rules-based trade on cultural industries in the Western hemisphere (Sauvé and Steinfatt, 2000; Goldsmith, 2002; Dunkley, 1997), few studies have yet to be conducted in East Asia. However, these issues are set to emerge on national agendas with the ascent of regional and, perhaps, international markets for cultural products, and the growing influence of competition policy emerging through the architecture of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Arup, 2000).

While Asian cultural elites reluctantly admit that culture is a form of business that should be subject to business rules, it provokes a negative reaction to Hollywood’s cultural hegemony in the business of global film and television industries. However, the basis for this hegemony is open to interpretation. Olson’s (1999) thesis revolved around the argument that Hollywood-based film and television industry exhibited ‘narrative transparency’ where their output is capable of being understood in multiple markets. Miller et al (2001) questions the tradability of American popular culture based upon its textual properties which generate broad appeal, as argued by Olson (1999). Miller and Ledger (2001) refer to Hollywood’s first-move advantage as its system of production that exploits the ‘new international division of cultural labour’ to control global distribution channels and cultural labour markets (2001: 89-90). Yet, Hollywood’s status as the global exporter is increasingly challenged by other film and television players, even at policy levels, where vibrant domestic production industries continue exporting their cultural content.

Beyond Hollywood, Hesmondhalgh (2002: 190-191) highlights the crucial role that generous state support plays in Bollywood - India’s flourishing Hindi-language dominated film industry, and the massive expansion of middle-class consumption that is fuelled by domestic and overseas Chinese demand for kung-fu films from Hong Kong. While Bollywood has recently become a successful international exporter of Indian films to such markets as the Arabian Gulf, Russia, Indonesia, U.K.,

43 Morocco and some countries (see Pendakur, 1990), Hong Kong has become a dominant exporter of martial arts films during the 1980s and 1990s (Ong, 1999).

As national film and television industries thrived, developing nations joined international cultural ‘distribution circuits’ – initially through film festivals and later through television markets. A growing buffet of content (Sinclair et al, 1996) is currently on display in Chinese-speaking and Spanish-speaking (Latin American) markets. These markets are formed through regional and ethnically-linked ‘social networks’ (see Meyer, 2000) or are broadly interconnected in a ‘patchwork quilt’ of submarkets observed by Tracey (1985).

East Asian diasporic communities residing in developed nations such as USA and Canada are avid consumers of TV programmes and films from peripheral ‘Eastern’ markets. This allows them to participate at a distance in national homeland cultures, while also claiming flexible citizenship that overseas Chinese enjoy (Ong 1999). Unsurprisingly, as television programmes have a ready audience, and a marketplace domestically, the new era of multiple media platforms feeds directly into the furious demand for content in satellite, cable and online broadcast services. Thus, television programmes provide a suitable subject for examination as sites of production, distribution, circulation and consumption.

Trade in East Asia media industries

As mentioned in Chapter One, it is undeniable that tradable cultures have grown when we look at how trade links have become established for media and the creative arts businesses to flourish via institutional roots. It is not only an economic advantage but a cultural one. For example, countries that actively sign Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) build on the advantages of an expansion into two or more markets where they are exposed to greater opportunities for increased networks and alliances in all industries and under the blessing of mutually amicable political units across geographical boundaries. Singapore signed the first USA FTA with an Asian country on 6 May 2003 (Info.gov.sg, 2005). However, while this has economic motivation written into it, it opens up the opportunity for media industries, from

44 broadcasting to print, to represent a unique sector within the creative industries . As Asian media industries are often viewed as a barometer of national culture, national identity and voice(s), it is likely that governments urgently need to attend to the development of their domestic media market so that they can compete effectively in the expanded globalized marketplace that such trade agreements bring.

Creative industries beget other industries because of the multiplier effect of media exposure for marketing tourism, fashion, music and lifestyle entertainment. South Korea, for example, has increased regional tourism traffic, which some observers suggest is due partly because of the wave of Korean drama in the last few years (Fifield, 2004). Even ‘tourist packages’ in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong have started to market Korean hotel locations and scenic views as sites of famous Korean soap operas and drama serials such as Yong Pyong Ski Resort (site of Winter Sonata 2002) and Soraka National Park (site of Autumn Tales 2000). Other ways that media content have ‘multiplier effects’ include how Hong Kong films like He’s Woman, She’s a Man (1994) made Hong Kong’s ‘Peak restaurant’ a celebrity hangout during the summer of 1994, and Singapore films like Bugis Street (1994) drew attention because of its strong association with the flavour of the same-named old red-light district.

Local Knowledge, Local industries in Media Capitals

There has been a recent upsurge in the production and circulation of Asian film and television products from within Asian peripheral centres, and their penetration is regionally if not internationally visible, albeit limited, into Hollywood (Beals and Platt, 2002; Kim, 2001). These clues offer alternative strategies in creating tradable television content. East Asian cities with youthful television industries seem to be well-placed to develop into media capitals that can exploit local knowledge which, in turn, increases the trade-ability of their content by drawing on global expertise, capital, and talent and combining this with local cultures, talents, and skills. Local knowledge here refers to the tacit and formal knowledge acquired by people in their daily interactions with, and exposure to their cultural milieu.

While information and media convergence is creating a global entertainment

45 environment which differs from city to city, there are parallels between deregulation and commercialisation of television broadcasting services and the emerging television markets of Europe (Collins, 1998), Latin America (Sinclair, 2000) and Asia (Chadha and Kavoori, 2000). But their pathways towards commercialisation and internationalisation differ, partly due to their unique competitive advantages (and disadvantages), and partly due to cultural and regional differences (see Sinclair et al, 1996).

Rather, developing local knowledge that is translated into successful templates for each local television industry will become critical for wider industry development. Local industries that are able to adapt, create and innovate depend on the fostering of a ‘culture of production’ (Du Gay et al, 1997) that is informed by local knowledge as much as wider cultural, economic, political and social contexts.

Local knowledge was first introduced by anthropologists to stress the importance of understanding the local context, local population and local practices which define and measure changes in culture (Geertz, 1983). Updated in the form of globalisation theories, local knowledge takes on new significance and forms with the emphasis on the ‘local-global connection’ or ‘glocalisation’ (Albrow, 2000), ‘hybridisation’ (Ang, 1996) and syncretic interactions between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’.

What happens to local knowledge in the face of media globalization? The short answer is that it gets smarter. National or local cultural industries like television and film industries may strive to develop indigenous content while at the same time developing competitive strategies to export their productions regionally or even globally by ‘modelling, imitating and mutual learning’ (Wang, Ku and Liu, 2000: 64).

Adopting localisation strategies requires local knowledge about audience tastes and audience demographics. Foreign broadcasters in Asia have already started with pan- regional co-productions like MTV Asia’s Rouge or formatted thematic channels like CNBC Asia, and the Mandarin-language Hong Kong satellite channel, TVBJ in Taiwan. Customizing production to suit local tastes needs international expertise. In this context, local knowledge requires a familiarity with national audiences and

46 regional markets, as well as entrepreneurial ability to convert know-how, insights and creativity into concrete programmes.

However, this thesis also applies the concept of ‘local’ in the sense that is not necessarily opposed to ‘global’ or ‘trans-national’, but is aligned to national interests. Wang et al (2000: 58-64) usefully delineate the national television and film industries as ‘local cultural industries’ with specific geographical and national boundaries tied to state sovereignty. As local industries develop, their small size means that television and film industries are often geographically and creatively inter-connected. They can articulate knowledge about local literature, television or films to produce international spin-offs on film or television or create new partnerships using recognisable formats in the international marketplace.

Local knowledge is, then, the spectrum of local ‘know-how’ about the industrial production process - from pitching new concepts to packaging, promoting and distributing media products, as well as culturally-specific knowledge about local practices, local tastes and audiences. Developing local knowledge that has global currency and attracting global knowledge and skills which can be adapted, copied or transformed into local/regional skills and templates, underline how the ‘global’ and ‘local’ are ‘complexly articulated, mutually constitutive’ realities (Ang, 1996: 153).

Creative entrepreneurs, aided by enlightened cultural policy, can draw on global expertise and local knowledge to create economically viable domestic television industries. Some theorists view the development of local creative sectors in terms of its role in building a knowledge-based economy (Caves, 2000; Garnham, 1987; O’Connor, 2000). In this sense, culture becomes even more embedded in arguments about markets (Sinclair, 1998).

The reality of ‘market forces’ (Sinclair, 1998: 219), where the use of local knowledge in articulating narratives using colloquial flavours and settings is already emerging. Asian television programmes or Western channels with localized programming schedules, like Star TV, have won over regional markets within Asia, more so than Western programming in the 1980s and 1990s (Carver, 1998). For example, the long-standing circulation of Japanese anime and Hong Kong martial

47 arts films have given way recently to Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese popular drama, music and pop-stars (Alford, 2000). In addition, there has been an emergence of pan-Asian cultural products (see Yeh and Davis 2002; Beals and Platt, 2001; Kim, 2001; Keane, 2004; Iwabuchi 2002; Fung 2004). As Asian television industries become more viable enterprises, and production is racheted up via broadband capabilities, ‘regional production networks’ that have developed in traditional industries such as manufacturing and electronics (see Peng, 2000) are beginning to play a greater role in Asian television production.

This new phase of activity is occurring at a time when Asia’s Sinic civilizations (see Huntington, 2000/1993) are collaborating via friendly competition in the cultural sphere. Investment in popular TV dramas featuring modern urban life, traditional costume dramas (Woods, 1997), as well as new cinema projects (Beals and Platt, 2001; Kim, 2001; Yeh and Davis, 2002) involve countries such as Korea, Japan and China (Hong Kong). This surge in content industries coincides ironically with a slump in ICT industries radiating from Silicon Valley and the lucrative North American markets.

While actual volumes of regional sales of audio-visual content may take time to register significantly within GDP, examples of television formats within the East Asian region are showing the way. Iwabuchi (2000; 2002) illustrates how developing TV formats and co-productions form part of Japan’s regionalisation strategy to export Japanese culture to Asia in similar ways that it has exported anime, automobiles and technology products globally.

The Asian marketplace has indeed benefited from the increased traffic in cultural goods. This is particularly evident in the official (or ‘licensed’) TV format trade, and the unofficial (cloned) take-up of formats developed in neighbouring countries. The constant re-invention of formats globally has had spill-over effects on Asian mediascapes. New hybrid programmes have burst onto the television screens during the 1990s. While some have originated from English-speaking countries, Asian TV channels soon began to create their own formats, rather than simply importing the concepts or finished formats from their Western counterparts (Winstone, 2001; Television Asia 2001).

48

Like most cultural products in film, music or arts, the trade-ability of TV formats, co- productions, and local fare ultimately depend on both the existence of alternative distribution pathways in geo-linguistic and international markets, as well as affinity with the social ‘habitus’ of ‘cultural intermediaries’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 359) in potential markets. These intermediaries are buyers, programming executives and cultural authorities who help promote and circulate these products to more audiences overseas.

Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei are well situated for the paradigm shift to new social and technological modes of communication. However, taking the next step of developing lucrative television products for international markets brings other complexities. Trade in culture involves negotiating legalities (Arup, 2000) as well as confronting issues such as the global management of copyrights, free-trade agreements, the impact of the GATS, and worldwide piracy problems covered in the TRIPS agreement (Galperin, 1999).

As TV formats are easily copied and adaptable commercialized production tools, they appear to be one of the more commercially attractive vehicles by which Asian television industries can learn to gain quick financial returns from the marketplace. There are two senses in which TV formats are viewed – where Asian producers import and purchase the formats, they view them as privileged access to successful and creative productions. But where Asian producers are responsible for creating the TV formats, they view them as risky business. It is risky because, as content creators, they face global challenges in the marketplace and will have to grapple with legal issues of copyright and ownership (Grantham, 2003) while face the common prospect of unofficial copying that commonly occurs across Asia right now (Moran and Keane, 2004)

Instead, many Asian media producers adopt a more conservative approach towards TV format trade and focus on developing exportable formatted genres of Asian media production that involve mediating their Asian-centric cultures — for example,

49 Asian animation (Lent, 2000), martial arts dramas (Ma, 1999) and romantic idol teenage serials (Liu and Chen, 2004) that also exhibit some of the benefits of TV format trade but fewer of its teething issues. This is most apparent when we discuss formatting in the television industries. .

Formatting in television industries

Finally, my thesis is situated at a time when research into TV format trade, and the broad phenomenon of formatting culture is discussed in cultural studies and media and communication research. Unfortunately there has been scarce literature on the subject until recently (see Moran and Keane, 2004). While there is a large collection of studies on the reproduction of mass culture, few studies examine the role of formatting as templates or processes of change in television and related creative industries. I will attempt to link up relevant literature on formatting in television that will illuminate the significance of my research by placing it within this field of study.

Early research on formatting can be found in Hartley (1982). Formats were generic codes to classify segments of television programmes in order to appreciate their structure and flow of narratives. Applying the broadcasting industry’s use of formats in Making Capital from Culture, Ryan’s 1992 neo-Marxist thesis on the industrialisation of the music industry as it became corporatised and competitive, demonstrated a wider application of the term ‘format’. Ryan (1992: 146) defined as ‘structuring principles’ that which reflects the articulation of economic, organisational and cultural practices in a social field and generates their own logic of production as well as ‘technical aspects of the commodity’, similar to what Hartley refers to formats. Ryan introduced the concept of ‘formatting of creativity’ to describe the consolidation practices of a competitive cultural industry:

Creative work is performed to a management plan. Specific, fixed cultural rules are formulated as company policy by its creative managers and applied to members of the project team…key conditions in the process I refer to as formatting. (Ryan, 1992: 150)

50 Ryan (1992) uses organisational sociology to reflect the rules and values of creative versus managerial staff in the entertainment industries, demonstrating that the rationales and modes of formatting, occur in complex ways. Charting the rise of a fixed management team and individualistic creative team that is characteristic of commercialised cultural industries, this appears to be an optimal arrangement to ensure creativity flourishes and market failure disappears. While useful in describing the formatting practices that occur in growing media industries, formatting does not occur in isolation, as the relations between cultural enterprises and their actors interact with a wider array of agents in the global flow of culture.

The 21st century’s local television industries that are informed by the material and social practices associated with aspiring or established media capitals are moving towards collaborative and ‘post-Fordist’ modes of production that encourage rationalisation, international cooperation and competition. Cooperation and co- optation can lead down several alternate pathways – the choice depends on available resources like finance, talent, script and technology, social networks and capital, or connections to resources and resource persons.

Ryan (1992) analysed the production and circulation of texts and the division of labour at each stage of the production cycle. This allowed for an examination of a wide range of formatting that can occur at each stage of the circulation of texts, from creation (pre-production and production), reproduction (duplication and transfer into tapes, mastering onto CDs, etc), circulation (marketing, packaging, scheduling), distribution (retailing, exhibition and broadcast) to consumption (audience viewing). In the global era of large corporations, the increasingly commercialised nature of cultural industries like the music, film and television industries naturally favour organisational structures and policies.

Recent studies on TV formats also describe formatting activities related to television industries that enable formatting to be conceptualized into four ways (see Moran and Keane, 2004). Firstly, formatting refers to detailed configuration and reconfiguration of specific genres of popular TV programmes that are associated with culturally- specific urban and traditional myths or narratives. Secondly, formatting refers to the

51 industrial practice of TV format trade in which a fixed structure for organising television programmes is used to produce similar programmes on a regular basis.

Licensed format adaptations have international exchange value on the global television markets; thirdly, formatting refers to the wider practice by peripheral and developing TV markets’ use of TV formats in a variety of opportunistic ways that are aimed at filling up air-time (such as importing completed formats, ‘cloning’ successful formats (see Keane, 2004b), to recombining well-known formats with new elements tailored to specific audience tastes); fourthly and finally, formatting also refers to the wider practice of commercialised media companies that seek to rationalise and standardise specific parts of the TV production cycle whether this occurs at the creative stage of production or the marketing and distribution stages of the production cycle.

Studies in TV formats have only recently begun to critically examine the social, legal and cultural capital investment and creativity involved in producing, reproducing and consuming formats (see Roscoe and Hawkins, 2001; Adair and Moran, 2004). The missing link is between industrial perspectives and creativity. This study moves into conceptualising formats beyond traditional hardware notions of newspaper layouts and TV formulas to incorporating the concept of ‘software’. In other words, formatting occurs in television industries as innovation and variations of the different modes of aesthetics and practice: from content (such as drawing on familiar narratives and popular aesthetics), work processes, the organisational culture of corporations, to technological knowledge and skill transfers from producer to producer. Understanding the application of formatting to Asian media productions involves considering TV programmes as production sites. Formatting can also be viewed in a broader industrial context of technological change, the rise of regional cultural economies, media capitals and digitalisation that is currently sweeping across Asia.

Theoretical Framework for Formatting and Change in East Asian Television Industries

52 The brief literature review on Asian and media communication, the growth of new/local media in globally-networked cities in East Asia, and broad examination of TV format industry trends presents a compelling argument to examine change in East Asian television industries up close. I propose a theoretical framework comprising four research hypotheses that illuminate the extent of change in East Asian television industries and then propose a way of categorizing formatting practices in television industries that offer probable answers to the research questions mooted in Chapter One.

Research hypotheses

From the literature review, four general research hypotheses can be extracted for testing and discussion regarding development of East Asian television industries:

Hypothesis (1): Peripheral cultural goods and services (like television produced and developed in emerging East Asian media capitals) are increasingly able to move across national borders to dominate regional markets and also make inroads into the major international centres of production in the West.

Hypothesis (2): While Singapore-, Hong Kong- and Taipei-based producers offer strong comparative advantages in sales of formulaic content to Chinese-speaking markets, success in new markets and new formats will be derived from understanding the changing global relationship between producers and consumers, especially in entertainment programmes.

Hypothesis (3): TV Formats are global templates for fostering cultural and technological change in TV production and consumption. They provide a short-cut for television industry development and internationalizing television production in local industries.

Hypothesis (4): The recent rapid rise in TV format production constitutes an opportunist and (often) innovative local response to media globalisation, allowing a more rapid adaptation of global trends.

53 To document and make sense of TV formatting in East Asia, I will map out the alternate pathways that East Asian media producers take within their own television industries to compete in the global televisual landscape with the bigger players from East to West.

I suggest that how media producers use local knowledge plays a critical role in crystallizing/capturing the creativity of their respective industries. Their ability to find the right mix will be determined by their ability to successfully leverage on the influence of media globalisation over their skills, technology and content to capture audiences across markets, languages and platforms. As Asian media industries mature, formatting is increasingly one of the most commonly used converters, or turnkeys, of cultural currency for creating successful and exportable TV productions.

Defining a genie – TV formatting

If a study on Asian media productions is useful in illuminating the globalisation of media and popular culture within Asia (Iwabuchi, 2001; Moeran, 2001), then a closer examination of TV formats and formatting practices can reveal a part of how people who live in East Asia co-share and create a modernity that is not defined simply by the West. However, defining TV formats and formatting is a bit like defining a genie – there is a broad sense of what the literature refers to when discussing TV formatting. If you ask a big format distributor like Michel Rodriguez from Distraction Formats, anything can be a television format (Personal Interview, 3 Dec 2002). While industry observer-turned-academic commentator, Ryan (1992) viewed formats as an ensemble of production, marketing and promotional tools that can be used to solves problems like low ratings, intense television industry competition and audience fatigue, by using knowledge-based (templates, copyright-controlled), philosophical (anti-creative, utilitarian) and business-oriented (reduce potential for market failure) strategies. However, within the expansive use of the concept of formatting in television as a turnkey solution (that is, a complete, ready-made solution) aimed at preventing market failure, a more specific set of industrial, textual

54 and social practices are involved that aid the translation of ideas from print to screen, regulate the consumption and increase the audience size for TV programmes,

Maturing East Asian TV industries are rethinking how to export their programmes, and are therefore attempting to reinvent and regroup themselves to compete in a global and multichannel and multimedia environment. In the new economy of a global era that touches on digital media, internet and borderless world of communication, the media players that survive will need to find ways to harness the old media and adapt them to new conditions.

Geographically large linguistic markets in Asia - such as Chinese-speaking countries, Indian-speaking communities, Spanish/Portuguese-speaking nations in Latin America – have shown significant regional cultural flows (see Chua, 2000b; Sinclair et al, 1996). These flows are significant in showing how the media regroups consumers to identify themselves with cultural marketplaces that transcend national boundaries. If people love martial arts films inspired by Hong Kong-based novelist Jin Yong, or romance graphic novels like Hana Yori Dango (Boys For Flowers) translated into Chinese comics, they will readily consume television programmes derived from these original sources when they are broadcast or sold on VCD or DVDs regardless of where they live in the world. Youths and adults readily set up fansites and online discussion forums to interact with fellow consumers on their favourite television programmes, alongside roadshows and fanclubs that media producers set up to promote their television programmes in Asia.

Moreover, the rise of popular genres that see global distribution of TV formats in studio-based game shows and reality game-shows is possible because of new media technology and delivery mechanisms (such as SMS and online forums) that offer greater interactivity between audiences and producers. This creates a stronger and complementary relationship between consumption-driven and production-oriented practices - turning audiences into participants who post comments that are sometimes addressed by producers (Lim, 2004). Therefore, TV formatting activities are focused

55 on strengthening the structural homology between the culture of production and the consumption of culture across multiple television markets.

To combat what Ryan (1992: 230) observes as the paradox of mass marketing, intense publicity and over-exposure that simultaneously launches TV programmes into the public sphere and inadvertently leads to their quick demise, other kinds TV formatting activities sustain viewership and programme sales once these cultural commodities are introduced into the cultural marketplace. Some examples include publicising stars and styles in close association with particular TV programmes such that audiences can engage not only with the consumption of the particular TV programme, but also with the actors, writers and directors who are behind the productions. Such customisation shows the inter-relationship between consumers and producers in sustaining the shelf-life of television programmes.

This is further complicated by non-industrial factors such as media and technology policy changes and rising standards of living that impact particular national TV systems. Some types of ‘formatting’ are, then, more successful than others.

In particular, this thesis argues that successful television programmes are those that involve formatting devices that reinforce or reproduce a particular ‘circuit of culture’ (du Gay et al., 1997) that already occurs in national TV industries. Strongly-backed local TV stations in peripheral markets can leverage upon their local knowledge of audience preferences, media policies and restrictions to compete with global TV products from overseas giants in Hollywood and Europe to develop programmes with less ‘cultural distance’ (Hoskins, McFadyen and Finn, 1999) for their own ‘backyard’ audiences. Growing indigenous competition can be accelerated by the rapid learning curve that TV formats offer for local TV industries. Over time, many peripheral nations will be able to develop comparative advantages historically enjoyed by Hollywood (Hoskins and McFayden, 1991).

To help classify the range of formatting activity that occurs in a mature TV industry attempting to reinvent and repurpose itself to compete in a global and multichannel

56 and multimedia environment, a list of format-related concepts is examined. These are: ‘industrial TV formats’ (ITVF), ‘formatted genres’ (FGs)_, and ‘re-designing genres through new media’ (RedeF). As the case studies will illustrate later on, these three groups of TV formatting practices are often complemented by greater marketing and publicity in the cultural marketplace. Tantamount to a working taxonomy of TV formatting, the list will be used to identify, describe and track the different strategies which media producers use to tackle the key issues described earlier in this chapter.

The value of this taxonomy is in how it describes what is occuring generally and links it to a larger circuit of culture. It provides a useful way to understand how Asian media productions circulate within a particular cultural economy and nation. I have complemented this framework with a descriptive framework that focuses discussion on the three kinds of formats and formatting activities in the television industry of Asia.

ITVF: Industrial TV formats

The existing academic literature and press reports tend to use ‘genre’ and ‘format’ interchangeably. The confusion derives from their origin of use. As mentioned earlier, ‘genre’ originates from film theory (Turner, 1992). The ‘format’, on the other hand, originates from observable industrial practices that enshrine sets of media production activities into specific economically exchangeable and intellectual property for the marketplace (Dawley, 1994; Ang, 1991).

Moran’s seminal work, Copycat TV: Globalisation, Program Formats and Cultural Identity (1998), tells an account of TV formats as a form of strategic program development that fashions content for multiple markets. This moves the emphasis away from notions of treating TV formats as adaptations of genres to industrial techniques for cultural production. Moran (1998: 14-23) reserves a place for formatting television industries through the identification of a ‘format’, in its strict sense, as a ‘technology of exchange in the television industry’ that regulates (through licensing and legalities) how programme skills and ideas can be transferred across national borders. It is, in effect, a sophisticated and organised way of trading cultural products and services, as he illustrates using the packaged TV series, Room 101:

57

…the programme was formatted, an operation whereby the precise production elements and their organisation, including the steps of production, were documented in a booklet known as the Format Guide, itself part of BBC Programme Format and Production Kits series… like a cooking recipe, the Guide identifies both the ingredients and the sequence and manner of their combination that will produce an adaptation of Room 101. (Moran, 1998: 14)

The benefits of developing and importing industrial TV formats are manifold for commercialised television services. It serves to regulate cultural exchange in the marketplace among programme producers, minimises or at least deters , provides training and employment, and shortens the learning curve for new producers to adapt tried formulas to local settings. Most significantly, the rise of formats and format trade is due to the liberalisation and commercialization of television services (Stiles, 1995, cited in Moran, 1998). This provides a useful framework to observe the various types of ‘formatting’ that occurs within the television industries, and is most visible on the televisual landscapes of East Asia.

‘Format’, in this strict sense, is a ‘technology of exchange in the television industry’ that regulates (through licensing and legalities) how programme skills and ideas can be transferred across national borders for dollars. Its focus is on developing TV programmes that can be converted into tradable cultural products and services. Some recent examples include Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Big Brother, The Weakest Link, The Happy Family Plan, The Iron Chef, Everyone Wins, Survivor and older examples such as BBC Room 101, and Sesame Street. Ryan (1992: 170-177) lends an organisational perspective to the process of implementing or producing a TV programme based on an industrial TV format. This operationalised and realised notion of formatting is embodied in the trade in TV formats, or the industrial TV formats expounded later by Moran (1998) and more recently in Moran and Keane (2004).

FGs: Formatted Genres that are Classics or Fads - an economy of cultural forms

58 During the mid to late 1990s, there was a shift from conceptualizing the TV format as a more detailed and institutionalised typology of ‘genre’ to it being linked to of specific stories, characterisations and plots that had become ‘public fictions’ for national and regional audiences sharing cultural and linguistic commonalities - classics. ‘Genres’ can be signifiers of future ratings success for new series. They can be used to suppress strong localised cultural references in order to make productions ‘culturally odourless’ (see Iwabuchi, 2001), or to create recognisable yet new productions that are ‘androgynous’ in time or space (see Yau, 2001). Esther Yau (2001) points to the eclectic range of Hong Kong films of recent years which combine traditional notions of chivalry in wenyi (martial arts) heroes and science-fiction myths. Other examples include Hong Kong television tough cop/action hero TV series and films inspired by the Bond movies and Dirty Harry movies in the 1960s-1980s, and ‘campy’ horror TV series inspired by The Ring movies.

Other kinds of genre formatting include Brazilian tele-novelas; multiple renditions of the Indian epic, The Mahabarata; Chinese costume dramas about the Yellow Emperor, ; and martial arts dramas such as The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre by famed contemporary Hong Kong-based writer, Louis Cha. Formatting of genres occurs in the way particular stories, characters and plots are systematically recycled, and by adding on new dimensions with each rendition to cater to newer and younger audiences or new ‘taste cultures’.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a tendency to confuse formats and genres. Derived from literary and cinema studies, genre is audience-driven (Ma, 1999; Allen, 1996; Fiske and Hartley, 1992/1978; Lotman, 1990. Genre is more abstract as it refers to ‘the way in which groups of narrative conventions (involving plot, character, and even locations or set design) become organized into recognizable types of narrative entertainment – westerns or musicals’ (Turner, 1992: 15). Audiences have some degree of indirect regulatory control over just how far the industry’s innovative practices depart from the original motivation and storyline or style of the formatted genre’s work. Film-makers and film producers often

59 have to carefully deploy standardised codes drawn from literature and cinema history to connect with audiences’ expectations of the familiar and new.

Recognising the fluidity and changing types of genres that any ‘sphere of art’ or ‘field of cultural production’ (Ryan, 1992: 162) offers, I would like to submit that ‘genre’ is an ‘economy of cultural forms’ of two types – the stable classics and the fads. The classics are usually considered breakthroughs that are lucrative, enduring, popular in the marketplace, and which define a particular field of cultural production -- ‘classics’ or ‘first order forms’. Fads are other kinds of ‘cultural forms’ that are more ‘transitory, stylistic variations imprinted with ‘an individual’s style but masquerading as significant breakthroughs’. Some examples of fads are teenage soap operas along the lines of Beverly Hills 90210, Clueless, and occult teenage drama series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, or the spate of reality dating game-shows like The Bachelor, For Love or Money and Meet the Folks.

By adding style9 to its set of conventions, genres can be easily classified as a more general type or group of work/products with specific conventions but with no specific steps to create the products. Their classification enables these works to be branded and circulated more easily in the cultural marketplace. Ryan (1992: 162-163) distinguishes ‘formatting’ from ‘genres’ by placing ‘genres’ earlier in the creative stage of production, along a value-chain of creative production, as ‘a plan which is based on rules of a type’. It also includes a whole range of opportunistic practices that include cloning popular TV programmes. This is widespread in television industries, and involves opportunistic and deliberate copying of TV format concepts from internationally well-known TV programmes, such as those found in China (Keane, 2002) and India (Thomas and Kumar, 2004) where clones of quiz and game shows are common.

9 ‘Styles’ are identifying marks of in a competitive market where certain groups of works and the creation of these works can be signified in the marketplace and marketed based on their distinctive features. These include ‘signs of an individual’s expert and distinctive talent’ or ‘contrivances of dress, mannerism, speech, etc’ that are novel but not necessarily creative or unique. However, in a diverse and competitive marketplace, a proliferation of many kinds of genres and subgenres that are created in the interests of market segmentation and type specialisation often leads companies, industries and analysts to use an individual’s work to personify a style or cultural form (Ryan, 1992: 162-163).

60 Based on formulaic conventions of popular cultural commodities, FGs often poach ‘officially’ from recognised works in other fields. They can migrate loyal consumers from one field to another (fan-base) to aggregate audiences, or hybridize different foreign styles to create new productions. Examples include Meteor Garden and Tomato Twins. These productions are formatted to increase the attractiveness of the product to a wider base of audiences, which has diverse interests and hobbies that intersect with television.

RedeF: Redesigning old genres through new media

Finally, the third and final type of formatting practices occur on the level of extending the shelf-life of an idea by employing ‘new’ media practices and technical innovations to create new interpretative communities. Re-designing old TV series on the web is one example of how old media builds new communities of audiences. This thesis is mindful of the impact that technology offers to media producers to re-design genres that use new media to build communities with on- going communication links (see Agre, 1998).

In this scenario, the ‘inter-textual’ referencing that TV programmes enjoy have become more acute in the new media age, as audience feedback is almost instantaneous and commentaries proliferate on various community boards and websites with TV viewers offering advice on anything from casting to lighting. Most game-shows and drama series have website forums run by the broadcasters

Producers also actively solicit new inputs through new media feedback channels, and offer open-ended solutions that encourage TV viewers to engage as pseudo producers or official textual poachers 10 . Maintaining or establishing a large audience is at the heart of re-designing old genres through new experimentations. Producers respond to their local knowledge as much as to expectations of advertisers, sponsors and other agents. This kind of formatting in television industries becomes increasingly embedded in a feedback relationship with

10 Jenkins’ study (1992) refers to fans who rewrite stories, plotline and character developments of popular television series as’textual poachers’ who challenge the regime of narrative conventions set by the creators of the series by ‘poaching’ their texts and exerting individual creativity to construct new narratives from their favourite television series.

61 viewers of particular TV programmes or genres to the extent that programme re- fashioning and re-invention is faster and either extends the product life-cycle or helps it mutate into new forms. This mutation occurs faster than is the case when examination of genres is mediated by critics, ratings and direct merchandising sales.

Drawing on a wide mixture of ideas, tools and skills learnt across various media platforms from print, film and the internet, their aim is to keep ‘up-to-date’ with perceived expectations and tastes of audiences. New hybrids of genres are constantly emerging which cannot be easily ‘pigeon-holed’, but instead seek to cater to a wider demographic/new audience. Their creative decisions involve constantly experimenting with new and fresh ingredients, approaches or styles that may appeal or put off audiences in the marketplace. Some examples include the interactive features that sell Big Brother, Tomato Twins and Fat Cow Motel11 to audiences.

While the three kinds of formatting practices attempt to capture a range of TV formatting that occurs in the TV marketplace, these formatting practices often are complemented by the need to influence the distribution and consumption climate of TV programmes. This is reflected previously in Ryan’s (1992) use of the term ‘formatting of the culture industry’ which described the insertion of rationalisation into the cultural marketplace. For this thesis, I have extracted this expansive notion of formatting from the thesis, so as to draw emphasis to the need to complement a set formula or turnkey solution within the constraints of the process of moving from pre-production to consumption. In this sense, what Ryan alludes to as formatting of culture is equivalent to marketing of cultural commodities, and this places emphasis on the fact that discerning cultural entrepreneurs are aware that middle range factors (Sinclair et al, 1996) where broadcasting companies who exert influence around and in the TV production by determining scheduling, publicity, advertising, promotion and marketing play a

11 This was an experimental interactive-cum-broadcast television series created by a young and enterprising Australian production company. Some articles on the ABC’s Fat Cow Motel is found on http://www.australiantelevision.net/fatcow_articles.html.[Accessed: 12 May 2005].

62 crucial role in their eventual success or failure to circulate and be consumed beyond a limited audience or time-frame.

Producers use celebrities to conduct roadshows and publicity stunts and having them appear in other promotional programmes like talkshows. They borrow from the latest fashions/fads in print, music and other related creative industries (eg. animation), and use brand-name associations — all aimed at drawing in the audiences more quickly and repeatedly to the production. Such marketing and publicity activities complement the three types of TV formatting practices identified above. These marketing and publicity activities also rely on fixed and successfully tried formula in which rules of creative production are devised for the purpose of maximizing returns in the marketplace and minimizing risks.

As TV formatting may not minimise market failure, cultural entrepreneurs (established media producers) often rely upon the rationalisation of the TV marketplace. This involves sophisticated publicity, packaging and marketing - activities that are at the core of circulation and representation practices so that the programmes are able to ‘travel’ regionally and globally for trade and sales. The outcome of controlling the creative stage of production is insufficient to ensure a longer product life cycle after the cultural product is created. Hence, in an effort to remedy the contradictions suffered by ‘cultural commodities’ for newly released TV programmes or music recordings, entrepreneurs and broadcasting companies incur great expense and effort in ‘rationalising the cultural marketplace’ after the production stage.

This involves two steps: marketing and publicity. Firstly, marketing cultural commodities translates to ‘positioning’ them by constructing an ‘identity’ and promoting them as unique or significant by packaging and promoting the commodities ‘for use and exchange value’ (1992: 185-191). Besides the formatting practices, the cultural entrepreneur needs to invoke the stars and marketing styles that can be easily associated with the programme to help develop audience loyalty. For example, marketing activities for TV shows include producing artist-associated promotional materials and merchandising

63 covers, pictures, advertisements, T-shirts, and even soundtracks sung by the artists.

Secondly, rationalising the marketplace means that corporations try to stabilise and control the flow of popular tastes by creating a ‘publicity complex’ to promote the marketing of stars and styles (Ryan, 1992: 229-240). Such activities include offering product ‘tie-ins’, product launches, paid advertisements and ‘free advertising’, under the guise of offering to be tourist or cultural ambassadors to local agencies. And comperes at national or international press events aim to give the stars and styles maximum public exposure.

Conclusion

Television forms the mainstay of new media developments because of its stable domestic base, easy access and different revenue models. Television broadcasting is an open platform for media entrepreneurs to test new interactive or info- intensive services, for instance, Internet TV, SMS-TV, VOD, cable and satellite channels. This change is not only noticeable at a hardware level, in organizing the structural flow of communication or expression of information and narratives, but also at change in software-related interactions between creators and consumers. It is the inexpensive alternative to new media, easily reconfigured, but not easily replaced because of its audio-visual combination and aspect ratios. Television does not have a ‘soul’, which makes it easily disposed of and replaceable on a weekly or daily basis.

The rise of reality TV and the revived interest in formats may also be an extension of the ‘living room wars’ that drama series like Dallas (Ang, 1985; 1996) and Dynasty used to play across the globe in the 1970 and 1980s. The difference now is that the assertion of local culture has new currency -- giving formats a new face, new capital strategies, and new voices (audiences). The result is that content populating the televisual landscape is undergoing ‘glocalisation’ (also known by the environmentalist activists as ‘think global, act local’), a type of ‘syncretization’ of local general knowledge with a globally recognisable set of game rules which, in effect, allow the local production industry to engage in the

64 twinning of ‘cultural homogenization’ and ‘cultural heterogenization’. This breeds new formats which cut across the traditional socio-economic divides between young and old, men and women, as part of the cultural stakes where audiences participate in a borderless game of life.

Similarly, formats are constantly changing and are easily replaced, superseded or extended with new media features in order to capture a fragmenting and fickle audience, especially the young and restless MTV, internet generation. Consumption drives change in most cultural products, as Skov and Moeran (1995) suggest. In Japan, the rise of formulaic girls’ comics or shojo manga (Thorn, 2001), kawaii or cutesy fashion (see Kinsella, 1995) and cartoon characters like Pickachu (see Napier, 2001), involve formatting a culture of production that successfully exports ‘an Asian Subculture’, feeding the demand of an emerging and lucrative female population in North America, Japan, East and .

The next chapter (Chapter Three) explains methodologically how I have categorised the formatting practices described here into a useful taxonomy that allows me to appreciate and analyse television programmes in ways that demonstrate how formatting and change occurs in East Asian television industries.

65 Chapter Three: Methodology ------Following from the rationale and emerging patterns of cultural entrepreneurship in East Asia, this chapter sets out the methodological approach that selects and maps out the industrial and cultural responses of various TV industries to media globalization.

As an exploratory study, a case study approach was used (see Gomms, Hammersley and Foster, 2000). This enabled the researcher to examine the progress of any cultural product (i.e. TV programme) created in each industry, as each of the products go through their respective cycle of life. Another merit is that it allowed for a close comparison of the three different television industries, selected on features such as industry structure, the relations of productions, distribution and consumption of individual TV programmes, when they entered cultural marketplaces. It also provided an examination of similarities and differences among the three television industries in their response to environmental challenges as they developed, sustained or expanded their reach.

Due to my previous position as an administrative officer for industry promotion at the Singapore Broadcasting Authority, individual productions gave me the opportunity to observe and study the production company’s operation and development. Consequently, single production was used as the unit of analysis. Although participant observation of television production activities in an Asian context was not new, few researchers have had the opportunity to investigate the problems from both within and without.

While Chua (2003: vii) did not dismiss the need to analyse the cultural products, he questioned the value of limiting critical analysis to the products since they are meant to have a brief life cycle in sync with the rapid turnover of mass entertainment and popular consumption. While the subjects of analysis for this thesis (i.e. television programmes) had indeed been broadcast and consumed, I was able to engage in critical empirical analysis of the productions at various stages of production, circulation, distribution and consumption. Chua (2004: 204) and Moeran (2001) see the critical areas of analysis for East Asian popular culture or Asian media

66 productions as the “structure and modalities” that products engage in at each stage where the products are produced, circulated and consumed.

Research Design

While the subject matter does not warrant the use of a methodology that leads to generalisable and quantifiable outcomes, to produce meaningful research outcomes from qualitative research, the methodology used three tools:

1. In-depth interviews with key creatives involved or aware of the production and distribution aspects of each TV programme (See Appendix 1 for List of Interviewees and Appendix 2 for sample Interview Guide.) 2. Secondary data collection of published commentary and analysis linked to each TV programme; and 3. Content analysis of each TV programme.

Besides these tools, I have also drawn from the literature review and hypotheses that were proposed in Chapter Two. I have mapped out the interaction of various structural and environmental factors with formatting strategies developed within local television industries. A working taxonomy on formatting allows a meaningful inspection of each case study within the larger context of the global flow of media, cultures and economies. The case study approach attempts to provide a triangulation of methods to minimize tautological problems and methodological weaknesses of each method of data collection.

The other merit of this methodology lies in its versatility to identify the key moments where local knowledge intersects with regional or global practices in cultural production. By discussing how agents like TV producers apply resources to negotiate, compete and cooperate with others in the particular broadcasting field, various processes and structural conditions can be identified and used to explain the dynamics and changes of developing East Asian television industries. Another advantage is that it is suitable for analysing the production of culture and the culture of producing consumer goods like the SONY Walkman, various Asian media

67 productions like Vietnamese and Singapore advertising regulations, Indian condom commercials, Japanese soap operas and variety shows (see Moeran, 2001).

Sampling

After identifying four TV programmes from three television industries that were featured in their respective local press, I first consumed the four programmes as a regular audience member. Subsequently, this was followed by seeking cooperation from trade contacts, from press clippings and from internet reviews to chart their life- cycles. Given that it covered three cities and involved four production companies, it was most difficult to obtain real-time data except for the Singapore case studies. Secondary data collection through reviewing trade and public press was crucial to supplementing the process of discovery. Overall, the sampling and most of the data collection took a total of 18 months from September 2002 to December 2003.

The data collected is informed by an analytical framework that combines cultural studies, creative industries as a response to media globalization, business theories and Moeran (2001), which applies Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production.

The four case studies of current TV programme series were selected based on the following criteria: • They showcase formatting in television industries, either as licensed formats, unlicensed adaptations of successful formats, or formulaic adaptations of popular programmes developed in Asia. • They are examples of popular genres that have international track records - such as soap operas, children’s programmes, and game shows. • The production companies involved have worked with or are now working with globally successful partners. • The programmes have been broadcast in Singapore over the last two years, or will very soon to be telecast, and therefore are programmes that the researcher has ready access to. • They are created and produced in at least one of the three cities.

68 • They are tradable and exportable in such a way as to be targeted at particular market segments - such as ‘taste cultures’ that cut across conventional demographics of age, gender and occupation that unite ‘culturally proximate’ segments of East Asia.

Analytic framework for each case study

The following elaborates on the cross-disciplinary method used to study the rise of East Asian television productions as tradable cultures. Fiske (1987: 311) argued that television programmes, like other cultural commodities, circulate in two separate but related economies – cultural and financial. This methodological approach takes into account the overlapping circuits of production and introduces the field of television broadcasting in which television programmes are situated. Meanwhile, the financial economy is always considered when discussing the product life-cycle of selected television programmes.

Firstly, the analytic framework introduces the notion of a field of media productions – the field of television broadcasting in which each television production inhabits as part of a broader ‘circuit of culture’ (Du Gay et al, 1997). Recognising the link between material and cultural practices, this field grows out of a ‘circuit of cultural production’ (see Diagram 3.1) and is further refined to allow some in-depth investigation by mapping a value chain of broadcasting (see Diagram 3.1). Clearly, TV programmes are produced as part of popular culture as much as they are inscribed with certain norms, ideologies, values and practices linked to the larger community, society or nation from which they originate. Then the business marketing concept of ‘product life cycle’ (see Diagram 3.2) is introduced to explain how the TV programme is subject to the conditions in the competitive field of broadcasting after it has been produced and distributed.

Finally, the study examines strategies of media producers and audiences at relevant moments in the circuit of culture in order to initiate and sustain the shelf-life of a TV programme through formatting practices. The following section discusses the application of formats, formatting and genres to the field of cultural production (see Diagram 3.3). After which, each of the four faces of formatting are conceptualised as

69 a working taxonomy of formatting that can be inserted into the research areas (see Diagrams 3.4 and 3.5).

The field of television broadcasting

The ‘field of television broadcasting’ is useful for this study. Bourdieu (1993) conceptualised the ‘field’ as a strategic place for agents, competing with other agents, to accumulate cherished forms of capital (cultural, social, economic and political) so as to attain a strong position in the field. In the various fields of media production, these agents include creators, producers, distributors, marketers, advertisers, audiences, regulators, reviewers, artistes, and other media. For the purpose of this study, the field of broadcasting is where the unit of analysis, the TV programme, is situated.

At the beginning of my project, to examine what and how cultural practices are used to produce, distribute, circulate and consume particular TV programmes, I applied the concept of a ‘circuit of culture’ (Du Gay et al, 1997) onto the production of selected TV programmes. The aim was to map their moments of production, distribution, promotion and consumption within their relevant political, economic social and technological contexts (see Diagram 3.1 below):

Diagram 3.1: Circuit of culture applied to TV and other fields of production

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However, while this gives an overview of the impact of environmental conditions on practices of television production process, I needed to refine it further (see Diagram 3.2) to reflect the people involved or the agents that inhabit the field, like TV producers and directors, distributors, advertising executives, TV marketing executives, broadcasting regulators, TV programme reviewers, actors and actresses, audiences, other media like newspapers, magazines, websites and films, which are associated with the TV programme Diagram 3.2: FIELD OF TV BROADCASTING MAPPED ONTO A VALUE-CHAIN OF BROADCASTING,

Production of cultural commodity Finished cultural commodity

Creation/ TV TV Marktg & TV Pre- Production Distribution Promos Audiences production = & (involves (interactive =Design Manufacture Circulation represent or passive) = Distribute ations) = =Consume Market

Identity formation (with Identity formation creator, producer) Regulation (censorship, critics, cultural (with characters, gatekeepers, intermediaries, other media)

Product Life Cycle of a Cultural Product(ion)/Television Programme

I developed an analytic framework that maps the circuit of culture (Du Gay et al, 1997) onto business theory’s use of value-chain analytic model because it allows the researcher to examine the processes involved in cultural production. Using the field of broadcasting, it also makes it easier to identify moments where texts are created by agents in the television field who work directly or indirectly in the industry.

These agents could be censors, critics, audiences, fans, and marketers who have a significant role to play in extending or shortening the life-cycle of particular TV programmes by creating and sustaining particular identities and employing regulatory practices to discriminate against the TV programmes.

71 This brings us to the concept of a Product Life Cycle (PLC) which has been linked to formatting activities of media industries (see Ryan, 1992). There are five stages in the life-cycle of products from product development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Ryan (1992: 55) uses it to explain the life of cultural commodities as it can be applied to any kind of cultural production activity that is linked to the financial economy. Here, the PLC is also useful in allowing us to examine the chronological progress of selected television programmes within a typically short life-span in its marketplace. (see below Diagram 3.3)

Diagram 3.3 – Ideal product life cycle of non-cultural consumer goods.

I am indirectly examining the PLC of a television programme in each case study. This has already been applied briefly by various researchers who have employed cultural studies or cultural geography. Ryan’s 1992 treatise examined how to make economic capital from culture industries, by dwelling on the role that marketing and business factors play in determining the kinds of products corporations of culture produce, and how they make these products sustainable in the marketplace over time.

The growth and decline of a cultural product is usually defined by its sale in the marketplace and therefore can be applied at the distribution and consumption stage of the circuit of cultural production. To illustrate, I briefly apply the PLC concept to the field of broadcasting below:

1. Product Development stage: When the product is developed for production, this stage describes the research and development as well as production of the

72 product. This is when television programmes undergo casting, pre-production workshops, scriptwriting, and then the actual production process until post- production activities such as editing and special effects. 2. Introduction stage. When the product has completed production, the company/producer needs to launch the product, build awareness and develop a market for the product. A full range of marketing activities is employed by the producer/distributor/broadcaster to position the product in the crowded field, such as creating programme brochures; marketing directly at trade fairs; creating weekly trailers, internet contests and promotions on television prior to telecast. 3. Growth stage. With the existing product, the company builds brand preference and increase market share on the television schedule as it continues broadcast or as it gets resold into overseas markets. Advertising and promotions are undertaken aggressively. 4. Maturity stage. When competition may appear as sales growth reduces, the company needs to defend market share from other competing and newer programmes in local and overseas markets. Reselling downstream is common at this stage. 5. Decline stage. When a product is not so popular, or has finished circulating on local television and is circulating abroad, it is possible to maintain and rejuvenate its popularity by adding new features or finding new uses, reducing costs and offering it to niche audiences/loyal segments, or discontinuing the product and selling it to another company willing to continue the product. Merchandising and licensing options are offered to extend the shelf-life of the product.

While Ryan applies this business studies dimension to cultural products such as music, it is applicable to the larger ‘culture industry’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1947). Publishing, television and film industries create, produce, distribute and market their cultural products to particular consumers. What is unique about cultural products is that they are quasi-private goods --when they enter into the marketplace as cultural commodities, they have a short commercial shelf-life, which Ryan describes as a ‘truncated product life cycle’ (1992: 55)

73 As television programmes are cultural products and cultural commodities, they too have a truncated product life cycle and tend to have a very short shelf-life. This is because they are easily replaced by other newer and competing programmes. Connecting this pre-condition of intense competition inherent in various fields of cultural production, television programmes exist in a field of broadcasting that is situated in a particular locality (ie nation, region or territory). Their level of competitiveness depends on the openness of the marketplace to competing programmes at each location.

Similar or competing products easily displace existing television programmes in popularity. If commercialization is a motivating factor in creating programmes, to compensate for the heavy investment in human and material resources used to produce them, programmes deemed exportable or with export potential often include rationalizing strategies that reduce market failure, generate revenue and, hopefully, extend the shelf-life of the product before they reach the final stage of decline.

In the broadcasting field, television programmes are produced for telecast and then distributed on television schedules in television channels before they are resold downstream into other windows of distribution, such as video rentals, pay per view, subscription channels and, most recently, as direct sales in various technical standards such as VCD or DVD. Since the proliferation of e-commerce, these downstream distribution channels may be physically ‘bricks and mortar’ stores or virtual internet portals. Furthermore, if the television programmes are very successful, or perceived to be successful in the marketplace, other related merchandise is created alongside the television programme to increase revenues and boost brand awareness of the programme. Some examples of merchandising include posters, mousepads, T- shirts, games, and spin-offs into other media like music albums linked to the television programme.

This is a common practice for successful television programmes — BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs, Australia’s Hi-Five children series, American Idol-the Final 12 compilation. In East Asia, successful Hong Kong, Japanese and Korean drama series often have bookmarks, love tokens, celebrity pictures and music soundtracks featuring songs inspired or used in the series.. For example, Heaven Sword and

74 Dragon Sabre 2000 offered a music album, pictures and celebrity tokens; the popular Japanese dorama Long Vacation sold many music albums featuring the Japanese music group Cagnet; and the hit Korean drama Winter Sonata offered a music album, notepads, diaries and necklaces, reminiscent of the love tokens used in the television series. Japanese manga and television anime offer an impressive range of licensing arrangements for merchandising from print, toys and candy to fashion for famous exported anime like Hello Kitty, Power Rangers, Sailor Moon and Doraemon.

Therefore, to reduce market failure or to avoid being displaced by others, makers of television programmes have to employ a number of positioning strategies. Formatting practices are then employed to strengthen their presence and extend their shelf-life in the field.

Formats, formatting and Genre in the field of broadcasting

Before discussing how to use the taxonomy of formatting developed in Chapter Two for the case study chapters, I will demonstrate how the concept of TV formats and formatting strategies can be meaningfully deployed in the fields of cultural production in the television industry (see Diagram 3.4.).

Traditionally, genres are broad types of communication style and conventions found in media products like television programmes, films, radio programmes, music, online games, etc. As broad meta-categories, genres are non-specific to time, place, culture or history, but have become a regulatory mechanism in recognising which creative work is situated in which respective field of cultural production. Thus, while television news, comedy and lifestyle shows are recognisable in the field of broadcasting, poetry and prose are recognisable in the field of publishing. Drama can take many formats: film screenplays, television screenplays, stage plays. All of these genres are timeless and ‘culturally odourless’ (to borrow the term from Koichi Iwabuchi, 2001) in that they can be used to communicate effectively to a wide group of audience over time. Also, genres can be used by a diverse group of creators/producers/authors to create specific works across many generations. Within its short lifespan, television genres have also undergone change through a diverse range of experimentation with various forms (see Creeber et al, 2001).

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Drawing from cultural studies (study of the consumption of everyday life) and media studies (study of media as signs, semiotics, text, etc) perspectives, forms of culture or media are assumptions, recommendations and expectations about what works within the conventions of specific media genre to make media products popular (see Fiske and Hartley, 1978; Schnelbach and Wyatt, 2005). These assumptions are based on what creators/authors/composers/producers use to generate an experience of success or to avoid failure, as well as being based on how consumers use these media products to critique the examples of media products.

Formats are the published outcome of forms, and become a cultural currency that is available for sale on the cultural marketplace. Television formats are understood as tradable goods that are usually bought and sold at trade fairs and television markets (Moran, 1998). Their value is in their prescription for instant audience success. Often, TV formats include some expertise on best practices for that particular genre. They are characterised by easy disassembly of their parts and repetition of its form over a short period of time, or long period if successful. They also make tacit knowledge more explicit and applicable as they often demystify the process of production and specify how to manage the relations of production in order to create a successful media product. They encourage the creation of a ‘Do-It-Yourself’ culture of entertainment. However, not all formats work in all contexts as they tend to be created for audiences in one locale and then exported to other audiences in the world.

Formats re-design genres when they interact directly with sub-genres. This occurs because formats are turnkeys to transforming genres into popular sites of consumption, and provide feedback to inform creators/authors about production of texts. In this sense, formats are best practices that also serve the dual function as a creative link between production and consumption.

As TV industry competition intensifies, broadcasters and independent media producers alike feel the need to further differentiate their programme offerings. They do so by creating specific applications of genres that have been given general categorical content with specific cultural inputs (i.e. the ‘pie filling’). They tend to be specific to time, place, culture and history of a media site (i.e. site of production and

76 consumption). The marketplace replicates successful versions, multiplies them ad nauseum and exhausts their appeal to consumers over a short period of time.

In the marketplace, any agent within a field of cultural production can draw a selected group of meanings from the cultural products they create or consume, depending on the social and cultural circumstances that influence them. Storey (2003: 8) highlights how Frow and Morris define ‘text’ in cultural studies as ‘texts exist only within networks of intertextual relations. To study a ‘text’ means to locate it across a range of competing moments of inscription, representation and struggle’.

In other words, texts are sources of meaning-creation through which producers/agents and audiences/consumers use to identify, appreciate and communicate their social needs, fears, wants and desires to one another. Therefore, it is equally important to map the particular conditions of production and to delve deeper into the psyche of a consumer to find out how he/she appropriates texts as culture. In the process, he/she produces meaning within the specific social context in which he/she currently occupies.

The diagram below (Diagram 3.4) can be superimposed onto any field of cultural production from advertising to broadcasting (see Moeran, 2001, 2003). Any of these fields would have created products that go through the value-chain of activities of any consumer product from production, circulation, distribution, to consumption (see earlier Diagram 3.3). In addition, as a cultural product, like the SONY Walkman, each product would be the site in which identity formation and regulation occurs.

Diagram 3.4 Mapping the relationship between genres and formats in a circuit of cultural production

77 REGULATION moments/ eg. Genres of communication in media products

Conventions/Rules of Formats eg. Poem, Recognised Genres eg Genres eg Poetry, Drama, Play, Drama Serial, Romance, Sci-fi, Prose, TV News, Lifestyle Novel, Daily News Western, Martial arts hows, TV Comedy, Programme, Variety, (categories)/ Children’s TV Situation Comedy, Pie; & can be easily Meta-Recipe/Menu Children’s Animated identified/expected to (broad categories of creative Cartoons use elements of knowledge that presumes (best forms/popular narrative/themes/charact specific conventions & styles forms); can be traded/ ers that aggregate that aggregate writers into exchanged/ published readers/audiences ifi l ) that aggregate resellers

Production moment/ Consumption moment/ Conditions of production Social context of consumer

Circulation moment/ Distribution moment/ Social context of Conditions of distribution circulation

Tools/Factors that Increase Distribution Distributed by Publicity & Circulation eg. Advertising, Broadcast, eg. Styles, Brand Press Reviews, Video-cassettee, names, Famous Roadshows, DVD, Authors, Celebrities Contests, and VCD, casting, scheduling Merchandisin Spin-offs,extensions g

Source: adapted from Du Gay et al (1997), Moran (1998) and Ryan (1992)

78 Applying a Taxonomy of Formatting in the field of broadcasting

Following Moeran’s call for a study of Asian media productions as a field of cultural production, a number of formatting practices were described in Chapter Two’s literature review. While these practices are non-exhaustive, television productions are products of a larger circuit of culture and cultural commodities.

To make it easier to apply the formatting practices to the case studies, this thesis proposes grouping three types of formatting practices into a simple taxonomy based on Moeran (2001), Ryan (1992) and Du Gay et al (1997) who conceptualised popular culture as cultural commodities competing in a field of strategic possibilities. The three types identified are: ITVf – Industrial formats; FG – Formatted genres; and ReDefs–Redesign Old Genres through New Media. As these were defined and discussed previously in Chapter Two, the following briefly summarises their key characteristics and discusses how to apply them as they engage with the literature review and theoretical framework proposed earlier.

ITVf refers to the industrial TV format for TV producers. It is a ‘turnkey’ solution – an industrial term used here to refer to opening up -- that format creators offer broadcasters for quick ratings success. It is usually sold in the form of a package of technical and executive knowledge licensed for a fee to a production company or broadcaster for adaptation. The package varies depending on what the format creator and reseller offers. It can be a written guide to making a TV series (such as a format bible that contains characterization, fixed segments and narrative arc for each episode, and audience ratings from other cultural markets of previously formatted TV series using the same written guide); a taped programme of sample formatted productions; design plans for stage sets; proprietary software; marketing and sponsorship plans; and music rights; It could even be consultancy services offered by the format creators. TV format adaptations vary by language, locality and cultural identities of the audiences, depending on the cultural marketplace. According to trade press, the price varies but it can command a license fee that is ten times more than purchasing a completed show (see Winstone, 2001).

79 FG refers to the formatted productions that attain the status of ‘classics’ or genres. These are successful examples of creative work from fields within or external to the TV field and have a recognizable audience following or fan-base. While formatting classics or genres do not have such fixed methods of execution, producers who use this format have to use the conventions set by genre or classic. Such titles represent more specific applications for production in order to meet the horizons of expectations that are already established because of the genre’s or the classic’s distinct features.

While the overall narrative and thematic structure of the storylines and characterization have traditional fixed formulas, the TV production team have the flexibility to change the way original stories are told, how the characters are portrayed or other conventions that can be maintained or reduced. Just as genres change over time, so too does FG formatted production. The changes are usually subtle ones that ensure the creative aspect of the production still resembles past adaptations in terms of a limited scope of inter-textual conventions. It also includes opportunistic practices of using fads. TV producers can seek to adapt formats that have been successful in other fields or other culturally proximate or culturally odourless settings, to generate a possible popular TV production.

Finally, ReDefs refers to the redesigning of old genres through new media. Formatting practices that aid the revamping of old genres. They include the use of hybridization strategies that combine different genres or styles with new media solutions that have worked in other fields of cultural production. New media platforms, that are used as back channels to communicate with audiences or to create communities around TV programmes, sustain the consumption of these programmes over a longer period of time. New media solutions tend to fit into an interactive relationship with audiences, such as the way most game shows these days have an interactive component courtesy of SMS technologies, and the creation of web-isodes for a TV series like Tomato Twins12.

12 See the third website episode or ‘webisode’ of Tomato Twins at Happia Town [online] Available: http://www.tomatotwins.com/wall3.htm. [Accessed: 12 May 2005].

80 Meanwhile, as mentioned in Chapter Two, even these are insufficient to predict the success rate of new TV programmes in the TV cultural marketplace, so these TV formatting practises are often supported by publicity and marketing tactics. That includes galvanizing the support of cultural intermediaries to help promote and raise the profile of newly launched TV programmes to audiences and advertisers. The use of big marketing budgets to promote and circulate the TV programmes is a visible sign of this practice in popular Hollywood, and Asian drama serials. Stars and styles are often used to raise the circulation and consumption of the TV programme to extend its life-cycle.

At the cultural studies level, Du Gay et al (1997) make the assumption that producing culture, like producing a SONY Walkman, is about inscribing certain material and social norms onto the products. They, in turn, affect the way such cultural commodities are reproduced, identified with, circulated and consumed. In a similar way, television programmes are inscribed by norms, stereotypes, values and themes that are circulating within a wide culture. Television programmes are also marketed and consumed by people in the field of broadcasting who have particular frames of reference about what is acceptable or not, what is popular and what is not, or what is successful and what is not.

Moeran (2001) notes that there is often a structural homology between a particular cultural production/product and the tastes and consumers in the field the product enters. The different formatting strategies or practices used can be distributed along the value chain of activities that make up the life of a typical TV production in the field of broadcasting.

The three types of formatting identified here, along with their respective case studies, can be superimposed upon the product life-cycle model described earlier (see Diagram 3.3). Briefly, over time, formatting strategies that reap steady returns become institutionalized (through different kinds of copying/repeated practice) into formats with varying legal restrictions of use and perceived economic value. This enables them to be recognized as a brand, managed or marketed, and exchanged or sold like a business entity — usually when the products is at the growth and maturity stages of its product life cycle.

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However, at the decline stage and product stages, as shown in the various kinds of TV formats across Asia, (see Liu and Chen, 2004: 56-57), many hybrid formats emerge as older formats exhaust their novelty value. These hybrids exploit the gaps left unfilled or enter niche markets that offer an unexplored opportunity or currency. Those who are able to quickly identify and exploit these new gaps or niches can profit or position themselves/programmes as leaders, icons or innovations – at least briefly.

Often, the choice of what kind of formatting strategy is used is determined by the stage of the product-life cycle of similar genres, since each TV programme co-exists with competing commodities (like Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000 versus Duke of Mount Deer 2000) that can be used to extend or deflate the television programme’s popularity. The kinds of formatting strategy used also depend on how ambitious the producers/owners of the TV programme are, namely, how wide the audience reach is expected to be. Therefore, it is essential for corporations who own these commodities to employ formatting strategies to delay the decline stage of a typical cultural product’s lifecycle.

Each of the four television producers featured in the next three chapters use formatting practices that try to increase the distribution, circulation and consumption of their programmes in highly competitive marketplaces. However, it is inevitable that repeated viewing may lead to audience fatigue, and over exposure on television schedules shortens the programme’s life-cycle. Therefore, a great deal of effort is focused on marketing and rationalising the cultural marketplace after the production is finished in order to satisfy demand, attract audiences and to increase its chances of resale.

The same three types can also be identified along the value chain of broadcasting activities (see Diagram 3.4). Formatting classics or fads, (FG) or using an industrial TV format (ITVF) is usually a choice made at the pre-production and production stage of the value-chain of television production. (Besides the need for marketing and publicity activities to support these three types, environmental factors of a specific place/city determine how competitive a cultural industry. The more global a

82 city, the more competitive the cultural and creative industries perceive themselves to be, and thus the more likely that they use formatting strategies to compete. This tallies with Ryan (1992) whose notion of formatting (ie styles, genres and stars) as an industrial relations management mechanism, and interpretation of formatting as a corporate response (Hesmondhalgh, 2002: 35), is a strategy of borrowing and expecting a safe return in a competitive landscape and truncated product life-cycle.

Conclusion

By using the formatting taxonomy and its relationship with a television programme’s life cycle, and by situating the programme in the value chain of activities that define the broadcasting industry, we can document what similarities exist between the textual and organisational decisions that television producers make when choosing formatting practices and how corporations of culture use strategic business decisions to decide on their formatting practices.

Hence, for commercial television products, like the four case studies illustrated in Chapters Four to Six, it is the net result of a convergence between the bureaucratization of the television industry’s material and social practices and the rationalising of the marketplace by cultural businesses. Each case study represents the outcome of small East Asian TV industries exploiting formatting strategies in response to increased competition, larger markets and greater access to resources (such money, legal support, talents, technology, networks), or the lack thereof.

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Limitations of the methodology

Due to the choice of methodology, we cannot generalize from the practices observed in the case studies of the four TV programmes to their respective television industries. Given the scope of the study, which focuses on the production to circulation moments of the TV programmes, it was difficult to obtain real-time data on consumption practices as well. I have tried to supplement it by relying on the proxy measures of personal consumption of the four television programmes, ratings and position in the top 10 television programmes of a TV schedule, as well as other website reviews by fans of the TV series. I recognize there are limitations as to how much can be gleaned from the consumption data.

During the SARS outbreak in late February 2003, data collection, which started in late 2002, was delayed as all three cities under study were on the US Embassy in Japan (2003) list of SARS-affected countries, and discouraged overseas travel to these cities. However, I overcame this by opting to replace face-to-face interviewing with telephone interviewing and indirect sources in my country of origin, such as third-party distributors and industry contacts that have immersed experience and familiarity with both Taipei and Hong Kong, respectively.

Another constraint is working with data that is no longer visible on the circuit of culture. It is a common problem described by Chua (2004: 204) as a result of the naturally short lifecycle of a consumer product. Most of the TV programmes investigated have already been telecast, which made it more a post-telecast review of the programmes, although I had some initial experience watching two of the case studies (from Singapore) while in Singapore during 2003. Therefore, I had to rely upon interviews, press releases, internet reviews, website forums, newspaper articles, and my personal consumption of video versions of the Hong Kong and Taiwanese TV programmes, acquired in music and entertainment stores.

84 Chapter Four: The Ascent of HONG KONG television and martial arts drama serials

In addition to their own domestic audiences, which still constitute the first market, television programmes, films and music from Hong Kong…have always had a constant presence in the other locations where there are significant ethnic Chinese populations…Hong Kong had been the major production site of Chinese movies from the 1950s to the late 1980s, and although the production rate slowed down considerably in the 1990s, it remains the major production location of Chinese movies…However, its television drama programmes have grown as a result of film producers such as the Shaw Brothers, switching to the small screen. (Chua, 2004: 208)

Popular culture in Asia takes many forms. A disproportionate volume of East Asian popular cultural products come from economically developed and modern consumeristic cities such as Tokyo and Hong Kong. When it comes to popular East Asian television programmes, Hong Kong’s martial arts drama serials form part of this media capital’s strategic formatting repertoire. This chapter argues that the rise of Hong Kong as a regional centre of production is due in particular to TVB’s ability to systematically recycle genres and introduce new styles and stars closely associated with the TVB corporate brand. However, its historical advantages over martial arts fiction are waning as other television industries increase their output in this genre, while making other genres ever more popular. This forces established media producers like TVB to rely more on distribution and publicity strategies to increase circulation and profitability of its programmes. As the casey study will reveal, Hong Kong has been a media capital in the past, and in orded to maintain its status, its key players in film and TV now needs to address the creative crisis of diminishing audience interest in its use of recycled genres, and its position as the key dispensor of martial arts stories is superseded by other emerging East Asian media capitals, such as Shanghai or Taipei.

In this chapter I look at such practices through an examination of the Hong Kong field of broadcasting. Then, I take a case study of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre to illustrate how TVB has systematically used classic works as formatted genres over many decades. With their distinct branding of celebrity authors and television stars, Television Broadcast Limited (TVB) has established a constant supply of exportable martial arts drama serials. However, as TVB faces the prospect of over-production

85 and audience fatigue at home, other marketing strategies are also used to minimize market failure. Firstly, to show how TV formatting occurs as a natural consequence of a highly commercialized cultural industry. I briefly examine TVB’s historical love affair with Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre as part of their conservative logic of cultural production and drive to create a risk-free business environment in their efforts to obtain industry growth. Secondly, I discuss how a typical Hong Kong martial arts drama production is created, produced, distributed and circulated in the field of broadcasting, using the Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 as an example. Finally, I examine the formatting practices in Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 that occur along the value chain of activities of broadcasting to show just how Hong Kong martial arts drama serials are formatted.

Television producers can extend the life-cycle of existing television productions such that broadcast and distributed products are interchangeably consumed by audiences based locally and overseas. As shown in the following case study, the popularity of television drama serials like HSDS2000, have sparked a new circuit of cultural production in print and online media that remits back to the copyright owner, in this case the author, Jin Yong, who enjoys a continuous cycle of financial returns and cultural circulation of his novels outside of the primary television economy.

The appearance of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 production attests to TVB’s love affair with adapting famed novelists martial arts fare. Using a classic genre, their formatting tools include Hong Kong martial arts films, novels and comics that were successfully exported globally. It is a sustainable practice that offers guaranteed financial returns and market success, if not locally, at least internationally in dispersed overseas Chinese television marketplaces. Thus, Hong Kong television martial arts dramas that were adapted from Jin Yong’s novels had already seen benchmarks set by the Hong Kong film adaptations.

Hong Kong’s field of broadcasting

The dominant players in the field of broadcasting already hold entrenched positions in the field, and are also able to build regional circuits of cultural production and consumption. Currently, Hong Kong’s field of broadcasting comprise two

86 commercial terrestrial television networks, TVB (Television Broadcast Limited) and ATV (Asia Television Limited) who are also key players domestically, a public service broadcaster known as RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong), a small number of production companies and a few new media services on cable TV provider, Wharf Cable and interactive providers (iTV and i-cable).

Despite new media options, TVB and ATV command the largest viewership base in Hong Kong. Established in 1969 and 1967 respectively (Fung, 2004: 78) TVB and (changed to ATV in 1982) competed intensely for audiences by capturing ratings with their production of local drama serials. This distinctive mark of hierarchy of positioning in the field is corroborated by Jiang Long’s remarks of ATV’s earlier days of success against TVB in the 1970s:

The other reason why our productions were good enough to beat TVB at that time was because while Hong Kong cinema at the time was at its low point, we (ATV) invited a group of good martial arts directors to work with the television station to put filmed martial arts choreography into television. My drama production ‘天 蠶 變’ (Reincarnated, 1978) was the first drama series to be broadcast daily. (Interview with Jiang Long, 17 July 2003)

Hong Kong holds an historical position as a neo-network for cultural production (see Curtin, 2003), with the aid of new media (i.e. Internet and Satellite TV). It has a regional and global footprint created by a migrant population that constantly shifts in and out of Hong Kong, neo-networks of distribution and consumption that allow Hong Kong media producers to enjoy a place advantage of using the city as a highly visible production and distribution centre of quality ethnic-Chinese television programmes. Hong Kong city transacts in dense flows of cultural commodities of fiction, music (pioneering Cantopop in the 1980s) and films (especially musicals, comedies, and martial arts films) as well as television programmes across Asia, North America and Europe(Chua, 2004).

In fact, this field of broadcasting can be diagrammatically represented as follows (see Diagram 4.1). This diagram summarises historically, the relationship amongst the different fields of cultural production, as seen from a broadcasting-centric historical

87 perspective. From my personal interviews with senior TVB and ATV veterans1 and the existing literature on Hong Kong’s television industry (see Ma, 1999; Fung, 2004), the Hong Kong TV industry - specifically the broadcaster-producer models of TVB and ATV - established a very efficient system of television production and broadcasting, which includes an ability to systematically co-opt talents and resources from other fields. Structurally, the inter-field flows of agents with prized cultural and social capital is commonplace because of the television industry’s small size and social networks.

Diagram 4.1: Hong Kong’s Overlapping fields of cultural production (a broadcasting- centric view)

HK Music field: HK Film field: • Recording artistes • Directors • Music composer • Production • Artist & Repoirtre Manager Manager/ Agent Choreographers • Music publishing company • Actors HK Broadcasting field: • Special effects • Management team team • Creative Team - Executive Producers/ Production Managers, Scriptwriters, Directors, Actors, Editor • Postproduction team • Publicity • Marketing & Distribution business unit • Broadcast HK Publishing field: • Audience & Market Research • Newspapers • Writers – novelists/graphic novelists •Cartoonist/ graphic artists • Publishers/ publishing agent

However, in compensating for its small size, the Hong Kong field of broadcasting also globally prospects talents and content from abroad and uses its unique location at the tip of the Mainland Chinese peninsular to particular advantage.

The ‘surplus television economy’ of the 1970s-1980s

1 I interviewed personally 4 television professionals who worked for TVB, Lee Timshing, Jamie To, Sherman Lee, Robert Chua, and one who worked for ATV, namely, Mr Jiang Long during my data collection period from 2002 to 2003.

88 To examine why, how and what happened to popular martial arts drama serials like HSDS2000 continue to appear on Hong Kong’s television mediascape, let us look to the impact that economic and social contexts play in the elevation of martial arts drama serials as a key genre for exporting Hong Kong television.

Ma (1999: 40) introduced the concept of the ‘surplus television economy’ to refer to the golden age of Hong Kong terrestrial television in its colonial days of the 1970s to late 1980s. He explained that the rapid localization of occurred despite the lack of policy support for local production, and the limited domestic marketplace meant the Hong Kong field of broadcasting could easily rely on foreign importers to supply dubbed substitute programmes from abroad to fill up its schedules.

From the beginning of radio (established in the colony during 1930) and then television broadcasting services, the British colonial administration did not set a quota for limiting imported television programmes (Ma, 1999: 41) in the way that South Korea did. Instead they preferred to adopt a market economy and made provisions to ensure that the colony established a locally-run English-language channel during which no Cantonese language advertisements were allowed to be broadcast2. This inadvertently made the Cantonese language channels more attractive for advertisers hoping to reach the largest audience possible, especially the increasingly affluent Cantonese-speaking audience. Thus, Hong Kong’s two broadcasters (i.e. TVB and ATV) invested in original local productions and imported a few regional programmes (mostly dramas and children’s cartoons) to attract a populace where about 98 percent spoke Cantonese as their first language(Wilkins, 1998: 17). Wilkins (1998: 17) cites Varis (1984)’s results of television data in 1983, which indicated that 64 percent of Hong Kong television output was local while only 24 percent comprised imports. Waterman and Rogers’ analysis of Hong Kong’s television output in 1989 indicated similar percentages (Waterman and Rogers, 1994).

2 This restriction is cited in reference to TVB’s remarks in para 6 of the summary of the Telecommunications and InfoTechnology Forum – Hong Kong’s broadcasting and new media services, held on 13 October, 1998. Raymond Wong, Assistant General Manager for TVB made the following request: ‘TVB would like to see an end to advertising restrictions

89 In the 1970s and 1980s, local television programmes on terrestrial broadcasting relied heavily on advertising revenue to sustain their productions, and Hong Kong’s television output reflected these economic realities. Wilkins’ content analysis of one week of TVB’s programming schedule from 8-15 October 1993 compared its Cantonese-language channel (TVB Jade) with its English-language channel (TVB Pearl). Her findings demonstrated that TVB used different genres and formats to engage audiences in the more ‘mass’ channel of TVB Jade, with 15 percent devoted to drama serials. The ‘niche’ and highly educated audiences of TVB Pearl showed more one-off films (10 percent of all Pearl programmes). Of the imported programmes on TVB Jade, most were from geo-linguistic countries such as Japan and Taiwan. Such a differentiated strategy of programming ensured that TVB’s profitable channel was Jade.

The local-language television was closely interlinked to the local audiences. More than half of TVB Jade’s advertisements were fast-moving consumer goods including food, beverages, medicines, and household items3. Not surprisingly, many of these advertisements used familiar TVB stars to promote their consumer products on the Jade channel. Hong Kong’s growing economic affluence in the 1970s and 1980s led to more advertising expenditure on local television, making it highly profitable for TVB and ATV to expand local productions in order to widen programming choices in the 1980s. It generated a surplus value in the television economy that encouraged TVB and ATV to build larger sets, multiple production teams and co-opt talents, genres and stories from outside the field of television.

As illustrated in Diagram 4.1, Hong Kong talents traversed the broadcasting and film fields in Hong Kong with many of the big stars and directors who started their careers on television eventually going into the film field. Structurally, the industry’s small size situated in a densely populated city ensured that Hong Kong’s television industry and film industries continue to remain intertwined until today. Musicians, actors and directors move easily from film to television appearances and vice-versa. Actor Chow Yuen Fatt started off as a TVB actor, from its training school in the

applied specifically to free-to-air broadcasting, and especially, the freedom to advertise in Cantonese during English language broadcasting.’ 3 Karen Wilkins (1998:22) noted that Jade channel had devoted 54.5% of all advertisements to everyday needs.

90 1970s, before emerging as a big cinema box office Hong Kong film star and household name. According to ATV veteran, Jiang Long, got his first taste of commercial work through directing in Asia Television’s (ATV) drama units during the 1960s before moving into film (Interview, 17 July 2003).

Hong Kong’s box office king, Andy Lau, first made his name in TVB drama series in the 1980s before going into film and music in the 1990s. , in this chapter’s case study on Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000, is a well-known film actress as much as a regular TVB first-tier or second-tier lead actress for television dramas.

During the surplus television climate, new experiments became an established cultural moment in Hong Kong television, including the first in 1973 4 , and the first long-form variety show started in 1967, Enjoy Yourself Tonight, which still runs on TVB Jade today and was inspired by a 1960s Australian talkshow, In Melbourne Tonight.

The producers at TVB and ATV built a distinctive range of Cantonese language programmes that were ‘very different from the West with respect to content, format, and aesthetics’ (Ma, 1999: 43). Fore (2001) and Ma (1999) also highlight how local television captured Hong Kong audiences’ imagination with breakthrough productions in television drama such as those featuring heroic policemen, anti- corruption investigative teams, courtroom and medical dramas, as well as the use of Chinese myths and folk tales. However, Hong Kong’s television producers have found inspiration in imported formats, especially those of Japanese, Taiwanese, British and American origin in their variety, documentaries, current affairs and news formats.

In the heyday of the 1970s – 1980s, TVB and ATV had 80 percent and 20 percent respectively of the local market share (Ma, 1999), but this has been reduced to 70 percent or less for ATV (Fung, 2004) in 2000. Kenny (2001) notes that as Hong Kong television’s dominant players remain the terrestrial ones, new players such as

4 See ‘Miss Hong Kong’. TVB.Com [Online], (2005). Available:http://misshk.tvb.com/art_95.html [Accessed: 1 Feb 2005]

91 digital TV platforms i-Cable and iTV competed directly with Wharf Cable rather than TVB. The strong structural homology between its local television output and the Hong Kong’s people’s consumption of lifestyles, identities and commodities is an inevitable consequence of political and economic realities that were historically established. Now, TVB’s overtly dominant position is informally complained by its fellow agents in the field, such as ATV and Wharf Cable who refer to the ways TVB accumulate cultural and economic capital as ‘anti-competitive’. For instance, in a recent Hong Kong industry forum, it was noted that:

One free-to-air advertising-driven broadcaster in Hong Kong, TVB, has consistently dominated the market, holding around 80 per cent market-share. Naturally TVB puts this down to their business acumen, and this extends to a regional expansion through their Galaxy satellite TV feeds into cable television systems in Taiwan, as well as marketing their programmes widely to overseas Chinese communities. Their free-to-air rival, ATV and Wharf Cable, see it differently, claiming anti-competitive practices, including tie-ins with artists and predatory purchasing of programmes which are then stockpiled. (Hong Kong Telecommunications & Infotechnology Forum,1998: para 2)

TVB’s competitive practices, used to maintain its dominant position in the Hong Kong field of broadcasting, are not uncommon in other Asian fields of broadcasting5. Nor is it uncommon in the United States where big-name artists associated with top- rated TV shows tend not to work for any of the competing broadcasting networks.

Hostile television climate of the 1990s and 2000s

Where TVB’s prime time ratings in the 1970s drew almost 40 percentage points, or 2.6 million viewers (Fung, 2004: 78), the highest rated TVB programme in 2001, Duke of Mount Deer 2000, drew 36 percentage points, or 2.33 million viewers (Fluff from January 10th, 2002’). This is highly significant given that since the 1970s, Hong Kong’s resident population had doubled in size. When there was a noticeable drop in audience ratings for television serial dramas in the mid 1980s (Chan, 1990, cited in Fung, 2004), commentators saw it as a result of structural change where new media services competed more directly with traditional broadcasting services (Fung and

5 For example, in the recent past, Singapore’s media industry saw the now defunct SPH MediaWorks engage in struggles over exclusive rights over access to artists and production companies with the incumbent MediaCorp TV.

92 Lau (1993) cited in Fung, 2004: 78-79; Wilkins, 1995). From the viewpoint of TVB and ATV, the changing context of media competition meant that programme export was a more attractive proposition as they could no longer rely on extracting surplus value from the local field of broadcasting. Rather, the regional markets in South-east Asia and cities with significant overseas Chinese communities received strong interest among the terrestrial broadcasters.

TVB had deeper financial pockets than ATV and under the charter of Runrun Shaw as Executive Chairman of TVB in 1980, the company focused on expanding their export markets. The hostile television climate in the local Hong Kong television field in the late 1980s saw the buildup of a global distribution network that enabled their programmes to circulate overseas to more locations, with more partners and with investment in developing TVB International’s (the distribution arm of TVB) circulatory capabilities and enlarged publicity complex . These involved a more rapid use of TV formatting practices to further sustain the high local production levels into the 1990s and now.

While TVB’s strategy of relying heavily on formatting genres (FGs) seems to have worked in the past, they need to refine ways of making classics with better special effects or to revamp their catalogue of TV drama programmes with new martial arts titles to match other new entrants into the regional marketplace. Furthermore, their strategy of investing in large overseas networks of distribution to create more consumption sites for TVB content, translates into TVB needing to sustain an increased volume of cultural production and exploitation of the intellectual capital invested in the existing archive of productions.

This compels them to use a more diverse range of complementary strategies to bolster audience ratings at home, and aggregate audiences in multiple locations with sizeable ethnic Chinese communities. Some of these formatting practices rely on TVB’s ability to build cultural and financial linkages to leverage on associations with other cultural commodities in other fields of cultural production, including popular martial arts fiction, folk tales, music and films. Let me now examine the role of formatting, vis-à-vis the wider marketing of culture, that the Hong Kong television industry has taken up on the road to development, and shed some light on the impact

93 that other fields of cultural production (viz. publishing and filmmaking) have had on it. Afterwards, I will briefly examine the kinds of strategies that TVB uses to increase the viewership and product life-cycle of their 3 versions of HSDS and dwell on what TVB did to reduce audience fatigue and fears of possible market failure with HSDS2000.

Formatting Hong Kong television programmes: martial arts drama genres, stars and styles

As Ryan (1992) and Hesmondhalgh (2002: 19-23) have observed, companies in the cultural industries compete and manage failure risks by investing money in vertically integrating their businesses or by using formatting strategies to promote their cultural products with familiar genres. They, thus, establish a popular star system and package their products into thematic productions (i.e. a sense of style) that have a ready made fan base, and the product can be released in batches to generate high sales and intense consumption.

For the Hong Kong television industry, the competitiveness between TVB and ATV was especially concentrated on prime-time programming — understood to be from 6pm to 11pm and when viewership is highest. During this period there would be television news, mostly locally-produced Chinese drama and an occasional variety show. Most of the visible and new output was focused on dramas and the continuous flow (and demand) of television broadcasting enabled their production units to develop an efficient print-to screen system. This also helped the creative team hone their craft in -telling, production and publicity efforts. Among the Hong Kong television industry’s unique circulation of popular cultural commodities is the production, distribution and circulation of its martial arts drama serials for television.

…In Hong Kong they've filmed versions of every single one of Jin Yong's novels. Ten years ago when Jin Yong television series from Hong Kong first came to Taiwan, they topped the popularity charts at video stores. After finishing airing a TTV production of Shendiao Xialu [The Condor Heroes], producer Yang Pei-pei immediately broadcast a newly edited version of Yitian Tulongji [Heaven Sword

94 and Dragon Sabre] that had aired three years ago. It too met with great audience approval… (, 1998, inserts are mine)

The martial arts or (武侠), literally meaning "martial arts chivalry" or martial knight/adventurer6), genre was popularised by 1950s’ writers such as Jin Yong, Liang Yu-sheng and . According to Professor Lin Pa-chun, these writers’ works were themselves exemplar in content and structure, having been distilled from the best practices of other lesser-known marital arts novelists.

Jin Yong made a great contribution to the modern era of the thriving Kungfu novel, but he was not alone," Lin argues. "In truth, it was brought about by the collective hard work of more than 500 novelists, who wrote over 4000 novels." Jin Yong's novels just point to "how a kungfu novel ought to be" or "can be" but don't show "simply how kungfu novels are. (Lin Pa-chun, cited in Teng, 1998)

Jin Yong’s works were formats in the publishing field for the martial arts genre. His efforts, and those of only a few others, elevated wuxia as a distinct genre in Chinese literature and cinema in the 1960s. Jin Yong’s novels became an industry standard and lingua franca for ethnic-Chinese East Asian popular culture.

However, martial arts novels predated Jin Yong. Minford (2002) documents how these novels evolved through centuries of writing from antiquity. While earlier stories focused on the qualities and biographies of knights described in the works of Second BC historians like Sima Qian, the short stories of the (618-907 AD) focused on individual heroes performing extraordinary feats, and the epic tales of The (16th Century). The modern 20th century martial arts novel started in Shanghai but then shifted to Hong Kong and Taipei. It emerged as a product of a commercially-driven publishing industry (Garcia, 2001; Lau, 2005). By actively constructing an ideal and modern Chinese society, Chinese fiction writers such as Louis Cha (or Jin Yong) and Gu Long re-shaped the tastes of Hong Kong and Taiwanese readers and influenced Chinese popular culture in East Asia from the 20th century until the present. Through the impact of popular culture, local television reflects the modern sensibilities of the city dweller.

6 This definition is taken from ‘Wuxia film – definition of Wuxia film in Encyclopedia’ [Online].Available: http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Wuxia_film, [Accessed 27 Apr 2005].

95 Jin Yong’s novels were serialized stories found across Asia’s Chinese newspaper communities, such as Singapore’s Shin Min Daily Newspaper (‘Legends rewritten’, 22 July 2002). Given the ready access of such print versions of the stories since the 1970s, which have been circulating for more than 20 years in the public domain, these stories formed a ready cultural format for savvy TV and film producers to capitalize on. Jin Yong’s martial arts novels were loved because of their , the mythical figures with magical powers, their use of and history, as well as their picturesque settings of China. They have been remade into TV and films by Hong Kong, Taiwan and other East Asian producers over and over again.

With a circuit of cultural production that saw a successful local and regional circulation of martial arts fiction and films, it was a conservative move for the fledgling television industry to make and build upon, It was one which eventually earned Hong Kong a reputation as a media capital for producing quality martial arts drama serials. Thus, most of these drama serials that appeared throughout East Asia in the 1970s and 1980s originated from Jin Yong’s works.

During the 1990s, retold adventures of the knights-errant (such as The Condor Heroes Trilogy) gave way to variants dealing with supernatural love and knights and deities saving the world (Storm Riders, 1998), courtly comedies with a hint of martial arts (Happy Harmony, 2000-), or a time-travelling story where police officers are sent back in time to restore a dynastic ruler to his birthright (Step into the Past, 2001). Corliss (2000) argued that the appeal of a fictional China with mythical heroes and heroines fighting for the oppressed and the weak lies in these stories directly contradicting China’s real history of dynastic regimes, political and economic oppression by warlords, foreign invaders and dictators. Others chart a chequered history of martial arts development from Chinese medicine and human biology to the use of martial arts for military defence, before it became street entertainment and then as a salvo for political vacuums for common folks in the past and present communities in exile (Sek, 1980).

96 In its present long-form television serial, the martial arts genre has endured for almost half a century, and it still gets prime-time scheduling on Hong Kong television. The works of only a handful of martial arts novelists are adapted for the small screen and film. Examples of recent novels to appear in film are: The Storm Riders, based on the fantasy martial arts novels of Ma Wing-shing; Step into the Past (2001) a science-fiction/martial arts novel by Liang Yu-sheng, which has been formatted for television and featured time-travelling police officers who return to the time before China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang7, to witness Qin’s ascension to the throne; The King of Yesterday and Tomorrow8 (2003), a novel turned drama serial about how the Qing emperor, Yong , gets transported into modern day Hong Kong.

As discussed earlier, in its broadest sense, TV formatting is a process of rationalization that media firms tend to use in response to industry competition, rapid expansion and internationalization. The compiled table below (see Diagram 4.2) shows how much formatting of martial arts fiction has occurred in both film and television.

Both the film and television broadcasting fields have culturally appropriated the cultural capital made popular in the field of publishing (i.e. Jin Yong’s martial arts novels) for the big and small screen. This is a natural consequence of the drive for commercialism in the new markets. In Hong Kong it creates a logic of cultural production that focuses on creative repetition and stresses the twin marketing strengths of bestsellers and emerging Hong Kong stars. Complementary marketing and publicity-generating practices thus feed directly into the cult of celebrity (Coser, Kadushin and Powell, 1982: 221). Building on the celebrity status of individuals is a common practice for companies that rely on singular productions to be profitable, where the life-cycle of a production may be closely aligned to the life-cycle of a celebrity artist.

7 Historically, the Qin dynasty’s Shi Huang Di was the first emperor who ruthlessly united the warring states into a centralised administrative system of governance, built the Great Wall and standardised the written Chinese language. See ‘Qin dynasty’ Britannica Concise Encyclopeda [Online], (2005). Available:http://www.britannica.com, [Accessed 29 Apr 2005]. 8 See http://jade.tvb.com/drama/whatever_it_takes/. [Accessed: 29 April 2005].

97

Diagram 4.2 Circulation of Jin Yong’s novels in the fields of Film and on Television Broadcasting9 Title of format (film/TV series) Format (Year) Origin of Based on Jin production Yong’s books 1 Smiling Proud Wanderer ’77; 1977 (film); Hong Kong; Smiling Proud Swordsman I; 1984 (TV series); Hong Kong; Wanderer Swordsman II; 1990 (film); Hong Kong; Swordsman III (aka East is Red); 1991 (film); Hong Kong; State of Divinity; 1993 (film); Hong Kong; State of Divinity; 1996 (TV series); Hong Kong; Xiao Au Jiang Hu 2000; 2001 (TV Taiwan; series); 2 Duke of Mount Deer; 1983 (film); Hong Kong; Duke of Mount Royal Tramp I; 1992 (film); Hong Kong; Deer (DOMD, Royal Tramp II; 1992 (film); Hong Kong; aka The Deer Duke of Mount Deer (1984); 1984 (TV series); Hong Kong; and the Duke of Mount Deer (1998); 1998 (TV series); Hong Kong; Cauldron) Duke of Mount Deer (2000) 2000 (TV series) Taiwan 3 Legend of Condor Heroes I; 1958 (film); Hong Kong; Legend of Legend of Condor Heroes II; 1958 (film); Hong Kong; Condor Heroes LOCH ‘76 1976 (TV series) Hong Kong; Brave Archer I; 1977 (film); Hong Kong; Brave Archer II; 1978 (film); Hong Kong; LOCH ‘88 1988 (TV series); Taiwan Dong Chen Xi Jiu (aka Eagle 1993 (film); Hong Kong; Shooting Heroes); LOCH ‘94 1994 (TV series); Hong Kong; Ashes of Time; 1994 (film); Hong Kong- LOCH ‘03 2003 (TV series) Taiwan- Mainland co- production 4 Return of Condor Heroes ‘76 1976 (TV series); Hong Kong; Return of Brave Archer III; 1979 (film); Hong Kong; Condor Heroes Return of Condor Heroes; 1982 (film); Hong Kong; ROCH ’83; 1983 (TV series); Hong Kong; ROCH ’84; 1984 (TV series); Taiwan;

9 This is compiled from weblistings of fansites on Jin Yong’s martial arts films and television programmes such as http//forums.cinple.net/jinyong/index.cgi?read=39354, Hong Kong Film Archive [Accessed 18 July 2003].

98 ROCH ’95; 1995 (TV series); Hong Kong; Legend of Condor Lovers ’98; 1998 (TV series); Taiwan; ROCH ’04 (rumour in 2004 (TV series) Mainland production) 5 Heaven Sword & Dragon Sabre 1963 (film, 2- Hong Kong; Heaven Sword (HSDS) ’63; parter); & Dragon HSDS ’78; 1978 (TV series); Hong Kong; Sabre (Heaven HSDS ‘78 1978 (film); Hong Kong; Sword and HSDS II ’78; 1978 (film); Hong Kong; Dragon Sabre) HSDS ’82; 1982 (TV series); Taiwan; HSDS III ’83 1983 (film); Hong Kong; HSDS ’86; Hong Kong; Evil Cult Master; 1986 (TV series); Hong Kong; HSDS ’94; 1993 (film); Taiwan; HSDS ’03; 1994 (TV series); Mainland+Taiwa 2003 (TV series); n+ Singapore; 6 Demi-gods & Semi-devils 1977 (film); Hong Kong; Demi-gods & (DGSD); 1982 (TV series); Hong Kong; Semi-devils DGSD ’82; 1984 (film); Hong Kong; (DGSD) DGSD ’84; 1997 (TV series); Hong Kong; DGSD ’97; 1990s (film); Hong Kong; New DGSD; 1990s (film); Hong Kong; DGSD – Legend of Xuzhu; 2004 (TV series) Mainland DGSD ’04 (in production) 7 Book and Sword ’79; 1979 (TV series); Hong Kong; Legend of the I; 1980s (film); Hong Kong; Book and the The Book and The Sword II; 1980s (film); Hong Kong; Sword Book and Sword ’87; 1987 (TV series); Hong Kong; Book and Sword ’91; 1991 (TV series); Taiwan; Book and Sword ’02; 2002 (TV series) Mainland

While Ryan (1992: 157) describes how agents in the publishing field occasionally borrow ‘luminaries from other spheres’ to put their pens to paper, this process of cultural borrowing and bartering is much more common in the fields of film and television. Just as the Hollywood, Japanese and Hong Kong film industries produced box office films by formatting classic or highly popular novels into film screenplays

99 like Bride and Prejudice (2004), Ghost in the Shell (1995) 10 and Zu Mountain Warriors (1999), television producers like TVB adopted the same conservative practice and turned to Jin Yong’s novels to create original television martial arts dramas that could be instantly popular.

As most television producers of Jin Yong’s martial arts novels kept closely to the general form, content and narrative structure of the novels, these television producers engaged in formatting classics or genres (ITVF) over several decades. In speaking with the scriptwriters who did the textual adaptation from print to screen, they strived to customise each decade’s adaptation to perceived audience tastes for riveting television, inspirations of the senior creatives in the production team, and what star talents were cast for each production. As can be seen in Diagram 4.2, the rule or industry habitus seems to be producing only one classic every decade or so. With a pragmatic and efficient production system in place, TVB and ATV producers tend to favour the ethos of formatting where rationalization of creativity occurs to allow some measure of control over the creative process.

Hong Kong television producers used popular genres in other fields of cultural production (such as the martial arts fiction by Jin Yong). Producers like TVB use familiar faces with star power, such as martial arts acting veterans Damien Lau and Michelle Mei, and current heartthrobs of the small screen, Lawrence Ng and Chairmane Sheh from Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000 (hereafter known as HSDS2000). These producers situate their TV dramas in a hierarchy of production and cultural values that correspond with Hong Kong’s stylistic conventions for ‘new school’ martial arts entertainment that has endeared audiences to Hong Kong films in the 1950s to 1970s (Sek, 2003).

10 Ghost in the Shell (1995) is the ground-breaking cybernetic magnum opus based upon the works of Japanese comic book legend Masamune Shirow. Known by fans as ‘Gits’, the film was the most lucrative film-turned-home video release in 1995 and has impacted the work of The Matrix. (See Yang, Jeff (2004) ‘ASIAN POP Ghost, Resurrected At the core of the "Ghost in the Shell" phenomenon is our fascination with human identity in the cyber age’.SFGate.com [online]. 1 October 2004 – last update. Available: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2004/10/01/ghost.DTL. [Accessed: 12 May 2005])

100 Case study: TVB’s love affair with Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre (HSDS)

Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 is an example of how key agents in the field of Hong Kong’s television broadcasting attempted to attain a stronger position in the shifting change of Chinese popular culture, with mixed results. Despite using a classic to format their martial drama serials, TVB executives were prompted to reformat the completed production through marketing and distribution control.

History of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre

Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre is a well-known Classic martial arts drama fiction, and which forms the final part of a trilogy -- the other two novels are The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1957), and The Return of the Condor Heroes (1959). The story was written in 1961 by Louis Cha, one of the most famous martial arts novelist to- date, under his pen name of Jin Yong11 and serialised into his newspaper. Later on, Louis Cha reformatted all of his 15 martial arts stories, including Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, for publication into novels in 1973, which entered into the Chinese- language regional markets and were translated into many other Asian languages, amassing yet another generation of followers.

At the time of writing this thesis, TVB has made three adaptations of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre for terrestrial broadcast and overseas distribution (in 1978, 1986 and 2000). Besides TVB, other broadcasters such as CCTV in the PRC (i.e. Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 20003) and in Taipei have also produced their own versions of martial arts television serials. Historically, Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre was a popular cultural commodity to format from print to other media, shown by its numerous film adaptations. One of the earliest adaptations was a 1963 black- and-white film version by the Hao Hua Film Company (recently released by Pearl City Company, Hong Kong), available in dual tracks Mandarin and Cantonese (the original language of production). The film was released in a two-part feature-length format entitled Story of the Sword and the Sabre Part I and Story of the Sword and

11 ‘Jin Yong’, WorldHistory.com. [Online], Available: www.worldhistory.com/wiki/J/jinyong.htm. [Accessed: 17 Jan 2003]

101 Sabre Part II, and starred Cheung Ying, in the lead role of Cui Shan. Cheung Ying was also the film director.

This was followed by Shaw Brothers’ film version in colour released in 1978, also in two instalments as Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre and Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre Part 2 which were released within one week of each other in late October 1978. This was part of Shaws’ steady line-up of sword-fighting wuxia films, which Law Kar (2003: 132) observed was one of the two genres (the other being kungfu films inspired by the success of ) that became the ‘new wave of Hong Kong’s action cinema’ throughout the 1970s. During this boom-time, TVB began to source for inspiration and quickly followed the film industry’s lead with a television drama serial based on the same story in 1978.

TVB then consolidated its position in the broadcasting field by producing 3 small- screen adaptations, in Cantonese, for the rapidly growing Jade Channel - 1978, 1986 and 2000 versions. The 1978 version followed Jin Yong novel’s title starring , a young unknown TVB actor at the time. The 1978 version is generally considered by fans to be closest in ‘spirit’ of Jin Yong’s vision of his novel and it influenced a whole generation of choreographed swordplay for martial arts dramas on local television. The New Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre (1986) was produced by Huang Tian Lin and starred Tony Leung Chiu Wai. The third and final version by TVB is the 2000 release starring Ng Kai Wah (Lawrence Ng) and produced by Zhong Wei Jian. In between, Taiwan also produced a 1990s small- screen version by Yueng Pui Pui which starred King To.

Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000 (Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000) starred Lawrence Ng Kai Wah, Gigi Lai, Charmaine Sheh, Lai Ming, and Eddie Chueng Siu Fai. All these versions were also exported to other Southeast Asian and regional markets, and have been distributed downstream onto VCD and videocassette tapes. Meanwhile, the last attempt at using Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre in the film field was made by Wing’s Film Production Company in the 1990s entitled Kungfu Cult Master (1993) directed by and starring as Zhang Wu Ji. This perhaps signalled audience fatigue for Jin Yong’s works in the film field but did not deter those in the television industry.

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With a total of forty-two episodes, Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 was the longest version ever produced on the small screen in 1999 to early 2000. It was released internationally in 2000 by TVBI, while it was not broadcast in Hong Kong until 2001. Reviewers noted that it departed the most from the original storyline among TVB’s three television versions, and appeared to use a lot of inexpensive special effects with some uneven results.

One reviewer noted that while Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 used a lot of gimmick and colours, he could still see the prop wires holding up a few characters flying across a rooftop in a particular episode (SCPNet, 2002). One could argue that while Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) was a ‘millennial synthesis of the great wuxia tradition’ (Bordwell, 2000: 20) and a tribute to Hong Kong martial arts films, Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000. It is similar to how Kellner (2004) describes media events and activities: as sites for ‘media spectacles’ for TVB stars. In introducing the role of media spectacles, Kellner describes these as the media promote, reproduce, circulate and sell news and information about the TV series to attract consumers. Where all the local media and virtual reviews focused on promoting the series (mostly in their TVB Weekly magazine), feature personal stories about the actors behind the series reported gossip about any narrative changes, casting choices, scheduling. The spectacle revolved around celebrity pairing for the lead actors, tabloid style news about the production problems or the late scheduling of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 on the Jade Channel. There was little tribute to the authorial creativity of Jin Yong’s martial arts novel.

Though the scriptwriters for Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 limited the tragic love story of the hero’s parents to just four episodes, fast forwarded to the young man’s encounters with four beauties, and focused especially on the suffering of the leading ladies, they retained the original storyline of events and characters.

Formatting classics place heavy expectations on the production team not to disappoint fans and, sometimes, the original author. For example, most Hong Kong filmmakers and television producers have kept closely to the original storyline because of the personal esteem these industry persons hold for Jin Yong’s creativity,

103 knowledge of Chinese history, and vision (Interviews with Lee Tim-shing, 24 October 2003; Jiang Long, 17 July 2003). Another reason could be Jin Yong’s business acumen in holding onto the copyright of his stories. Producers like TVB had to purchase the rights for a limited time period to produce and script the martial arts drama from him. Lee Tim-Shing cited that TVB held a six-year contract with Jin Yong to exploit the television screenplay rights (Interview, 2003).

As the field of broadcasting overlaps with other modes of popular culture in Hong Kong, television producers used actors and actresses, where possible, to sing the theme songs of their television drama productions. This was also the case for martial arts drama serials – for example, in the 1978 version of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, Adam Cheng (the hero) and Lisa Wang (the Mongol princess and love interest of the hero) sang on the soundtrack for the series. In the 2000 version, the main theme was performed by Lawrence Ng (the hero) and Liz Kong (one of the smaller female leads). These are examples of formatting and traversing other fields of cultural production to increase earnings and extend the circulation and life-cycle of the programme.

The value-chain view of cultural production of Hong Kong martial arts dramas

Next, let us go through the value chain of television production to see where cultural, industrial and economic practices affect the production, as part of the larger Hong Kong popular culture’s circuit of culture. A diagrammatic representation of the value chain of television broadcasting activities was drawn to explain what occurs in this field of broadcasting (see Diagram 4.3) in which martial arts drama serials are produced. It summarises the findings and identifies the key agents in the field of broadcasting who affect the process of narrative, technical and value creation.

The production moment in the chain was under the control of only one person, the (EP), who usually has no training in scriptwriting or directing but has learnt on-the-job or through TVB’s own training school. As the de facto link to the TVB management, the EP has overall creative and production control over the production. The production climate reinforces the EP’s position in the field of broadcasting by assigning blame or praise directly to his creative decisions. It

104 corroborates Ryan (1992) in his analysis of how cultural industries retain a flexible mode of production that also rationalizes the creative process by maintaining an arms length relationship between management and the creative production team by devolving control to an intermediary (the Executive Producer).

Additionally, this and other kinds of formatting occur at the regulation moment in the field where cultural intermediaries use the conventions set by the larger genre of martial arts to discuss and highlight the expectations set by previous versions, or how well the actors perform, or how closely the current script followed the published novel. For Lee Tim-Shing, having acted as EP for numerous TVB martial arts dramas, the EP’s role is to interpret the story at the screenwriting or editing stage.

Complementing the continuous recycling of classics that constitutes FG, the publicity complex has become even more crucial, aggressive and targeted for key cultural markets as TVB expands its distribution network overseas. Sherman Lee of TVBI observed how TVB’s brand is extended with each roadshow bringing artists to overseas locations to promote popular martial arts dramas. He described how the stars of Step into the Past visited Southeast-Asian cities like Bangkok, and Sydney, Australia, to do tie-ins with local television stations that were due to telecast the series. He was amazed at how fans abroad would download and print out photo- quality pictures of the TVB stars for autographs at these road-shows, fuelling the publicity circuit. Investment in was also well-established. TVBI pays special attention to the politics of language that govern a lot of East Asian television fields, for example, erasing Cantonese dialogue and dubbing over into Mandarin for the PRC, Singapore, and Taiwan. Subtitling is usually performed by the licensed overseas broadcasters or video re-sellers, while requests for costly in-house subtitling are confined to certain language markets such as Thailand and Vietnam (Interview with Sherman Lee, 24 October 2003).

Finally, the link between consumption and production is closely maintained through a regular feedback mechanism that tracks audience interest in the TV programmes. Using consolidated television ratings of drama serials, conducting phone surveys and checking overseas sales and rental revenues for the selected title (Interviews with

105 Janie To, Sherman Lee, 24 October 2003) are extremely important to TVB’s management as it is a listed company whose earnings and viewership are reported in their annual report.

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Diagram 4.3 Value chain of Hong Kong television broadcasting for martial arts dramas (eg. HSDS2000)

Preproduction Production Distribution & Circulation Representation – Marketing & Promotions

TVB approaches Jin Yong (aka Louis Cha) to TVB executives decide to soft launch purchase Screenpl ay rights for Heaven Sword and Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 via TVBI Entertainment News in Hong Kong Dragon Sabre, and obtains the rights for a 6-year EP assigns a series of episodes to one video release first in 2000. features celebrity pics to HSDS2000 expiry period. director at a time. Each director leads a (Damien Lau, Lawrence Chau & cast) Production Unit TVB Jade telecast Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 immediately after Duke of Mount Deer 2000 received high audience ratings in same timeslot. Executive Producer (EP) + Scriptwriting team Jin Yong’s name is printed in gold, next to discuss script treatment, using previous television EP oversees production process HSDS2000 Programme & cover title ratings of similar dramas as a guide. For TVB on-location TVB promotes upcoming Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 series in TVB Weekly magazine and trailers on Jade Channel about three weeks prior to telecast. TVB Jade TV trailers on Jade Channel, HK; Executive Producer assembles the creative team of TVBI video rentals include 5 directors to produce several episodes each. EP supervises postproduction & editing HSDS2000 trailers overseas to determine completion date. TVB Jade telecasts Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 in April 2001 on weekdays at prime-time, 9.15-10.20pm.

TVB releases the OST (original soundtrack) for Heaven Sword and TVBI re-releases Heaven Sword and Dragon Executive Producer casts leading actors Selected TVB actors (usually the lead) Dragon Sabre2000 into marketplace. Sabre1978 in 2002 and Heaven Sword and Dragon and actresses, and TVB stages a pre- and actresses cut a soundtrack for the OST features Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre1986 in 2003 in regional markets via partner Sabre actors Lawrence Ng and Liz Kong production ceremonial table with suckling opening title music and/or end credit online, offline video stores, on VCDs. pig, joss sticks and red cloth where talents music. in the album. pay to the heavens. Consumption Identity Regulation

TVBI executives tally sales and rentals for Heaven Press and fansites question selection of casting, Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 overseas. These scriptwriters at pre-production stage. are reportedly to TVB management and EP of TVB actors, author Jin Yong and the Heaven Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000. Sword and Dragon Sabre story have brand appeal to audiences in martial arts drama genre. They act as signifiers and markers of distinction to encourage consumers to view Heaven Sword and Reviewers in press and fansite reviewers like SCPNET, Dragon Sabre2000, and purchase related and Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre forums like TVB’s television ratings of daily telecast processed merchandise Network 54, compare Heaven Sword and Dragon by TVB’s research department. 107 Sabre2000 to earlier versions at consumption stage.

Comparative Analysis of various adaptations of HSDS

In much the same way that TV formats are purchased for a license fee from an original format creator with a view of retaining the key features of the successful formula, TVB’s three different adaptations of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre were all licensed adaptations from the original novel. However, since each was created and produced by different generations of scriptwriters and executive producers, they used different formatting and narrative strategies to make the series relevant to their audiences in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s.

Also, the studio-based system organised creative teams and often divided them into competing groups so that each executive producer and his team of scriptwriters would perform under an internal economy that demanded new consumption value be created from the storyline or the casting (Interviews with Lee Tim Shing, 2003; Lee, Sen 2005). The format for the progression of the narrative was pre-established by the novel but the scriptwriters had a creative license to rework the storyline subject to TVB’s management approval.

To illustrate the departures and attempts at differentiating between the three adaptations, I will compare the three series on casting, format length, narrative strategies from various website reviews and my personal viewing (see Diagram 4.4 ).

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Diagram 4.4: Comparision of TVB’s adaptations of HSDS12 Year of Zhang Wu Ji Zhao Min Zhou Zi Ruo No. of a. Narrative Strategies Production (The Hero, (Mongolian (Leader of episodes (Does the TV series follow strictly to Leader of the Princess, the E-Mei the novel? Beginning & Ending?); Ming Sect) Main Love Sect, The AND Interest) Love Rival ) b. Consumption Behaviour (What do reviewers, fans of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre novel and I as audience think of it?)

1978 Adam Cheng Lisa Wong Gigi Chiu 19 a. Narrative Strategies Title: & No. It follows most of the Heaven storyline and focuses on physical Sword and martial arts stunts that apparently set Dragon new standards for live-act martial arts Sabre in film too. Emphasized the brotherhood code of honour and Zhang Wu Ji’s bonds with the Ming Sect, his father’s clan and others in the Jiang Hu (literally means "rivers and lakes" or the underworld of pugilists and martial arts exponents) rather than his relationship with the 4 women. But the ending was different from novel. It had the most tragic ending of the 3 adaptations. Zhao Min was forced off a cliff by the Ming Sect's members and was presumed dead. Zhang Wu Ji was rejected/"sacked" as leader of Ming Sect and lost everything. Finished with an open-ended ending by making Zhao Min’s presumed death ambiguous (she appeared and disappeared like a ghost when Wu Ji went to her grave to grieve). The lovers were not re-united. b. Consumption Behaviour It had significant breakthroughs in martial arts television dramas. But it was the most bleak, albeit closest in spirit to the knight-errant themes of brotherhood and honour in Jin Yong’s martial arts pulp fiction. 1986 Tony Leung Kitty Lai 25 a. Narrative Strategies Title: Yes, the screenplay used almost word The New for word. But the ending is not so Heaven ambiguous as Zhang Wu Ji rides off Sword and into the sunset with Zhao Min. The Dragon lovers live happily ever after. Sabre b. Consumpption Behaviour The casting was stellar with TVB’s hottest young actors in the golden ear of television in the 1980s. (recently seen as the host of Hong Kong’s The Weakest Link) and

12 The sources are: The VCD versions of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 1978, 1986 and 2000;’Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre Adaptations’, Available: http://taykis.tripod.com/Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre_versions.html [Accessed: 20 March 2003]; Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre Taiwanese 1994 is the Best! [Online], Available:http://taykis.tripod.com/nurhaci_review.html [Accessed: 20 March 2005]; Chinese Kungfu TV Series VCD Page 1, Available:http://www.orientvisual.com/tv4.htm [Accessed: 29 March 2005], and ‘The New Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre (VCD) End. YesAsia.com [Online], 3 March 2005. Available:http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/pid- 1003971366/code-c/section-videos/ [Accessed: 20 April 2005].

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Simon Yam as the parents of Zhang Wu Ji, and Tony Leung (the star of many Hong Kong films such as the award-winning In the Mood for Love and the latest Wong Kar-wai film, 2046). It created elaborate sets, costumes and realistic background scenery. It is the most popular adaptation of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre because of ending and casting. 2000 Lawrence Ng Gigi Lai Charmaine 42 a. Narrative Strategies Title: Sheh No. Slight abrupt beginning as the Heaven series began later into the novel (It Sword and skipped the search for ’s Dragon half-sister who appeared later towards Sabre 2000 the end of the series to arbitrate for the hero). The storyline made the Mongolian rulers more human and sympathetic, especially by portraying the difficult choice that Zhao Min made to give up her family and Mongolian status to be with the Zhang Wu Ji. Zhou Zhi Ruo’s ending was more romantic as she was so heartbroken that she forgot all about Wu Ji and quietly lived out her life with her loving husband after Wu Ji rejected her. Wu Ji also retires from the Ming Sect and lives with Zhao Min as a couple happily ever after. b. Consumption Behaviour The love pentagon was the most interesting aspect of this version. The casting was very old except for the four leading ladies. A lot of special effects on cheap-looking sets were used, instead of physical martial arts.

Comparatively, of the three versions, the 1986 version was perceived as the best because it followed closest to the original novel’s ambiguous ending13, right until the ending and the leading actor and actresses made the most on-screen chemistry (see SCPNet Reviews, 200514). The 1978 version was seen as a breakthrough in physical

13 In the written Chinese novel (1973 edition), it was left deliberately ambiguous whom Zhang Wu Ji eventually chose to leave with. The last section of the novel describes Zhao Min asking Wu Ji to use a brush to draw her eyebrows as her third and final request. However, when he picked up the brush, Zhou Zhi Ruo appeared and claimed that Wu Ji also gave her three promises. The novel ends by stating Wu Ji hesitated and dropped the brush, looking back and forth at the two ladies at a loss. 14 See SPCNet Reviews [Online] of several Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre TV dramas: ‘The Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber’, 29 August 2002 – last updated. Available:http://www.spcnet.tv/tvb_Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre78.shtml, the reviewer watched 5 versions of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre. [Accessed: 20 Feb 2003]; ‘The Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber’, Available:http://www.spcnet.tv/reviews/review.php?rID=122 [Accessed: 20 Feb 2003]; . [Online]. Available:http://www.spcnet.tv/tvb_yitin86.shtml [Accessed: 20 Feb 2003]; ‘The New Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber’. [Online], 4 Jan 2002 – last updated. Available:http://www.spcnet.tv/tvb_yitin2.shtml [Accessed: 20 Feb 2003]; ‘The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000’. [Online], 16 Aug 2001 – last updated. Available:http://www.spcnet.tv/tvb_yitin00b.shtml [Accessed: 20 Feb 2003]; ‘The Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber’ [Online] Available:http://www.spcnet.tv/reviews/review.php?rID=530 [Accessed: 20 Feb 2003]; ‘Heaven Sword Dragon Sabre’. [Online], 9 Aug 2003 – last updated.. Available: http://www.spcnet.tv/tvb_yitin00d.shtml [Accessed: 20 Feb 2003].

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stunts in martial arts dramatic performances, setting new standards for Hong Kong martial arts television. These were techniques borrowed from ‘wire fu’ Hong Kong films, that is, kung-fu films which used wires and other tricks, including the use of trampolines to exaggerate the movements of actors and to simulate superhuman powers (Interview with Jiang Long; 17 July 2003). Meanwhile, Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 is reviewed as the weakest among the three versions (Knoch, 200515). The storyline also undergoes the most change, while the casting may have been weak, with many older actors playing the minor roles.

One of the Miss Hong Kong Pageant winners, Charmaine Sheh16, was one of the most actively sought after new TVB drama actresses from 1999-2003, which could explain the strong focus on women in Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000, compared to the focus on brotherhood in Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre1986 and Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre1978. Moreover, the shift towards focusing on martial arts heroines is reflective of TVB’s awareness of the recognised spending power of women, as well as the incorporation of feminism in remaking martial arts, action and other similar television and film genres globally. Thus, it is no coincidence that a central focus of global hit movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and TVB martial arts-related dramas telecast in Hong Kong during 2001 were young women.

Other television formatting practices in HSDS2000

Given television audience’s preference for long form drama serial in Hong Kong (Wilkins, 1998; Ma, 1999), the complicated and epic storytelling found in Jin Yong’s martial arts novels provide an opportunity for television broadcasters to produce long form dramas using his works. Thus, TVB is willing to offer about 10-15% of the total budget of a television production just to buy the adaptation rights to the martial arts novels. What TVB is buying from Jin Yong is the surety that the martial arts production will appeal to at least two generations of viewers, and multiple generations of readers who follow Jin Yong’s novels. The steady base of fans and the

15 See para 14k. 16 Charmaine was the second runner-up for the annual Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant, which has become the format where new TVB female leads are found.

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high quality of Cha’s written works of fiction, provide a ready market for TVB’s adaptation of them into TV martial arts serials.

As Jin Yong’s name is imprinted onto almost every programme title bearing his story on the TVB catalogue, TVB is also selling the ‘Dream of Jin Yong’, Therefore, Jin Yong’s name became a brand that is often used as a marketing tool to draw attention to the programme for many aficionados of Chinese martial arts novels, pre-selling the promise of good martial arts story even before you play episode one of the VCD or tune into the first episode on television.

Furthermore, TVB continues to employ its television formatting strategies through market research and observation of regional trends in film and markets. To have the creative license to adapt the martial arts genre in ways the producers felt would attract a wider catchment of audiences, TVB executives paid a high price to screenplay adaptation rights. Offering to retain the author’s vision in tact, and investing in location shooting on authentic Chinese landmarks, appeared to convince Jin Yong to only charge Mainland Chinese producers one dollar for the screenplay rights to his works (Interview with Lee Tim-Shing, 24 October 2003).

TVB is willing to pay the higher price in order to adapt and experiment with the storyline to customize to the resources, talents and production context of their in- house facilities. They are also mindful of the falling size of the television audience in Hong Kong since the late 1980s (see Fung, 2004) as it competes with other media properties and platforms available. This has made TVB even more sensitive to an already very commercial and ratings-driven work culture (Ma, 1999: 138). Ratings provide a rationalizing tool to reward and accord blame to television production teams According to TVB executives, TVB signed a 6-year deal for limited use of Jin Yong’s novel for screenplay adaptation, Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre and they continued to buy the adaptation rights to Louis Cha’s final part of a martial arts trilogy, HSDS, just as they have done for his other novels over the years.

Despite the fact that HSDS2000 was produced in 1999, it was only telecast on Hong Kong television in 2001. Similarly, another Louis Cha adaptation, Crimson Sabre, was also shelved till 2001. TVB executives did not leave this audience-driven

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momentum to chance. They employed both celebrity vehicles and promotions across media channels, such as their “TVB Weekly”17 (a weekly entertainment magazine featuring TV, movie and entertainment news, lifestyle, information about TVB drama programming and television schedules), to promote the series in the run up to the telecast. Interestingly, during 1999-2001, Lawrence Ng, and Charmaine Sheh, in particular had been given many leading roles in TVB’s modern and costume dramas — a concerted move to capitalise on their rising celebrity at the time. Older martial arts drama veterans such as Damien Lau also promoted the series, given his double exposure to TVB and ATV dramas as well as his active appearance in various Taiwanese dramas as well over the years.

In 1999-2001, TVB faced the prospect of Hong Kong audience fatigue for classic stories-turned-martial arts dramas (see ‘Reader Poll #126: (March 24th to March 30th)’, 2002). Falling television ratings and competing television stations in the PRC, Taiwan and Singapore, which were all recreating some of Jin Yong’s martial arts drama serials, intensified competition. Despite these conditions, brave television production teams in TVB, like the creative team which produced HSDS2000, maintained the genre format and used the TVB star system but experimented with style. All had mixed results.

TVB’s publicity complex went into overdrive to compensate for the flagging interest and focused first on exporting the dramas and then on formatting the cultural marketplace at home. Also, an interview with Sen Lee, a former TVB scriptwriter, revealed that normally those drama series that TVB management assessed as poorly made tended to go straight to video distribution and was rarely telecast domestically (Interview, 7 May 2005). TVB can afford this alternative mode of distribution without significantly affecting its financial position. Since the 1980s more than 50 percent of its earnings rely on exporting dramas overseas (see also TVB Annual Report 2003).

17 TVB Weekly is a 2-booklet weekly entertainment magazine featuring TV, movie and entertainment news, lifestyle, and information about TVB drama programming and television schedules. It is published by TVB Publications and started in 1997. It has become skewed towards the teenage audiences in order to appeal to their more globally exposed youths who are interested in Japanese and European entertainment news, games, arts, literature and fashions, etc. See http://www.tvb.com for more information.

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To restore the flagging interest in the martial arts story of Jin Yong, Type D formatting is most commonly attempted to synergize strengths through bundling various parts of the circuit of TV production to increase the ratings success of this series. For example, in scheduling and promoting HSDS2000 for Hong Kong television, TVB executives were hedging their bets. A wider scoping of the TVB televisual landscape may indicate worries about audience fatigue towards the flooding of so many adaptations of Jin Yong novels so close to 2000. This occurred before Hollywood’s romance with kungfu and martial arts films re-ignited with the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). In fact, the first-run telecast of HSDS2000 was pulled from telecast in mid year of 200018, and was finally re- scheduled to follow on from a surprise ratings winner in April 2001 at 7.30pm – 8.30pm. The surprise winner was an urban drama from Louis Cha called, Duke of Mount Deer 2000. It had ended its run in April 2001 on a ratings-high, at 9.15pm- 10.20pm and was replaced by a horse-racing drama. In any case, their ‘publicity complex’ strategy worked because HSDS2000 became one of the top 10 highly rated programmes for TVB in year 2001 (see Diagram 4.5.).

Diagram 4.5: Top Ten Rated Programmes On TVB In 2001 Average Audience Percentage of Series Stars Rating Size Viewers DUKE OF MT. DEER Wai-Kin, 36 2.33 89% 2000 (Lam Sum-Yu) million A STEP INTO THE PAST Tin-Lok, Raymond 33 2.12 88% Lam Feng million HEALING HANDS II Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah, Bowie 33 2.12 86% Lam Bo-Yi million III Siu-Fan, Bobby Au 33 2.11 80% Yeung Jun-Wah million ON THE TRACK OR OFF Ada Choi Siu-Fan, Jun- 32 2.08 88% Wai million COLOURFUL LIFE Cutie Mui Siu-Wai, Frankie Lam 32 2.06 87% Man-Lung million A TASTE OF LOVE Flora Chan Wai-Shan, Lawrence 31 2.03 77% Ng Kai-Wai million HEAVEN SWORD AND Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah, Gigi Lai 31 2.02 89% DRAGON SABRE 2000 Gi million GODS OF HONOUR Ho-Man, Chin Kar- 31 2.02 82% Lok million ROMANCE IN THE Vicki , Ruby Lin (Lam 30 1.95 87% RAIN Sum-Yu) million Source: Hong Kong Entertainment Review, 10 January 2002.

18 See ‘Fluff from October 18th 2000’, Hong Kong Entertainment Review [online] (2000) Available:

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The newspaper Oriental Daily reported that HSDS2000, Crimson Sabre and other costume dramas including Seven Sisters and Country Spirit were popular TVB dramas in 2001, but they were not big hits. In a population of 7 million, TVB’s top ratings for 2001 reflected that less than half the population was watching television. Compared to the 1970s and 1980s this was a significant drop. HSDS2000 suffered the problem of a truncated life-cycle typical of most cultural products. But TVB has overcome it a little by tackling ‘middle range’ factors to obtain higher audience recognition and ratings. This may not be sustainable over the long term, and this media giant has to seek more collaborative strategies with independents and overseas players to combat audience fatigue for martial arts dramas.

Since 2000, there has been a noticeable drop in Jin Yong formats on TVB.I Instead we see more of Jin Yong’s works produced for the Mainland Chinese TV marke,t and productions have moved inland to Mainland locations where most of his novels are set. Meanwhile, TVB has adopted a formatting strategy that hybridises the martial arts genre with other popular entertainment genres such as comedies and science fiction as well as scouting for works by other contemporary graphic novelists or literary martial arts novelists such as Ma Wing-shing (writer of The Storm Riders), Wen Rui-an (writer of Ni Shui Han19 ) and (writer of Step into the Past20).

Conclusion

To me, it’s because we have an identity and a brand with a long-standing record of excellent programmes. Also, in our productions we are catering to the local audience. In a way, we have a very focused target audience, even though some of them would have emphasis on whatever age group. It makes our production different from the so-called international appealing ones because if we try to appeal to an even much wider audience, then our focus might be lost. We are really catering to the local people and a lot of overseas markets are people who are interested in Hong Kong affairs and how Hong Kong people live or who are people who used to be living in Hong Kong or have relatives in Hong Kong. So the attraction is there because we have this http://www.hkentreview.com/2000/october/1018/1018pics.html [Accessed: 20 May 2005]. 19 See ‘Ni Shui Han (Vol.1-40) VCD’, YesAsa.com [Online], Available:http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/pid- 1003845801/section-videos/code-c/version-all/did-10098/fil-35/sortby-1/ [Accessed: 20 Jan 2005] 20 See http://tvcity.tvb.com/drama/steppast/index.html for TVB’s webpage on the TV series. Also see a review of Step into the Past 2001 by http://www.spcnet.tv/tvb_astepintopast.shtml [accessed: 20 April 2004].

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identity and what makes us different is that we are not trying to please everybody but just the people of Hong Kong.

(Interview with Janie To, 24 October 2003)

Relying on the brand name of Jin Yong’s novels and the media spectacles that surround Hong Kong popular culture and its celebrities have been the most commonly used strategies of Asian television producers like TVB. Indeed, as martial arts novels often feature a singular narrative, many colourful characters and scenic changes, the novels are themselves a ‘format bible’ that screenwriters can follow closely. The ensemble of characters, settings and storylines are already laid out. In fact, Jin Yong’s novels are popular television formats for drama serials because of their extensive treatment of character development, use of Confucian ethics to bring out heroism, and injections of history into the storylines (Interview with Jiang Long, 17 July 2003).

While Hong Kong’s television broadcasters take pride in making original television programmes that ensure local dramas are closely associated with a Hong Kong sensibility and cultural identity by featuring issues close to their hearts, they have been extremely liberal in acquiring fictional formats in East Asian popular culture, including Jin Yong’s novels, for adaptation into television drama serials. The finished products can be easily re-sold in overseas markets familiar with Jin Yong’s novels – mostly in the Chinese-speaking world.

Inevitably, as the circuit of culture extends the life-cycle of Jin Yong’s novels from decade to decade. He himself has become synonymous with martial arts fiction and therefore a site of cultural consumption of his own. His celebrity as a novelist, his educational honours and his economic success in building a magazine empire () have made him a Chinese hero in his own right. Again, this feeds directly into the cult of celebrity that television producers themselves build up. So, for example, in Diagram 4.6, HSDS remains an attractive vehicle to use formatting classic (FG) because it is reinforced and sustained by a circuit of cultural production that allows for many vertical cross-overs into different fields from publishing to thefilm and television industries. It also generates sufficient market interest to horizontally cross

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over time and space from Hong Kong to Singapore, Taiwan and PRC, and North America.

Cha sold TV screenplay versions by screenplay rights TVB scriptwriters, approved to TVB in 6-year by TVB Executive Producer/ long contracts. Management; (The first film Produced into TVB version of Heaven drama serials (1978, 1986, Sword and Dragon 2000) Sabre was in 1963.)

Diagram 4.6: Circuit of cultural production - Heaven Sword and Heaven Sword and Dragon Louis Cha’s novels appear Dragon Sabre Sabre telecasts on TVB Jade; firstly in print under his pen resold by TVBI to subsidiaries for name, Jin Yong in rental and overseas newspapers (1955-1970) & broadcasters; the 1978 and 1986 later re-issued in novels the versions were repackaged and 1970s. Heaven Sword and edited to be released on VCDs in Dragon Sabre was 1st 2003. 2000 version is yet to be published in 1961. released for sale.

Jin Yong’s collaboration with Ma Wingshing, famous illustrator and writer of ‘Storm Riders’ to Rise of ‘Jinology’; produce Heaven reviewers & fansites Sword and Dragon for celebrities and Sabre Vol.16 (released in August novels, also fan 2002). fiction of loved novels, such as of the Condor Trilogies like Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre.

Also, TV formatting of classics [FG] provides ‘free publicity’ for the source of these classics, extending the circuit of culture of the original content on which the formatting is based to other fields. In fact, the first English-language comic of the same novel (distributed by Comics One, ), and the development of an online game based on the Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre storyline and characters (created by Softworld, Taipei) soon followed in 2002. Overall, the case study of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 demonstrates that in most of Hong Kong’s television martial arts drama serials, TV formatting occurs at both the regulation moment and circulation and distribution moments of the circuit of cultural production.

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The recent revival of interest in kungfu and Asian swordsplay in Hollywood has extended the lifecycle of martial arts cultural productions as ‘neo-network’ (Curtin, 2003: 218) sites for extensive formatting, from East to West. Martial arts films, television, animation and comics that are targeted at the media capitals of the world, such as Hollywood, reactivate the circuits of culture for appreciating and consuming martial arts products. Films such as The Matrix trilogy, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by Lee Ang and more recently Kill Bill (Vol.1, 2003; Vol.2, 2004) by Quentin Tarantino constantly refer to the old traditional martial arts actors immortalized on Hong Kong celluloid and Japanese samurai films.

TVB’s success as a media producer with global ambitions may depend on its ability to cultivate a ‘glocal’ habitus of cultural production (underlined by commercialism)21. Using formatting and marketing strategies that focus on mining content from other media, and protecting the distribution networks that form the basis for a lucrative and recycled circuit of cultural production are vital. The net effect of these formatting strategies is steady control over television distribution and revenue as Hong Kong’s dominant media players move to consolidate this city’s position as a media capital and centre of Asian media productions in the 21st century.

Overall, TVB’s formulaic use of story, flexible use of production strategies, control over publicity, scheduling and distribution attempts to rationalise the uncertain tastes for martial arts dramas coming out of Hong Kong in the new millennium. Through the exploitation of martial arts culture in the fields of broadcasting, print and cinema, media producers in Hong Kong have successfully Hong Kong as a media capital. It remains to be seen how far Hong Kong media producers, including TVB, will go in creating martial arts drama-like productions, co-opting elements of Hong Kong wuxia filmmaking, and collaborating with new talents to re-invent the genre for an ever-changing and dispersed clusters of audiences.

21 Robertson (1995: 25-44) refers to the appearance of glocal practices as indigenisation global techniques to local conditions. Much of East Asian popular culture is derived from multiple sources, borrowing story ideas from Chinese myths, popular dramas from other countries, aesthetic production techniques of celebrated directors, and indigenise it for the cosmopolitan and urban tastes of city dwellers.

118 Chapter FIVE: The Case for Singapore: New Singapore, New Media Opportunities

A thriving city-state, Singapore seeks a constant renewal of resources, skills and knowledge to renovate its industries so as to survive in the global economy. In fact, the lion-city is a prime example of how much change can occur across many aspects of its existence – culture, economy and society — within a very short period of time. This chapter reveals some of the developmental challenges that the Singapore television industry faced and the formatting solutions that emerged as it shifted gear from creating a domestic television service to growing a media industry. There is a hyperactive developmental approach to Singapore that is linked to the government’s continued strong role in planning to building a sustainable and globally connected economy. .

In post-colonial Singapore, television started during the country’s first year of self- government, beginning transmission on 15 February 1963. Like many fledgling ex- colonies in the process of establishing its own political, cultural and economic existence, Singapore experienced its share of volatile geopolitical changes that, arguably, has contributed to its institutionalization of state planning, even in the area of broadcasting (see Hing, 1999).

The changes in Singapore’s broadcast field have always been a swift response to technological developments, until the recent focus on media content and cultural entrepreneurship. The Department of Broadcasting was established in 1946, later became Radio and Television Singapore (RTS) in 1965, was re-organised into Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) in 1980, corporatised into Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS) in 1994, and re-named Media Corporation of Singapore (MediaCorp) in 1999 (Ang and Lee, 2001). The de facto national broadcaster turned commercial broadcaster, engaged and felled a competitor (SPH MediaWorks) in a span of just forty years (Osborne, 2005).

The rise of local production and opening up of the domestic television industry to greater market competition shifted the focus from the state to television economics

119 (Goonasekera and Lee, 1998; Collins, Garnham, Locksley, 1988). In doing so, new agents appeared in the field – independent producers and new TV channels that functioned as part of a range of new platforms for distribution (eg StarHub TV, the only local cable TV provider, and other interactive pay-per-view TV platforms).

With each technological leap in the 1980s and 1990s, the local television industry’s structure altered in terms of hiring, production and investment practices. The agents in the field moved increasingly towards wide talent-casting, partnering global companies on complementary technological services, consolidating their programming strategies and internationalising their media industries by forming co- production partnerships with China (especially in 1980s- early 1990s). They also borrowed the technological innovations of digital players from Europe and Asia.

In Asia’s developing television industries, gaining overseas recognition is perhaps easier than gaining overseas distribution While Singapore’s broadcasters have a distribution arm dedicated to overseas sales at various key trade markets all year round, some personal networking and marketing strategies used by independent production companies have been more successful. For example, some of these local productions that have travelled overseas are tied to global brand names or find alternative routes to distribution through internet or VOD (Video-on-Demand) platforms.

Singapore is also home to thirteen (out of sixteen) regional satellite broadcasters, including the largest entertainment channels such as HBO Asia, Nickelodeon Asia, Discovery Networks Asia, and MTV Asia. It is one of the symbols of Singapore’s position in the Asian region as a global broadcasting hub. This place-advantage can be attractive for local companies, who are able to tap into the presence of these international broadcasters who operate in the Singapore field of broadcasting, through Starhub TV. Potentially, the island-state’s television economy can become a touchstone for transforming the smaller field of broadcasting into a larger field of regional or international broadcasting, and some of the agents from Singapore field into global players.

120 Looking for change – industry vis-à-vis state

The field of Singapore broadcasting is populated by many local television producers who need to overcome an industry habitus inherited from the TV stations’ public remit in order to better position themselves commercially in the international field of broadcasting. For those who started up their own production companies after leaving the national broadcasters, there is no formalized system, except those inherited from broadcasters – including budgeting. There are even instances where no actual invoices are needed for work done and budgeting is subject to negotiation for above- the-line items such as director, producer, and more.

Television producers agree on one issue endemic to industry growth. This is the practice of undercutting, which is common-place, especially with so many production houses rising since corporatisation of SBC. In recognising the need for change, they recently set up AIPRO (Association of Independent Producers). It is however an accepted reality that production houses compete for local jobs based on past performance, ability to work well with commissioner, broadcasters or clients, in addition to cost.

Introducing Two Case studies of TV formatting practices

The uneven field of strategic possibilities in Singapore broadcasting depends upon the veracity of independent producers as well as the flow of television culture across its borders. Independent producers or production companies need time to harness social capital through networking skills, and market their projects as unique and creative for Singapore. Simultaneously, they need to identify opportunities to create media productions of distinction for Singapore and to position them in the wider field of broadcasting outside of Singapore. A few companies have attempted to move across the boundaries of Singapore’s small domestic marketplace through a range of TV formatting practices. Given the structure of the Singapore field of broadcasting, most are conservative strategies. While some have concentrated on utilizing Singapore as a media exchange point for their satellite operations elsewhere, others have chosen to use Singapore as a base for their international aspirations.

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One example is Robert Chua Production House, based out of Hong Kong but owned by Robert Chua, a Singaporean veteran with 28 years of broadcasting experience. He was trained in Australia and then worked in RTS and then TVB before setting up his own concern, Robert Chua Production House. He later set up CETV (Chinese Entertainment Television) using the marketing slogan of ‘no sex, no violence’ for the Mainland Chinese television market. After selling CETV to AOL-Time Warner, he reinvented himself as a TV format producer in 2001. Chua leaned towards using TV formatting in the ‘industrial’ sense of developing TV formats (ITVF) to trade in a wealth of ideas excavated from a fusion of Chinese and Western popular culture, his production expertise, on which he built his international reputation in broadcasting.

By retaining his links to his homeland Singapore and being conversant in both English and Cantonese, Chua has been able to capitalize on his flexible citizenship. He is a cosmopolitan pan-Asian media producer able to network with other Asian broadcasters and producers in Asia. He built personal networks with various East Asian counterparts and Western companies and moved into the Chinese-language television marketplace with the hope of tapping larger television markets for his TV formats. His TV game show format entitled Everyone Wins is examined in this chapter to demonstrate what breakthroughs he made, how he did it and how successfully his strategy has been so far.

Another aspirational company is Peach Blossom Media, a new media start-up company created by Sung Lin-gun and a team of young media producers based out of Singapore. Like many other independent start-ups in Singapore, the company was set up by little known independent producers who had previously worked for other Singapore-based media companies. While relying on the talents of the creative team and their combined portfolio of past projects, it invested in new media content development through private and venture capital financing, resulting in their foray into flash-animation for TV and the Internet. Their development strategy hinges on using TV formatting on various levels, with marketing and publicity support.

Firstly, Peach Blossom Media adopted formatting genres (FG) focused on the fusion of popular American children’s cartoons and Japanese animation for a cosmopolitan

122 young audience. Secondly, their strategy entailed re-designing old genres through new media (ReDef), enabling the company to harness new production technology and offer cross-media promotions on its interactive website (which operates as a back-channel for TV traffic and vice versa). To complement the risky nature of launching into the international animation marketplace, they did not rely solely on TV formatting but also built regional networks from production to distribution that already trade aggressively in the publicity and marketing of TV programmes to children such as teaming up with Nickelodeon Asia’s ‘children’s for children’s channel’. Tomato Twins was promoted by local press and local institutions such as Media Development Authority (MDA) as an example of a commercially viable Singapore animation (Envision, Jul-Sep 2002) and raised MDA’s confidence such that it signed an $18-million MOU to co-invest in 7 animation projects over 3 years in 2004 (MDA, 2004b). This chapter will feature their maiden production, entitled Tomato Twins which made Singapore broadcasting history as the first Singapore animation series picked up by international broadcasters ever.

While both companies – Robert Chua Production House and Peach Blossom Media – have developed relationships with the terrestrial broadcasters, MediaCorp TV and MediaWorks in the last few years, these projects demonstrate tentative steps towards breaking into the global circuit of TV trade using Singapore as part of their calling card. The reliance on tried formulas, established regional partners and new media services by Robert Chua Production House and Peach Blossom Media to create original Asian media productions, is one model of how Singapore is attempting to internationalize its field of broadcasting. Through employing various formatting practices in television production, they have been able to capitalize on the flow of television culture in Singapore. And by building social networks with international broadcasters based in Singapore or through regional networking, they seek the marketing expertise of global distributors to trade in their productions.

Both companies courted the idea of treating Singapore as a media exchange, which is a key feature of a media capital where a transactional flow of cultural goods and services occurs. Singapore is a place where Asian media productions are developed conceptually (based on familiar global genres) and distributed afterwards. The companies adopted a collaborative strategy with agents from the global field of

123 broadcasting who offer existing technological and proven production expertise in countries like UK and China, respectively. In doing so, these cultural entrepreneurs also tailor the communication of their TV products to gather support from ‘cultural intermediaries’ as these TV producers recognize and cater to the need for ‘formatting’ practices that big media conglomerates and terrestrial broadcasters themselves engage in, a fail-safe feature in their work plans. What these two producers offer is an option for formatted productions that enable broadcasters and related interactive services to capitalize on the production of long-running light entertainment fare.

Case Study # 1: Robert Chua’s role: Pan-Asian cultural intermediary?

For cultural entrepreneurs like Robert Chua, being geographically positioned next to the largest television market in the world, China, in addition to being able to test bed his latest TV game-show formats in developed Asian cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, is ideal. His role as a format producer is not simply one-dimensional but converts his cultural capital into currency to achieve a Pan-Asian cultural intermediary status that he sees himself filling within the larger East Asian flow of culture. In Western markets, it is a different story as his cultural capital is limited to certain European affiliations through his participation in Reed-Midem Organisation’s television markets, FRAPPA (Format Producers Association) and his earlier dealings with British media (see Robert Chua online, 200434). He has chosen the path of developing game-show formats as a successful strategy for engaging in the global trade of culture. We will now discuss the popularity of TV game-show formats in Asia, and why this production strategy may work for Chua.

Why are TV game-show formats appealing in Asia, and Singapore?

Cooper-Chen (1994) suggests from her 50-nation game-shows study, that game shows are traditionally local productions (equated with low-costs productions) mediated by ‘middle range’ factors, structural and textual features that are customized to certain geographical regions. Some of these features include ‘schedule

124 placement (weekday strip, weekday prime and weekend), duration (in minutes), presence/absence of celebrity panellists, gender of host, format origin (original or transferred from another country), and mode of play’ which refers to ‘interactive, spectator, knowledge and mixed’ playing methods (Cooper-Chen, 1994: 111). Her content analysis of various game shows suggests that not all game-shows are ‘culturally odourless’ but that some regional appeal exists. She argued that game shows from different ‘cultural continents’ have distinct features that reflect distinct socio-linguistic preferences of their audiences. The global village is fragmented, for example, Asian game shows can be split into an ‘East Asia Model’ which includes the East Asian nations from Japan to Singapore and an ‘Equatorial Model’ which includes Saudi Arabia, UAE to India.

The ‘Equatorial Model’ suggest that Asian nations belonging to this ‘cultural continent favour low productions values and ‘knowledge quizzes’ for large teams of young school-going participants (Cooper-Chen, 1994: 254). However, of greater relevance to this study is the ‘East Asian Model’. This model uses Japan as the centre for game show formats on the grounds that Japan is one of the world’s largest game show producing countries, influencing neighbours like Taiwan and Korea (Cooper- Chen, 1994: 251-252).

The game shows that belong to this model have features like interactivity (home audiences can play along), emphasis on content and information rather than mode of play, de-emphasis on expensive prizes and huge cash amounts to be won, celebrity players, activist hosts(direct the action, gives opinions, evoke laughter), women as co-hosts but also as silent assistants, high cost, high technology, out-of-studio production values, prime-time, once-a-week scheduling (weekdays and weekends), high tolerance for sentimentality, moderate pacing (most shows do not use a buzzer), game-only formats (no variety acts intervene) and length (30 to 60 minutes).

The high volume of game shows imported by Hong Kong and Singapore from Taiwan - many of which are adapted from Japan - as well as the closer cultural and linguistic affinities between these East Asian nations, implies that game shows that

34 Robert Chua Online [Online}, (2004). Available: http://www.robertchua.com, [Accessed 12 January year?].

125 appeal to Singapore audiences would also fit into this model. Also, if we apply Cooper-Chen’s ‘cultural continents’ theory, we could also easily fit China into this model. We will later examine Robert Chua’s game show Everyone Wins in the context of Cooper-Chen’s East Asian model to see how Asian game shows has changed as it is marketed as a format for global trade.

Of course, as the study was conducted in the early 1990s, it excluded the amateur shows in Asia, gladiator competitions and the extremely professional shows in the US, while including some variety-game shows. In the 21st century, starting with the hybrid of so-called reality-game show formats, quasi-gladiator competitions like Survivor, The Amazing Race and Fear Factor as well as professional shows like Star Search, Fame and American Idol have come back with a vengeance but are mostly acquired programmes from the US. As the arrival of satellite and cable TV has changed the televisual landscape in East Asia, these have also been popular acquired programming for English-language channels in Singapore and Hong Kong. With media globalization and the explosion in television and internet channels, there is a saturation of media images courtesy of reality- television game shows that form part of the society of ‘media spectacles’ (Kellner, 2003). That is, a consumer society where media productions of images, commodities or staged events define everyday life, and are increasingly sites for audiences to express their social values. Game shows are no longer as apolitical as they once were and have become the new landscape for public participation (see Lim, 2004).

While game shows have been around since the age of radio, many of the earliest television game shows were technically ‘format’ transfers from radio to television (see Creeber et al, 2001). As game shows have a natural affinity to be easily formatted for any kind of media, they become a ready vehicle for cross-media experimentation while retaining their attractiveness as safe bets for local terrestrial television.

Today’s age of the internet and new media enable game shows to cross over into other creative industries as they often entail investment in state-of-the-art design in stage sets, music, lighting, camerawork and proprietary software for games and SMS-enabled voting technology. Triggering whole new enterprises in the design,

126 music, and infomation-communicaion industries, game shows are one of the drivers for the new economy and the development of the creative industries. However, it does not necessarily equate to a greater diversity of creative ideas for television as media institutions tend to stick to tried formulas for continued ratings’ success, especially if their programming budgets are tightly controlled.

With SMS technology, game shows also provide new meaning to the notion of public participation, voting and public sphere, which gives Asian television the ability to offer new ways of establishing consumer rights mingled with audience participation. For those Asian cities with developed infrastructures, public access to new media services through mobile phone or fixed lines, new technology-oriented interactive game-shows have appeal.

This suggests that the broadcasting field is still growing and that game show genre allow for a great deal of overlap with other genres as convergence and media consolidation continues across the globe. Added to that, the business making practices of East Asian producers hinges on informal networks. Brian Moeran (2003) cites the example of the Japanese advertising industry which employs informal networking as one way for advertising firms to win accounts with clients. Recent studies on East Asian businesses and entrepreneurship also identify the need for guanxi – Huang (2003: 9) refers to this as personal relations, and the use of these relations and norms of obligation and reciprocity in exchange – to rally business opportunities in China (Huang, 2003: 15). Guanxi has multiple meanings and uses such as ‘friendships with continued exchange of favour’ (Tsang, 1998: 65) or the techniques of building interpersonal relationships and networks of mutual dependence known as guanxi xue (Yang, 1994: 6). However, Huang (2003: 19) notes that Bourdieu’s use of social capital (1986) is similar to notions of guanxi where the sources of such capital lie in personal networks. While social capital has multiple definitions, depending on usage and origins, from collective membership and civic associations (see Putnam, 1995; Fukuyama, 1995) to trustworthiness of the social network (Coleman, 1990), they overlap with the most relevant usage of social capital — Bourdieu (1986) — where it refers to resources found in an individual belonging to social networks. This becomes a classic example of how technology, Asian media productions and business fuse within a creative industry such as television.

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Aihwa Ong (1997:207-208) cites the rise of Asian professionals as an elite group engaged in transnational flows of businesses who have access to American business networks and capitalists, and who are both technically and culturally adaptable enough to harness guanxi in a Chinese capitalism that is distinctively Asian. She uses the example of Richard Li as the ‘new cosmopolitan Asian’ who is a ‘flexible corporate subject’ and an ethnic Chinese media baron. While Richard Li ultimately sold Star TV to Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp group, Robert Chua as the ex- Chairman of CETV (which achieved landing rights into the PRC under his term) and is now founder of The Interactive Channel in Hong Kong 35 , has also used his interpersonal network with Chinese media businesses and his personal clout as an ‘influential media personality in Asian media’ to build business opportunities in Asian markets and increase his linkages to Western media markets36.

As Robert Chua has been an established name in the Asian television industry since the 1960s, he is perhaps in a stronger position than many other independent Asian producers to summon the social capital and clout needed to start the ball rolling on trade in his TV formats throughout Asia. He has managed to play ‘cultural intermediary’ between the type of entertainment productions favoured by East Asian television broadcasters and the current global trends of game shows originating in the West. To examine his style of entrepreneurship, it is useful to examine through textual analysis the appeal of his game show. By using Cooper-Chen’s model for East Asia, we will see the extent to which his game-show format Everyone Wins is based on local knowledge and how it fares compared to the landscape of game shows in East Asian television channels.

Everyone Wins … the TV game show format

Since the late 1990s, many game-shows have had an interactive component linked to new media services. Often this is in the form of SMS voting that has become familiar through reality game-shows such as American Idol and Big Brother. However, Chua

35 See ‘Icareus and TIC go together to Asian Digital TV markets’ [online]. (31 August 2004) http://www.icareus.com/media/Icareus_PressRelease_31.8.2004_English.pdf. [Accessed: 18 May 2005].

128 goes one step further by including a home viewers’ gambling segment that overlays each of the 4 or 5 game segments in one session.

According to the promotional brochure, Everyone Wins is the ‘new interactive quiz sensation from Asia to the world’ and it is not so much reliant on voting as on accidental good fortune:

The last digits of the contestants’ constantly changing scores generate a stream of “Lucky Numbers” that enable viewers to play and win prizes by matching numbers of their own on anything from national identity cards and lottery tickets to sponsors’ numbered tickets.

This difference is attributable to Robert Chua’s belief that gambling by numbers is a fundamental feature of modern Asian (especially Chinese) societies. Ordinary people who purchase Toto/lottery tickets or sweep stakes often buy serial numbers of personal significance such as their car license plate number, their telephone number, their house number, birthdays, etc. Asian societies have taken this kind of social practice to the extreme on special national events such as when good luck is believed to flow easily. The disproportionate number of Asian migrants and tourists who visit casinos while overseas lends some credibility to Chua’s belief in the success of this risk-based element in compelling audiences to return to the channel even while they channel surf:

The reason is that mine is interactive, it will teach viewers things. Mine has multiple-choice answers and so are theirs [Millionaire], it’s a very standard thing, there is no copyright thing to it but the great difference of mine [for Everyone Wins] is that besides the contestants being entertained, you at home can also win something at the same time ‘cuz mine allows seven contestants to play and the last digits of the scores can be lucky numbers.’ (Interview with Robert Chua, 28 September 2002)

Furthermore, Chua’s other selling point is the origin of the format that involves trading on the Asian-ness of the show. He suggested that Asian producers have to face the challenge to create original programmes for changing audiences. He offered

36 See ‘Robert Chua Appointed to Rose D’or Advisory Board’, Rose D’Or [online]. 21 October 2004. http://www.rosedor.com/press_releases/2004/00252.html [Accessed: 18 May 2005]

129 his motivation on why he has returned to creating new programmes and is choosing to start in the game show crazed trend of the last few years:

‘…“I have been in television for a long time and I think part of my success has been that I react to things the way an audience reacts,” says Chua. “I love creating and making things happen. With all this game-show craze going on I thought it was a good time to go back to doing what I love best, and that's creating new shows. It's very much an Asian show, from the set design to the music. And we've designed it so that it can be in any language. Home viewers will be very much involved all the way”…’ (Scott, 2002)

Initially developed with Singapore as the first test market, Robert Chua Productions’ Everyone Wins, was pre-sold to SPH Mediaworks, the challenger to incumbent terrestrial broadcaster, MediaCorp Singapore, and was announced with some fanfare in 2002 in SPH’s print media (see article below, Diagram 5.1):

Diagram 5.1: Article featuring ‘Everyone Wins’ in Straits Times (2002)

Source: http://www.robertchua.com/PRONFESSIONAL/recentpress/streats_16-1-2002.gif

His test pilot episode was produced in English with an Asian host and contestants with a mild American-style accented English, a characteristic of more advanced postcolonial Asian cities like Hong Kong and Singapore. According to press statements from the island’s largest English-language newspaper, the Straits Times37,

37 See Leong, Weng-Kam (2002) ‘It’s About Time Everyone Wins’. Straits Times Life!. 21 January, p.L5. Also available online at: http://www.robertchua.com/PRONFESSIONAL/recentpress/tthe_Straits_times_21-1-2002.gif [Accessed: 12 January 2003]

130 Robert Chua worked with many in developing the game show, alluded to his nationality and articulated Singapore’s consistent theme of being the first among Asian nations to position his Everyone Wins as a Singapore media production:

Categorically, 21st August, 2003 was a historic moment in the Singapore television industry. The occasion was the launch of an international Quiz/Game show format that Singaporean should be very proud of, due to the following reasons: First time in 40 years of television in Singapore that a local boy (Jack Neo) hosted an international Quiz/Game show format (on Channel 8). (2) Format was created by me also a Singaporean. (3) The show's set design is also by a Singaporean, 'Right Space Pte Ltd' (Singapore company).(4) The show's title is also designed by a Singaporean, a Graphic Design company (Singapore company). (5) The show's computer graphic opening title is also created by a Singaporean, '7G Studios Inc Pte Ltd' (Singapore company). (Chua, reply in TODAY, to SPH letter in 200238)

Despite the press coverage in throughout 2002, the project did not move into production for over a year, perhaps due to some internal ambivalence towards using TV formats within MediaWorks. Robert Chua then sought alternative Asian broadcasters outside of Singapore for the project. Eventually, after the false start, Everyone Wins was launched in Singapore with MediaCorp Singapore, the rival broadcaster where, according to Chua, his personal marketing prowess and reputation, won him recognition and confidence with MediaCorp’s senior management. The switch in broadcasters was not without controversy as Robert Chua lobbied on TODAY newspaper (MediaCorp’s free newspaper) reprinted on his website where he criticized SPH’s MediaWorks for unfair competitive practices which led to little publicity for his show on the Straits Times throughout 2003, the main paper in Singapore, owned by the SPH group, as seen below:

…Only three stories were about 'EVERYONE WINS' prior to the show's launch on 21st August were reported, one on 13th May and two on 12th August. If one looks at the records in my website www.robertchua.com under 'recent press' one would find much more prominent stories about “EVERYONE WIN”' that were written in the past, by SPH various newspapers (before Feb.2003) when MediaWorks had the 'format license' rights to the show. With incredible coincidence, once "EVERYONE WINS" was licensed exclusively (in Singapore) to MediaCorp (away from MediaWorks), there were far fewer stories reported by any of SPH's

38 See Ngoo, Irene (2003) ‘Sufficient Coverage: Chinese newspapers ran six articles on Everyone Wins this year’, TODAYonline.com[online] (30 September 2003). Available: http://www.robertchua.com/PRONFESSIONAL/recentpress/30sep2003.gif [Accessed: 28 November 2003].

131 newspapers, and not a single story on the day of its historic launch in Singapore. I believe that the Media structure we have in place needs to evolve according to fair public requirements and we should all be forthright and visionary enough to recognize and execute correct measures.

In my opinion, the fact that the 21st August launch of the show (Everyone Wins) on MediaCorp Channel 8 was not reported really indicates exercise of overwhelming competitive advantage by SPH... With regard to your report of my so called claim that I was black listed by SPH, this is simply not true. In context, based on the fact that despite the news worthiness of the 21st August launch and the concurrent coincidence of the lack of mention of the show after it was licensed to MediaCorp, my view is that the show was blacklisted ie: any competition to SPH's subsidiaries 'MediaWorks' appears to be shunned by SPH's Print Media reporting which constitutes unfair play. The point I am trying to make is against broader and fundamental issues and not people or positions. The examples of such substantiation are the (on-going) events experienced by "Everyone Wins".’

This underlying criticism revealed both Chua’s ability to capitalize on his ‘flexible citizenship’ and his pan-Asian intermediary role in the regional TV marketplace, which permitted him to express his frustrations when dealing in the competitive field of Singapore broadcasting. He is also well-placed to offer criticism given his status as a Hong Kong-based media entrepreneur without affecting his cultural capital. While Shanghai eventually became the first Asian territory to telecast Everyone Wins, Chua continues to acknowledge Singapore as a pioneering partner and, given his own nationality, was a strategic choice to fortify his regional network further.

Soon after the initial soft launch during the 2003 National Kidney Foundation Charity telethon event in March to April 2003, Singapore became the second territory39 to produce and telecast the game-show (after Shanghai in November 2002), after fits and starts, in August 2003. It continued into 2004 with a renewal of the format license at MediaCorp’s Channel 8 and has again become tied in with the 2004 Charity event for NKF with Jack Neo40, the familiar comedian and TV Chinese variety show host, as its game-show host and its contestants were local celebrities from MediaCorp itself. After four instalments, this programme drew to a close. However, the format went regional to more Asian territories. This is significant as

39 See ‘EVERY WINS PROVES A REAL WINNER’, [Online].(18 September 2003) Cited in http://www.everyonewins.com/html/index.asp. [Accessed: 28 November 2003]. 40 See ‘Everyone Wins’, MediaCorp TV Channel 8 [Online], (2004). Available: http://ch8.mediacorptv.com/shows/variety/view/258/1/.html. [Accessed: 19 March 2004].

132 Everyone Wins is Singaporean, in contrast to many Japanese formats, which are seen by producers to reactivate resentment against Japan in parts of South-East Asia (Iwabuchi, 2004). Positioned as a groundbreaker, the format has gradually led to increased intra-Asian format trade in other Asian formats, giving confidence to other Asian media producers to produce their own industrial TV formats as well as trade overseas. Recently, after acquiring other licensed versions of overseas formats, MediaCorp TV’s created a range of TV game-show formats in different languages, including ’s (a Mandarin-language channel) Project Superstar, inspired by American Idol, which MediaCorp could possibly resell as an industrial TV format to neighbouring territories like Malaysia.

Textual analysis of Everyone Wins

The general description of Everyone Wins used is extracted from both the MediaCorp TV website41 and Robert Chua’s game show website as follows:.

a Question and Answer game-show with cash prizes to be won by both the studio contestants and homeviewers. Studio Contestants: In the studio, the contestants will answer 5 questions per round within a specific time frame. There would be a total of 3 rounds to be played…The last digits of the contestants' scores will generate a stream of "Lucky Numbers". ..Homeviewers: The homeviewers can then match these lucky numbers against their own telephone numbers, which they use to call the NKF charity hotline. They will stand a chance to win cash prizes. Point- Swopping Exercise At the End of Each Round: There is a point-swapping exercise at the end of each round. The contestants can register their interest in swapping points with one of the other contestants. As the scores are kept secret among the contestants (i.e. they only know their own scores and no one else's), they will have to guess who is the one with a comparatively higher score.’

Let us take a closer examination of Everyone Wins textually. Firstly, we use Moran (1998)’s ‘pie-and-crust’ model for TV formats; secondly, we examine inter-textual references to other game shows; and finally, we compare Everyone Wins against Cooper-Chen (1993)’s East Asian model to see how aligned Everyone Wins is to this

41 See ‘Every Wins on 8!’. MediaCorp Group [Online], (26 March, 2004). Available: http://corporate.mediacorpsingapore.com/press_release/pr_1048670599.htm, [Accessed 28 June 2003].

133 model. Below is a summary of the structure of the ‘crust’ (see Diagram 5.2) for every 1-hour episode as it has been produced in Singapore:

Diagram 5.2 Structure/Crust of Everyone Wins in Singapore- Diagram 5.2(a) During NKF Charity Show S/N Segment Duration/description In the debut episodes, the 6 contestants comprised 3 Singaporeans working, studying or living in Shanghai and 3 MediaCorp artistes flown into Shanghai for the event play on the show. The host Jack Neo, explained the uniqueness of the competition to the audience (i.e. contestants need to play the game quickly and accurately which also involves acting) and re-iterated the rules throughout each round. Meanwhile, a voice- over aided by a separate diagram explains how the home viewers win in the contest, get a chance at a larger jackpot and raising money for NKF charity. Most of the commercials are cleaning and hygiene products, promotional trailers for audience participation in Everyone Wins or NKF donations, cross-channel promotions for MediaCorp Singapore and drama serials starring two of the 3 MediaCorp contestants in game-show. Jack also tries to stir up suspicion and red herrings throughout the point-swopping segments of each round and poke fun especially at the celebrity contestants. 1 Round 1 Each question is worth 20 points. This is a General Knowledge round featuring trivia about Chinese culture, wider trivia about music and literary classics, and MediaCorp television programmes. Each question has 4 multiple choices offered. Homeviewers can then play if their phone numbers coincide with the 3 last digits of the 3 contestants featured on screen. At end of the round, when no contestant volunteers to initiate point-swapping, the contestant is randomly selected by the game computer. Contestant chosen has no choice but to choose someone to swap scores with. 2 Round 2 Each question is worth 40 points. This Memory round features MediaCorp TV video snippets which the studio contestants have to use to answer memory recall questions. Each question has 4 multiple choices. Homeviewers get to play and then another point-swopping session occurs in studio. 3 Round 3 Each question is worth 60 points. The final General Knowledge round features a wider area of trivia about world knowledge and Singapore history. This time, each question has 6 multiple choices to select from. After studio contestants play, homeviewers can participate and then the final round of point-swapping occurs in studio. The final contestant selected for the swap has three choices: to retain their score, to swap with other contestants, or to select the mystery prize (it is worth more than a few thousand dollars) held by the host. Final announcement of score winners, start from the 3rd prize winner, followed by 2nd prize winner and then top winner. Source: Everyone Wins telecast on 5, 12 & 19 Apr 2003, Channel 8, MediaCorp Singapore.

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Diagram 5.2 (b) During regular season on Channel 8 in 2003-2004 Segment Duration/description S/N Generally, the format is the same as in the NKF Charity show telecast. The key differences are that it is a midweek programme but retains the prime timeslot of 8-9pm, and each round initially has 5 questions per round but later switches to 4 questions per round. The point system is modified in the regular season telecast. But it still uses the similar mode of play sequence of Studio contestants, Home viewers, and Point- swopping in studio in each round. As the main sponsor is Harvey Norman, the homeviewers’ segment is slightly modified as the winner of the first two rounds would be those who have a sequence of the 3 digits of the score of the last 3 contestants that coincide with either their Singapore identity card numbers or the last 3 digits of a Harvey Norman sales receipt number for purchases from August onwards, while the final round’s homeviewers’ segment must have a sequence of 5 digits of the score of the last 5 contestants. Point-swopping is voluntary but if there is more than one contestant wishing to swop, the computer decides the final round. At the end of the show, all of the ‘lucky numbers’ generated from the show would be broadcast on radio channel FM97.2 at 10pm. 1 Round 1 Each question is worth 20 points. This general knowledge round offers 4 multiple choice answers per question. 2 Round 2 Each question is worth 30 points. The visual and audio round use familiar video clips to test their memory abilities regarding placement and association of objects or people in the clips, or use the novelty of a toddler singing a familiar Chinese pop songs to test their auditory abilities to identify the songs. 3 Round 3 Each question is worth 40 points. The final round is a general knowledge round with 6 multiple choice answers per question. Final announcement of score winners, start from the 3rd prize winner, followed by 2nd prize winner and then top winner. Source: Everyone Wins telecast on 31 Jul 2003, 27 Nov 2003, 12 & 19 Jan 2004, Channel 8, MediaCorp Singapore.

It is interesting to note that even between the culturally proximate television markets of Singapore and Hong Kong, there are slight differences in the ‘crust’ of Everyone Wins. For example, even the Chinese title for the game-show is different for different territories of Hong Kong (i.e.橫掃千金 or Huang Bi Qian Jin) and Singapore (i.e. Jin Tian Shui Hui Ying), suggesting Chua offered more customization than is usually available to imported game show formats from the West. Another example is that the final roll call when announcing the top 3 winners is reversed for the Hong Kong version, where the top winner is announced first and the third place winner is announced last.

Next, a closer examination of various telecast episodes will reveal the wide range of ‘pie’ fillings or narratives involved in the show (see Diagram 5.3).

135

Diagram 5.3 Example of Narratives/themes used in Everyone Wins S/N Dates of telecast Narrative/themes 1 Debut – 5, 12 & 19 Linked to the launch of MediaCorp’s annual NKF Charity show, April 2003 the debut of this game-show also occurred during the SARs period (Saturday), 8-9pm in Singapore and the first 3 episodes were overlayed with crawlers of local SARs news updates. Winning proceeds go to NKF charity show. The first round (General Knowledge) featured questions about Chinese literature and culture, Shanghai delicacies, and past MediaCorp television events. After 5 questions, the host offers an opportunity for each contestant to swap scores and when none wish to swap, the computer selects the contestant to swap scores. Round 2 (Visual Recall) is about recalling details from 5 video clip taken from MediaCorp TV shows. The third and final round (General Knowledge) featured trivia about global events and NKF related trivia. 2 Aug-Sep 2003, This period featured individual episodes focused on contestants Thursdays, 8-9pm with common roles or occupations, such as nurses, teachers, primary school students, secondary school students and fun-loving 60-plus year olds. 3 23 Oct 2003, This episode of Everyone Wins’ regular season coincided with Thursday, 8-9pm Deepavali, the Indian festival of lights that is celebrated in Singapore. This week featured Indians speaking fluent Mandarin, contestants comprise 4 female and 2 male contestants who are effectively trilingual either because their neighbours were Chinese- speaking, they went to Chinese schools, of mixed Chinese heritage or married Chinese speakers. Round 1 featured 5 questions about Chinese culture and language. 3 contestants chose to swap scores and the computer selected one of the 3 to initiate the swap. Round 2 features 5 video clips about Indian and Chinese culture telecast on MediaCorp Channel 8 programmes. Round 3 featured 5 questions of overseas trivia. Jack Neo breaks into English throughout the show when communicating with the Indian contestants. 4 27 Nov 2003, This episode featured 6 sets of married couples of which 1 set are MediaCorp artistes. Host Jack Neo asks a range of introductory Thursday, 8-9pm questions like the length and quality of their marriage, how many children they had, and how they met. Round 1 featured 4 questions about marriage customs and a wide variety of general questions from diet, animal and health questions as well as one about Harvey Norman. Round 2 featured 2 video clips of MediaCorp artistes and 1 question tied to Harvey Norman furniture sets in their current catalogue promotions for ‘Mix n Match’ and 1 video clip of a toddler singing a song off-pitch and inaudibly. Round 3 again featured 4 general knowledge questions. There were more interaction between the host and contestants as Jack Neo asked individual contestants to guess who should swop with whom they perceived to have the highest scores. 5 19 Jan 2004, This last episode for Season 1 featured 6 newscasters from Channel 8’s Chinese language news and current affairs team. Each round Thursday, 8-9pm features 4 questions in similar format to earlier episodes – round 1 features General knowledge bordering on news events and world news, round 2 features video and audio clips, and the final round features more general knowledge questions. Source: Telecast episodes of Everyone Wins, April 2003 – January 2004, Channel 8, MediaCorp TV.

136 a) Using data retrieved from reviewers, interviews and personal viewing of the Singapore programme, the format allowed flexibility to enable the local producers to use their local knowledge to make connections between audiences, artistes, and the cultural fields that they share. The game-show invoked historical knowledge of Singapore’s television industry, marketed MediaCorp artistes and celebrities as the majority of the episodes featured one or more MediaCorp artistes; general knowledge of Chinese culture, and excitement through the gambling component where audiences kept watching to win prizes/money, and mind games where contestants were cajoled or tricked into score-swapping.

Within this analysis, a number of distinctive narratives geared at amusing audiences, stimulating audience participation and increasing the brand value for the broadcasters’ key stakeholders (i.e. advertisers, government and audiences) are employed. This strategy is partly the result of terrestrial broadcasters, like MediaCorp TV, mimicking the three tested models for revenue-generation from advertisers, local government/public institutions and audiences, and adopted by regional broadcasters.

These include tying up with national televised events such as the NKF (National Kidney Foundation) Charity Show and Chinese New Year celebrations that terrestrial broadcasters like MediaCorp TV’s Channel 8 promote. It also creates a ‘media spectacle’ of TV game show formats which allow many public service messages and national ideologies to be inserted seamlessly without seeming anachronistic or preachy. Game show formats like Everyone Wins and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? are attractive recipes for satisfying the dual goals of public service and commercial goals of various agents in the field of broadcasting. This partly explains their widespread proliferation in Singapore’s media space.

We can see how the show has evolved in terms of inter-textual references to other game shows made by the show’s format creator. During the pre-sales or distribution phase, Chua makes constant comparisons between Millionaire and Everyone Wins, from its ability to generate more revenue for the broadcasters than just the ‘million-

137 dollar dream’ to using the latest technology of successful international game show formats:

By the end of next year, I want to have more countries broadcasting this than Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which is now showing in more than 60 nations… (Robert Chua, cited in Lee, 2002)

…Everyone Wins, I bet my life that people will want to watch this. Just like Millionaire, the world’s most successful show, it is very good and I myself give it my full respect to this show. But mine is no less and in fact I always encourage whoever takes my license to put it side by side with Millionaire.

…I can guarantee that viewers will watch mine, they will like mine if they like quiz shows…it allows the answers to keep changing all the time, so sponsors can creatively offer products, like sponsor credit cards, anything, you can win seats and prizes so what would you watch, Millionaire or my show at the same time? You’ll watch mine as once the number strikes you have to turn back to my show to call in, that’s my advantage so I’m very confident.’

…I’m working closely with the computer company who does the computer system and graphic design for Millionaire, The Weakest Link, who do a lot of shows. He’s called Chris Goetz. You can see his name on the press release on my website so I’ve got the best person to work with. (Interview with Robert Chua, 28 September 2002)

This emphasis on the use of the latest technology and software is appealing to Asian broadcasters. In my interview with a Senior Manager of MediaCorp TV’s Channel 5 Productions and Programming unit, he felt that mainly specialist knowledge and proprietary software are what gave game show formats their purchase value (Interview with Chong Gim-Hwee, 20 May 2003).

Finally, a brief scan of ‘Everyone Wins’ in comparison to the traits commonly associated with game shows created in East Asian territories (see Cooper-Chen, 1994: 251-252) of the early 1990s is given below (see Diagram 5.4):

Diagram 5.4 Comparison of Everyone Wins to ‘East Asian Model’ checklist (Cooper-Chen, 1994)

138 Judging from the match up with the ‘East Asian model’ checklist derived from Cooper-Chen (1994) (see 5.4), the game show format created is very similar to those imported by Hong Kong and Singapore from Taiwan and adapted from Japanese game shows. This makes Chua’s production a familiar type of entertainment programme that already fits easily into TV schedules in East Asia. At the same time, Everyone Wins sells itself as a premium worth paying for by fusing elements not usually seen in East Asian game shows but are more commonly associated with game-show formats that fall into the ‘Continental model’ from Western territories like the USA (see Cooper-Chen, 1994) .

Everyone Wins is an industrial TV format (ITVF) with an Asian element/value system etched into it. While it attempted to position itself as an Asian media production, it looked like a Western game show, using colours schemes that reminded audiences of the popular Millionaire and The Weakest Link game-show formats. Using Ryan’s (1992) analysis of how formatting occurs at each stage of commercial music production and applying it to television production, the following analysis will demonstrate how the Singapore TV industry manages creative and financial risks at each stage of the television production cycle through formatting. As a format meant for local audiences, the mixture of local knowledge and global

139 templates were clearly observable in the programme itself. The questions and footage were Singaporean; the music effects were Chinese-inspired; the set design and packaging resembled the global stage of Millionaire in its use of blues and lights, as did the on-screen question-and-answer layout for two of the three segments. However, as a Mediacorp observer also remarked after the initial telecast, the many different game segments made it difficult for viewers to interact with the show:

I’ve only watched one episode of it and I find that it is a bit too confusing, the mechanics not so straightforward and it’s not so accessible. I hate to say it the format is not very well structured so I hate to say that let’s jump on the format and want to do that format. The good thing about that is that it is very interactive, the interactive part is good because it engages the audience at home. (Interview with Chong Gim-Hwee, 20 May 2003)

It was an engaging programme, in terms of featuring well-known Singapore Mediacorp Channel 8 artistes, and the social capital generated from associating the debut with the annual NKF charity telethon was interesting, although it proved to be a double-edged sword in terms of marketing the show as unique. Given the nature of public events raising the social concern of television viewers, it may just have become lost amidst the social marketing of NKF fund-raising activities. After MediaCorp, the format travelled regionally, and was distributed to Southeast and East Asian cities. The C21 Media trade magazine reported in January 2005 that Everyone Wins had been sold to 6 Asian territories including Vietnam and South Korea (‘Korean sale for Chua format’, 2005). Unlike Millionaire or The Weakest Link, which have sold to more than 30 territories worldwide, Everyone Wins may not be a global TV format success story but it has become an example of a regionally exportable Asian TV format.

Therefore, this case study suggests that Chua capitalized on his own knowledge of the existing audience preferences in local markets that he is familiar with — Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China. His entry into the trade of TV formats is timely given the ‘spill-over’ of the surplus television economies for entertainment shows and the recent increased demand for game show formats in East Asian television industries. Partnerships with local production companies and personal networking with industry leaders was the best re-entry approach to

140 Singapore’s field of broadcasting, as the ‘cultural habitus’ of the Singapore broadcasting industry towards cautious experimentation in local productions.

Case Study #2: Peach Blossom Media’s Foray into Animation

With the advent of 3D-technologies such as Softimage and Maya, as well as flash software, animation has become increasingly intertwined with digital and new media developments lifted off the latest IT breakthroughs in the computer world. Singapore is perhaps one site for using high-tech and digital services given the government’s long-term ambition to be an info-comm hub for Asia with its pro-IT policies and rapid infrastructural developments (see Toh and Tan, 1998). For example, GDC Technology, a Singapore-based company, recently pioneered the first digital cinema solution, which was presold to several thousand cinemas in India and recently sparked government interest in digital cinema services for Singapore (Computerworld, 2003).

Creative Technology, a Singapore PC soundcard chipmaker previously listed on the NASDAQ, has recently signed a deal with Bill Gates to provide its proprietary NOMAD technology and design for Microsoft’s expansion into the mobile entertainment business (Microsoft, 2003). There are also schools for digital animation in Singapore at the polytechnic level, such as Nanyang Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic, while NTU has set up a Siggraph (Silicon Graphics) chapter that is now affiliated with a large network of amateur, freelance and contract , collectively known as Singapore Animators Connection42.

Furthermore, Singapore’s television audiences have been exposed to a heavy diet of Western and Japanese cartoons since the 1980s through acquired programmes telecast on local TV channels. The culture of consuming animation has become even more entrenched in Singapore with the advent of cable TV offering television animation like Jet TV, Azio TV, TNT Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon Asia, as

42 See Singapore Animators Connection homepage [Online]. Available: http://www.sac.4mg.com/ [Accessed: 22 May 2005]

141 well as the recent Hollywood animation film hits like Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, ANTZ and Animatrix as well as, in local cinemas, anime films such as Spirited Away.

In Singapore, while a few Asian animators have partnered with local businesses to start up animation companies, still fewer have produced for the local market. Programmes are most often produced for the terrestrial broadcasters, with limited circulation or life beyond the first instalment or series. Some examples include Jo- Kilat (Singapore’s first animation series produced for MediaCorp’s Malay-language channel, Suria) and Rats 2099 (billed as the first locally-made English-language, 3D- animation) which was telecast on children’s day on Channel 5 in 1999. These were technological firsts in Singapore’s local television history that have not sustained momentum in their product life cycle beyond their limited local terrestrial telecast window.

Instead, others like Digipix and 7G Studios (see Teo, 2003) and more recently, Peach Blossom Media, have chosen to chart a different path by creating animation for international markets. Tapping on a pool of local talents, venture-capital financing and regional networks in production and distribution, Peach Blossom Media. demonstrates one example of how media producers in Singapore are capitalizing on existing resources to leap into the lucrative international trade in animation.

Peach Blossom Media (Peach Blossom Media) is an independent production company created in 2001 by the husband and wife team of Sung Lingun and Petrina Kow. Both in their late 20s, they have set up this production unit after a short career in Singapore’s field of broadcasting. Sung had previously worked with another independent production company, Oak 3 Films, and established a portfolio of commissioned television productions for the local terrestrial broadcasters. While Oak 3 Films focused on genres such as documentary and dramas43 with local budgets set by government funding models and broadcasters, Peach Blossom Media had a different focus - new media productions for bigger markets:

Peach Blossom Media Pte Ltd is a television and new media production house pioneering a new form of entertainment for the convergence era. The company is

43 See Oak 3 Films homepage. [Online], (2004). Available: http://www.oak3films.com [Accessed: 29 July 2004].

142 the first in the region to merge the web, the space and traditional television to create brand new immersion projects that are a hybrid of television programmes and video games. By partnering strong production houses and technology enables in Europe and North America, Peach Blossom Media aims to be the leading creator and producer of innovative multi-platform new media entertainment.’ (Peach Blossom Media, 2002)

According to Sung, Peach Blossom Media was started with financing from ‘angel investors’ through a chance encounter with w3angels.com44, a venture capital outfit linked to local telecommunications company, Singtel. Peach Blossom Media’s objective was to produce programmes that could cross-over to new media services. In order to own their creations, they had to develop the designs for each production in-house and choose the genre of animation.

Why does animation appeal in Asia and Singapore?

From print to screen, animation in Asia has a long history, and the economy of television animation has exploded in the last 20 years or so. Many Asian television and film industries are beginning to experiment in original animation production as well as trading globally. One of the production centres of animation in Asia is Japan, which we will discuss further in the next chapter (see Chapter 6) when discussing Japan’s global neo-network for animation production. For now, we will simply highlight the growing appeal of animation in Asia and the structural changes of Asian television industries that have begun to contribute to growing Asian animation trade.

If we compare TV game-shows with made-for-TV animation series, both can function as formatted TV productions, in the sense that both genres offer a fixed and repeatable programme structure in which various cultural narratives and media texts can be easily inserted. Like game-shows, TV animation series can stand alone. Each episode has a self-contained storyline with a basic set of lead characters, and each episode can be viewed independently of other episodes within a series. In a

143 descriptive sense, TV animation and game-shows both fall into the ‘pie and crust’ model used by Moran to define a television programme format (Moran, 1998:13). This model refers to the ‘crust’ as the structural elements (like logos, colour schemes, organization of actors, sequence of segments) that remain constant throughout each episode of production while ‘pie’ is the cultural ‘filling’ of local content (such as local faces, questions, settings, locations, themes, etc).

However, unlike game-shows, TV animation is rarely traded in the way that other genres are. It is also rare, before the age of new media like the internet, for TV animation to provide some interactivity for audience participation in the way that game-shows have been able to do.

There are possibilities for limited ‘formatting’ of specific TV animation series according to the perceived tastes of various geo-linguistic markets in Asia and elsewhere. Unlike game-show formats, the trade is no longer in services rendered by the original creator/owner of the format or the animation series, but in ancillary services that they offer. These ancillary services allow customization of acquired animation series to local markets – services such as dubbing, voicing and re- organising segments for longer or shorter durations to suit existing television schedules. Hence, while animation cannot be easily formatted industrially for localised production, animation is a type of genre that can be easily formatted or re- designed while maintaining its original production values. This is because of its unique stylistic conventions and added technological dimensions for cultural neutrality.

Animation is increasingly appealing to broadcasters in Asia because they can be easily re-designed for their needs. Where high quality animation productions were costly, acquiring foreign syndicated or first-run series was both economically and organizationally sound. From the broadcasters’ perspective, certain animation programmes can function as a premium marketing tool for their children’s channels (Sandler, 2003). They can also act as interstitials in the form of animation shorts (as

44 See ‘Leading Venture Capital Firm takes stake in Local Media Company’, Peach Blossom Media.com [Online], (1, August 2001). Available: http://www.peachblossommedia.com/press/PB%20PR%20W3%20Investment% 202.0%20w%20Tao.pdf, [Accessed: 21 May 2003].

144 in the case of using animation shorts as ‘fillers’ on Singapore’s TV Mobile45 channel) or as programme substitute for more costly live-action children’s programmes. With a good post-production infrastructure and a resident population of multilinguals, facilities can be found locally or in neighbouring cities. Dubbing seems to be the more common strategy for localizing Western animation to Asian markets and vice- versa.

Peach Blossom Media observed that what made Nickelodeon Asia select the Singapore-made, flash animation series for regional broadcast was the fact that it was a first in Asian animation during 2002 (Interview with Sung, 2 October 2002). Also, at the time, the cable channel did not have many original animation programmes on their schedule that they could market with their channel branding to compete with their more prolific rival, Cartoon Network. This is a good example of the first kind of branding synergy created within the Singapore field of broadcasting.

There are only a few cases of recent TV format trade adapted from Western to Asian animated children’s shows. One example was zhima jie a Chinese version of the long-running Children’s Television Workshop (U.S.) children’s show, Sesame Street. Launched in 1999, zhima jie producers at saw fit to create several Chinese-styled Muppet characters within the familiar ensemble (Keane 2002).

More recent cases of trade in television programme formats across Asia (see Liu and Chen, 2004) suggest that made-for-TV animation and films have grown in circulation throughout Asia in the 1990s. This has occurred especially in the form of Japanese anime and more recently in the transfer of format rights for famous Japanese cartoons into Asian drama serials like the recent surge in Taiwanese idol dramas. Japanese anime has also triggered Hong Kong’s popular martial arts and sci-

45 TV Mobile is Singapore’s mobile television channel that is installed on public buses and other public places and it features a mixture of TV programmes on MediaCorp’s terrestrial channels from news to light entertainment as well as interstitials from comic gags to short animation. Recently, in March 2004, an animation showcase of Singapore’s animation pieces produced by graduates of Nanyang Polytechnic was telecast on TV Mobile.

145 fi cartoons as the basis for ‘new age’ Hong Kong film adaptations like Zu: Mountain Warriors (1999).

Indeed, younger Asian audiences have a wider choice of animation to consume. They have already become accustomed to a diet of Japanese comic books and Hollywood cartoons perpetuated by the increased number of outlets for consuming animation created by American media owners of network television and Hollywood films. For example, many Hollywood animation films have populated the Singaporean chart for top grossing films in the last few years — A Bug’s Life, Toy Story, The Lion King and Mu Lan. The number of children’s television channels offering cartoons has grown dramatically in Asia. From the Philippines to Taiwan international satellite channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon Asia compete with kid’s programming on terrestrial channels like ABS-CBN (a leading television channel from the Philippines), Kids Central (a children’s’ programming timebelt on Singapore’s Central channel), and dedicated cable channels like Yo-yo (a Taiwanese children’s channel).

Thus the increased circulation of animation in Asia is partly the consequence of learning from the expansion of the ‘corporate animation field’ by international media players who are vertically integrated and horizontally linked to the Hollywood studio system (see Larson, 2003; Lent, 2000). A wider selection of animation productions have appeared through Japanese, and now Korean, media conglomerates who have invested in animation, for example, Koei Animation (Japan) and Sunwoo (Korea), as well as related merchandising and licensing of their cartoon characters —Pokemon, and Sanrio’s Hello Kitty. All these players have focused on animation production as the most lucrative revenue-generating type of media production available today. Media conglomerates from Hollywood and Japan have steadily outsourced most of the labour-intensive parts of 2-D or 3-D animation into cheaper locales in Asia such as India, South Korea and China, thereby reducing their production costs while increasing their operating profits still further. This has led to the growth of animation expertise among Asian countries, with a ready labour pool of talent that has become accustomed to doing contract work for overseas majors.

146 Although Asian producers used to see themselves as merely contracted labour for Hollywood and Japanese animation studios, the low-cost mode of cultural production is complemented by a shift from contracted labourer to cultural entrepreneur (Osaki, 2002). Indeed, companies based in urbanized cities with strong currency values like Singapore cannot compete with cheaper and larger supplies of cultural labour from South Korea, the Philippines or the PRC. As a result, local animation houses like Peach Blossom Media have to rely on a co-production model where their external partnerships offer a cheaper and a larger pool of Disney-trained contract labour while they retain the copyright ownership and the pre-design and post-production work on the series (Osaki, 2002).

Given the above discussion about the expanding scope of animation as part of tradable culture, it is increasingly becoming an attractive genre for cultural entrepreneurs to invest and trade in. Moreover, the flexible nature of animation series, where usage of cartoon depictions can be less culturally sensitive or even made neutral through dubbing, is attractive to broadcasters. Increasingly the logic of television economics has shown that there is greater industry focus on animation production since the 1990s. Therefore, more outlets and platforms from print to the internet have become available, which generates greater demand for the flexible accumulation of visual culture such as animation. It may be timely that Asian media producers obtain greater production and marketing expertise, and master the business of selling animation as formatted productions to these platform owners.

The story of Tomato Twins

While the founders of Peach Blossom Media chose flash animation as the starting point for experimenting in original animation production for a number of reasons -- both economic and training (or lack thereof) – they set as their ultimate goal the most difficult television market in the world for Asian media production to enter - the North American market. When I queried them about this rationale, Sung commented that it was a high-risk strategy that compelled them to produce programmes of international standards of acceptability set by the world’s richest television markets for children’s’ television outside of Japan (Interview with Sung, 2 October 2002).

147

In fact, Asia’s representations of animation exported to the West have been dominated by Japanese anime for television and films. For example, the runaway success of Pokemon: the Movie (1999) at the Hollywood box office and Hayao Miyazaki’s critical success of Spirited Away (2000) in Cannes further cement the potential for exporting made-in-Asia animation to the world’s largest audiences. By not following strictly into the Japanese anime-look-a-like mode of production where TV animation is often a cross-over from print to TV, Peach Blossom Media offers a case of TV formatting practice with a difference. Starting from new media formats offered by the Internet, they intended to cross-over to TV animation. Additionally they could differentiate themselves from Japanese anime by offering something closer to the Western format.

There are similarities, at the pre-production stage, to what the founding team for Peach Blossom Media is doing compared with Craig McCraken, creator of the final year school project that became Powerpuff Girls. The differences include the fact that Peach Blossom Media faced a very small domestic marketplace while Powerpuff Girls was well-placed for Hollywood. In effect, Peach Blossom Media had to position themselves in this niche.

We will examine Peach Blossom Media’s strategic use of resources and capital, and make inter-textual comparisons with Tomato Twins and the highly commercially successful, ‘Powerpuff Girls’. Sung revealed that the selling point of Tomato Twins is its small but growing niche of growing properties for animation – namely a recognizable Western format for children’s cartoons with Asian sensibilities. It was a niche with which they identified personally and felt was set to rapidly grow in the Asian region:

Lin Gun said “We watched Asian cartoons like Doremon and Western ones like Scooby Doo and this is a mix of both.” (Channel NewsAsia, 2002)

CAR[carlene tan]: It’s something created by Singaporeans for a global audience. Singaporean kids will enjoy it, and so will Taiwanese children, Australian children and American children. Visually, there are Asian

148 references. Even in our stories, we talk about stuff like filial piety that you definitely don’t see in Dexter’s Lab or The Powerpuff Girls. (Teo, 2002)

Furthermore, their appeal to international broadcasters, such as Nickelodeon Asia, lie in their own hybrid existence between television landscapes of Eastern and Anglo- American origin. Having been audiences themselves, they were avid consumers of television animation from both sources. Also, Nickelodeon was a late entrant on the Asian satellite-broadcasting scene and therefore had to compete aggressively with TNT Cartoon Network, which had already established a first-mover advantage in the regional field of broadcasting.

It became a win-win partnership for independent Peach Blossom Media because it gave them international accreditation as well as access to additional financing with local industry development agencies, Singapore Broadcasting Authority and Economic Development Board. Given the lack of competing cultural properties to market themselves to an expanding satellite viewing kid audience in Asia, this allowed Nickelodeon to draw upon a larger brand equity with the audiences both in Singapore as well as across Asia:

We wanted an Asian series that has strong international appeal. Tomato Twins has that slight but distinctive Asian sensibility, as it is conceived by a group of very cosmopolitan Asians – consisting of Singaporeans, Malaysians, Taiwanese and even a third-generation New Zealander Chinese’, said Sung, the show’s creator and executive producer.

Nickelodeon is making Singapore broadcasting history with the premier of the first-ever made-in-Singapore . We are extremely impressed with the quality of the production, and the appeal of the characters and stories. Since introducing Nickelodeon to kids in Asia, we have always been on the look out for opportunities to bring distinctly Asian-centric productions as another way to connect with our audiences,’ said Gary Sinclair, Nickelodeon Asia’s Director of On-air Promotions and Program Development. (cited in Peach Blossom Media Release, 2002)

Through its fusion of Eastern elements with familiar Western animation story formats pioneered by Hanna-Barbara and, lately, the creator of Power Puff Girls, Tomato Twins was positioned and marketed internationally on satellite broadcasters

149 like Nickelodeon, in animation catalogues of distributors and in international children’s marketplaces like MIPCOM.

As for the emphasis on creativity, the media producers for the series were presented as spontaneous and personal. This can be illustrated by how Peach Blossom Media came to choose the name Tomato Twins or how they drew inspirations for their characters:

Why Tomato Twins? LIN [Sung Lingun]: Well, Pumpkin Twins didn’t sound quite as cool. (Haha!) CAR: [Carlene Tan]: Someone mentioned Twinkle Twins, but I said, no, Twinkle Twins won’t work. Lingun was drinking tomato juice. And I think someone mentioned Tomato Twins because of it.

Where do you get inspiration for the characters? CAR: I guess it came from bits of ourselves and of kids we knew. Ti-ann has probably got a little bit of me and Petrina in it, and Ti-yo has probably got a bit of Lingun and Andy in it. We just played on characteristics we liked and worked on them. (Teo, 2002) There are distinct similarities and key differences between Tomato Twins and Powerpuff Girls that bear inter-textual as well as ethnographic comparisons. These inter-textual patterns reveal the general economic and political forces that underline their respective fields of broadcasting in the business of television animation. A descriptive account of the structure of production also reveals the environment in which a group of cultural producers face competition in the field of broadcasting.

Textual analysis of Tomato Twins

Tomato Twins is a half-hour children’s animation television series (see Diagram 5.5 below) targeted at 7 to 11 year-olds. Each episode begins with a 3-second story of how the Twins got their power – their Scientist mother placed her chemistry experiments next to the two baby formula bottles which their Construction engineer father mistakenly feeds to the Twins. The first 13-episodes were completed and telecast regionally in Asia by November 2002, while the second series was in production in 2003. Each half-hour comprises two stories with pro-social narratives

150 that are television friendly and ‘problem free’ from possible censorship or programme content concerns. Diagram 5.5 Descriptive profile of television episodes of Tomato Twins (Series 1). S/N Episode No./ Title of Narrative/themes episode 1 Episode 7A, MC Kat vs Kat kitten, nephew of Kat Pest Trophy, visits his uncle and takes Prof Twang’. 26 Feb 2003 him to see MacDaddy, a rapper perform in front of a large audience. Kat hatches a plot for world domination by installing a hypnotic device behind a rap music ploy. Meanwhile, the Twins’ parents are practicing country music line-dancing and try to entice the reluctant Twins. Eager (Mac Daddy Eager) and Kat Pesk Trophy (MC Kat) enters all the children, including the Tomato Twins. When their parents do not permit them to go for Kat’s downtown rap concert, they sneak out. Their parents found out and recognized the rappers immediately as villains in disguise. Mrs Tomato decides to counter Kat’s plan by a hypnotic device using line-dancing music which destroys the rap device. As punishment, the Twins have to join their parents to learn line- dancing. The Twins lecture Prince Eager about letting his good intentions harm others. 2 Episode 7B, What time is This episode follows from MC Kat vs Prof Twang. Mr Tomato it?, 26 Feb 2003 answers the door to Pete, Ti-yo’s friend, who asks him to play soccer but Ti-yo tells him they all have to help clean house because their grandparents will be visiting. When Mr Tomato gave Ti-yo the wrong solution to clean the carpet, Mrs Tomato recounts the story of how the Twins got their powers because of Mr Tomato’s absent-mindedness., and how they had to switch from ‘potty-training’ to ‘power-training’. This is followed by how Kat tried to steal Professor/Mrs Tomato’s inventions and stumbled onto the powerful baby Tomato Twins. When their grandparents visit, they reveal how Mr & Mrs Tomato got to together in high school, unwittingly aided by teenager Kat who tries to spoil Mrs Tomato’s experiment from winning the school science fair but Mr Tomato ends up rescuing Mrs Tomato. 3 Episode 9A, Costume While Ti-yo and Ti-ann watch a recent movie by Jimbob Trunk, 1 Apr 2003 Superjam, a children’s’ superhero on television, their father and the flying Tomato (Cat-chup invented by Mrs Tomato) make a mess of the living room. Meanwhile an elephant (Prince Eager) tries to trick the Zoo attendants to release the caged animals from the Zoo, and eventually goes into a costume shop to purchase a Jimbob costume to masquerade himself to slip into the Zoo again. The Tomato Twins join the rest of the town’s children’s in being extras in Jimbob’s latest movie set at the zoo but Prince Eager releases the animals which scare the children and people. The Twins save the day by containing the animals in bubbles or sending the animals (via a windstorm tunnel) back into their cages. 4 Episode 9B, Fred Pest This episode follows from ‘Costume Trunk’. Frederick, a new Trophy, 1 Apr 2003 boy in school tries to recruit the Tomato Twins to join his team of superheroes. The Twins lecture Frederick about his reputation for stealing and insist they are not superheroes. They caught Kat Pest Trophy trying to steal their mother’s scientific documents. They foil Kat’s plan and he is propositioned by Frederick to join up to form a super-villain team. Kat gives Frederick a course on ‘World Domination 101’ and the Twins warn him about Kat. The Twins try to be friends with Frederick who switches alliances and saves the Twins when Kat captures the Twins after they confront him for stealing a magnetic device from their mother’s lab.

151 Source: Taped episodes of Tomato Twins in 2003, courtesy of Peach Blossom Media.

Besides the television series, Peach Blossom Media has also created several ‘webisodes’ which run into 5 minutes each on their dedicated website for Tomato Twins to engage young media-savvy computer users46. These mini-episodes feature the antics, talents and tastes of individual characters from the series, such as Ti-ann’s interest in being environmentally friendly and Ti-yo’s passion for Jimbob, the television action hero (in webisode 1), Mrs Tomato (aka Professor Tomato) who tries to serve vegetable dishes to her family who dislike her cooking (in webisode 2). Also, the Happia Store’s Wall 2 (http://www.tomatotwins.com/wall2.htm) features a toy room where there are a wide variety of toys, including a Gameboy that contains screensavers, icons and wallpapers of the characters; Jimbob and Billy Buzzed action figure boxes, a telescope that opens up into character profiles of the Tomato family, and many dolls, etc.

The premise is that a pair of twins was given an experimental concoction instead of baby formula when they were infants by their scientist mother. This turned them into super children with special powers to fight evil in the form of the vegetarian cat, Kat Pest Trophy and his army of robots as Kat threatens to take control of their hometown, Happia. Meanwhile, the twins, who have Asian-sounding names, Ti-yo ( a boy) and Ti-ann (a girl), are aided by another of their mother’s creations, Ketchup, a flying mechanical Tomato. They are, however, constantly reminded of their responsibilities at home and to their family — equated with cleaning their rooms and finishing up their homework.

Positioning Tomato Twins against Powerpuff Girls

In comparison to Tomato Twins, Powerpuff Girls features 3 little girls with magical powers. There are overt feminist themes in both series that invert the patriarchy world order, except that in Tomato Twins, this is manifested in the mother, Mrs Tomato. In Powerpuff Girls, this is embodied solely in the three girl heroines. Their special powers are also very similar and very visually simplistic.

46 See Tomato Twins homepage. [Online], (2002). Available: http://www.tomatotwins.com/wall3.htm, [Accessed: 8 March 2003].

152 However, the differences between the two series are both ideological and cultural. For example, we can examine the recurring narratives embedded in the series as social issues. Tomato Twins stresses the importance of maintaining family ties, such as helping siblings out of difficult situations or fulfilling their roles as filial children to their parents. In contrast, Powerpuff Girls does not focus on family but on the efficacy of girl power as they save the planet from evil. Tomato Twins offers little graphic violence, choosing to give the girl bubble-power and the boy command over winds which enable both twins to drive away or isolate problems and evil characters from the scene. This is unlike the usual violent geikga manga (see Kinsella, 2000) in Japan. Adult women are not featured in Powerpuff Girls, while Mrs Professor Tomato plays a prominent role as a character with ‘brains’ and is given the intellectual status of a scientist while her husband is the ‘brawns’, adding a feminist twist in Tomato Twins. While Powerpuff Girls’ trio command the natural elements also, unlike TomatoTwins’ limited expressions of body contact, Powerpuff Girls’ heroines express themselves with physical dexterity and violence as the girls use their powers on their enemies:

Tomato Twins is an animation about the exciting lives of the Tomato Twins, their struggles as seven-year-olds and their dangerous encounters with devious villains. The series contains subtle messages about values such as friendship, responsibility, and conservation of nature. While full of excitement, there is very little violence and the Tomato Twins solve problems with their smarts rather than their fists. (Peach Blossom Media’s Tomato Twin brochure, 2002)

Moreover, the names of these superhero children and the colour schemes used in TomatoTwins do somewhat fit the oriental tastes of Asian audiences —bright red, green and orange palettes reminiscent of Hello Kitty/ Chinese pop culture. Meanwhile, Powerpuff Girls uses names and a colour scheme based on pink and pastels, colours easily associated with the Barbie doll culture established in the West (see Diagram 5.6 below).

153 Diagram 5.6 Screenshots of Tomato Twins versus Powerpuff Girls

Sources: Tomato Twins brochure, Screenshots taken from a Powerpuff Girls fansite47.

Interestingly, the background music varies considerably in the first season of Tomato. Hence, Peach Blossom Media attempted to format their animation to incorporate visual and aural cues that enable audiences to readily identify Tomato Twins with animation from the West as well as appealing to the sensitivities of the East.

New Singapore structure of animation production

As mentioned earlier, like the student creator of the original animation that became Powerpuff Girls, the creators of Tomato Twins have been described as amateurs entering into a commercial field of broadcasting:

The series was put together by a motley crew of graphic designers and live action producers who believe it or not have little experience in animation other than the fact they like watching it. (Channel NewsAsia, 2002)

Significantly, the amateur standing of these media producers meshed well with the democratic potential of learning with the aid of digital technology. Intersecting neatly with a common political discourse of the city-state, Singapore’s emphasis on keeping up with technological progress in order to sustain its survival as a globally connected city has become an orthodoxy for young media producers like Peach Blossom Media. It resonates also with the ‘open source’ movement of the Internet

47 See http://www.ppgworld.com/screenshots4/101a/Dzl6186.jpg [Accessed: 12 May 2003]

154 age championed in the West (see Boyle, 1996) and the power of new technologies in solving the social ills of developing Asian countries. Being cast as the ‘underdogs that made good’ is the ultimate Hollywood fairytale and certainly much pre-launch publicity for Tomato Twins played upon this as much as their trials. It also elevates animation to the status usually reserved for technological breakthroughs in science and communications in Singapore:

The flat hierarchical structure of the independent company meant that Peach Blossom Media started off with employee-owners who invested heavily in pre- production. Brief interviews with various staff at Peach Blossom Media suggested that each had contributed creatively to the design of the characters (see Teo, 2002). While Peach Blossom Media initially undertook work on designing the characters, formulating the colour schemes and storylines and selecting the music in-house, the actual artwork was created by a resident Art Director, Andy Lam, who experimented on how to use Flash animation software to create the images and involved a small team of freelance animation students from the local polytechnics. Meanwhile, Sung and his business partners went about sourcing for media owners and after much canvassing, secured a broadcast deal with Nickelodeon Asia, one of the international broadcasters based out of Singapore in 2002:

For Nickelodeon and the Singapore media industry in general, we are happy to be paving the way for more of such ventures. There is a lot of creativity and ideas that have yet been discovered right here in Singapore, where Nickelodeon Asia Pacific Headquarters is based… (Richard Cunningham, cited in Envision, Jul-Sep 2002: 26)

However, given a very tight timeframe to telecast in July 2002, Peach Blossom Media was forced to outsource the bulk of their production work and found a ready partner in Hong Kong, Agogo International Limited (formerly known as Animation Services Hong Kong). While Agogo had an established base of four regional studios for contract 2D-animation work, Peach Blossom Media cooperated with Agogo as co-producers. Meanwhile, there was greater synergy still because Peach Blossom Media was attracted by Agogo’s distribution network for animation work and sales. To compensate for its small size, Peach Blossom Media engaged in horizontal and vertical integration of resources. It built a temporary regional network of production

155 and distribution with a company based in Hong Kong and Mainland China, and went into the well-trodden path of satellite television distribution via a US media conglomerate on Singapore’s doorstep, Nickelodeon Asia. To deal with the uncertainties of the regional marketplace, PBM also employed regional marketing strategies in hopes of exerting some control over the unpredictable marketplace

As Peach Blossom Media is in this enterprise for the medium to long-term, what financial revenue streams arise from these arrangements are still a long way off, according to Sung (Interview with Sung, 2 October 2002). The long-term attraction is perhaps in all the possible spin-offs that adopting this pan-Asian model of animation production would offer their company, through Tomato Twins directly, or indirectly through other animation projects in the pipeline.

They have attempted to create a new mode of production for TV animation that, if successful, will lead them to pioneer a method of production for animation that is regional but still branded ‘made in Singapore’. It is a pre-emptive strategy where formatting the television production cycle involves forming flexible partnerships with other companies who are able to better perform specific functions along the value chain of broadcasting or by linking up agents in the wide field of broadcasting outside of Singapore to strengthen their domestic position among competitors. This sustains their survival over the short-term as they attempt to catch up on the learning curve at all these points in the value chain of activities.

While this regional production network strategy may not be unique for broadcasters used to commissioning productions through an outsourcing model based on low-cost production, it is unique among small independent production companies, because these independents based in Singapore eventually own the copyright to the design of the characters as well as the programme rights for further exploitation downstream from television, internet to mobile entertainment. In order to achieve this, they will need: to use technologies pioneered for the internet (ie flash animation) to create original character designs; to set up a creative process with virtual and regional production capabilities; to broker virtual and regional distribution partnerships with quick turn-around times; and to initiate common sharing of low-cost resources during production.

156 Although Peach Blossom Media had initial seed money from investors, like many independent production companies in Singapore, they were acutely aware of limited financial resources and timelines set by others to produce results that would establish their credibility and track record. Furthermore, compounded by the lack of free access to flash animation experts, the founders of the company had to learn how to use the software from scratch. Moreover, there were virtually no established agents in the Singapore field for distributing animation programmes overseas, and the producers were fearful that the huge catalogue of large international distributors would eclipse their maiden production (Interview with Sung, 2 October 2002).

Peach Blossom Media had to adapt to the realities of the Singapore field of broadcasting. This led to their choice of flash animation software, contracting established animation production units in mainland China for the bulk of the animation work, and relying on the distribution networking prowess of Hong Kong distributor, Agogo Entertainment (Interview with Sung, 2 October 2002). They also wanted to express their cosmopolitan ideals onto animation they believed would distinguish themselves from both Japanese anime and straight Hana-Barbara cartoon programmes. They also engaged in formatting of the kind described as ReDef where their creative energies were focused on redesigning traditional genres through new media.

Therefore, their choice of colours, names, storylines and music overlap with children’s animation offered in the East and West. Overall, this is what we could call a kind of TV formatting practice described in Chapter Two as ‘market adaptations’ in which specific market constraints force media producers to engage in risk-adverse practices that mimic other kinds of successful media production strategies. The fact that Tomato Twins has been renewed for another season and the company is coming up with more new flash animation series such as Tao Shu: Little Warrior and Emily’s World is a good sign that Peach Blossom Media views its formatting experiments in animation positively.

157 Conclusion

The impact of media globalization on Singapore’s field of broadcasting meant that local players have, on the one hand, to become more receptive to overseas TV formats and productions that can be adapted from independent producers, especially game shows and digital animation. On the other hand, it has also opened up more opportunities for locally-based companies to network with international broadcasters that can lend global reach by associating with the marketing and brand values of these media conglomerates. Peach Blossom Media and Chua are examples of entrepreneurs who decided to create programmes that feature industrial TV formats or the other two kinds of formatting. These are small cellular, distributed networked companies who customize and translate tastes and content to suit different target markets, complemented by different marketing strategies. However, as can be seen from the competitive practices in the ‘field of broadcasting’ of Singapore, while Chua used a global strategy of ‘industrial TV formats’(FG) and Peach Blossom Media focused on redesigining genres through new media (ReDef), what determines regional and international success is further engagement of these cultural entrepreneurs with large media owners of platforms or networks which leads them to engage in the wider marketing and publicity activities that increase their circulation and distribution overseas.

Singapore is very much an urban city seeking to upgrade itself into a media capital. Where political institutions envision building a global city, economically and culturally dynamic, these form the tentative steps towards building a global city for the arts. The media industries play crucial if dualistic role of being ‘pedagogic’ and nation-building (ie SARS channel and local news) and of becoming independent and ‘commercially viable’, relying less on public funding for content production and more on market competitiveness. The difficulty is bringing the gap between vision and reality. As Kwok (2001: 23-24) suggests, the new global economy and information technology revolution requires people with new skills, not merely concerned with ‘efficiency’ to add ‘volume’ but people in the creative ‘crucible’ of experimentation towards ‘creating value’- a ‘national mindset change’ which is ‘cultural change’ where ‘culture is not just arts or ethnic traditions but a ‘system of everyday patterns of thinking, feeling and acting’.

158 CHAPTER SIX: THE REACH OF TAIWAN – TAIWANESE TEENAGE SOAP OPERAS/POP IDOLS ------[Angie] Chai holds that being acutely aware of the popular culture atmosphere and understanding the needs of youth are supremely important. For instance, in selecting actors for F4, she felt that acting skill was subordinate to star-like charisma and presence. “A teen-idol group exists to satiate people’s fantasies,” she says…she established physical criteria for prospective F4 candidates: a minimum height requirement of 180 cm and exceptionally handsome features. (Lin, 2002)

…in a market where years of experience can be outbid by a squirt of hairspray, it is not learning but looks, not the cerebral but celebrity that mark the winners… (Hartley, 1996: 36)

Using the above-named criteria for creating celebrities from unknowns, Angie Chai, a veteran variety show producer, in her first drama production, selected four male leads in Meteor Garden and systematically overturned the established conventions that governed the production and circulation of Taiwanese television drama serials or soap operas. According to Ryan (1992: 178-179), formats are bureaucratic systems of control that help to produce cultural commodities that centre on ‘familiarity and amusement rather than the challenge of originality’. The formatting of Meteor Garden fulfilled this operating feature,, leading to a new culture of production within Taipei as the programme circulated within the larger circuit of culture among East Asian communities outside Taiwan.

Despite linguistic differences in the region, Meteor Garden captured the cultural markets in a way that only Hollywood soaps like Dallas had previously been able to draw audiences in East Asia. By using relative unknowns with no dramatic acting experience or skills, and co-opting others from non-broadcast backgrounds to join her creative team, Chai and her production company (Comic Ritz Productions) rejected older conventions for typical Taiwanese drama serials and created a new genre – the Taiwanese idol drama serials (ou-hsiang chu). The new genre is not only new to Taiwan’s broadcasting field but it is a new genre of Chinese drama serials that is exportable across geo-linguistically

159 similar territories. While both the Japanese and Koreans have equivalent genres, the cultural discount of their language differences from the Chinese languages offers a strategic cultural space for Taiwan’s television industry to be a site for East Asian popular cultural flows. Using the case study of Meteor Garden, the role that formatting plays in resisting and facilitating change in the Taiwanese field of broadcasting led to the creation of a new breed of drama serials.

According to Harvey (1989: 159) in The Condition of Postmodernity, being able to adopt flexible accumulation mode of production is essential in the global world where ‘instantaneous response to changes in exchange rates, fashions and tastes, and moves by competitors’ is vital.

Employing TV formatting and rationalisation strategies to create new productions are attractive in Taiwan. Formats are able to provide ‘a very quick turnaround between popular Japanese manga and a Taiwanese reworking of its motifs for local television. Meteor Garden and other teenage idol dramas are exercises in negotiating a Taiwanese identity in its popular TV programmes. While using successful and popular Japanese formats in manga and Western music formats that together form a new hybrid genre of drama, the Taiwanese teenage idol drama has (briefly) become a competing force throughout East and Southeast Asia.

Formatting practices in Taiwanese television field

An ensemble that brings together different images and characteristics is like a "buffet lunch," with "more for your money." "Everything you could wish for, wrapped up in one package… (Ma Hsin, Taiwanese music cited in Lin (2001)

Tracing the development of local Taiwanese television content strategies on both terrestrial and cable television, Liu and Chen (2004: 72-73) argue that formatting has been a common feature of television schedules in Taiwan since the development of a field of broadcasting. Given the intense competition for a small market of six million households, they note that scheduling practices tended towards ‘isomorphism’, where

160 similar types of programmes would be scheduled across various channels in the same time slots.

There are three modes of supplying television content for Taiwan’s field of broadcasting – ‘internal production by the networks, contracted domestic production by independent production companies, and foreign imports’ (Tan, 2004). As foreign imports were not to exceed 30 percent of the total daily programming hours, and all foreign programs were required to use either -over or Chinese subtitles, terrestrial broadcasters carried the main burden of local production requirements. Compared to their cable counterparts, terrestrial TV also tended to be more innovative in local productions.

Liu and Chen (2004: 56-57) organized the range of formats into eight observable categories that populated the Taiwanese field of broadcasting, from adaptation, importing, cloning and re-production to creating original formats. They cite the small market for Taiwanese television as a structural reason for television producers to engage in formatting. Agents in the field of broadcasting whether ‘the rights-holder, the producer, or station’ tended to be ‘risk adverse’ which prevented them from creating original formats for overseas sales. Instead, this encouraged them to adopt strategies for incorporating formats from abroad into their local television productions.

Industry participants displayed cynicism about the potential development of an industrial TV format trade, identifying the problem of ascertaining the original value of television programmes they create as tradable formats or tradable cultures. My recent interview with Liu, an executive producer at Dong Fong Production House, for the popular Taiwanese variety show, Super Sunday, reveals this tension:

Q: Have you thought of selling the format since the programme is so successful? Oh, you mean selling the know-how. Let’s say that in Taiwan while we do think about it but ultimately it’s linked to who holds the copyright to the programmes. The knowledge is the value of the copyright. Even in Mainland China, they would simplify your ideas so you can’t possibly sell the format to them. We have thought about it but the reality of piracy makes it impossible.’ (Interview with Liu, 24 January 2003)

161 Liu and Chen (2004: 64) note that the format rights and only one segment of this variety show was acquired from Japan (that is, Super Compare/ Chao Ji Bi Yi Bi) for US$3500. While acknowledging the influence of Japanese variety shows to Taiwanese variety shows, Liu De-Hui (the current executive producer for Super Sunday), insisted that the success of the show was not due to the Japanese format segment. She pointed to other segments of the show as audience-grabbing, which enabled Super Sunday to create a loyal audience following and sustainable brand name. A result achieved precisely because of the Taiwanese innovations, driven by their industry experiments on the local audiences and the reactions of audiences to the show:

Actually, for Super Sunday, it introduced a lot of new and unique segments. Segments such as Super Comparison [the format segment they bought from Japan] did not draw such a steady following but actually from the very beginning, the two most compelling segments were Harlem Entertainment Club and Press Conference because I remember at the time that a lot of audiences had not heard of Harlem and his songs and his composition skills were strong and contributed to the programme’s musical library, adding new elements and effects to the programme. So when audiences saw the programme, they were surprised at the refreshing new way the music performance occurred…(ibid, [my comments])

Although Taiwanese competitors did not engage in copying and cloning of their own, many Taiwanese variety shows used Super Sunday as their model for developing their own copy-cat versions of the show. To avoid the accusations that they were merely copying the producers of Super Sunday, these competitors laid claim to the fact that they also paid the format rights for the Japanese segment on Super Comparison (ibid).

The survival of the independents also hinged on government content quota restrictions. For example, GIO regulations specified that for terrestrial TV not more than 30 percent of total daily programming should be acquired overseas, while at least 20 percent total programming hours on cable TV should be local productions (Tan, 2004). In order to benefit from this local production boon, local media producers have to maintain local production requirements, such as featuring only actors of Taiwanese descent or residency in leading roles on local TV (Interview with Iris Yang, 30 Oct 2003). This increased the number of independents who produced commissioned works for television broadcasters, earning only advertising revenue.

162

The rising license fees demanded of terrestrial TV broadcasters since 1994 (Tan, 2004), meant that these costs were passed onto the producers of local productions who were faced with low budgets and short turn-around times. This forced them to adopt highly opportunistic practices to compensate for the uneven quality of productions.

Prior to 2001, the Taiwan’s industry habitus was focused on developing local productions which catered to the spectacle of melodrama found in tsiung-su (rural Taiwanese dramas) or wacky and outrageous variety shows. These were both failure- resistant genres that drew Taiwanese audiences away from competing broadcasting channels. The divergence in content strategies was apparent. While dramas were exceedingly local and catered to adults, particularly housewives, variety shows like Super Sunday borrowed heavily from Japanese variety and music programmes. Arguably, variety shows were more progressive and globally experimental than dramas. They could get sponsorship and borrow from a range of sources for ideas, even from abroad, while feeding the publicity complex of Taiwan’s entertainment scene.

The context of the Taiwan field of broadcasting -- , soap operas and stars

The social, political and economic context informs Taiwan’s industry habitus as well as the appearance of formatting practices that helped to create a new genre in the Taiwanese field of broadcasting. A number of constraints and opportunities in the Taiwanese field led to experimentations with celebrity-making rather than celebrity- driven television programmes. They have become de rigueur for TV drama serials and other genres such as Super Sunday.

The Taiwanese television field began life under colonial influences — Americans and Japanese —with an overtly commercial operating paradigm but also with selective state- controls over its content. Thus, its field of broadcasting is defined by a hybridity of external cultural influences from East and West, linked to Taiwan’s colonial history. Many early television programmes were deliberately formatted to resemble or imitate

163 popular imported American news or Japanese variety shows but these gave way to other kinds of television genres and celebrities that became unique to the Taiwanese television field.

This ‘hybrid’ system (Liu and Chen, 2004: 54) was also a complex marketplace of legal and illegal television channels before the Taiwanese government was pressured to combat signal piracy by consolidating the saturated television field with The Cable TV Act of 1993. Enterprise (TTV) commenced service in 196China Television Company (CTV) and Chinese Television System (CTS) both started in 1971, before the first broadcasting act of 1976 came into force (Euroview, 2005). Since then, another commercial network, (FTV) was established in 1997, the public service broadcaster; Public Service Television (PTS) was founded in 1998 and, most recently, the government allowed the launch of a minority language channel, Hakka Television in 2003 (Television Asia Satellite and Cable Annual Guide, 2003/2004).

However, these Taiwanese terrestrial networks are also clearly affiliated with particular government bodies or political parties in Taiwan, being either government-funded or having investment from different political parties See Diagram 6.1:

164 Diagram 6.1 Comparison of Commercial Terrestrial TV Stations (adapted from Liu, 2002) TTV CTV CTS FTV

Political Taiwan Provincial Kuo Min Tang Ministries of Sympathetic to affiliations government (KMT), ruling Science and Democratic political party till Education Progressive Party 2000. (DPP) – opposition party till Chen Shui Bian became President in 2000. Capital NT$2.6 billion NT$3.1 billion NT$2 billion NT$6 billion Stock Structure State banks -- Defense -- 25.88 % Ministry26.4 1% Education Ministry 9.84% Party Party Public Corp. -- reinvestment reinvestment 38.69% 10.55 % 41.1% Enterprise Enterprise Enterprise, People Investment 34.86 % 23.35% individuals, Co. CTS 74.54 % employees, All People 25.06% Investment Co. 25.45 % Individuals Individuals -- Individuals 8.2 % 35.55 % 0.002 % Japanese 20.51% ------Cited source: GIO (2000) cited in Liu (2002).

This field is crowded with numerous legal and illegal cable TV stations which became a competing force since the 1980s. The early use of community cable systems to relay terrestrial signals mitigated the first-mover advantage of the terrestrial players, since they reached audiences that could not receive terrestrial broadcasts (Liu, 2002). Piracy of signals was an unintended consequence of slow state regulation over cable TV.

From a political economic perspective, the government’s differentiated approaches to broadcast regulation may have served the political elites well but it placed terrestrial players under increasing pressure to compete. With the Broadcast Act of 1976, terrestrial TV and radio networks were heavily regulated for local content to curb political opposition to the government (Tan, 2004). Terrestrial TV networks had to abide by a strict quota of 70 percent local programming, while cable TV networks only needed to fulfil a 30 percent quota. Thus, in the 1980s, it encouraged them to start importing and

165 telecasting foreign television programmes from America, Japan and Hong Kong.. The government also stipulated that foreign programmes had to be subtitled or dubbed into Mandarin before they could be broadcast.

While the Cable Act of 1993 forced the cable TV players in the field to consolidate and weed out the illegal operators, the 4 key terrestrial TV players continue to face stiff competition from more than 250 cable TV companies today (Euroview, 2005). Although the terrestrial players still dominate in terms of aggregated audiences per channel, their audience base is eroding quickly. In contrast, cable television audience ratings are rising. The average TV rating for cable TV started to exceed terrestrial TV ratings in 1998 (see Diagram 2 from Liu, 2002).

According to Liu (2002), the 1993 Cable Television Act increased the number of foreign and local cable channels and converted the lucrative TV advertising market from being a ‘seller’s market to a buyer’s market’. Advertisers enjoy a wider range of media platforms for plugging commercials and marketing their products to a population of 22 million. While terrestrial TV ratings declined in the last decade, the amount of copying and formatting practices have increased, seeming to exhaust the range of innovative and creative practices that can be defined as strictly Taiwanese.

Imitation

In this hostile and fragmented television economy, the television field appeared to be populated by television networks that are conservative and reluctant to change television formats for fear of losing audience (and advertising revenues) to competing television channels. Cultural industries like television broadcasters tend to act conservatively by ‘collecting and scheduling stars and styles which are currently popular with their target audiences’ (Ryan, 1992: 256).

Taken to an extreme, this trend in standardization and imitation results in the Taiwanese broadcasting field as being in a constant state of ‘isomorphism’ where ‘scheduling of

166 television programmes’ brings about a ‘herd mentality’. Television programmes appear similar across many channels during the same timeslots. Liu and Chen (2004: 55) observed how most Taiwanese TV channels schedule American-styled news formats at 7-8pm, and call-in television programmes from 8pm to 10pm.

To differentiate from the competition, terrestrial TV broadcasters must offer a unique experience to win higher audience ratings. Since terrestrial television broadcasters have a high local content quota, they tended to concentrate on creating local drama and variety productions that the Taiwanese audiences could easily identify with. Among the terrestrial TV players, CTS earned a reputation for its ‘localizing’ of entertainment programmes.

For example, the network became the first broadcaster to mix Mandarin with Taiwanese in its 8 pm prime-time drama series, When Brothers Meet. Instead of the never-ending Romeo and Juliet-style of love and hate romance that characterized Taiwanese melodramas, this program established a brand new drama genre -- historical (li-shi) dramas -- where real-life conflicts are re-created in the storyline. When Brothers Meet not only emerged as the prime-time television winner, it also began a continuing success in television drama for CTS. Other television programmes that broke conventions and generated high audience ratings to become defining moments of Taiwanese television are listed in the diagram (Diagram 6.2) below.

Diagram 6.2: Inserting of ‘television moments’ into the Taiwanese field of broadcasting 1970s-1980s Imitation shows (where hosts or guests imitate famous singers, actors or politicians) like Diamond Stage (Zuan Shi Wu Tai) produced by Angie Chai for CTS, and Golden Partners (Huang Jin Pai Dang) by CTV. Restaurant shows, info-tainment shows like Walk 10,000 Miles of the Country (Jiang Shan Wan Li Qing) 1990 Love was the first Taiwanese dialect drama series, was produced by CTS. 1992 Taiwanese government relaxes ban on Japanese television imports. Super Sunday, the first entertainment-cum-music variety show hosted by real musicians on Taiwan television for CTS. It is the highest rating variety programme on Taiwanese TV and is popular overseas as well (see MediaCorp, 2001; TARBS World, 2002). 1993 Fair Justice Bao (Bao Qing Tian), a CTS drama with the highest drama ratings in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and others. 1994 The official launch of TVBS (Hong Kong overseas satellite channel) and its

167 ‘landmark call-in programme, 2100 All Citizens Talk, modelled after CNN’s Larry King Show. The Launch of When Brothers Meet, a brand new drama genre where real-life conflicts were recreated, the first local programme to mix Mandarin with Taiwanese, 8-9pm prime-time slot, on CTS. Others include the second most popular Taiwanese series, Outlaws of the Marsh. CTV broadcast one of the first Japanese dramas on prime time, A-Hsin (aka Oshin), starting a wave of Japanese drama imports on local television schedules. 1995 Rise of the ‘daughter-in-law’ drama series started by The Astonishing Daughter- in-Law, hsiang-tu drama genre, with all-Taiwanese-language stories broadcast by CTS, describing the relationship between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law in Taiwan's traditional rural society. 1997 5 Japanese cable channels in Taiwan including NHK Asia, Video Land Japanese, Gold Sun, Po-shin Japanese and JET (Japan Entertainment Network). Feeding Japanese programme imports for Japanese drama and anime into the Taiwanese field of broadcasting (Hattori & Hara, 1997, cited in Iwabuchi, 2001: 60). 1998 Rise of cross-generational historical rural Taiwanese dramas like Springtime Stepmother's Heart by FTV, defined as a new genre known as ‘contemporary drama’. 2001 The launch of Meteor Garden, a brand new drama genre featuring teenage idols, on CTS. GTV debuts Korean drama series Blue Life and Death Love, jumpstarting a frenzy of imports on both terrestrial and cable television channels in Taiwan. Sources: Tan (2004), MediaCorp (2001), Iwabuchi (2001), Hattori & Hara (1997), Liu and Chen (2004), Lin (2000)

A glance at the Diagram 6.2 showed that most of these ‘moments’ were either variety shows or soap operas that were produced for terrestrial TV networks. It therefore comes as no surprise that CTS again created a strong position in the field when it broadcast Meteor Garden on Wednesday and Thursday nights at 9.30pm in 2001. Meanwhile, we also see cable TV operators play a significant role in defining the Taiwanese field of broadcasting by importing a wider collection of popular regional programmes from Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea that widen Taiwanese audiences’s TV diet. These stations rarely engage in commissioning local versions of formats with the exceptions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Star TV’s stalled plans for Taiwan’s Temptation Island, but a few experimented in co-producing teenage idol dramas when Meteor Garden appeared as a new genre.

The role of stars or celebrity

Television producers employ stars or celebrities to maintain a distinctive product identity and branding for the shows. Stars are so much a key currency in the competitive

168 marketplace (Wernick, 1991, cited in Ryan, 1992) that some producers attribute the success of their shows to using the star system.

Graeme Turner (2004: 26) noted that celebrity arises out of a publicity industry that manufactures cultural products which are of strategic value. The role of celebrities within the media industries seems to be to turn would-be audiences into active consumers, such that commercial companies can exhort audiences to buy, engage in conversations with or identify with the brand in order to buy more related merchandise or cultural commodities linked to them.

The manufacturing of celebrity across many entertainment and media industries is increasingly prevalent because of the convergence ‘between systems of delivery in the media, entertainment and information industries’ (Turner, 2004: 33). As celebrities can be manufactured in a standardized way, their effective value is their ability to differentiate themselves as individual personalities (Turner, 2004: 37). When actors become stars, like the case of , Ken Zhu, and Vic Zhou of F4 fame, they maintain their celebrity status by constantly multiplying their celebrity value through guest appearances and hosting variety show segments in the heavily saturated Taiwanese TV field.

Building momentum for the publicity complex surrounding Meteor Garden’s four actors, they cut music albums; went on music promotional tours; and earned global star status when they associated with a global brand like Disney’s film, Lilo & Stich, or by appearing in Peps, and Toyota advertisements. Therefore, it is the inter-personal relationships between celebrities and their audiences-turned-fans that is of greatest economic and social value to the producers of Meteor Garden and F4, the . It is what some entrepreneurial producers hope to replicate by producing similar formatted idol drama series in the Taiwanese television field.

Hesmondhalgh (2002: 21) observed that cultural industries tended to use stars to combat risk associated with a single work. The Taiwanese have turned stars into a celebrity

169 complex that attracts financial and cultural capital in order to increase the market success and the shelf-life of a continuous series of works. For example, in the longest running variety show in Taiwan, Super Sunday, Liu De-Hui suggested celebrities were the key to growing audience interest in the show:

…. Super Celebrity… was considered one of the earliest segments to use audience participation in the programme. This gave yet another refreshing atmosphere to the programme because at the time, most of the variety programmes featured only artistes. The logic of Super Celebrity was to partner an audience member who resembles a famous celebrity. It became another decisive feature of the programme because it became the talking point for viewers the next day after telecast as the celebrity look-a-like programme referred to people whom audiences were already familiar with.

Yet another segment is Super People which featured profiles of various celebrity individuals, recounting stories of their childhood. These stories were not commonly known by audiences. It became the first variety programme in Taiwan to employ a narrative and biographical device to produce a segment. Then, Ah Liang the segment host would bring viewers on a trip to find the long-lost friend, relative or teacher, etc. As the featured celebrity himself or herself does not know if the person they mentioned still existed or could be found, it became a dramatic flash point. Therefore this segment also became a huge part of the reflection of the audiences. (Interview with Liu De-Hui, 24 January 2003)

Cultural fields like music or television often have an unstable ‘hierarchy of cultural value’ where a particular star, style or work could be seen as the best or top-grossing star, style or work one week and fall into a lower position the following week (Ryan, 1992: 248-249). For long-form television genres (like drama serials or variety shows) to have a long shelf-life, producers often use celebrities to sustain a publicity complex 48 that hopefully increases rather than diminishes long-term consumption. Publicity binds as many different cultural fields (ie publishing, advertising, broadcasting, performance, etc) together to help promote and circulate individual cultural products to their target audiences.

48 Ryan (1992:235) defines a ‘publicity complex’ as ‘the collective efforts of various advertising agencies and the freelancers and independents they [media producers] sub-contract to promotion and publicity agents, personal managements and tour promoters, and the media, consumer, trade and specialist newspapers, magazines and newsletters and radio and television stations which carry the message they place’.

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Publicity is integral to any cultural industry because it is ‘free’ advertising. Stars are objectified as cultural products that can become public entities which consumers can own through merchandising. These stars could easily take on attributes or values as a cultural fact (Ryan, 1992: 237). Therefore, F4, the heroes of pan-Asian hit Meteor Garden in 2001, became F4 the ‘inspiration’ for Chinese pop music when they received the ‘inspirational’ award at the MTV Asia Awards 2003.

Briefly, the Taiwanese music industry started the celebrity or star system when they began promoting idol pop groups such as Taiwanese boy band Little (小虎隊), who became such a sensation in the Chinese-speaking world that they became known as The Beatles of Asia. A combination of factors such as the entry of transnational music firms (like EMI, SONY and BMG) into Taiwan, the communication and publicity skills transfer that led to the Taiwanese use of a publicity complex to promote pop idols, and a boom in local music during the 1980s and 1990s, led to the development of a celebrity- driven publicity complex. It had a combined presence and activity level that generated a dense flow of cultural products, using Mandarin-language popular music, from Taipei to the rest of the Chinese-speaking world.

Before the 1980s and even into the 1990s (see Wells, 1997), there was a slight disconnection between television stations and music companies. Few music companies could promote their music albums except through guest spots for their artistes on television shows like Galaxy of the Stars (1960s -1970s). Even then, only the most popular Taiwanese singers could appear on their own television shows like the Chinese pop queen of romance ballads, Teresa Teng, who hosted her own , Each Day One Star in the late 1960s.

Today, it is common to see such crossovers in the variety show genre Some of the more successful popular stars began their music career using music-based entertainment television programmes, such as on Taiwan’s pioneer television variety show, Super Sunday. It therefore seems an organic outgrowth of this cultural circuit of talent

171 that contemporary Taiwanese television drama serials beget television stars that beget pop idols or music stars in their own right.

Established or budding stars performed on television by playing games with the audiences or sharing personal stories to relate to their potential music-listening audiences. In analyzing Japanese music variety shows, Stevens and Hosokawa (2001: 224-225) stress the critical role that television publicity plays in endearing stars and promoting popular music. While the Taiwanese industry obviously copied this practice of transfers in the 1990 using the variety show genre, it was unheard of to use the drama serial genre to promote, much less create music stars. Meteor Garden became the first television serial to do so.

This celebrity-driven publicity complex is easily transferred from industry to industry and makes it possible for Taipei to maintain its position as a media capital in music and television production. With Meteor Garden, it became possible to transfer stars made in television drama serials or soap operas into music idols as well.

Soap operas

In researching key moments on Taiwanese television, I found a definite pattern of classic or genre formatting (ITVF) among the most popular Taiwanese drama serials or soap operas in the 1990s. Some groundbreaking soap operas were Fair Justice Bao (1993), When Brothers Meet (1994), The Astonishing Daughter-in-Law (1995) and Princess Pearl (or Huan Zhu Ge Ge) (1999), where leading actors had melodramatic on- camera skills. The stories were based on Taiwanese novels or Chinese folklore, the misc- en-scene strongly Chinese or Taiwanese, and dramatic action which revolved around family intrigue and family bonding.

Like all indigenous cultures, Taiwanese society defined its own cultural identity through creating a local product. In the 1970s, the music field had Taiwanese folksongs and ballads, and the publishing field had nativist or hsiang-tu literature

172 (鄉土文學) which depicted Taiwanese customs and practices in rural Taiwan. The fervour of holding onto a Taiwanese identity can be seen in the popularity with which much nativist literature was adapted regularly into hsiang-tu chu dramas for prime-time television. These hsiang-tu chu dramas were highly popular. They had complex love affairs and revenge plots, scenes of Taiwanese countryside, and regularly used the Ho-lo dialect instead of the officially sanctioned Mandarin language (Tsai, 2000: 175), such as the recently popular Taiwan Ah Seng (台湾阿诚).

Meanwhile, the cultural flows of Japanese television dramas into Taiwan that began in the early 1990s when bans in Japanese imports were lifted, transformed the Taiwanese television field into a site of production and consumption of hybrid Japanese and Taiwanese television drama productions. Thus, where the field of publishing fed directly into the creation of television drama programmes, the flows of Japanese television culture into Taiwanese television provided a good grounding in transferring Japanese manga into Taiwanese idol drama serials for television.

Overlapping fields of cultural production – manga, music idols, melodramatic TV soaps

Unlike hsiang-tu dramas or li-shi dramas, idol dramas are vehicles for youthful fantasies and satisfy the teenager need for idol worship that is very much a rite of passage in contemporary society. Meteor Garden partially satisfies the ‘localism’ of Taiwanese drama serials/soap operas, and seeks to capture the celebrity-driven logic that defines the global tastes of Taiwanese youth. Since Taiwanese youth have an eclectic diet that includes a well-developed appetite for Japanese comics, Angie Chai simply connected the market segment for translated Japanese comics with the youth market for local and international television programming.

Since Taiwan has been for the longest time been dominated by ’hsiang tu’ dramas or Hong Kong-style martial arts dramas, there had not been any fine dramas that spoke directly to the young people. She [Angie Chai] considers the

173 appearance of Meteor Garden as filling the void left behind to satisfy the desire of youths for idols [Luo, 2002: 141, cited in Lin (2002)]

Transposing culturally odourless (Iwabuchi, 2000) Japanese shojo manga (or young girl comics) into the culturally-specific Taiwanese television field is now possible with formatting practices created by independents such as Comic Ritz Production. They have made tacit knowledge of cultural production more systematic and rational by providing a clearly visible logic of production to transform actors into television celebrities or music stars.

By borrowing successes from other fields of cultural production, Angie Chai and others create a new kind of celebrity complex around a particular media product that allows the producers to leverage on the star power of the authors, comics and fan base of potential viewers. To sustain this strategy over the long run, media producers tend to select celebrities who they can exploit from overlapping fields of cultural production.

An important effect of media globalization has been the start of hybrid and fashionable genres in the local fields. The producers of these global hybrids tend to be locally adept at following trends from abroad, whether these are direct adaptations like Meteor Garden and Poor Aristocrat or local scripts inspired by Japanese manga, like Lavender and MVP Lover. Perhaps transferring popular Japanese comics that are already translated into the Chinese language onto a genre that is considered strictly local – drama serials or soap operas – shows the complex relationship Taiwan has with larger cultural centres in the world.

Even while Taiwan’s statehood is called into question, its cultural identity is negotiating the overlaps of various fields of cultural production and the multiplicity of overseas cultural flows into and out of the country. With a foundation laid during Japan’s period of colonial expansion, bilateral cultural flows have persisted between Taiwan and Japan up to the present. Connecting the fields of manga and television is a well-established practice in the Japanese television field that Angie Chai merely transferred over to the Taiwanese field.

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Lent (2000) draws the connection between Japanese manga and animation in Asia by suggesting that ‘a symbiotic relationship has existed between animation and other mass media in Asia’. While manga and anime ‘feed off each other’ in Japan, ‘many Japanese anime evolve into live action films and television drama serials’ in East Asian cities like Hong Kong and Taipei. He cited examples like how Hong Kong musicians write and sing Cantonese versions of anime theme songs, and other Asian artists, such as Lat of Malaysia, Nonoy Marcelo of the Philippines, Dwi Koendoro of Indonesia, or Pran of India who adapted Japanese manga for television. Ng (2000; 2003) corroborates this with evidence of how the spread of Japanese comics and animation, and their pioneering anime style has, crossed over to influence Hong Kong’s own comics, toys and animation.

Within the Japanese field of publishing, shojo manga (young girl comics) is a manga genre marketed directly to female readers and audiences aged 8-to-20-something years, although shojo, strictly speaking, refers to girls or ‘maidens’ who are not yet of marriageable age (Thorn, 2001; Skov and Moeran, 1995). In Japan, Thorn (2001) estimated that of the 1.5 billion manga magazines and books sold during 2001 was worth in excess of US$523 billion in total revenue. Many of these were shojo manga. Yang (2000) noted that DIC, one of America’s largest comics publishers, started distributing Sailor Moon, a shojo manga turned into television anime in the US, as television cartoons in 1995. This was after ‘witnessing its popularity in so many other countries such as Italy, Spain and much of Asia’, and ‘rose to become the number one show with teens, gaining massive popularity on the Cartoon Network’ in 2000. Shoujo manga and its transference into other media, particularly television, turn shojo manga into familiar cultural production.

Meteor Garden is an example of a shojo manga. Because of the mass circulation of the comic, the series already had a large Asian fan base under the comic title of Hana Yori Dango (HYD). The TV series retained HYD as a subtitle, retaining the brand-name of the comic. This served the dual function of crediting the manga publisher, and creating publicity for the TV series among the Taiwanese manga comic enthusiasts. Furthermore,

175 the producers quickly pre-sold the telecast rights for this series across Asia as a Chinese adaptation of a very popular Japanese comic.

Successful Taiwanese boy bands in the 1980s, such as The Little Tigers and LA Boyz, were modelled after those from Japan and the USA, but established Taipei as the place to become an international recording artist or to perform as a celebrity artist. Compared to Hong Kong and Singapore, the Taiwanese cultural market was a relatively large Chinese-speaking market and had neo-networks with proximate Chinese-speaking communities in Southeast and East Asia, as well as the United States. This reflects a Taiwanese field of broadcasting that is increasingly intertwined with other fields of cultural production, both locally and globally interlinking and intersecting with the global flow of culture.

Meteor Garden was modelled on the success of the Japanese manga of the same (translated) title. The manga’s regional reach and savvy fashionable packaging into a drama serial turned the four male acting leads into singers (when only one was trained musically). They achieved this by riding on the celebrity status of their television persona as F4 in Meteor Garden. This single act attracted substantial cultural and economic capital. The boys signed onto Pepsi and Toyota sponsorship deals, appeared in numerous advertisements, generated a chain of merchandising around the F4 brand name, and sparked the growth of many English and non-English fansites. The celebrity vehicle that Meteor Garden became for F4 single-handedly revived the popularity of Chinese boy bands (Lin, 2002; Interview with Iris Yang, 30 October 2003) to a new generation of internet-savvy and English-speaking youths in 2001.

After the arrival of F4, other boy groups styled in the same urban-chic clothes, hairstyles and combinations appeared. Many of them declared themselves better than F4 because most of them had formed as music groups first before attempting television appearances. Thus, the Taiwanese television industry, which had borrowed from the music field in variety shows, became a vehicle for creating popstars in the Taiwanese field of music production.

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Can media producers based in Taipei, the largest metropolitan city in Taiwan, contribute to building Taiwan into a production and distribution centre for Asian media productions like television dramas? We now examine how a fragmented television marketplace drove some independent producers like Angie Chai to change a low-cost and localised industry habitus to create innovative ‘breakthrough’ TV productions like Meteor Garden.

Case study of Meteor Garden

Magazine interviews and newspaper sources indicated that Hana Yori Dango (HYD) and Meteor Garden portrayed contemporary social issues and provided role models and a new lingua franca for young viewers to express themselves in terms of friendship, love and family conflict. In fact, it has been mentioned in interviews by Angie Chai herself that Meteor Garden created a new mode of expressing real-life youth-centric issues like anguish and coping with failure, love and rivalry.

For example, like many shojo manga in Japan since the 1970s (Thorn, 2001), the HYD comic raised the status of ordinary girls to heroines and also elevated social taboos to the status of social issues in Japan. Since its debut in 1992, HYD gained popularity rapidly and was praised for its realistic portrayal of school bullying and violence in modern Japanese society. was reportedly surprised by the extent of teenage violence in Japan, revealed by fan letters, which was unwittingly depicted in her HYD series.

The Hana Yori Dango manga became established relatively quickly in Japan. Many people commended Kamio-sensei for her realistic portrayal of high school life and everyday violence in Hana Yori Dango. Although Yoko Kamio was initially surprised by the confessions of high school violence stated in fan letters, she realized that Tsukushi's fiery character served as a role model for much of Japan's youth and helped others cope with school violence. (Kamio Sensei, 2002)

177 Angie Chai, a respected variety show producer, had spent her initial career in broadcasting working in entertainment productions for the terrestrial broadcasters, particularly CTS. As an independent, she embodied the characteristics and norms of a successful executive producer of variety shows – using anything from local to more global elements in her shows – and attained a reputation for being able to manage human and material resources to create unique shows. The most successful variety show that she produced was Super Sunday She also created the current production house which took over the programme mentioned. Various media articles have viewed these developments as ground-breaking, aimed at audiences in metropolitan cities in East and West (Interview with Liu De-Hui, 24 January 2003).

When Angie Chai pitched for a show for CTS, she discovered that the other 2 competing commercial terrestrial broadcasters (i.e. Taiwan Television station and station (Hua Shi Dian Shi) were offering adult women drama fare and variety shows like Romance (Fei Chang Nan Nue), during a particular weeknight and primetime slot (i.e. Thursday, 9-10.30pm). Chai then proposed to adapt a popular Japanese shojo manga (i.e. young girls comic) for Taiwanese television after doing some market research of her own. See Diagram 6.3 for the process of cultural production.

178 Diagram 6.3 Value chain of Taiwanese television broadcasting for teenage idol dramas (e.g. Meteor Garden)

Preproduction Production Distribution & Circulation Representation - Marketing & Promotions

After securing timeslot from CTS, Angie EP works with director and scriptwriter MG2001 gets airing on CTS, 8.15pm once a F4 and Big S (Shan ) appear in st Chai (EP of CTS) approaches closely. She also makes the creative week (for the 1 4 weeks) and then is variety shows. They have their own Shuiesha (publisher) to purchase decisions in casting, hunting telecast every weekday till run ends. shows as well. Screenplay rights for Hana Yori Dango, ‘worldwide’ for 4 male leads to play the and obtains the rights for a 2-year period. MG2001’s F4 launches music video-cum- single, ‘Meteor Rain’. F4 goes on country- EP negotiates music rights for barter wide tour to promote music and TV series. F4 signs deal with Pepsi as their music arrangement in exchange for ‘free’ artists in Asia. Each member of F4 music on TV drama series. cuts a music album and 2 of them star EP works with Shuiesha publisher on EP gets sponsors for series and MG2001 is resold as VCDs and then in Hong Kong-linked movies. storyline. Then EP selects local playwright places products in script. to discuss TV script treatment using only DVDs, with many pirated copies floating in the comic as guide East and southeast Asian cities. F4 and MG2001 merchandise appear everywhere. Include puzzles, cups, EP announces F4 will resume acting stint EP supervises flags, fashion accessories, etc. postproduction & editing with MG2002 in works, after music tour of Executive Producer assembles the to determine completion date. key cities – East Asia, North America, etc. creative team of 1 MTV director, 2 Asst Producers, 1 scriptwriter and co-opts variety show production team and EMI launches MG music album with old transform into drama unit. She forms hits repackaged with MG TV drama cover. her own company, Comic Rtiz EP pre-sells MG2001 to Satellite & Productions. Cable TV channels in regional markets and terrestrial TV stations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand, etc. Identity Consumption

Regulation EP and Comic Ritz Productions keep track of the forums and ratings of MG2001 on a daily basis. They write as they review each episode. F4 actors, author and the HYD story have Press and fansites question whether HYD will be brand appeal to audiences in shuojo translated well onto TV & in Mandarin at the pre- manga genre or Japanese girl comics. production stage. They act as signifiers and markers of distinction to encourage consumers to , HYD and F4 clubs appear. Translations view MG2001, and purchase related of HYD and MG2001 in other languages apopear. merchandise. Phrases, hairstyles, clothes Reviewers in press and fansite reviewers like ??and HYD used in MG2001 are adopted by Asian and F4 fan forums like ??, compare MG2001 to HYD at youth the consumption stage.

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Chai came across HYD, the Japanese manga (see above in Diagram 6.3) from which Meteor Garden was adapted, after researching the popularity of Japanese manga in Taiwan. When Kamio Yoko, the creator of HYD, came to Taiwan to officiate at her manga exhibition, she announced that she would be discontinuing her series after volume 28 in 2000. However, after Chai’s television deal with the HYD publishers had made Meteor Garden a classic and fed great interest in HYD, Yoko continued to extend her series of manga. It was still in production four years later.

Chai flew to Japan to make a deal with Inc, the manga publisher of many shojo manga titles, and secured a 6-year exclusive license to use the characters in Hana Yori Dango in late 2000. While in Japan, Chai also met Kamio Yoko, the manga writer for the series, to get her views. On her return to Taipei, she convinced CTS to let her produce and co-own the rights to the production under the name of Comic Ritz Productions.

A total of 19-episodes were produced over a four-month period. While most of the series was shot in Taipei, the crew also went overseas to an island resort on Hokkaido, Japan. This was apparently a very rare feat for local Taiwanese productions, which were normally shot on location in Taipei or its countryside. With a commissioning budget of NT$700,000 per episode, Chai realised early into production that she needed advertiser-sponsored funding to sustain production values and remain true to the comic. The series eventually chalked up to NT$1 million per episode which was unheard in the Taiwanese local drama production community at that time (Interview with Yang, 30 October 2003; Lin, 2002). Chai had also decided to engage an untried young and passionate director, Chai Feng, who had only worked on music videos and shorts before this. Her acumen paid off as director Chai won industry recognition by winning the Golden Bell award for Best New Director in 2001 for his work on Meteor Garden (The China Post, 2001).

Furthermore, Comic Ritz’s extensive casting call for the four male leads came at a time when industry practice was usually to try for quick turnaround of productions. The casting process involved a three-month search for four young ‘camera-friendly’ men who were at least 1.8-metre tall and handsome. The search took them nationwide and abroad. Because this was a Taiwanese production, local production

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requirements stipulated that they could only cast for the title roles. Iris Yang, a co-producer for Meteor Garden, recalled how they talent scouted for the 4 male leads by using the comic book images as physical benchmarks for their looks. The female lead went to (aka Big S), who is a variety show host and member of female duo ASOS. She had no acting experience in local drama.

The preproduction and production processes were under close scrutiny by the local television industry because of Chai’s unconventional selection of talent and ideas. Subsequently, Chai assembled a team of five producers that she had previously worked with on her variety shows, a screenwriter from Taiwan’s vibrant theatre scene, and a young director whose track record was mostly for MTVs till then. None of them had direct prior experience with TV drama productions (Interviews with Sharon Mao, 31 October 2003; Iris Yang, 30 October 2003). While its Taiwanese telecast had record-breaking viewership, critics wondered about the need to use a Japanese comic to produce a Taiwanese drama series. They also questioned her use of sponsors to defray the higher production costs which were felt to be overly luxurious for local TV drama productions (Interview with Iris Yang, 30 October 2003).

Other innovative industry practices included the use of bartering to obtain ‘free’ access to a library of Western songs for Meteor Garden. The opening soundtrack (Qing Fei De Yi) was written and performed by Harlem Yu, while the closing soundtrack (Ni Yao De Ai) was written and performed by Dai Pei-Ni. Besides these two songs, the rest of the songs were borrowed from EMI’s collection of pop and jazz hits in the 1970s and 1980s. Chai and EMI arranged for a barter trade of services – EMI could release their library of songs alongside the Meteor Garden soundtrack if Chai could get rights to use the published songs on the TV series. Again, this was innovative.

Formatting in Meteor Garden

Using the list of ‘formats’ observable on the Taiwanese television landscape taken from Liu and Chen (2004), Meteor Garden was certainly an ‘adaptation’ from a copyrighted script of a Japanese manga. Before examining the specific formatting

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practices used in Meteor Garden, let us illustrate, through textual analysis, how the producers operationally executed the ‘adaptation’ to keep both to its original manga and appeal to local audiences. In a brief inter-textual comparison of Meteor Garden to the Japanese comic, HYD, the production team for Meteor Garden obviously borrowed heavily from the storyline, characters and settings of the original comic (see Diagram 6.4 below). Still, the producers were concerned with updating the storyline which had been written over a decade, selectively appropriating minor characters while retaining the key characters, customizing the language and mis-en- scene with a Taiwanese flavour and, changing the settings to meet budget and location constraints.

Diagram 6.4 Licensed script & adaptation of Hana Yori Dango to Meteor Garden Elements for HYD Meteor Garden2001 adaptation 1 Storyline 29 volumes of HYD used The 19 episodes feature most of volume 1-29 except those parts not realizable such as Shan Cai going to New York. 2 Characteriza HYD’s main cast include Meteor Garden retains the names of the leading lady tion F4, Tsukishu, elder sister and F4 from the comic by selecting similar to Doujimou, and sounding names to the comic as follows: Tsukishi’s friends like Shan Cai = Tsushuki Xiao Ying and Mu Zhen Dao Ming-Si = Doumyouji, Zi. Ximen = Soujirou Hua Ze-Lei = Hanazawa Rui = Akira It adds more to the parental roles, creating a heartwarming family unit with the two clumsy parents for Shan Cai (Tshukishi). Meteor Garden combines some of the cartoon characters into single live-action roles such as Xiao Ying and Mu Zhen Zi who became Shan Cai’s best friend in school called Li Zhen. 3 Mise-en- HYD is a black-and-white While attempting to retain the ‘comic book feel’ of scene/ comic book set out frame HYD, Meteor Garden had to fulfil the audio-visual Setting by frame. It is set in Tokyo needs of a live-action drama. This meant a full and far-flung locations colour treatment of the scenes, concern with from New York to lighting, music and props not drawn in by the HYD. Switzerland. It was also produced on local budgets. Meteor Garden was set in Taipei and the closer holiday destination of Hokkaido, Japan for expediency. The writing team made up for the lack of scene changes by dressing up the F4 in modern fashions, selecting stylish houses, art galleries, jazz bars and eateries to showcase Taipei’s cultural scene, and name-dropping of holiday destinations reminiscent of the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the comic book heroes. For example, Xi Men was dressed in plaid and spectacles to hint at his overseas schooling in England. The F4 also hung out at various ritzy pubs and bars with jazz music playing in the background.

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4 Language of Japanese is used for the Mandarin was the de factor language used in Meteor medium original HYD comic. Garden, with smatterings of Taiwanese slangs Chinese was used in the introduced unwittingly by Dao Ming-Si, the Tong Li comics translated hero/bully. This character shows his ignorance in version for export. using particular phrases or words in Mandarin and Taiwanese or in correct usage of English phrases, as Shan Cai and F4 point out his mistakes on several occasions in the series.. Sources: Various HYD online fansites, Meteor Garden comic, Meteor Garden TV series, Interviews with Iris Yang and Sharon Mao (30 and 31 October, 2003, respectively).

Rather than focusing on the administrative control over elements in early production, Comic Ritz depended upon using timely and popular templates or technical devices to capture audience interest, in this case, the popular manga, HYD. The success of such formatting strategies would depend on the ability of cultural producers to mix their local knowledge with fashionable global templates of the times.

Chai’s market research became part of her local knowledge of the popularity of the comic in Taiwan and of the disparity between local productions and overseas productions to engage in a process of convention-breaking behaviour that involved an integrated approach to the whole production value chain from pre-production to delivery, promotion, circulation and telecast. This, according to Iris Yang, is relatively new to drama production practices in Taiwan:

She [Angie Chai] realized after some research that Meteor Garden has already been published for about 10 years as a comic and in Asia itself has a huge circulation and distribution power, especially in the last 3-5 years since arriving in Taiwan, it had become the No. 1 top-selling young female comic. So at the time, she was thinking that with 10 years circulation, this comic would definitely have an established audience receptivity. It would have been difficult to translate any comic that you had no idea of its popularity, so at least for this comic, she was assured that it had a fan base in the comic world.

…because of her producing role in Super Sunday, she had some connections with the Japanese. So she went all by herself to Japan, to obtain the rights for the comic from the Japanese publisher. It went smoothly until she brought it back and started the work. (Interview with Iris Yang, 30 October 2003)

As observed from the interviews, the creative policies were at once conservative and daring. Conservative policies included the need to keep the integrity of the original storyline and the overall look of key characters, given that the most important appeal

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of drama productions lies in the storyline and script. While a key feature of integrity involves redrawing the cartoons into real-life characters for television, there was a need to update the look and feel of the settings. This proved to be a winning strategy for production. It was no coincidence that the selected leads for the television series were visually similar to their cartoon sketches in the original manga, as can be seen below (Diagram 6.5):

As in Diagram 6.5 below, the four boys that play F4 in Meteor Garden from left to right are: Mei-Zhou (Vanness Wu), Dao Ming-S (Jerry Yan), Xi-Men (Ken Zhu) and Hua Ze-Lei(Vic Zhou), respectively. The arrows link up the cartoon characters with the television drama screen actors.

Diagram 6.5: F4 Look-a-likes?

Sources: Emily’s Hana Yori Dango Page! *Version 2 [Online]. 2002- last update. Available: http://niko-niko.net/hana/hana.html [Accessed: 12 October 2003], ‘Taiwan: Meteor Garden’. SPC Net Reviews [Online]. 24 May 2002 – last update. Available: http://www.spcnet.tv/taiwan_meteorgarden2.shtml [Accessed: 12 October 2003]

The creative policies employed meant breaking many conventions of what a popular Taiwanese drama was, and indirectly creating a new ‘cultural habitus’ of production in Taiwanese drama, for example placing together a team of creative people who had no experience in the local drama production scene. While Angie Chai and Iris Yang were well-known variety show producers, they certainly had no experience with

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local drama productions till Meteor Garden. Both Sharon Mao and Iris Yang cited several examples of this breaking of conventions that occurred with Meteor Garden:

During that time, no one had done this kind of script before in Taiwan. Even though they had no previous experience either with television dramas, Angie Chai and Yang Jia Rui, the two producers for Meteor Garden had bought the rights to the story for the comic book from Japan. We had a feeling that we were working on a high risk project. They came to look for me and actually I’ve never written a screenplay for television drama before then. It was probably because I myself studied Drama in school, and I actually come from a theatre production background. Perhaps, at the time, they couldn’t find anyone else suitable to do the screenplay or whoever they could find did not meet their needs.’ (Interview with Sharon Mao, 31 October 2003)

‘In Taiwan at the time, we faced quite a lot of criticism because some people asked why we must adapt from a Japanese comic and what would that say about our own Taiwanese scriptwriters. But Miss Chai had a different point of view: she felt that in Taiwan so many people were reading Japanese comic, and buying so many Japanese consumer goods, it would not seem logical for us to reject Japanese ideas for Taiwanese television’ (Interview with Iris Yang, 30 October 2003)

Moreover, the selection of Director Cai Yue Fen, who had little television directing experience, to direct Meteor Garden, as well as the choice of fresh faces who had little or no experience in Taiwanese dramas among the cast, meant that Angie Chai and her team could re-cast and bend any limitations or ceilings for production to suit their purposes.

Pre-production for Meteor Garden involved the use of pan-Asian strategies that directly redefine geo-linguistically similar groups through a flexible accumulation of stars and styles from Japan and popular tastes in Taiwan.

Many formatting activities are the result of competing corporations of culture (such as broadcasters, and production companies It was important for the producers of Meteor Garden to create ‘stars and styles and make them work like brands in an attempt to fix taste communities’ (Ryan, 1992: 229). By promoting F4, and fashioning the talent search for the four male leads that comprise F4 along the guise of the original artwork in HYD, Chai and her creative team were searching for a set of actors who could physically transform the two-dimensional brand of the lead

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characters to live-action heroes and heroines. Hence, there was great publicity and a worldwide hunt from Taipei to America for the four male leads..

This brand extension with global affinities to a larger Asian region is achieved when audiences now associate the four actors with their respective adopted or original homelands – such as Ken Zhu with Malaysia and Singapore, Vanness Wu with American-born Chinese in Los Angeles, while Jerry Yen and Vic Zhou were native Taiwanese who had never left Taiwan till then but espoused strong interest in Japanese and Hong Kong cultures. It made it easier to market Meteor Garden because at least two of the lead actors could speak English or Malay in addition to a smattering of Cantonese and, of course, Mandarin. This was also useful for F4’s ‘world’ promotion tours in 2001-2003, and for various guest appearances at concerts, ceremonies and shows in Hong Kong, China, Philippines and Indonesia.

While the creative team was new to this type of television production, the format of the original storyline, characters and branding of HYD served as both a textual and stylistic guide on how to produce a winning production. The type of formatting exhibited here is ReDef (or redesigning through new media), as it depended a great deal on formatting the Taiwanese fad of Kamio Yoko’s popular manga, following strictly to the conventions of characterisation laid out by the original author so as not to alienate the large youth fanbase. While the craze over Meteor Garden has cooled in the manga and television field of broadcasting, it has launched the celebrity complex of F4 as they continue to appear individually, in pairs or together on television commercials for Pepsi, Kelvin & Match (a clothes line), Toyota motorcycles. They also make television appearances on award shows, the latest being the 2004 MTV Asia Awards in Singapore; or cut music albums and film movies with Hong Kong and Korean pop stars. This has enabled the fad of F4 to remain alive while Meteor Garden became a historical milestone on Taiwanese television.

In order to sustain the fad of Meteor Garden and F4 in the hyper real and ever- changing popular cultural Taiwanese field of television and to guarantee prominence in the saturated marketplace, marketing and publicity formed a major part of Chai’s bag of tricks to help differentiate her media productions from other Taiwanese competitors. It involved her rationalising (i.e. encouraging media crossovers in TV,

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music or film) the cultural marketplace as part of the wider practice of rationalising the culture industry’s returns over a product life cycle. For example, one of the unique features of Meteor Garden was its use of English music throughout, except for the title and end songs, which were specially commissioned. Chai bartered with one of the largest music publishers, EMI, to obtain the rights to use 1970s-1980s classics for her television drama. In return, she agreed to lend the brand name of Meteor Garden to EMI to release their archives of classics, packaged as the original soundtrack for Meteor Garden. This not only saved her production budget but also provided merchandising extensions for Meteor Garden and enhanced revenues for the music publisher.

The other unique aspect that contributed to its promotional edge was its subtle use of global brand name sponsors throughout the series. This had the dual function of providing free-floating global signifiers of urban cosmopolitanism and raising the production values of an Asian television series. While many drama serials that have come out of Taiwan over the years have been criticized for having poor production values, Meteor Garden was definitely a television series that did not look cheap. For example, sponsors like Budweiser beer, Nokia mobile phones, McDonalds, Italian haute couture brands like Prada, Nina Ricci and Gucci, Japanese sports cars and European luxury cars were used as set props that connected with the rising affluence and desires of Asian youth as much as the stylish haircuts of the boys.

Chai and Comic Rtiz used these new practices and broke away from the norms set by industry habitus for local drama production. Initially, it triggered threats of boycott and criticisms because of its borrowing from abroad for a broad genre of dramas that until then had been viewed as local property. However, as Taiwanese idol dramas have shown promise in becoming exportable popular culture, many producers have made it a non-issue.

Conclusion

‘Making a teen-idol group show is about presenting an image,’ declares Chai.

(cited in Lin, 2002)

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Alongside the phenonmena of TV formats, like American Idol remaking ordinary Americans into singing icons of American popular culture, Taipei is remaking East Asian pop idols across East Asia. In this chapter, I have examined how Taipei continues to be the media capital for manufacturing East Asian pop idols. It is no longer content to launch idols from music industry platforms, but follows the method shown by the success (albeit short-lived) of the actors-turned-stars of Meteor Garden, F4. Since then, the music industry players have all been attempting to reverse engineer the formatting process by placing their budding singing talents onto television. For example, Energy, a boy band launched in 2002, starred in a drama serial of their own entitled Michael’s Dance in 2003 as part of their agent’s strategy to raise their profile NTUC Online, 2005).

While few Taiwanese teenage soap operas have matched the success of the breakthrough Meteor Garden internationally, neo-networking Taiwanese are heading towards more pan-Asian television productions. Arguably, Taiwanese television dramas have extended their global reach with the marketing and artistry of manga stories, combined with the television grammar of Chinese-language television drama and the supply of fresh faces of talents drawn to Taiwan’s dynamic and competitive media markets.

A more complex circuit of cultural production, one that maps Japanese cultural intellectual properties onto East Asian production practices, has emerged. The circuit may have some borderless potential to cross back into the difficult Japanese and South Korean television markets. It remains to be seen how long the cycle will continue before other experiments in hybridisation and neo-Asian networking occurs in Asian media productions. All these have repositioned the Taiwanese television field, renewing interest and a new reach for Taiwanese productions seeking a new generation of viewers in Chinese-language television drama.

Changes in the broadcasting field meant changes in the industry habitus among its independents or production companies. Chai and her production company, Comic Ritz Productions, broke industry norms and set new standards with her first teenage idol drama production – Meteor Garden. It is the product of opportunity, entrepreneurship and formatting practices. The next section will look at the case

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study of Meteor Garden to examine just how Chai and her team managed to create innovative productions by using formatting of Japanese manga, which jumpstarted a new flow of cultural trade between Japan and Taiwan, as well as activating a new line of production with export potential.

The fact that Meteor Garden and its successor, Meteor Garden II, are labelled by the Taiwanese media producers themselves as ‘idol drama serials’, shows unabashedly how much they are focused on developing Asian content that appeals to the idol- worshipping popular cultures of Japan and Asia. We can see how, in recent years, intra-Asian cultural flows in programming from Japan have built a network of cultural markets and production centres attuned to the cultural power of Japan as a ‘cool’ Asian and global icon.

The creation of Meteor Garden, in terms of its characterization and scripting, does involve some reworking of Western traditions in successful soap operas. The learning templates were from television melodramatic soaps like Dallas and romance novels by commercial publishers like Mills and Boons or theatrical dramas by Shakespeare.

In less than two years after Meteor Garden, 50 other idol teenage dramas appeared on the terrestrial and cable television stations that crowd the broadcasting field.. Even Chai and her production company, Comic Ritz Productions, continued to create teenage idol dramas. They quickly followed up Meteor Garden with Meteor Garden II in 2002, which had significant but slight differences in its narrative and characterization from the original. While Meteor Garden II was not as well-received as Meteor Garden, Angie Chai admitted that they made more financially from Meteor Garden II than from Meteor Garden because they had learnt the effect piracy has on business. They devised more sophisticated marketing and regulation strategies, such as premiums, unique merchandise and extras not available in pirated versions, as well as getting the celebrities from the show to appeal to fans directly. This ensured that sales of original Meteor Garden II DVDs and VCDs outsold the pirated copies in the market. Comic Ritz Productions also continued to build their regional knowledge and networks with other media capital in East Asia.

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Comic Ritz Productions demonstrated a grasp of local knowledge and a mercurial ability to articulate local talents (of Taiwanese stars). The company understood the importance of transnational marketing through regional neo-networks (built on markets, Mando-pop music and Chinese communities) and adapting successful Asian templates in other media (manga or Japanese comics) onto indigenous television drama productions.

Meteor Garden sparked an intense period of format trade in Japanese manga stories- turned-Chinese teenage idol TV drama serials, and changed the Taiwanese televisual landscape forever. The savvy exploitation of Taiwanese star or celebrity complex has given Taipei, a renewed reputation as a media capital for creating East Asian pop idols, not from the music industry but through the television industry. Chai stated her ambitions for Taipei when she declared that she would create ten teenage idol dramas and set up ‘a teen-idol incubator’ called ‘Comic Kids’ (modelled after a Japanese’s star-producing machinery, Johnny’s Studio)49. Underlying companies like Comic Ritz is a belief that Taiwan’s field of television broadcasting is well-placed to act as a media capital for pan- dramas.

49 See Lin (2002).

191 CHAPTER SEVEN: EAST ASIAN TELEVISION AS REGIONAL FORCE OF MEDIA GLOBALIZATION

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While global changes in media systems of production, distribution and consumption have triggered concerns about the independence and vitality of national and local television industries in Asia, local television stations from big nations like China and India and smaller territories like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, have to compete commercially. These industries continue to remain a strong force in national development for their territories and also form new relationships and alliances regionally.

In discussing the meaning and significance of a globalised media industry, Wang and Servaes (2000: 1-13) clarify the global changes in the communication landscapes by demonstrating that while major exporters like Hollywood and Japanese television programmes are economically cheaper for many developing nations to import than creating their own local productions, local TV channels continue to see the growth of locally-produced and regionally-imported programmes on prime-time television schedules as a persistent feature of the local television landscape. No doubt national media policies and regulations continue to exert an influence over local productions, but state control over the production and consumption of media content is waning as these become increasingly de-territorialised or spatially unbound (Appadurai, 1990; Sinclair et al, 1996). This occurs when local producers face increased competition from transnational media who strive to dominate the local television scene and see more opportunities for export as the local television marketplace becomes more interlinked to other regional television markets.

Local television programmes from small industries can be marketable. The global television marketplace does not operate exclusively according to an economic logic but reflects the cultural values and preferences of television producers and the social realities that they portray. Consumer preferences, embedded within cultures, play an increasingly important role in the marketplace. Television formats are an ideal compromise between local productions and global imports as they offer global

192 standards of television productions yet reinforce the familiarity of local places, faces and knowledge.

Past studies have suggested that particular Asian cultural products circulate more successfully across Asia than some Western cultural products (Carver, 1998; Chua, 2004). This is particularly so of television flows across Asia. Recent multi-country case studies of TV format practices demonstrated that newer TV formats are an amalgam of established entertainment and information genres. They exemplify the best industrial practices for adapting media content across different Asian territories successfully (see Moran and Keane, 2004). However, those formats that are readily adapted either officially (through format sales) or unofficially (through unlicensed copying) tend to be those which enjoy some cultural proximity, similar logics of cultural production, or historical linkages that allow the entry of imported formats onto local television schedules. Official editions of TV formats like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (Millionaire) and American Idol that perform well on local television give local producers and broadcasters new confidence in successfully producing local productions that are tied to global brand names. However, this is only part of the cultural formatting equation. Other kinds of formatting practices aid the development of a viable regional economy of East Asian television and a larger East Asian popular culture that trades rapidly across Asia and beyond it to North America and Europe.

This chapter discusses why and how East Asian television industries are poised to circulate the globe even as Hollywood continues on its pathway of dominating by mass export, heavy global marketing campaigns, and by controlling global distribution routes or co-opting other cultural forms into the Hollywood production system (see Miller et al, 2001). It will also identify the value of cultural entrepreneurship in creating change in these media industries, and the creation of many innovations aimed at producing, circulating and distributing Asian media productions beyond domestic borders.

Regionalism and the growth of services industries, typified by new free trade agreements, along with the maturing of East Asian economies, is aided by a historical relationship of trade and production relationships linked to a regional

193 production network. Peng (2000: 171-172) argues that this is a key to integrating an Asian economy. He identifies three kinds of informal cooperation among East Asian business as ‘ethnic ties, industrial linkages and geographic proximity’ which are all very important for creating a regional network of production (2000: 176). If we apply this idea of a regional production network to the spread of TV formats and formatting practices across Asia, the uptake of global templates and globalizing communication technologies do not mean the end of old media such as film and television. Instead, it suggests a closer integration of traditional media with other regional communication networks

Using my case studies, this chapter will discuss how those television industries that are situated in established or aspiring media capitals and linked to historical populations of migrants are likely to chart new exportable pathways alongside or with other media industries. Then the role of local knowledge in emerging production strategies among East Asian producers is explored. New forms of local knowledge that arose out of local industry competition have given rise to greater TV format trade in Asia and the four case studies are discussed in terms of the more common and innovative TV formatting practices in East Asian television industries. Finally, I discuss how the landscape of media and communication systems has changed locally and regionally and the extent to which TV formatting is facilitating this change. I identify some areas where certain TV formatting practices are possibly counter-productive towards industry development.

Media Capitals

Media capitals sustain the global flow of culture because they are located in urban centres that transact, intersect, aggregate and control the activities of transnational media businesses. Truly, these are cities where survival depends on other cities, transnational agents and international bodies. Similar to what Saskia Sassen (2001) argues are important of global cities, the pre-conditions for self-sustaining media capitals include having significant size, diversity, and a geographic position that intersects the various flows of finance, technology and services. Such capitals usually have a presence of large transnational corporations with large foreign investments

194 and subsidiaries, established international capital markets or a financial exchange, and a concentration of producer and corporate services. Their ability to attract businesses, capital, talents and other resources make them ideal sites for geographic clusters to flourish and they offer competitive advantages for building new industries, products and services. Cooke (2001), in a study of new media clusters like the Cambridge IT cluster, Sophia Antipolis and Japanese Technopoles showed that natural industry clusters form around large urban cities.

Viewing their status in the global flow of capital as crucial for survival, globally- networked cities usually have governments that facilitate cross-border operations and global networks for national and foreign firms, investors and markets (Sassen, 2001:9). They attract these global enterprises and networks with subsidies, capital injections in infrastructures, or signing FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) or MOUs (Memorandums of Understanding) with other countries. As a result, financial and cultural exchanges flourish, leading to an eventual marketisation of cultures.

In many developed economies, trade in services has already displaced trade in physical goods in real value. Hollywood has served as an exporter of cultural services, working through lobby groups such as the Motion Picture Academy of America (MPAA) and globally networked television shows such as Awards, which market their latest films to overseas audiences instantaneously. Miller et al (2001) and Schiller (1991) have noted how Hollywood’s film and television industries were always supported by the American government through institutional practices such as strong representation at international forums such as WIPO and trade liberalization policies.

Meanwhile, some Asian cities are beginning to use culture as a business opportunity, choosing to market their cities’ cultural and creative industries to draw investment and interest. For example, after decades of focusing on attracting foreign manufacturing and high-technology companies to invest and set up international regional headquarters into Singapore, the Singapore government organized the first ‘Singapore Season’ in London, where Singapore arts performances, exhibitions (including Singapore films) and talks by Singapore ministers and Singapore-based artists promoted Singapore culture while their English counterparts sampled

195 Singapore’s culinary treats in 200550. This is clearly indicative of the government’s role in promoting Singapore arts as a draw for tourism, business and cultural exchange.

Not so overtly, the Hong Kong government’s business development arm, Hong Kong Trade Development Council (TDC), recently co-located their Hong Kong Filmart and Hong Kong International Film Festival together in a bid to attract a larger base of visitors and overseas businesses to the territory (TDCtrade.com, 2003). Meanwhile, Taipei’s central government promoted and organized their first International Design Expo in 2004 at the Taipei Convention Centre to draw attention to the breadth of their cultural and creative industries. Taipei 101 opened in late 2003 and signalled Taiwan’s attempt to establish itself regionally with a financial exchange centre and the world’s tallest shopping mall, which has 101 floors comprising , business and financial services (Huang and Huang, 2004).

However, while globally-networked cities establish financial and cultural exchanges, historical forces also play a part in the marketisation of culture. Only some cities are able to carry out global marketisation of cultures due to patterns of global migration, technological competence or geographic linkages. Indeed, media globalization has led to the emergence of transnational media corporations that attempt to own, control and direct the global flows of culture in their favour (see Miller et al, 2001). However, the charges of media imperialism that globalization brings have become more complex and only slightly mitigated. As Latin American (Sinclair, 2000), Indian (Hesmondhalgh, 2002) and Chinese popular culture (Chua, 2003) become regionally circulated and internationally more prominent, other non-Hollywood transnational players are joining the global flow of cultures. These are triggered by the regionalization and internationalization of television-related productions from key cities. Michael Curtin (2003: 203) refers to cities like Hollywood, Cairo, Bombay and Hong Kong as media capitals, which he describes as ‘centres for the finance, production, and distribution of television programs’.

50 See some discussion of it in the UK at ‘Singapore Season: 2005’, Visiting Arts Bulletin [online] http://newsweaver.co.uk/visitingarts/e_article000332229.cfm?x=b48Lgss,b2sHKqk0,w. [Accessed: 12 May 2005]

196 As established or aspiring media capitals, these cities’ television fields must include international TV channels, transnational programmes, or exports of their local programmes overseas. Television broadcasting services are not only media institutions that produce TV programmes to inform and entertain local audiences, they can internationalise by engaging with other globally networked industries and media-related services to become part of a global television culture that emanates from these cities. As mentioned in Chapter Two, Curtin (2003: 203-207) describes how media capitals emerge in some cities because of a confluence of historical, geographic and economic factors. To compare the three cities analysed in this thesis, I highlight key characteristics of media capitals as seen in the summary box (see Diagram 7.1) below:

Diagram 7.1 : Characteristics of Media Capitals derived from Curtin (2003) (1) Situated in global cities. (2) Centres of media activity due to media-related ‘resources, reputation and talent’ (p 206). (3) Non-geographically bounded logic of production, distribution and consumption, or political economies of particular nation-states (4) Sites that mediate ‘complex array of historical forces’, and become ‘meeting places where local specificity arises out of migration, interaction and exchange’ (p205). (5) Roles in popular culture (p.208) where multiple sources of histories become articulated onto television programmes that elaborate on the popular memories of their audiences. (6) Local television networks complement larger national or transnational systems of mass production, distribution and consumption in other media industries. (7) Their status of media capitals depend on their ‘historical, cultural and institutional relations’ and linkages to other places. (p 204)

Using Curtin’s concept of a media capital and the presence of regional or global networks and activities associated with media capitals, I have focused on a few criteria to illustrate how Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei are or aspiring to be media capitals. The non-exhaustive comparisons are tabulated in Diagram 7.2:

197 Diagram 7.2 Comparison51 of 3 East Asian cities along Curtin’s (2003) media capital Cities Hong Kong Singapore Taipei Centres of media Co-pro MOU with Co-pro MOU with Seeking FTA with activity related to Canada (1994); Canada, (1998); Signed Korea, and other other cities (eg. Geopolitcially linked to 1st Asian FTA with countries but have FTAs/MOUs China- hinterland Japan (Jan 2002); SIN- established informal with countries, or (1997) Taiwan FTA (TBC Mar business ties with PRC other forms of Television and film 2002); FTA with USA and other countries. cultural exchange content inspired by (2003), followed by (However, as FTAs are or migration to Cantonese and Beijing other FTAs with tied to political stature and from these opera and film Australia (TBC) and and global relations. cities) production in MOU with South Such linkages are fragile and Korean given Taiwan’s Shanghai. uncertain status vis-a- vis the PRC. Presence of 130 pay TV channels 60 pay TV channels 132 pay TV channels global and operated by 5 pay TV operated by 1 cable TV offered by 60 domestic regional media platform owners. system. 15 foreign- and 19 foreign networks. 1 domestically owned satellite TV broadcasters companies, of which international satellite based there. 1 there are 69 cable -- Is there a company, Galaxy domestically owned operators (Feb 2004). concentration of Broadcasting Services. regional news channel, Most operate out of global resources, 2 foreign satellite TV Channel News Asia Taipei. As of 2005, reputation, broadcasters based there (Mar, 2005). 5 free-to- there are 5 free-to-air talents (NatGeo, and Star TV). air TV channels with 1 commercial channels, (exportable)? 4 free-to-air terrestrial of them offering 3 inclusive of 1 stand- TV channels, 1 public thematic belts (all are alone public broadcaster using 2 free- quasi-public broadcaster. to-air TV channels, and broadcasters). 1 free a few free terrestrial mobile TV channel. digital TV channels. Presence of HK talents are famous Singapore stars, Taiwanese directors, media talents and actors, directors, directors and other stars, singers, producers enterprising novelists, and martial talents are associated actors and other talents people/ arts choreographers for closely with other Asian that tend to become companies action and martial arts (eg. HK or Taipei) famous abroad film, and Canto-pop media industries or regionally or music stars, mediate Hollywood. Examples internationally – Lee circuits in Hollywood, include Nickson Fong Ang (film), Teresa Teng Taipei and Hong Kong. (animation), (music and tv), F4 Examples include Jin (film, tv and music), (tvand music), 5566 Yong (martial arts Stephanie Sun (music), (music and tv), Chin fiction), Jack Neo (film and tv), Han (film), Sylvia (film), Chow Yuen-fatt Eric Khoo (film and tv), Zhang (film), Angie (tvandfilm), Samo Royston Tan (film), Lee Chai (tv), Gu Long Hung,(film) Michelle brothers (music), Gurmit (martial arts fiction), Yeoh (film), Singh (tv), Qiong Yao (romance (music), (music), Jacintha fiction), etc. (film and tv), Tony Abishiganedan (music),

Leung Kar Fei (film) etc. and Tony Leung Chiu Family-owned media Wai (film and tv), Tsui Government-linked firms such as Eastern Hark (film and tv), John companies that invest in Multimedia Group and

51 The sources are: Hong Kong Yearbook 2003 [Online], (2003). Available:http://www.info.gov.hk /yearbook/2003/english/chapter17/17_10.html [Accessed: 12 March 2004]; Taiwan Yearbook 2004. [Online], (2004). Available: http://ecommerce.taipeitimes.com/yearbook2004/P255.htm [Accessed 19 March 2005]; personal interviews with a few persons from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taipei television industries; and Television Asia’s Satellte and Cable Annual Guide 2003/2004, pp. 16-18,35-36.

198 Woo (film), Ringo Lam media and Koo’s Groups into cable (film), Wo Yuen Ping communications include and satellite TV (film and tv), andy Lau Temasek Holdings, services. A few cable (film and music), and SingTel, MediaCorp systems have TV joint most of the Miss Hong Singapore and ventures with overseas Kong pagent winners- commercial giants such media moguls such as turned-TVB actresses, Sim Wong-Hoo of China Network Systems etc. Creative Technologies. (a joint venture between Biggest studio Koo’s Group and production company is Rupert Murdoch’s News Media tycoons such as MediaCorp Productions Corp). Run-run Shaw of TVB for tv and Raintree Key global music and Richard Li of Pictures for film, both companies have regional PCCW inject new linked to MediaCorp offices in Taipei (eg. business models into the Singapore. Universal, EMI, territory. BMeteor Garden, SONY

and Warner). and one domestic large independent music company, Rock Records. Presence of A Special About 4 million almost Taipei, 2.64 million in regional or global Administrative Region 100% on the main the capital city. activities of the PRC, 80% of its island. (Population and 6.7 million residents live 83% of financial size; presence of in city areas of HK and companies are located in transnational Kowloon. Regional hub for port Taipei city. firms, financial activity, satellite exchange or Regional centre for uplinking and global banking and investment international Western International factory for technology for transnational firms companies to operate electronics and wafer services) operated by overseas their regional HQs. fabrication, PCs and Chinese communities laptops (but gradually Hinterland is PRC, Singapore Stock losing their edge to especially the Pearl Exchange attracts cheaper Asian River Delta companies from China, locations). Malaysia and Indonesia Hang Seng Stock for listing. Taipei 101 as Taiwan’s Exchange is a regional financial exchange stock market for the (established in 2003). Chinese PRC and East Asia. Reputation for Chinese Reputation for Reputation for modern drama productions and multicultural casts for Chinese novelists, library of drama titles, English-language regional pop music using both famous productions, some stars, artistic films, and Chinese novelists, sitcoms in English, now teenage idol dramas celebrities and in-house some dramas in Chinese,

scriptwriters. The city is and English are known. known for being the best Singapore is reputed for of East and West, in technological firsts such terms of technical as launching first digital knowledge and cultural broadcast services; and sensitivity. offer test beds for digital animation and post- production. Also known for pre- and post- production work on documentaries for satellite TV broadcasters

199 like Discovery. Mediating role(s) The base for Cantopop, The base for Asia The base for ; in popular culture martial arts fiction, films Pacific satellite TV weepy romance fiction, and television dramas; broadcasters; hybrid and translation of kung-fu styled special forms of new Asian Japanese pop culture effects and animation. popular culture, eg. into Chinese forms; English-language Asian Chinese gaming programmes featuring software. Hong Kong, Canadian, Thai, Malaysian and Taiwanese stars; hybrid animation and horror films

What is globally compelling about the cultural output of East Asian cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei is that they express the nostalgia, experiences and aspirations of overseas and migrant Chinese and other geo-linguistically similar Asian populations (like the Vietnamese, and Thai) through contemporary popular culture. Furthermore, the success of a few items of popular culture can co-join with politics to break through previous political barriers between ethnic groups. An example is how, after generations of anti-Sino discrimination, Indonesian youths seem fascinated by Meteor Garden (Meteor Garden) and F4 fever, readily watching Chinese faces on Indonesian television — normally Indonesian faces in drama serials tend to be Eurasian. It is all the more surprising because in the Indonesian TV industry, the local consumers are normally prejudiced against the expression of Chinese culture in their public domain (Bachtiar, 2002). In a political economic twist, these cities’ cultural output can also participate in the international television programme trade, forming part of intra-Asian and contra-flows of popular culture that articulate the cultural experiences of migrants who are globally dispersed and share common ethnic Chinese and southeast Asian origins.

Comparing across the three cities in Diagram 7.1, it seems that Hong Kong is the established media capital in East Asia because it has the strongest linkages to other media capitals in Asia and the West. It also has the presence of many global stars and has a reputation for martial arts and action style film and TV productions. Secondly, Taipei is an emerging media capital with some significant links to Hollywood and Hong Kong, but it faces political issues of statehood that are sometimes closely articulated (in news programmes) but are at other times ignored (in entertainment programmes) by their terrestrial broadcasting services. Finally,

200 Singapore is a hypothetical media capital that is taking experimental steps towards media capitalization via government support. It is building upon technological infrastructure and a multicultural mix of talents. Of course, these cities are small in size compared to other large media capitals in Asia — Tokyo, Seoul and Mumbai — but their geographic location and geo-linguistic proximity to the world’s largest television audiences in PRC, Indonesia and possibly India secure their status as media capitals in a Pan-Asian flow of popular culture.

The processes that emanate from media globalization are most rapid in media capitals or cities that are located along nodes linked to a rapid flow of talents, finances, technology. These media capitals forge geopolitical links to larger markets because of physical or cultural proximity to large consumer groups. Historically, it is easier to identify media industries that cluster around urban areas, especially the metropolitan ones. Here supporting industries and businesses are co-located, with a corresponding increase in critical mass for local and transnational consumption, and there are intense inter-firm rivalries that stimulate local knowledge and innovation. For example, Curtin (2003: 207-208) notes how the concentration of advertising firms in close proximity to their corporate clients headquarters in ethnically diverse Chicago made this city at one time the mediating influence over American popular culture in radio and television broadcasting.

Furthermore, Curtin (2003) shows how Hollywood, New York, Bombay, Hong Kong and Cairo all share commonalities. They are unique and isolated creative communities, central to creative work, in the presence of transnational media conglomerates, and thus introduce many new forms of distribution that affect television revenues and open up possible export trade with a focus on marketing and publicity. For all these features to converge I argue that local knowledge of various kinds need to be articulated onto the circuit of cultural production that exists in each television industry – ‘identity’ needs, ‘regulation’ requirements and ‘consumption’ wants among television viewers. All this affects production, distribution and circulation of television programmes both locally and overseas. Understanding audience tastes (through ratings and demographics, or lifestyle consumption), and globally prospecting valuable sources for information, skills and creativity have

201 become more crucial than ever to boosting the development of systems of mass production, distribution and consumption.

Local Knowledge

Beyond the cultural geography of cities, other factors such as the availability and creativity in using local knowledge are crucial to fostering creative industries like television. These factors occur more readily in a ‘creative milieu’ (see Andersson, 1995) where information flows are speedy, where local knowledge consists of real or artificial memories, and the availability of competent skills are a result of demands from the external environment.

Creativity here refers to how information, knowledge and skills are constantly being renewed (Hall, 2000: 643). This kind of environment has significant impact on the development of a cultural economy when local knowledge is constantly renewed by creative solutions introduced by foreign imports or local experiments in transnational productions. The selective insertion of local culture that media producers articulate onto all their productions is crucial for local commercial success.

Featherstone (1995: 92) refers to how Bourdieu (1977) describes local culture as the unconscious patterning and habitual repetitive practices of everyday culture that individuals have mastery over. In this very broad definition, a local television culture has a particular programming and logic of its own that is affected by local languages, shared experiences derived from significant ‘moments’ in their television field, and industry habitus of industry practitioners derived from past success and failures. All these tacit forms of local knowledge become part of the production tools that local media producers use when they create local productions.

Global ambitions are emerging among producers in East Asian television industries that are located in cities seeking to renew themselves creatively. This climate generates a mindset change in undertaking other kinds of glocal productions, from importing TV formats to aspiring to export TV formats of their own – whether these are dramas, game-shows or news or information formats. For example, Mr Ho

202 Kwon-Ping, the new group Chairman of MediaCorp Holdings, speaking about the future for Singapore’s television industry after the media merger of MediaCorp with SPH Mediaworks:

Why do we assume that successful formats like Survivor or American Idol or The Apprentice have to be imported? We must have the confidence that we can create at least one internationally successful format out of, say, every dozen we launch as pilots….We are located in probably the most culturally and economically vibrant and diverse region in the world, and that gives us potential to aspire to be the best makers of documentaries within an Asian theme. (‘Post-merger MediaCorp to provide choice, encourage creativity’, TODAY, 24 Jan 2005)

Such aspiration and ambition is mirrored in Taipei. Iris Yang spoke for the Taiwanese veteran producer, Angie Chai and the Taiwanese television industry’s hopes for exporting Asian idol dramas from Taiwan:

Actually, Taiwan feels that they can cooperate with all 8 related Asian countries and from Miss Chai’s point of view, the production is not only created for Taiwanese audiences but to also suit the contemporary feeling of modern society and because of good economic management, and good relations with various countries, Miss Chai hopes that our productions should not be confined to Taiwan but appeal to the whole of Asia. We hope of course to appeal to Europe and the States as well. She felt that it’s not possible to just produce 1 or 2 drama series a year, and by working with a lot of different production teams, she could do more. You will also notice how all our marketing and posters are standardized across Asia. (Interview with Iris Yang, 30 October 2003)

If anything, this describes the measured optimism among small Asian media producers, as they build strong cultural and economic ties regionally while watching how Hollywood, the Japanese, Latin Americans and South Koreans are using their local knowledge confidently enough to establish tradable cultural commodities in external cultural markets.

If they serve local industries, television producers search for content strategies that do not undermine the local culture. This global yet local culture of television production that attracts geo-linguistically similar audiences because of similar ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams, 1977) aids the circulation and importation of certain

203 Asian TV formats for more culturally specific genres such as dramas. Informational genres, such as game-shows and news and magazine programmes, however, are more open to format trade. American news formats are popular organising principles for news programmes, just as Shakespearean love stories are common structures for love triangles, and great divides open up during format transfers. Meanwhile, having learnt and developed these strategies, local cultures can be exported to the regional television markets as something new and different from those created by dominant industry giants.

The fusion of knowledge about local tastes, cultures and language, with global standards in production (such as special effects, music scoring, lighting, and editing) is redefining Asian media productions as a globally tradable culture with new genres, stars and styles. Writers such as Bordwell (2000), Yau (2001) and Chung (2003) noted that Hong Kong’s film industry has developed different styles of production that revolve around specific genres such as martial arts, urban action, and courtly romance dramas. The talents, knowledge and expertise from film have permeated through to the television field, especially during the booming television economy of the 1980s when terrestrial broadcasters TVB and ATV started high production volumes on all such genres that perpetuate today (see Ma, 1999; Interview with Jiang Long, 17 July 2003).

As television has become both a local and global medium, with local, regional and international programmes, its audiences have raised expectations of consuming local programmes that are also globally covalent with other audiences overseas. This expectation compels media producers to extract and experiment more from their local knowledge of cultural and industrial practice to deliver more sophisticated content production, distribution and circulation strategies. Moreover, the Internet has become a necessary feature of most popular TV programmes as a backchannel for TV. Audiences participate in narrative construction and reconstruction of TV programmes through discussions on website forums, weblogs and dedicated fansites set up to discuss everything from the TV programme’s production values, actors or hosts, to its textual properties in relation to other TV programmes.

204 Fans also link up production and consumption moments. Jenkins (1992:45), in his ethnographic study of a community of female fans, argued that fans are not only readers but also writers, as they engage continuously in the production of texts within their community of fans. This echoes Michel de Certeau’s 1984 study of everyday life, where consumers engage in ‘secondary consumption’ (xii-xiii), In the new media context of the Internet as well as in the resurgence of TV formatting as industrial practices, this distinction between producers and consumers is also blurred. When it comes to TV formatting practices, applying local knowledge to popular cultural forms sometimes hinges on the TV producers’ ability to engage with fans, or they are fans themselves. Thus, the role of local knowledge in formatting is closely tied to an intimate engagement between production and consumption in ways that resemble Jenkins and de Certeau’s textual poachers. I would argue that the ten ways, described by Jenkins, that acts of textual poaching by consumers during the moment of consumption occur, are transformed during TV formatting practices into acts of textual production by TV producers.

By adapting and transforming genres popularized by other authorial textual producers, such as Jin Yong (novelist of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre), Kamio Yoko (manga author for Hana Yori Dango/ Meteor Garden), Craig McCracken (creator of Power Puff Girls), TV Asahi (Japanese producers of Doraemon) and Celador (creator of Millionaire), Asian TV producers are engaging fans of these global cultural commodities, which ensures the bridging of cultural economies from media to media, or the revamping of an old genre into a new one.

In my interviews with TVB executive producer Lee Tim-shing, press interviews given by Angie Chai of Meteor Garden, Tomato Twins (Tomato Twins) creator Sung Lin-gun, and Everyone Wins format creator Robert Chua, Asian TV producers said that they tied their rationales for investing their time energy, resources and reputation, when creating new kinds of TV programmes or business models, to a belief that they or their lead creative persons were great admirers or ‘fans’ of the novelists, novels, comics, television programmes, music and styles that they reference in their ‘glocal’ television productions. TV producers, through press interviews given to popular magazines, newspapers and trades for the case studies, played up their fandom as a signifier of quality assurance in order to draw interest from both audiences and

205 potential content buyers for the shows. Tomato Twins creators were interviewed in Singapore’s tabloid newspaper, (20 February 2003), where they mentioned they were exposed to cartoons in East (Hello Kitty) and West (Smurfs and Scooby Doo), and wanted to ‘produce a cartoon with a softer and gentler like what we had while growing up.’ (Tan, 2003).

Aided by transnational corporations like international TV distributors and satellite broadcasters, some producers have been able to make the leap from in-house local productions to highly risky global productions. Many of these producers who are either independent or affiliated to large terrestrial broadcasters tend to find their creative authority stabilized by shared local experiences informed by industry research, a core creative team and financing from a private investor who believe in their individual vision and creativity. To minimize these risks, independents like ex- CETV Chairman Robert Chua, CTS veteran TV producer Angie Chai, and ex-TV producer-turned- Sung Lin-gun, have financial linkages to private investors and corporations to allow them to capitalize in cultural, social and technical expertise. Their capitalization depends on their local knowledge of programme ideas, technical know-how, audiences and markets, rather than access to distribution, marketing and promotions. Larger production companies like TVB have a stronger advantage because they have vertical integration of the value chain of broadcasting from production to distribution in multiple markets, from which they also collate information and local knowledge about audience tastes, habits, and competitive intelligence in these locations.

Sources of institutional or private funding are required. For example, research and development costs for new technologies that were used in Millionaire, The Weakest Link and other game-show formats had to be absorbed by the creative team and recouped from future earnings or through profit-sharing from format sales. Without sufficient financial capital or pre-sales, it would not have been possible to cement the contract for developing the new game-show formats in the first place (Winstone, 2001). Secondly, innovations in production, distribution, circulation or consumption of the TV programmes drive sponsorship and future sales of these formats as they re- appear season after season, which makes the role of local knowledge more important. TV formats such as Millionaire, American Idol or Big Brother, must offer something

206 unique – whether new prizes, new ways of participating online or offline, or merchandising -- that draws advertisers and audiences to catch yet another instalment.

For local knowledge to be useful, it has to be timely and continuously fedback into the circuit of cultural production in a television field. Therefore, the producers, distributors and research departments of TV broadcasting services who are directly involved in articulating popular culture onto TV programmes invest in feedback mechanisms. For instance, setting up affiliated websites and forums linked to selected programmes, roadshow promotions, obtaining feedback from distributors and re-sellers who have point-of-purchase contact with the audiences, and traditional practices such as tracking audience ratings, telephone surveys, audience diaries and focus groups. The quick dissemination of such local knowledge to the creative production teams help to generate new learning cycles that translate eventually to newer productions.

Offering their TV programmes to both local and international markets, TVB’s research department conducts regular telephone polls and tracks domestic audience ratings for specific genres and programmes, while the TVBI (export arm of TVB) office collates market feedback from informal surveys with their distribution agents located overseas. Moreover, the producers of the shows are also fans of the works that they appropriate officially (i.e. purchase license for TV formats) or unofficially (i.e. textual poachers). Their acts of TV formatting reconstitute older cultural forms with new local knowledge, adding new cultural and economic value to the older forms in ways that they believe audiences in the current age relate to. For example, Taiwanese scriptwriter for Meteor Garden, Mao, explained that while following the storyline and even the dialogue of the Japanese comic, they had to make the dialogue relate to their target audience, reflect contemporary Taiwanese lifestyles and eliminate aspects that were difficult to transfer from the Japanese comic to the Taiwanese live-action drama serial:

I was conscious of not infringing the integrity of the original story…In my view, I was very clear that the conversational style was to be for teenagers. So therefore, all my dialogue was based on whatever expressions, terms and style that young people exhibited in their everyday lives. We wanted to create a new style and show culture and the arts, which in the current cultural scene

207 at the time was pretty comprehensive but it had not appeared in television drama series in Taiwan. However, I feel that there were many instances in the comic that did not fit into real life situations, especially because of Taiwan’s lifestyle was not like the comic. I was very clear about eliminating those parts where sometimes it was crazy, making it difficult to explain or describe. (Interview with Sharon Mao, 31 October 2003)

Finally, new local knowledge can lead to mindset change that affects the local industry’s practices and habitus towards using particular technologies, stories and talents. With Tomato Twins, Peach Blossom Media created an alternative pathway for independents to realise new kinds of hybrid animation that offered high production values cost-effectively, such as using applications for the Internet. Moreover, this and their latest animated series, Taoshu: The Warrior Boy (2004) relied upon a regional production network based on sharing regional dynamics and synergies with neighbour TV industries.

Meanwhile in Taipei, Angie Chai was the first in Taiwan to quickly convert preliminary market research about Taiwanese teenagers’ penchant for Japanese manga into a licensed deal with the Japanese publishers for Meteor Garden. Jolted by the success of Meteor Garden, many other Taiwanese producers started to produce teenage dramas, dismantling some of the conventional industry practices that characterised Taiwanese drama productions (Lin, 2002). Her experiment created an exportable genre with cross-promotional strategies for music artistes based in Taipei. For example, 5566, Energy and other boy bands have each appeared in idol dramas (NTUC Online, 2004) to complement their music-band persona. In fact, this is not a new working model but it has been resisted because most production companies in Taiwan have not been market-oriented until the mass movement in Meteor Garden and F4 consumption. Chai’s own company, Comic Ritz Productions, has also set up sister offices in Tokyo, affiliated offices in Shanghai and Indonesia to create more pan-Asian dramas that she hopes will allow her to breed new stars for the television and music industries (Lin, 2002).

Formatting - genres, stars and styles What kinds of formatting practices are common in East Asian TV industries and have been demonstrated in the case studies? A brief scan of the East Asian television

208 industries shows that the most common formatting practices in commercialised East Asian television industries relate to media cross-overs in genres, the use of stars as celebrities and the hybridisation of styles. I will discuss how each of the most common formatting practices occur in East Asian television programmes, and then I will contrast the rise of TV format trade with the use of formatting practices.

Media cross-overs

Media crossovers create a space for innovation linked to problem-solving, for example, the inadequacies faced in transferring a radio into a television format, or a novel into a television programme. This is a common practice which preceded television broadcasting (Fiddy, 1997). Successful radio dramas crossed-over to television when TV broadcasters adapted them to create ‘innovative formats in television genres such as children’s programming and variety television shows’ (Curtin, 2003: 208). If we examine Glen Creeber’s Television Genre Book (2001), many of the television game-shows cited originated in the radio field first as radio quiz shows. Genre refers to a set of ‘orientations, expectations and conventions that circulate between industry, text and subject’ (Neale, 1981: 6). Media crossovers in television genres occur when other fields of cultural production circulate across audiences and industry practices.

However, not all the conventions and expectations can operate effectively in a different field due to a different use of grammar and tools of expression. For example, while TVB’s formatting of Jin Yong’s classic into Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 works by following closely to the given storyline of Jin Yong’s novel, its scriptwriters do not necessarily follow the progression of dialogue line by line, scene by scene or using the same focus on the characters. Instead, it is common practices for the executive producer or script supervisor to have their own vision of how to ensure their formatting of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre would be different (Interview with Sen Lee, 7 May 2005). Also, some of the settings described on paper may not be executable in television production because they refer to a real scenic place in Mainland China, or a seasonal climate that is alien to Hong Kong. The realistic constraints of building wooden models of towns, mountain scapes, taverns

209 or mythical creatures that resemble what is described on paper forces either high investments in set design or simulating with special effects.

While most of the industrial television formats work by being crossovers from one television field to another, the most innovative tend to be those from media crossovers - such as radio to television, print to screen, big to small screen or vice versa, sound to screen, and now screen to sound as well. The prospect that new pleasure (or horror) is derived from consuming people’s favourite manga or martial arts novel in live-action television drama serials is the premise for producers to consider media crossovers as strategies to create new genres of production. When celebrity-making reality TV formats such as Popstar and American Idol appeared, television broadcasters learned to derive ‘leverage’ from the music television industry that began with MTV turning television competitors into singers and music popstars while millions of viewers watch the edited process. However, because of the heavy capitalization of resources involved, most broadcasters and producers tend to make calculated risks to ensure the crossovers are successful by first observing successes in other television fields. A natural outcome of such reworking in either formatting (FG) classics or fads is that a new system of cultural production is established that marries fledgling media industries with sophisticated imported practices, introducing new relationships between media producers in different fields.

A new system of cultural production challenges conventions and practices set by dominant cultural producers in the field, dislodging however briefly their position as the most watched, most highly rated or most sellable. An example of innovative TV formatting practices that use media cross-overs which impacts the mode of production is the shooting of Hong Kong’s earliest martial arts TV dramas, which borrowed heavily from Hong Kong’s martial arts film production in the 1970s. Some television directors simulated martial arts action through incorporating ballet choreography instead of traditional Cantonese-styled opera antics (Interview with Jiang Long, 17 July 2003). Later in the 1980s, using the example of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, comparing Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 1978, 1986 and 2000, distinctive shifts in production techniques occur at TVB where more physical combat and high-wired stunts are replaced by low-grade special effects to save time and money, working with increasingly limited budgets. Comic Ritz’s Meteor

210 Garden (2001) challenged conventions for Taiwanese drama production by introducing new relationships into the production value chain of activities (i.e. manga publishers), new models of funding dramas such as product placement, music bartering, and close-working relationship with sponsors into the narrative, recruiting lead actors based on their potential on-screen celebrity, and scriptwriters and production crews that were not experienced in television drama production. All of these were completely new in the Taiwanese terrain for drama productions until Meteor Garden, which were heavily criticized by industry but eventually adopted by other producers in the field.

Popular fiction is attractive to both the publishing and other media industries because of their ability to create an ‘ideological economy, making available a historically variable, complex and contradictory range of ideological discourses and counter- discourses’ (Storey, 2003: 50) that different audiences can select to consume differently. Indeed, Storey notes how the first set of James Bond films – namely, Dr No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964) triggered increased sales of the novels (2003: 52). If the format is highly adaptable and yet unique, it can be financially rewarding to keep encouraging media crossovers from it. Such is the case for Jin Yong’s martial arts novels which have found an extended afterlife in an expanded circuit of cultural production that martial arts fans can continue to occupy from print to films, television shows, graphic novels in other languages, to video game titles (see Chapter Four).

In East Asian television industries, it is more common for media to crossover from serialized novels to television screens. Their length and format do vary, for example, from 13-part Japanese dorama (dramas) like Long Vacation, 20-part Taiwanese dramas like Meteor Garden, 40-part Hong Kong martial arts dramas such as Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, 84-part Chinese historical dramas like Romance of the , to over 200-episode long Taiwanese tales of Chinese legendary heroes like Justice Bao (1993) popular in the PRC, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia (Lin, 2000). Thus, the television serial is most amenable to fiction. The virtues of long-form television drama serials are their ability to elaborate in detail the story plotlines, add third dimensions to existing two-dimensional characters, as well as offering a space to portray minor incidents as comic or tragic relief to the

211 over-arching storyline It is no coincidence that most of Jin Yong’s novels have found greater success as formatted television drama serials rather than as single or two-part films as many of his novels are epic journeys that describe the rise and fall of families and dynasties, interweaving the stories of many people .

Also, it is increasingly common in East Asia to see media cross-overs from graphic novels or comics to live-action drama serials. For example, Thorn (2001) observed that throughout the 1960s to 1990s, Japanese animation industries accelerated the close connection between manga creation and other media industries such as television production. Many serialised manga became anime for , such as Boy52 (1963-1966), a shonen manga (or boys’ comic) turned anime, and Sailor Moon (1992-), a shojo manga (young ladies’ comic) turned anime. These finished products also began to circulate outside Japan across Asia and in the West, influencing consumption and production practices in East and South-East Asia as well.

Lent (2000) draws the connection closer between Japanese manga to animation in Asia by suggesting that ‘a symbiotic relationship has existed between animation and other mass media in Asia’. He observed that while manga and anime ‘feed off each other’ in Japan, ‘many Japanese anime evolve into live action films and television drama serials’ in East Asian cities like Hong Kong and Taipei. He cites examples such as how Hong Kong musicians write and sing Cantonese versions of anime theme songs, and other Asian artists, such as Lat of Malaysia, Nonoy Marcelo of the Philippines, Dwi Koendoro of Indonesia, or Pran of India adapted Japanese manga for television. Ng (2000; 2003) corroborates this with evidence of how the spread of Japanese comics and animation, and their pioneering anime style has crossed over to influence Hong Kong’s own comics, toys and animation.

Shojo manga and its transference into other media, particularly television, turning shojo manga into familiar neo-global networks of cultural production and thereby becoming an attractive formatting tool for Asia’s media producers and Japanese distributors of manga. Shojo manga and anime production is a thriving and growing

212 cultural industry not just in Japan but in Hollywood, parts of Europe and across Asia. In Japan, Thorn (2001) estimates that the 1.5 billion manga magazines and books sold during 2001 realised in excess of US$523 billion in total revenue. Many of these were shojo manga. Yang (2000) noted that DC Comics, one of America’s largest comics publisher, started distributing Sailor Moon, a shojo manga turned television anime, in the US as television cartoons in 1995 after ‘witnessing its popularity in so many other countries such as Italy, Spain and much of Asia’. It ‘rose to become the number one show with teens, gaining massive popularity on the Cartoon Network’ in 2000.

As media globalization is opening up more options for distribution, Asian media producers are beginning to use TV formatting practices that involve media cross- overs, symptomatic of television industries that become commercialized and market- driven.

Stars and celebrities

Theoretically, the concept of stars is a currency that was created by the Hollywood film industry’s business motives (Hartley et al, 2002: 214). To sustain consumption by fans and general audiences alike, their image and their interactions in the public eye serve as markers of differences. Stars represent certain ‘general ideas in society’, which audiences themselves can use to represent certain types of behaviour in their everyday lives (Dyer, 1998: 1). Hartley et al (2002) argue that stars and celebrities are different because the publicity that surrounds stars focus on an individual’s uniqueness and difference from ordinary people, while the focus on celebrities tend to be on their extraordinary ability to perform ordinary lives.

Stars are ideological tools that exaggerate ideals of human beings in society, while celebrities are vehicles for discussing societal issues in the public sphere. Discussions about social taboos or deviant behaviour such as extra-marital affairs, drug-taking or teenage alcoholism for example would be permissible when a

52 See Japan 101 – Astro Boy anime series[Online], (Year). Available: http://www.japan-101.com/anime/astro_boy.htm, [Accessed: 13 Jan 2004].

213 celebrity addresses the taboos in public as he or she is often seen as unrestrained by social conventions.

The fragmented Taiwanese televisual landscape offered different modes of constructing and consuming celebrities. From turning the scandalous confessions of a Taiwanese political attaché, Mei-Feng ('Disgraced female politician plans nude photo book', 6 January, 2003) into a penitent celebrity to endearing legions of female fans of Jerry Yan, the lead male actor and head of F4, from Meteor Garden through his public appeals to encourage his fans to replace their tributes for his 24th birthday into donations for children’s charities across Taiwan. These celebrity acts were created on local television as media spectacles to extend their circulation regionally, via overseas television news and entertainment channels.

More importantly, celebrities and stars maintain a continuity of exposure and public engagement with audiences, thereby extending the product life-cycle of TV programmes. Hong Kong television drama serials generate strong pre-publicity and pre-broadcast publicity by featuring the stars in the TV series for extensive media coverage, as the industry knows that the stars attract press coverage and audiences read about them. When following the on-going publicity for Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000, Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah, who was chosen to play the leading role of Zhang Wu-Ji, (and also the drama king at TVB in 1999 to 2002), together with Charmaine Sheh and Gigi Lai, the two leading ladies, were in most of the publicity shots53. Entertainment news coverage about these three actors also linked their hard work, future vacation plans and next projects back to their current production of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre54.

Turner (2004: 9) refers to celebrities and stars as interchangeable. For him, celebrities are collectively:

53 From the TVB website, there are more screenshots of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 of the two female leads than the male lead. See http://jade.tvb.com/drama/index0.html. 54 According to Fluff, 2000/Hong Kong Entertainment Review (4 January, 2000) Charmaine Sheh was cited as saying ‘she will ask TVB for vacation time upon the completion of filming for Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre Sheh hopes to go to the United States for some rest and recreation.’ Available: www.hkentreview.com/2000/january/0104/0104.html. [Accessed: 20 April 2004].

214 a genre of representation and a discursive effect, it is a commodity trade by the promotions, publicity, and media industries that produce these representations and their effects, and it is a cultural formation that has a social function we can better understand.

Stars differ from celebrities only in terms of their origin as they perform the same function – celebrities are signs or texts that audiences can use to express or vent their subjective needs. Moran (2000: 41) conducted a study of literary celebrities that highlighted how authors are often promoted as personalities in various kinds of publicity for their written work and thereby function as vehicles to integrated publishing and the entertainment industries. Prior to Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000, the Jin Yong novel was re-adapted twice by Hong Kong’s TVB and twice by Taiwanese television, this was the only version that inscribed Jin Yong’s name in gold lettering onto the opening title sequence. Invoking the author’s name had two intended effects on potential audiences. By doing so, TVB recognised that there were pre-existing fans of the novelist’s many works. They could easily identify it as part of the library of TVB adaptations of Jin Yong classics, at TVBI video rental stores, or on television. Secondly, using Jin Yong’s name drew cultural capital towards the TVB series as well as the story.

In the Singapore case studies, Tomato Twins and Everyone Wins were pioneer productions but Everyone Wins won greater publicity and coverage because of the personal celebrity status of Robert Chua, who positioned himself as a Singaporean made good in Hong Kong television and a pioneer of many early television shows. Tomato Twins did not have any celebrity authority and relied instead on featuring the hard work and individual creativity of its producers as fans of similar animations.

However, stars and celebrities tend to have a brief existence if they are not systematically associated with successful productions over a long period of time. Like singular hits in the popular music industry, the lack of a follow-up success or re-appearance of F4 together in another manga production meant that F4 the boyband, and F4 the stars have all but disappeared even as the television series for MG2001 and Meteor Garden II continue to be recalled as a classic and re-consumed on VCDs and DVDs.

215 Ultimately, both stars and celebrities are individuals who are branding tools used by television producers to minimize risk and boosting publicity. Audiences can fast forward the programmes to the segments they love to re-watch, or catch the opening or closing scenes to enjoy the soundtrack for the series. All these post-broadcast acts of consumption also lead to eventual sale or rental of these TV programmes as merchandise.

Finally, the increasing prevalence of cultivating stars for television suggests that the role of stars and celebrities is increasingly more powerful than the content of media productions. In East Asian TV industries like those found in Hong Kong and Taipei, this is certainly the case as industry and audiences alike use celebrities and stars like cultural commodities with a real life-story that they can relate or refer to for their commercial or personal use.

Styles

Styles are similar to stars in terms of function – they are markers of difference but rely upon a grouping of characteristics, works and practices to signify particular identities. Hartley et al (2002: 219) explains style as simply the ‘display of difference…as the combining of pre-existing codes and conventions in the formation of identities’. Styles are created by producers who are guided by certain rules and habitus. Ryan (1992: 245) further elaborates within the corporate division of labour that a style is derived from singular works or acts. Instead, a style ‘is stitched together, named, and given public form, over a long time.’ With repeated formatting, it becomes a cultural fact when numerous work are created by producers, consumed and reviewed by audiences who can readily recall the prevailing features of the grouping or paradigm.

Ryan believes styles are branding vehicles which producers can use to rationalize the cultural marketplace since distinctive styles are more easily recognizable by audiences and reviewers. Whether it is a single event, programme, story about people using the style in question, a real television moment in a local TV industry’s history usually establishes the style’s existence as a reality. As a result of regional dynamics, some Asia film producers have already incorporated pan-Asian elements that merge

216 different styles of Asian filmmaking to aggregate more audiences – from the Shaw Brothers’ films of the 1960s (HK Film Archive, 2003) to the ‘JapHong screens’ of the Hong Kong films in the 1990s (Yeh and Davis, 2002).

In television, the hybridising of manga style in Taiwanese idol drama serials is distinctive. Meteor Garden, with its youthful and beautiful actors and actresses with huge eyes, heart-warming backgrounds and soft colours, and their emphasis on ‘kawaii’ or cuteness are the hallmarks of manga (see Skov, 1995). From Comic Ritz’s Meteor Garden, we can also detect a distinct Taiwanese style to the idol drama serials that make strong claims to local scripting like MVP Lover (2001), Lavender (2001) and more (Liu and Chen, 2004: 70). All of them have a similar look to the casting, feature urban malls or resort-like beaches as backdrops, and using fireworks on rooftops or night skies to signal the beginning of romances.

The Hong Kong styles of martial arts, action and kung fu films found their way not only into Hong Kong martial arts television, but also into Hollywood films such as The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003), Kill Bill Vol.1 and 2 (2003, 2004), and the wholesale purchase of Hong Kong directors and action stars into Hollywood for Face Off, Rush Hour, and more. What is new and refreshing in Hollywood about the martial arts genre as a story or a style in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), is really passé among adults who grew up on consuming similar Asian media productions in their media diets.

Despite the flagging local interest in formatting more martial arts classics from Jin Yong, TVB’s producers and research arm believe that Hong Kong’s global reputation for the martial arts genre can be adapted to any genre to make these genres more regionally relevant and appealing. The challenge is being reworked most visibly through martial arts films as gradually more Chinese television drama producers and filmmakers from Hong Kong, the PRC or Taiwan, have used the martial arts genre to articulate Chinese identities as popular cultural commodities. For instance, while Tsui Hark’s films (Teo, 2003), and ’s Hero (2003) are highly nationalistic in their expression of martial arts genres.

217 Meanwhile, other regionally popular styles from contemporary urban cities are easily inserted in the martial arts genre, Yeh and Davis (2002) whose analysis of the use of Japanese settings and stars in Hong Kong films use Japan as a signifier of ‘cosmopolitan mastery’, that attracts Hong Kong audiences to watch these films. These films invoke kung fu stunts, back-end stories of laughter-filled shot errors featured during the rolling end-credits that were common features of Jackie Chan’s earliest Hong Kong films such as The Drunken Master (1978)55. Television martial arts serials and contemporary dramas now receive equivalent treatment.

These are stylistic conventions that are easily formatted. The easy replication of industrial practices by the largest producers and the many potential producers to create more similar styles of production would lead to more formatting of the creative production process among producers. When they gain experience, they create industry bibles, house styles, and rules of engagement emerge. In Peach Blossom Media’s Tomato Twins, we can see how the same big eyes and colour schemes are a fusion of Japanese manga and Hanna-Barbera style cartoons, while the deep rouge tones are reminiscent of . The characterization, the colour schemes and mixture of 2-D and 3-D animation work have led Peach Blossom Media to develop a distinct look and style of animation that neatly fuses the east and the west.

Overall, the formatting practices’ use of genres, stars and styles, are corporate strategies designed to sustain consumption of individual works, taking into account the larger networked cultural economy and regional flow of culture across Asia.

Change in East Asian TV industries

Clearly, due to the economic growth and development of East Asian cities, the prospects for crossover markets triggered by media liberalization policies have gradually changed the way East Asian television producers plan and execute their

55 See Pollard, Mark (2004) ‘Review- Drunken Master (1978)’ Kungfu Cinema. [Online].Available: http://www.kungfucinema.com/reviews/drunkenmaster.htm [Accessed: 1 Feburary 2005].]

218 television productions. What are the drivers of change in these industries? What drives change in ITVF or TV formats and other kinds of formatting practices?

Individual agency at work

For each of the case studies previously discussed, the cultural entrepreneurship shown by individuals was inspired by, borrowed from, or copied from popular cultural forms that already circulated in their respective television culture or the region.

Asian TV producers consider creating and exporting their productions as an uphill challenge. They are faced with audiences that enjoy disjunctive taste cultures, multiple cultural identities and a bewildering array of media choices. But they are also dislocated by new kinds of international divisions of cultural labour. TV producers adopt formatting and marketing strategies that are tied to commercial principles and face the daily struggle of organizing creative production for market needs against a desire to instil a unique cultural logic to their creativity and productions.

As individuals operating in highly competitive fields of broadcasting, the decisions made by the people working in four production companies reflect some of the sources and kinds of innovations that occurred during the course of reformatting non- television East Asian popular cultural commodities into exportable television.

Cultural entrepreneurship: Innovations and the role of Local Knowledge

In his article for the Harvard Business Review about the importance of innovation Peter Drucker (1998: 149), noted that from his 30 years of experience working with entrepreneurs across many industries, those who were successful did not share common personality characteristics that were entrepreneurial but rather they all showed ‘a commitment to the systematic practice of innovation’. Entrepreneurship, like culture, has many different definitions but, as this study of TV formatting revolves around documenting the tensions between standardizing and change, Drucker’s definition of entrepreneurship is most relevant.

219

For Drucker, entrepreneurship is about activities linked to innovation, the ‘effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise’s economic or social potential.’ As this study indirectly investigates where innovation occurs in each case study, it is useful to refer to Drucker’s seven sources of innovation. He identifies them as: unexpected outcomes (where unexpected success or failure leads to innovation); incongruities that need solutions (like outdated methods in one segment of a new process; economic realities such as when growing markets have steadily falling profits, or the gap between traditional expectations and actual results); process needs (to increase efficiency, speed or quality in delivering products and services); industry and demographic changes; and changes in perceptions and new knowledge.

Of the seven sources Drucker identified, some are technical or knowledge-based innovations like word-processing software. Others, though, are social innovations that he claimed included the American advertising-revenue model for newspapers, jointly introduced by New York Times, New York World and William Randolph Hearst, which allowed newspapers to be distributed relatively cheaply or freely (Drucker, 1998: 154). However, most innovations are a mixture of both knowledge- based and social innovations, such as the Internet as a network of computers and an electronic commons and virtual marketplace (see Lessig, 2001: 159-163).

Like any other industry, television broadcasting and production also create innovations when people from television broadcasting and production companies practice cultural entrepreneurship. Some of these innovations are reported in the media and become a visible feature of public fictions, while others are more mundane.

Innovations in the television industry can occur while a television production company is trying to improve on or to perfect the process of preproduction, production and postproduction, or when a television broadcasting company attempts to exert leadership through creative marketing and promotions. As Drucker (1998: 156) argues, effective innovations have to be simple, clear, focused, carefully designed and involve applying or improving products or services. There are some

220 distinctive innovations undertaken by these TV producers as forms of cultural entrepreneurship in East Asian television industries.

Beyond the business of innovation, these activities can also be broadly viewed as the result of ‘creative practices’ where an individual’s creative capacity transforms opportunities, moments and problems into profitable or reputable solutions. According to Mitchell, Inouye, and Blumenthal (2003)’s American National Research Council report which focused on the interaction of Information Technology, Work and Creativity, creative practices are the outcome of individual creativity aided by tools and armed with knowledge, and it is a recognized skill in appropriating that knowledge. However, in order to flourish, creative practices have to be recognized as creative by others where the interaction between people, institutions and knowledge sustain creativity56.

Cultural activities become big business, due, in part, to the coupling of innovation with creativity. Through an innovative business ethos, cultural activities and production become transformed into creative industries. Leadbeater and Oakley (1999: 11-12) argued that cultural businesses tended to form creative clusters. The inhabitants of these clusters are not merely large corporations but include some independents who act as cultural entrepreneurs, cultural institutions and educational institutions that together create a healthy equilibrium. This resonates with the economic competitiveness of industries that are organised as clusters described by Porter (1998). In fact, both independents and corporations spur innovation and change differently by adopting different modes of entrepreneurship. While independents are able to combine and play with multiple or temporary roles, resources and ideas to create unique specialisations, corporations can call upon their capital and distribution clout to do ‘global prospecting’ of talents, technologies, skills and resources in order to generate successes (see Doz, Santos and Williamson, 2001: 64-6557).

56 See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s social model of creativity in “A Systems Approach to Creativity”, in The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives, R. Sternberg (ed), Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. (1987):236.

221 However, as Du Gay et al (1997: 100-101) warned, the innovative design of products may be altered from their intended use when the products are consumed and re-used by consumers and potential competitors in the marketplace. Therefore, some innovations may continue to appear outside the realm of those established by the creatives known as the original designers, original markets or domains.

In the television industry, this may take the form of the ‘’ - mixing old and new symbols, ideas and practices — at one end of the spectrum and at the other end, social engineering feats that include waving the national flag or scheduling the TV programme to persuade audiences that these are ‘must watch’ TV shows. Examples of this ‘bricolage’ of innovation are found in such fusion TV formats as the on-going Big Brother, short-lived experimental online/offline interactive dramas like Fat Cow Motel (Australia), virtual fan literature for popular TV programmes like Meteor Garden58 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (USA), media cross-overs such as the anime, TV serials and film versions of Hana Yori Dango, and variety-cum-talk shows in Taiwan and Japan.

During my interviews with the TV producers, the entrepreneurial ones make timely and strategic use of local knowledge -- of industry practices, popular cultural forms, and successful or failed business models -- to increase the success of their next productions or to boost the exportability of their own productions. Angie Chai approached her first drama production, Meteor Garden, imbued with the same industry habitus and local knowledge acquired from her 15-year stint on variety shows. According to Iris Yang, associate producer for Meteor Garden, Chai did preliminary research about what the Taiwanese field lacked and identified youth programming as a good counter-programming strategy against rival terrestrial channels and made use of her variety show connections to connect with the Japanese publishers for the manga. When she was named one of the ‘Stars of Asia’ in the innovation category by Business Week magazine in 2002; she spoke of local knowledge, demographic changes and discovery of new knowledge as the sources of innovation:

57 Doz et al (2001:75) cites the example of PolyGram, the transnational music company that ‘searches for new artists and repertoire who might have global potential in small markets’. 58 See Fanfiction.net [Online] http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1316325/1/ 11 May 2005 - Last Update.[Accessed: 10 May 2005]

222

Chai states that her experience with variety shows helped her become finely attuned to the world of popular culture. By analyzing the overall composition of TV audiences in Taiwan at that time, she ascertained that adolescents comprise the largest viewing group; however, few shows were specifically targeted at this youthful audience….As a result, devising a program for Taiwan youth and creating a new teen-idol group became the twin focal points of Chai's new production. She decided upon Meteor Garden, a Japanese comic that was …the most frequently rented …in Taiwan's book lending stores. (Lin, 2002)

Also, a desire to boost local knowledge spurred much formatting practices across many territories for broadcasters. Different kinds of formatting provide different learning experiences for TV producers but a strong grasp of local cultures and cultural differences between imports and local productions ensure the learning turns into innovative practices. Some knowledge about the local conditions of production and consumption affect the decisions that TV producers make to undertake a local version of an imported TV format, to import foreign content and practices into local TV productions, or re-export local productions overseas.

For example, when the Singapore production team shadowed the producers of The Amazing Race in Singapore during 2002, MediaCorp TV’s Vice-President of Programming for Channel 5, Selena Ho, noted that the local producers and cameramen learnt a lot about editing, camerawork, and organizing production shoots more efficiently as each mini-crew followed individual couples in their race around the island (Interview with Selena Ho, 5 Dec 2002).

Furthermore, with the costly experiences of producing several seasons of Who Wants to be a Millionaire Singapore? and The Weakest Link in-house, MediaCorp TV became more confident with working with fledgling Asian TV format creators like Robert Chua on his interactive gameshow format, Everyone Wins in 2002-2004, and continue their established working relationships with BBC in Weakest to produce Singapore’s Brainiest, the local version of the BBC format. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s terrestrial TV take-up of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and other gameshow formats briefly lit up its prime-time schedules with local creations of

223 knowledge-based quizzes like Knowledge is Power and Chinese Cultural Ambassador, inspired from the imported TV formats (Fung, 2004: 82-83).

Innovations in East Asian television productions

While this study focuses on only four individual cases and is exploratory in nature, these programmes offer insight into local TV productions created for potential overseas markets. Through these case studies of Asian Media Productions, there are several types of innovation and local knowledge at work within the circuit of cultural production that the TV programmes move through. See Diagram 7.3 for a summary of the innovations found in each case study:

Diagram 7.3 Innovations found in the four case studies Case study Source(s) Details of Innovation Location in Impact on TV of the circuit of industry/producti innovation cultural on company production Case study 1: Industry (1) Reworked narrative (1) Production HSDS2000 was Heaven changes; significantly from HSDS one of the top 10 Sword and Demograp novel and highlighted the most watched Dragon Sabre hic heroines and anti-heroine, programmes on 2000 changes reduced the genre’s usual TVB Jade channel focus on brotherhood59 (2) in 2001. (2).Combated audience Distribution It offered the fatigue over 5th TV audience a adaptations of HSDS via pre- thematic emptive and delayed experience scheduling only after the associated with the surprise hit Duke of Mount Jin Yong brand Deer 2000 on Jade channel. name60.

Case Study 2: Industry (1) Used the Millionaire (1) Identity Everyone Wins was Everyone changes; effect and the politics of among the top 10 Wins (2002-) New cultural identity of being (2) Pre- programmes on knowledge alternatively, ‘Asian’, production MediaCorp about ‘Singaporean’ or ‘Chinese’ to consumption Channel 5 in interactive raise interest in the show. Singapore; and a gameshow (2) Created an interactive (3) hit in Shanghai as software audience gameshow gambling Distribution well. It has been experience to ensure licensed to 6 Asian

59 A quick content analysis of the number of episodes devoted to the rivalry between the two female leads for the affection of the hero in HSDS2000 show that more than 30% of the serial focused on the romance while in earlier versions, notably the 1978 version, only about 15% of the serial was devoted to this theme. In comparison, fighting scenes and close combat scenes were not the highlight of the serial in the year 2000 version. 60 This is a variation on the American network programming strategy of ‘audience flowthrough principle’ (Lin, 1995: 483) where adjacent programmes enjoy high audience-ship leading-into or –out of a popular TV programme.

224 audiences return after territories commercial breaks.. (3) Use his personal store of social capital to network with broadcasters in Asian territories to generate format sales.

Case Study 3: Process (1) Used Flash animation to (1) Pre- The same Tomato Twins needs; create 3D animation Production production- (2002-) changes in children’s programme. distribution perception (2) used a regional division of (2) Production, arrangement was cultural labour headquartered Distribution, used to create Little out of Singapore. Circulation Taoshu, and Peach (3) Hybrid animation style Blossom Media that fuses eastern and western (3) Production recently signed a styles to appeal to more co-production deal cosmopolitan young viewers worth S$18 million who were equally familiar to develop 7 more with Japanese anime and animation projects Hollywood cartoon genres in Singapore (MDA, 2004b). Case Study 4: Demogra- (1) Apply Japanese manga to (1) Pre- More than 50 idol phic the traditional space of production dramas have been Meteor changes; Taiwanese local dramas. created over a 2- Garden incongruiti Created a new subgenre of year period (i.e. es; Taiwanese drama serials. 2001-2002). It also (2001) Process (2) Created a new celebrity sparked local needs vehicle to launch music stars interest in writing from drama serials. (2) local scripts with (3) Created a new business Circulation, youths at the centre model for merchandising that Consumption (instead of the increased profitability and traditional family combated piracy. and housewives as (3) the focus). Consumption MG2001 and MG2002 introduced a new business model for increasing profitability – merchandising linked to the purchase of originals of the VCD and DVDs, slow release of MG2002. Other boybands have used the TV drama genre format to raise publicity, eg. Energy, 5566 and F4’s successors, Comic Boys.

225 Diagram 7.3 briefly summarises the innovations of the four case studies and reveals that East Asian TV industries have begun to value different forms of cultural entrepreneurship that extends, repackage or revise their domestic television vocabulary into tradable television programmes.

This trend coincides with the regionalization of East Asia in the 1990s (politically and economically) accelerated by the instability of global flows of capital and technology (such as digitization and the satellite and cable delivery of content). These producers use their social and cultural capital (like televisual knowledge of globally successful television programmes, and access to larger financing or distribution networks) to create TV programmes that have greater potential for success. These entrepreneurs use TV formatting practices because they minimize risks of market failure but also seek to innovate on previous success models.

While formatting is used to mainly extend the product life-cycle of TV programmes in a limited marketplace, it is increasingly used by export-oriented TV producers to circulate their TV programmes to a wider selection of territories.

New business models – transforming traditional local broadcasting to transnational glocal marketing

TV formats like Big Brother offer new business models that can be applied to traditionally low revenue generating genres such as game-shows and drama serials (Turner, 2004: 59; Moran, 1998). Illustrating this in terms of the indirect resale value of Big Brother with its multiplicity of uses for publicity and promotions, Turner highlights how it can be used as a news item, as a star-launching vehicle, as contests that use SMS technology as a back channel to give broadcasters more revenue, to give audiences more participatory options or simply as pure television entertainment.

None of the Asian territories have picked up the Big Brother format, although China has created a TV programme that used similar structures of competitiveness as Survivor but replaced the sexually-charged Western format with more nationalistic or family-oriented themes – Sichuan TVs Into Shangrila (zouru Xianggelila) and

226 Economic Channel’s Perfect Holiday (wanmei jiaqi). Instead, independent Asian format creators like Robert Chua have readily gained access to the PRC and some Asian markets, promoting his interactive TV game-show, Everyone Wins, as useful for broadcasters and appealing to audiences because its business model attracts viewers to tune back to the programme after every commercial break.

New possibilities for extracting surplus value through formatting have inspired Asian producers to mimic some modes of home-viewer participation as revenue-generating features of globally-sold TV game-show formats. For instance, Singapore’s MediaCorp TV introduced a rapid succession of new competition-based reality TV programmes on their English-language channel – Channel 5 -- such as Audition Me and Eye for a Guy 2. Mobile technology has aided the renewal of focus on local productions in prime-time, while local audiences are enticed to follow imported programmes like The Apprentice61 and American Idol, to win prizes by SMS-ing their answers during the broadcast.

Meanwhile, others like Comic Ritz with MG2001 and Meteor Garden II use their close-ended drama serials as turnkey solutions to boost revenues by incorporating product placement opportunities in their serials for advertisers of foreign broadcasters. Furthermore, Meteor Garden II provided a good example of how to prevent pirates from stripping away downstream revenues when Comic Ritz released limited editions of Meteor Garden II with unique promotional items and tokens, posters, T-shirts and postcards, which the pirates could not easily replicate without incurring additional costs. In Chai’s explanation of how effective this was, she mentioned that Meteor GardenII earned 50 percent more revenue for the producers than Meteor Garden62. This is also partly the result of a change in industry habitus, and a new valuation of local television content.

61 See ‘Wassup - Win The Apprentice Premiums!’, 26 April 2005, 5.41pm. MediaCorp TV [online]. Available: http://ch5.mediacorptv.com/wassup/ch5announcements/view/502/1/.html [Accessed 17 May 2005] 62 This was cited by my PTS interviewee, Cheng Wei-hsiung, when he attended a seminar given by Angie Chai about their financial success with the Meteor Garden I and II series in 2003.

227 Age of access - offering new distribution outlets for sale of East Asian TV formats

Cabling and satellite TV has opened up a global Chinese entertainment world to cities like Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore. Being the first among the three cities to feel the impact of being located in an open global economy, Hong Kong’s television industry developed rapidly in the 1970s and early 1980s whilst its film industry became overshadowed by Hollywood films. Even today - Titanic (1998) is the Number One box office record in Hong Kong, with the local film, Kung Fu Hustle (2005) 63 at third place after Jurassic Park (1993). Audience ratings for TVB’s mainly local fare has dipped slightly but Hong Kong’s terrestrial Cantonese TV programmes still net greater consumers than the territory’s local pay TV channels. Meanwhile, TVB’s Jade channel has been recycled and exported overseas as pay TV services to South-east Asia, Australia, North America and Europe, and is localising its feed for the Taiwanese marketplace in Mandarin. A brief look at TVB’s latest annual report indicates that overseas distribution and licensing, and overseas Pay TV operations, are the biggest money spinners collectively netting HK$539 million in profit, compared to terrestrial advertising profits of HK$519 million, while its digital broadcasting service, Galaxy, is still finding its feet (TVB Annual Report, 2004).

Changes in Asia’s regional political dynamics bodes well for building a regional cultural marketplace over the last few years as the ASEAN, the Republic of South Korea, Japan and China move to consolidate better political ties. New timeslots are also becoming available for minority and overseas non-Hollywood programmes to enter new territories such as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, especially in content-starved cable and satellite TV channels that constantly re-cycle older TV programmes. These changes offer hope and prospect for small television industries to seek the internationalization of television programmes.

In a case of contra-flows back to Japan and even to the protected market of South Korea, Comic Ritz’s Meteor Garden was telecast in Japan, albeit on cable TV, as well as to rave reviews on South Korean terrestrial television (Personal Interview with Iris Yang, 30 October 2003). Meanwhile, international satellite channels, like

228 Nickelodeon Asia, have collaborated with Tomato Twins creators to signal their intentions to develop Asian productions for their Asian audiences (Pinto, 2003), and MTV Asia recently attempted their first regional TV drama series, Rouge, which featured MTV presenters.

Also, intra-Asian flows and access to Asian channels (like TVBJ and Azio TV) with similar geo-linguistic programmes are more likely because new and relatively less dominant players will tend to build on innovative programming from imported sources. In a scarce environment where capital investment into broadcasting and television production is gradually being reduced, external modes of capitalization are needed. Chai’s Comic Ritz Productions has identified a possible avenue – through international pre-sales, merchandising and product placement across different territories. TVB has established control over paid access to distribution of its television programmes on its direct cable and satellite TV channels and diverse franchise networks of video rental stores, while they closely track fansites and website reviews that use TVB images that help fuel promotion and publicity through the Internet space (Interview with Sherman Lee, 28 October 2003).

Formats have re-imagined a media globalization that rapidly deterritorialises production and consumption practices in East Asian cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei. Intra-Asian cultural flow has allowed Taipei-based companies, Hong Kong’s biggest television player TVB, independents like Robert Chua Productions and Singapore-based companies like Peach Blossom Media to retrieve regional expertise and produce TV dramas that aggregate a pan-Asian youth audience across national boundaries.

Mindset change

TV formats and formatting practices borrowed from overseas productions are increasingly viewed as necessary business tools that media producers have to incorporate into their local narrative projects. East Asian TV producers increasingly

63 According to Asia Box Office, Titanic grossed an all time high of HK$114.9million compared to Kung Fu Hustle’s

229 have to compete with other local producers as well as overseas productions to get their TV productions on-air with pre-sales or exportability as a consideration. This is why producers like Robert Chua, Sung Lingun and Angie Chai are examining what their audiences are consuming outside of their own television fields for answers.

Even while the rise of formatting practices can be associated closely with the increased growth of television production as cultural businesses in East Asia; the production companies may vary in size and motivation for using formatting. Experienced TV producers, management and owners of these cultural businesses use formatting practices to exert some control and administration over the timeline of the production process and product life cycle of their individual cultural products. Singaporean Robert Chua, an experienced and media owner, drew upon his years of production expertise, industry reputation, and business connections in various fields of broadcasting in Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore to develop and market his game-show format Everyone Wins (Chapter 5). Less experienced TV producers borrow formatting practices which they observe from successful models.

Formatting practices are commonly applied to the timeline for production, decisions on what resources and talents to use, and more exacting kinds like the ITVF also regulate and affect how one should distribute, market and publicise the finished programmes. For example, while fledgling Peach Blossom Media spent several months experimenting with the Flash Animation technology in Singapore to create character drawings for their animated series, Tomato Twins (Chapter 5), and brainstormed for names and colour schemes; the bulk of their production work was done by experienced animation production units in China, except for post-production. At the distribution and marketing end, they worked with Agogo Entertainment, a Hong Kong-based experienced animation distributor and marketed their TV series with a global children’s television channel, Nickelodeon Asia.

Mindful that television programmes do not exist in isolation but compete with other programmes in the marketplace for audiences and ratings, cultural entrepreneurs

HK$60.8 million in Hong Kong. Website: http://www.asianboxoffice.com/topten.php?yr=alltime.

230 must ensure that the new television programmes can attract audiences and retain their uniqueness in a competitive broadcasting field. They must anchor their programmes to cultural icons, issues, themes, lifestyles or desires of particular social groups or cultures. However, to sell these television programmes overseas, they must also appeal to a diverse range of audiences or an identifiably large group beyond a local field of broadcasting.

Formatting practices would therefore also be applied to TV programmes to increase their chances of transcending the limitations of a particular culture, national boundary and local field of broadcasting. Thus, Moran’s study of TV formats (1998) demonstrated how easily industrial TV formats like TV game shows adapt to multiple territories and cross cultural borders from North America to Europe, aided by the dynamics of media globalisation.

As a result of new experiments in East Asian television that garnered high audience ratings, old regional prejudices that late entrants to the broadcasting fields, like South Korea, offer only cheap geo-linguistic programming fillers are slowly giving way to greater acceptability as high quality programming.

For example, while discussing South Korea’s rising status as a regional media capital is beyond the scope of the thesis, it is worth noting that East Asian television outputs like South Korean drama serials exemplify this shift in mentality among Asian broadcasters. An example is All In (2003). It is Seoul Broadcasting System’s most lavish Korean drama to date. The serial focused on family intrigues and the casino business and is set in Las Vegas, Seoul and Jeju Island. It has a popular Korean cast. Singapore’s Sunday Life! News reported that the broadcast fees were U$40,000 per episode, 10 to 20 times higher than what Korean dramas used to command, and more than what Hong Kong, Japanese and Hollywood dramas are normally priced at (‘Seoul Survivor’, April 8, 2003). Yet there were many takers; All In was broadcast in many Asian territories in 2003.

More recently, the first lavishly Korean imperial TV soap opera, Jewel in the Palace (Da Jeung Gum), was the most highly rated Korean drama in South Korea, garnering

231 a 54 percent rating (YesAsia.com, 200564) in 2004. It was re-telecast in Hong Kong and Taiwan from January 2005, again to high audience ratings. The Korean TV industry’s promotional culture for its soap operas has developed a TV formatting strategy that converges with other fields of cultural production such as tourism — using the location shooting at Jeju Island and Seoul as selling points (KNTO, 2005).

While Japanese television producers may have eliminated some of the cultural odour of Japanese identity in TV shows, their dramas and entertainment programmes still reflect Japanese sensibilities and the . They do not utilise the regional lingua franca — the Chinese language — or the cultural franca — underlying Confucianist themes that can be found in South Korean family dramas, martial arts dramas and themes of fillal piety in children’s animation. Cultural entrepreneurs in smaller East Asian TV industries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei reconcile the two divergent production strategies by using formatting practices that standardize and differentiate genres, stars and styles that endear audiences to these Asian media productions, that articulate cultural identities and social experiences, and refer to imagined communities of heroes, heroines, coolness, kawaii-ness and personal success. This all resonates with audiences that consume these TV programmes as popular East Asian cultural commodities across many territories.

Conclusion

In this study, TV producers and owners were in the business of selling TV programmes for profit. To be commercially viable, they must be able to differentiate their new programmes from competitors in the marketplace yet ensuring that they are similar to existing programmes that are popular. Therefore, many of them employ formatting practices to eliminate the exigencies of time and place, i.e. reduce wastage of resources and time-to-market, and increase a TV programme’s cultural proximity to local audiences or reduce it for overseas markets.

64 See http://global.yesasia.com/en/artIdxDept.aspx/aid-502308/section-videos/code-k/version-all/ [28 September 2004].

232 But as many writers have shown for Taiwan, South Korea and China (see Liu and Chen, 2004; Lee, 2004b; Keane, 2004), differing policy regimes or the template of certain TV formats are often so generic that these TV formats can be easily copied without penalty in the Asian marketplaces. It explains partly why few East Asian television producers have not based their businesses on selling industrial TV formats but instead focus on incorporating still more regulatory control through inserting other kinds of formatting-related marketing practices in their completed television productions. For example, after the huge audience following for Meteor Garden in Taiwan, Comic Ritz Productions attempted to franchise their finished programmes for advertising and sponsorship opportunities overseas. This enabled Angie Chai to create empty slots within a hit television programme and extend its profitability as is observable on Comic Ritz’s website (Comic Ritz online, 2003).

Such emerging television industry practices in East Asian that rely on extensive use of formatting are geared towards commercialised local as well as exportable cultures, demonstrating alternative pathways for the flow of global culture.

233 CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSION ------

The previous chapters have explored the many faces of formatting in East Asian television through examining four case studies - from Hong Kong (TVB’s Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre), Singapore (Robert Chua Productions’ Everyone Wins, Peach Blossom Media’s Tomato Twins) and Taipei (Comic Ritz Production’s Meteor Garden). Conceptualised as Asian media productions, these TV programmes are sites for examining individual agency, the network flows of popular culture and structural changes of their respective broadcasting fields.

There is systematic use of formatting practices and sources of innovation that some incumbent or independent indigenous players in small East Asian TV industries rely upon to create exportable television programmes. Their strategic use of stars, styles and popular genres have provided turnkey solutions to convert local television programmes into cultural commodities for a new de-territorialized cultural economy.

Aided by neo- networks of production, distribution, circulation and consumption, individual agents (i.e., a broadcaster or production company) constantly reposition themselves and struggle for cultural, economic and social capital in their respective fields of broadcasting. These interactions connect media producers in different locations such that new global yet local (that is, glocal) cultures of production – a regional division of cultural labour -- have begun to re-order the flow of global media (dominated by Hollywood) through the systematic formatting of East Asian popular culture for television.

Changes in industry and public perception about the role that the local TV industry plays, from serving an information and communicative function to serving as a culture and creative industry, are driven as much by policy shifts as by the rising affluence of Asian audiences (especially among youth). While these audiences desire more sophisticated media content and services that relate to urbanised Asian sensibilities, their common desire provides an impetus for TV broadcasters and producers to integrate geographically disparate but geo-linguistically similar Asian cultural markets into one large regional marketplace.

234 In this chapter, we see how the regional dynamic is created and sustained by linkages between the practices of cultural entrepreneurship and formatting practices in East Asia. In particular, Asian TV producers repackage Asian content for export partially as a result of their being situated in de-territorialised networks of culture in globally networked cities, and by harnessing their local knowledge to generate sources of innovation. The chapter also focuses on promotional mindset changes among East Asian states as their TV industries respond to lessons from their more global counterparts in Hollywood, in a bid to compete for wider markets – especially through adopting various marketing strategies. The final part of the chapter briefly discusses the limitations of the study, proposes what future directions for research could be, and revisits the two research questions posed.

Networked flows of popular culture

Reviewing the media scene over the last few years, indications based on media consumption surveys by industry firms such as Nielsen Media Research suggest that television remains Asia’s primary source of information and entertainment. For example, in 2002, the Nielsen Media Index showed that 98 percent of Hong Kong consumers watch both terrestrial and cable/satellite TV, while 92 percent of Taiwan’s, and 91 percent of Singapore’s consumers watched either terrestrial or cable television daily (Television Asia’s Satellite & Cable Annual Guide 2003/2004: 18, 36). Notably, as ethnic Chinese form the predominant group among residents of Hong Kong SAR, the Republic of Singapore and Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan), these three locations are not only rival would-be media capitals but also form a triangulated marketplace where their TV, film and music industries intersect with each other on talents, finance, local knowledge, global templates for change, and audiences.

The regional dynamic is strong among the three cities. With Hong Kong taking the lead as the most established media capital and Taipei being the most prolific producer of Chinese popstars, there is a continuous neo-networked flow of culture, capital, talents and technology between them, and, separately, each have links to larger and richer overseas markets. While Taipei and Hong Kong have cultural commodities (from television dramas, fiction, films to music) that found markets in

235 China, Southeast Asia and diasporic communities, Singapore has made limited inroads into the PRC (mostly in dramas and being granted landing rights for Channel NewsAsia). Other markets where local talents, productions or services transact include the fragmented markets in Malaysia, Indonesia, , Australia, Canada and Hollywood. Each of the cities offer certain competitive advantages for their television industries but, as described in the previous case studies, these advantages are linked to historical factors, structural conditions and reputation for a few service industries. These may or may not be sufficient for them to become sustainable media capitals.

Hong Kong

Among the three, Hong Kong has the competitive advantages that have firmly placed it as a media capital (see Curtin, 2003). Its brand name and reputation as the film capital of the East is linked to its historical output of Mandarin and Cantonese martial arts, action and romance films. Its music and television industries are also exported heavily to Chinese communities overseas. TVB has its own overseas distribution channels which ensure a dedicated publicity complex for all of its TV programmes and stars. Its historical flow of talents is aided by its status as a financial and entrepot trading hub which has attracted many capitalists and entrepreneurs to its shores. Since the signing of the CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Agreement) in 2003, it has developed a closer integration into the world’s largest TV and film marketplace, the PRC65. However, as Chapter Four has shown, while Hong Kong has been a dynamic media capital in martial arts films, popular music and television drama serials for several decades, it is now facing a creative crisis. The lukewarm performance of HSDS2000 domestically and overseas brings this status is under renewed competition from other media capitals emerging in East Asia.

65 See ‘Cepa to fuel tripartite partnership in film industry’ (26 September, 2003) [online] Availvable: http://www.tdctrade.com/tdcnews/0309/03092601.htm [Accessed: 10 May 2005].

236 Singapore

Singapore is not well-known for its exportable media productions. Even though it was the film capital in the 1950s with the Loke Wan Tho and the Cathay Keris Film studios, its output was mostly Malay films. Location shoots for Cathay’s Mandarin films have virtually disappeared. It is today a well-known digital and cable-wired island state. It has also become a regional HQ hub and attracted many satellite broadcasters to set up offices there. Being located in the Southeast Asian region, it serves as a cosmopolitan linkage to East Asia, India and the West for the non- English-speaking world of Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand and Indonesia. Its intellectual property infrastructure is considered to be the most progressive, leading the way for many FTAs in the region. The producers and consumers are equally encouraged to be new media-savvy through the e-government and e-lifestyle initiatives. English is also the key language for commerce. It is well-positioned to be a media capital of non-Western and non-Chinese TV productions, especially in animation and gaming. Its well-developed info-communication sector has also bred companies that create solutions for distribution – like Creative Technology’s soundblaster, digital cinema and related 3-D animation services. Being on the periphery of the East Asian geographic cluster has not diminished its role in creating and enabling the circulation of East Asian popular culture. Rather, it is re-emerging as an aspiring media capital, capable of creating both culturally proximate and culturally odolourless productions by marrying new media technology with genres (children’s animation or gameshows) that function as global templates.

Taipei

Finally, Taipei is a fly-away capital that became a secondary capital for Chinese talents from all over Asia. Its competitive advantage is in its music industry. It serves as the regional site for launching music careers, fuelled by an extremely saturated TV environment. Its official language may be Mandarin but its linguistic roots are closely tied to the Taiwanese dialect (). It has a literary tradition that draws upon Chinese martial arts, Taiwanese love stories, American and Japanese popular culture. It exports Taiwanese novels, online games, animation and drama serials in contemporary or imperial-court romance or martial arts genres. It is also a major

237 translator of many foreign non-Chinese but Asian television dramas from Japan and Korea.

Regional circuits of culture (or cultural production)

Yet, while situated in these networked locations, cultural entrepreneurship emerges out of individual efforts to change strategic positions in fields of cultural production. Thus, cultural entrepreneurs show an awareness of the current normative practices and values that dominate their modes of production. A summary of how their individual agency works to re-map the fields of cultural production contribute to new forms of knowledge and innovation.

As the discussion on the changing nature of media capitals has shown above, their sustainability is always in question. As this thesis suggests, the main dynamic that ensures the existing and aspiring media capitals maintain and establish their status is the presence of regional circuits of culture. Where cultural entrepreneurs located in East Asian cities focus on capitalising on media talents, finance, ideas and aggregating audiences from the region, there is a higher probability that their cultural commodities both profit from and become part of the flow of East Asian popular culture, circulating regionally. Consequently, this leads to increased traffic of cultural goods and services from media capitals recognised as regional centres of production, circulation, distribution and consumption.

For example, in these four case studies, each of the producers made strategic use of regionally popular brand names in talents, capitalising and linking up with distribution networks, and pre-empting marketing opportunities to increase audience interest and therefore the consumption and circulation of their TV programmes. This occurred at different stages of their individual circuits of cultural production, and each TV programme inadvertently sets up a regional ‘circuit of circuit’ for their industries. All four producers prospected content, talents, some new media capabilities, relationships with traditional distribution channels as well as new media ones on the Internet.

238 At the pre-production stage, TVB used Jin Yong’s famous martial arts novel and highly popular and regionally familiar TVB stars for HSDS2000. Similarly, Comic Ritz Productions used a popular teen Japanese comic, Hana Yori Dango, to create a new genre of Taiwanese teenage idol dramas with Meteor Garden. It also employed an ensemble of good-looking unknown boys to feed the frenzy of the celebrity machinery embedded in the Taiwanese media to take advantage of the marketing and publicity stage. Meanwhile, at the pre-production and post-production/publicity stages, Robert Chua leveraged upon his personal reputation as a respected TV veteran, as well as the Singaporean talents and UK designers of Millionaire for Everyone Wins, to create media spectacles, secure pre-sales or canvass support for his TV formats, and to exploit cultural assumptions about the gambling ethos of Asians. Also, at the distribution stage, Peach Blossom Media associated closely with internationally recognised distribution networks, like Nickelodeon Asia, for Tomato Twins to break into the growing children’s animation programme market for Asia and beyond..

Remaking East Asian Television Industries: the role of promotional state and neo-global practices in local industries

What the current trade in TV formats and the highly rapid uptake of formatting practices for local TV illustrates is: the growing recognition that TV production can become a viable business if entrepreneurs seek cutting-edge technical solutions that enable them to develop exportable pan-East Asian television shows. New business models develop a lucrative value-chain of cross-over activities starting from or leading to television productions.

Furthermore, the overlaps between the different fields of cultural production, facilitated by the small size and close networked industries, in particularly small TV industries, leads to an automatic transfer of celebrities and talents from one field of Asian media productions to another. In East Asia, there are iconic pan-Asian artistes, like Andy Lau of Hong Kong, Taipei’s F4, Japanese boybands like SMAP and KinKi Kids, Korean heartthrobs like Lee Byung-Hun, who have started or landed careers in television and music, feeding channels like MTV Asia and Channel V with hours of music videos consumed by millions of youths across Asia. These synergies of

239 cooperation and collaboration at industry levels have been accelerated by political economic and mindset changes.

Political economic and mindset changes

As discussed in Chapter Seven, there are significant shifts in the political economic conditions of East Asian cities that have led to the rapid use of formatting as forms of globalizing or internationalising practice regionally. Arguably, the recent shift to an overt uptake of transnational TV formats across Asia were wrought by government - led media liberalization policies, new market realities and the prospect for digitalization. In turn these transformations have stimulated mindset changes from negative to a slightly more positive attitude towards format trade (see Lim, 2004: 119; Lee DH, 2004: 49-50).

Just as copycat formats flourished in India when its television industry recently liberalized (Thomas and Kumar, 2004), the more pro-market cultural business climate in East Asian cities translated to foreign firms – as channels or distributors -- who gained access to more local terrestrial broadcasters and their domestic audiences. This forced these indigenous broadcasters to overtly experiment with globally circulated Western brand-name TV formats, and regionally successful Asian imports that emphasized the nuances of liberalism within East Asian cultures. From the urban lifestyles of Japanese trendy dramas to the manufacturing of celebrity drama serials based on popular folklore, history or fiction, the periodisation of television into distinctive styles, celebrities and genres has become more compressed through globalisation. Indeed, the simultaneous presence of many hybridised experiments, from costume dramas to contemporary settings, draw upon the audiences’ desire to consume a modernity that offers media content and services that are progressive, modernist and ground-breaking.

Following the lead of overseas industrialized economies in the UK and Europe, where creative and cultural and creative industries were identified as key to transforming national economies as secondary industries moved offshore, the Newly Industrialised Economies (NIEs) shifted from a regime of centralized, nationalistic controls and value-added manufacturing economy, towards building regional trading

240 networks and knowledge-based and production service industries. The NIEs are no longer ‘new’, as other Asian countries like the PRC, Vietnam, and India have become attractive bases for low-cost manufacturing and outsourcing centres. In a conscious effort to establish themselves as media capitals, East Asian cultural entrepreneurs recognized quickly the export-potential for their content. The most lucrative appears to be pulp fiction-derived Asian media productions, as pan-Asian audiences youth, urbanites and would-be fashionistas – invest in conspicuous consumption, but they also offer information-based formats for pan-Asian travellers.

Meanwhile, their governments promote e-governance and digitization across many industries (including broadcasting) to maintain their globally networked status in the global communication era. Policies such as the Taiwanese Challenge 2008 to develop life-sciences and digital services; Hong Kong’s 2030 vision initiatives, such as an incubation programme for television games and one-stop resource centres like the Digital Media Centre and iResource Centre66; and Singapore’s Media 21 blueprint for developing the creative industries, mean that new info- communication and cultural and creative industries needed intense capitalization – human, cultural and financial.

All these planning initiatives mean that governments are engaging as key agents in the fields of cultural productions. They intersect these fields with the field of power to play a strategic role in fostering a positive climate for new models of business, attracting and grooming talents, and promoting intellectual property regimes to attract any knowledge-based, info-communication and digital services.

Regionally popular television programmes — Who Wants to be a Millionaire, American Idol and Everyone Wins, comics-turned-soap operas like Meteor Garden, television-cum-online properties like Tomato Twins, martial arts novels-turned- comics, new media or television martial arts dramas like Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000 — have emerged recently because of the focus on using innovations and TV formatting practices to increase audience reception. The positive reception towards these franchises illustrates how cultural and creative industries policy,

241 technology, market and consumer interests intersect in popular culture such that governments, producers and consumers perceive culture not as a social cost but as an economic multiplier.

The case studies are the outcomes of variations on industry development models – from marketised proximate cultural and creative industries to a range of state- sponsored industry development funding models -- that resemble the intellectual and cultural warfare practices of Hollywood’s military entertainment complex model suggested by Turse (2003), Miller et al (2001) and Bordwell, Thompson and Staiger (1986). East Asian television industries are not displacing Hollywood as the world centre of cultural production but is de-centring it. it.

With each new technological and communication frontier charted in the 20th century, from terrestrial satellite to internet broadcasting, Hollywood remains at the cutting edge. It provides content and services that few cities in the world can rival. Olson (1999) and others (Scott, 2004; Semati and Sotirin, 1999; O’Regan, 1990) explain the phenomenal growth of Hollywood’s global reach as a result of America’s largest GDP — the industry’s professional and developed management system, narrative appeal and the use of English as the global language, and Hollywood’s transnational appeal as its proliferation of democratic ideals.

Transnational media corporations and institutions play a crucial role in re-organising work in global Hollywood by exploiting other locations and industries. Factors such as Hollywood’s historical dominance of global cultural trade, state support and policy deliberations hidden under agendas of ‘free trade’ and a push for intellectual copyright protection are cited by Miller et al (2001) as instrumental in embedding Hollywood’s dominance in the global flow of culture. However, while this assumes that foreign locations and industries are merely handmaidens to Hollywood’s continued global domination; this may be a short-term and one-sided viewpoint.

As the case of Tomato Twins illustrates, the availability of transnational media such as Nickelodeon offered shortcuts to using marketing and other opportunities

66 This was highlighted in paragraphs 83-89 of the Chief Executive’s Policy Address 2005, on 11 January 2005. Website:

242 associated with global brand names. Most recently, European production companies sought similar cooperation with Asian companies such as the upcoming release of House of Harmony, a TV mini-series adapted from an American novel and co- produced by a Singapore production house, and a German distributor FFP Media, shot entirely in Singapore67. Push factors of increasing global media competition and intra-Asian flows have activated hyper-development policy programmes geared towards promoting local TV content as pan-regional or international cultural exports.

East Asian governments have only recently begun to work closely with their TV industries to build neo-networks for regional circulation, using what Miller et al (2001: 160-162) refer to as ‘advocacy marketing’. This involves attempting to ‘build positive brand awareness, popular acclaim and formal political support’ for cultural corporations, linked closely to establishing stronger positioning for distributors and distribution of various media products.

Players in bigger nations, like Hollywood, have industry associations such as the vocal and high profiled Motion Picture Association of America, and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (MPAA), the European Union has MEDIA I, II and III (MEDIA PLUS). South Korea has the Korean Culture and Contents Agency (KOCCA) and China has state-linked corporations like the China Film, Radio and TV Group or state agencies like SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television).

Smaller nations have used both state-based agencies like Singapore’s MDA (Media Development Authority) and EDB (Economic Development Board), Hong Kong’s TDC (Trade Development Council) and Taiwan’s CCA (the Council of Cultural Affairs) and the NFA (National Foundation for the Arts), as well as more regional

http://www.policyaddress.gov.hk/2005/eng/p83.htm. [Accessed 2 May 2005] 67 A few international press picked up the news about Singapore’s move towards more international co-productions such as in ‘Oak3 in Film, TV Production Alliances with MDA, FFP’. [Online], (2004). Available:http://www.worldscreen.com/print.php? filename=oak412.htm [Accessed: 10 Apr 2004] and ‘East-West Period Drama With Top German And Asian Stars For International Release’ [Online], (2004). Available: http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/thenewsdesk.aspx?sid=579 [Accessed: 10 Apr 2004].

243 platforms like the NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asia-Pacific Cinema68), AEF (Asia-Europe Foundation) and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). The core and periphery are becoming ever more blurred in the global hegemony of certain media capitals supported indirectly by their governments.

Learning from their Hollywood counterparts is a given assumption for export-driven TV producers. As formatted TV productions circulate regionally, cultural entrepreneurs observe how Hollywood invests heavily in textual strategies to enable Hollywood’s reach to intensify across diverse cultural markets. This has resulted in drawing the most popular Asian celebrities of the moment to localize their latest products and services. For example, many Star Wars Episode III film posters at the local cinemas, at bus-stops and on billboards, ring-tones of the soundtrack and wallpapers on newly minted Sony-Ericsson mobile phones for sale and a collection of action figures. Non-English language territories have versions that are either dubbed into the local language using familiar local voices or subtitled with opening titles translated from English to Chinese, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia or Japanese, and getting local celebrities to grace the premiere of the film. Others like Disney’s Lilo & Stitch (2002) got F4 the Taiwanese television stars-turned-boy band to sing the Mandarin version of one of the soundtracks – Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.

Asian media producers have also attempted to hybridise their local knowledge with global templates of marketing and sell their productions overseas. The building of pan-Asian networks of cultural entrepreneurs, the rising demand for Asian media content among the media-savvy youths and the rising spending power of the middle classes among Asian media capitals provide suitable conditions for a regional marketplace.

Robert Chua’s Everyone Wins (Chapter Four) is a good example. His interactive knowledge-cum-visual game show borrowed heavily from the existing repertoire of global gameshow formats like Who Wants to be a Millionaire and The Weakest Link. Yet, he has marketed the game show format as an Asian-friendly gameshow co-

68 This was cited in Miller et al (2001:163) and see www.pacific.net.sg/siff and www.asiafilms.org, founded in 1994 -members

244 created by Asian talents and creativity. It was an opportunistic strategy that allowed Robert Chua to interact with the dominant ideologies promoted by various developing television industries, and to position his format offerings as domestic to Singapore, Asian to the West, yet global to Asia. This flexible positioning strategy depended on his knowledge of what cultural capital is valued in different markets, and by customizing his products to the diverse institutional demands of particular fields of broadcasting. He recognized that it was not just business marketing and ratings success that led to format sales. Personal marketing, cultural processes and institutional support counts too.

Iwabuchi (2004) offers another route that Japanese producers use. They target their own formats for the most lucrative markets in the world, America and Europe. The Asian markets are often a bonus. While the steady production of local television programmes unique to particular television cultures does not lead to a global circulation of their cultural commodities, some East Asian television industries have begun to find overseas audiences and international distribution outlets as well. Certain genres, styles, languages, and production modes have enduring international product life cycles, comparable to some of their Western counterparts in America and Europe.

Some East Asian television producers have chosen to join their Western counterparts in the global format business by licensing their television formats to Asian territories while retaining copyright ownership to the format. The example here is Robert Chua and his game show format, Everyone Wins (see Chapter Five). Others have chosen to emulate the ‘new international cultural division of labour’ practised by American off- shore films like The Lord of The Rings Trilogy and The Matrix, and television productions like X-files and Xena: Warrior Princess, and The Simpsons. But there is a difference: they use co-production and not contract work. See the examples of TVB (Chapter Four) and Peach Blossom Media (Chapter 5), which tapped into the expertise of labour pools of trained animators, television production crews and talents from Mainland China. However, the difference is that of strategic purposes vis-á-vis costs. While TVB’s cooperation is aimed at meeting China’s quota

include ‘critics, filmmakers, festival organizers and curators, distributors and exhibitors, and film educators’.

245 restrictions for ‘co-productions’ for television during prime-time, Peach Blossom Media’s cooperation is with a Hong Kong-based distributor linked to Mainland animation companies and is motivated by the need to use standardised, experienced and cheap contract workers to reduce overall production costs and time.

TVB would have to incur higher production costs in order to use China-based actors in key television roles as they command a higher performance fee than Hong Kong- based actors (Interview with Lee Tim-Shing, 26 October 2003). This explains why they would rather be selective in their choice of co-productions with Mainland Chinese television companies, and when doing so, they focus on creating classics with an existing ‘brand’ or positive positioning in Chinese popular culture. Otherwise, they still attempt to adapt classics with local actors and focus their energies on textual creativity by training a new focus on certain characters and plot movements, while making use of their existing marketing synergies in print and other television shows on its terrestrial networks. Well-aware of the cost driven nature of local production in Hong Kong television, very few Hong Kong television dramas are invested with spectacular 3-D animation or effects.

The four case studies illustrate how they need to rely on re-designing old genres, new media and complementary technologies, and new business models derived from the recent influx of globally successful gameshow-reality formats to extend their marketplace. Thus these cases illustrate the validity of the second hypothesis: While Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei have had strong comparative advantages in terms of sales of formulaic content in Chinese-speaking markets, success in new markets and new formats will be derived from understanding the changing global relationship between producers and consumers, especially in entertainment programmes.

While East Asian broadcasters (except the Japanese) tended to confine their roles in TV format trade to acquiring Western TV formats of gameshows (reality or studio- based) and current affairs, purchasing the license to produce or adapt from global (mostly Western TV formats) rather than create original, exportable formats, their local television programmes closely observed the prevailing conventions, including formatting practices made popular by media capitals like Hollywood and Europe.

246 Increasingly, East Asian TV producers (like their film producers) have also borrowed global Hollywood industry practices in new ways to engage with globally exposed Asian audiences in rapidly developing Asian cities and those living in other developed cities. These practices focus on investing heavily in production, manufacturing celebrities, cross-promotion and global marketing activities (see Rosen, 2003).

However, compared to the Global Hollywood model with its large distribution and political clout (see Miller et al, 2003), most East Asian industries lack the clout to create a global distribution system where locally-made TV formats form attractive exports. Instead, they have focused on harnessing TV formatting practices in hopes of rationalising the cultural marketplace so that it becomes sustainable. In particular, these TV formatting practices are linked to greater investment in marketing so as to manufacture a new hierarchy of values that place them as leaders in the fields that they are exporting from. Three types of marketing activity are observable across the case studies – commercial marketing, textual marketing and institutional marketing.

For commercial marketing, there is almost a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ effect to this kind of marketing activity. Of the four case studies; HSDS2000 and Meteor Garden were the most heavily marketed. Both television productions were pre-sold to audiences based on the brand value of the original novel or comic, respectively, which already enjoyed a large following and successful track record in the print industry. With the benefit of market research and an easily identifiable market for these intellectual properties, the producers employed safe formatting practices in conjunction with marketing practices to amortise their risks in producing TV programmes with higher production budgets and withstanding comparisons to other classics.

Miller et al (2001) highlight how textual marketing enables cultural commodities to be associated with other product tie-ins, product extension and merchandising opportunities by using familiar voices, changing names/titles of the products, designing advertising and product placements with more globally recognized products and services. Arguably, while Meteor Garden has come and gone from television schedules in Asia, F4’s celebrity remains sustained by the continual

247 association, at concerts and through advertisements, with global brands like Pepsi and Toyota. (See Diagram 8.1 on Pepsi and F4 below)

Diagram 8.1 Billboard Advertisement of F4 promoting Pepsi in Taiwan69

These tie-ins are lucrative revenue-generating activities. They extend the life-cycle of cultural commodities with more audiences overseas. Miller et al (2001: 156) cite the examples of Four Weddings and a Funeral (1996), the James Bond franchise, and Men in Black (2000) where fast moving consumable goods like cars, alcohol, mobile phones, credit cards and toys can be easily cross-promoted.

Meanwhile, cultural products have even moved into alternative media productions such as creating spin-offs on television like Men in Black, the cartoon series from the hit film, and Taiwanese television idol drama, Meteor Garden (2001) from its published Japanese comic, Hana Yori Dango (See Diagram 8.2).

769This is extracted from http://www.sinorama.com.tw/en/show_issue.php3?id=2002129112068e.txt&page=1,Jan 29, 2002.

248 Diagram 8.2 HYD manga and Meteor Garden merchandise70

Finally, most television industries aiming for exportability undertake to obtain institutional marketing — the advocacy role that government agencies can play to help promote a particular media industry. More Asian governments have begun their efforts at industry promotion and trade either directly through their own administrative polices or indirectly through co-opting partners, financing, circulation and distribution for their indigenous industries.

De-centering global Hollywood becomes possible where multiple cultural markets are fragmented by alternative media producers and cultural trade from regional players. Hollywood’s response is to localize their channels and use subtitles or voice-

70 The sources for these are: Hana Yori Dango dot com – The tribute to “Boys before Flowers” [Online], (2002). Available: http://www.hanayoridango.com [Accessed date: 30 May 2002]; The Manga & Scans [Online], (2002). Available: http://www.geocities.com/makinosempai/Manga.html [Accessed date: 29 May 2002]; Ebay [Online], (2003). Available: http://search.ebay.com/Meteor-Garden_W0QQsosortorder Z1QQsosortpropertyZ1QQsotextsearchedZ1 [Accessed date: 12 November, 2003].

249 over. Yet Asian media producers are gradually eroding Hollywood’s advantages in various local markets in the region, some of which have spilled outwards to Western cultural markets. However, there is no denying Hollywood’s global expertise, competitive advantage and enormous capitalization that enables it to invest in marketing and create business synergies.

Across this diverse regional landscape, a history of uneven developments in television markets, different policy regimes and lack of a regionally accepted policing mechanism to regulate television programme exchanges mean that format distributors are heavily reliant on informal networks or cultural intermediaries in the host territories. Without the marketing appeal of a global commodity system that privileges American popular culture, East Asian producers who want to re-sell their programmes as formats normally need to rely on personal networking with key agents and to actively accumulate cultural capital in these fields.

Limitations of Study

As this thesis makes comparison of three different television industries, it was not possible to include other East Asian television industries in the study. Also, due to SARS outbreak in late Feb 2003, data collection which started in late 2002 was delayed as all three cities under study were on the WHO (2003) list of SARS- affected countries, discouraging overseas travel to these cities. However, I overcame this by opting to replace face-to-face interviewing with telephone interviews and indirect sources in my country of origin. The interviews took place with third-party distributors and industry contacts that enjoyed a broad experience and familiarity with both Taipei and Hong Kong, respectively.

The methodological approach used here does not enable a comprehensive analysis of the industry but offers an in-depth analysis of the selected TV series only. By the time I started to collect real-time data for analysis, at least one case study had been off-the-air for three years. This made it difficult to collect a lot of the materials from official sources, producers or track the feedback on the TV programmes. This study needs to be complemented by a longitudinal study of similar kinds of TV series in

250 these cities. This would provide a more representative measure of the production strategies and their successes. It also requires consumption studies in the destination territories in which I was not personally able to collect data from, except when the TV programmes were telecast in Singapore.

Future Directions for Research

The study suggests that more detailed data and analysis of the local industries of emerging media capitals in Asia is needed. As youth programming often causes tensions between traditional and emerging industry practices, it would be interesting to investigate youthful responses to such changes to television production strategies. The overlapping fields of music, television, film and animation is an interesting area for future research. Furthermore, the displacement of Hollywood as the major, on- going dynamic for media globalization in East Asia makes it critical to track changes in successful strategies of Asian media productions and the matrix of East Asian creative industries. Reception studies in non-Chinese language territories like Thailand, Malaysia and others can also inform on the impact of these smaller East Asian industries.

Concluding Remarks

The phenomenal rise of reality TV gameshows and TV formatting practices in these cities are both a social commentary about how ‘globally mediated’ our lives have become over time and how the premise of a good idea (i.e. the format) lowers the bar for indigenous Asian TV industries to produce more engaging content that can be exportable and commercialised. The four case studies of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000, Everyone Wins, Tomato Twins and Meteor Garden demonstrate it is not simply companies from industrialised Western capitalist countries that internationalise in response to ‘falling profits’ or undertake a ‘spatial fix’ to spread and cut production costs over cheaper overseas locations (Harvey, 1989: 183). Clearly, emerging cultural businesses in industrialized East Asian countries also assume similar roles because of both push factors (like a limited domestic economy) and pull factors (of a regional marketplace).

251 Looking back to the past, we revert to the two research questions that frame this study: What are the factors and pre-conditions that enable or hinder the development of viable Asian television production centres, and their ability to develop, trade and export TV content successfully regionally and internationally? To what extent is format trade contributing to the internationalisation of Asian television productions?

Through the previous discussion about formatting practices and the changes in the East Asian TV industries, Chapter Seven has argued that TV producers use popular cultural forms as currencies (media crossovers, stars/celebrities and styles) that was traded across national boundaries to produce successful and exportable Asian TV productions. Indeed, cultural entrepreneurs at various moments of production, distribution, representation and consumption use formatting strategies that depend on signifying their productions as part of a larger East Asian popular culture. As the regional circuits of cultural production translate into regional cultural economies, formatting practices become crucial in helping East Asian TV industries move simultaneously towards the larger global cultural economy (that is, Hollywood), while also moving away from it.

The previous chapters have identified the critical factors for developing a sustainable and exportable television industry. They are as follows: the presence of industry development strategies, increased presence of transnational media, the creative exploitation of the Internet, the regional dynamic of intensified intra-Asian flows of East Asian popular culture, state-endorsed regionalism, and regional networks of production and exchange.

Furthermore, among the pre-conditions necessary for today’s television industries to be part of a sustainable creative industry, this study partially corroborates earlier studies about the presence of creative clusters. But it shows that independents are globally-networked to other regional urban centres also. As media capitals they offer access and opportunities to local, regional and global talents, an industry habitus that is focused on cultural entrepreneurship and generating new forms of local knowledge (or innovation), easy access to talents, ideas and synergies provided by overlapping fields of cultural production, and a shift in attitudes towards viewing local media productions as content for commercially viable industries.

252

While I am a Singaporean who has grown up mostly in Singapore, I have also enjoyed the privilege of traversing the East Asian mediascape. A frequent traveller makes for an experienced commentator, and since undertaking this research expedition to Hong Kong and Taipei, I would like to conclude the journey with a borrowed quote which I feel summarises the direction of future research into East Asian media productions:

With speed and radical change in the subjective as major elements shaping a new global narrative, the history, economy, and symbolic aspects of Hong Kong’s[/Singapore’s/Taipei’s] cultural productions in the 1980s and the 1990s, both are and are not Hong Kong’s[/entirely their] own. Local cultural productions are not merely expressions of local identity and memory. Competing with Hollywood for Chinese[/east Asian] audiences and for overseas markets, they are already a part of the media hegemonies, on the one hand, and they help generate other stories and memories in diverse instances of consumption, reading, and reinvention, on the other. (Esther Yau, 2001: 5, [my inserts])

I hope that this thesis has shed a little more light on the importance of a regional dynamic in reshaping how cultural and creative industries evolve into creative industries outside the global Hollywood circuit of cultural production. It reflects a fundamental belief that I share with Asians living across the globe that television is a cornerstone of the global communication network for sharing fictional, personal, or mythical histories, imagined communities, identities and beliefs, contemporaneously if not instantaneously. Using the new economic mode of exchange, albeit with its pitfalls, Asian media productions build a new consciousness where the past, present and future are linked by Asian media producers and audiences to a convergence of multiple fields of cultural production. It uses a televisual grammar to achieve a new fixity and permanence, and discovers new languages of power to define their relationships within and without.

253 APPENDIX 1: LIST OF INTERVIEWEES

SINGAPORE-BASED respondents Mr Adrian Ong, CEO, Right Angle Media Mr Chong Gim-Hwee, Senior Manager (Channel 5), MediaCorp Mr Han Guang-Wei, Executive Producer, ThreeSixZero Productions Ms Jean Yeo, Executive Producer, Ochre Pictures Mr Jiang Long, ex-ATV veteran & retired Head of Productions (Channel 8), MediaCorp Ms Selena Ho, AVP (Programming Channel 5), MediaCorp Mr Michel Rodriguez, CEO, Distraction Formats Mr Sung Lin-Gun, CEO, Peach Blossom Media

TAIPEI-BASED respondents Mr Cheung Wei-Shiung, Head (Programme Distribution), Public Television Station Ms Iris Yang, Assistant Producer, Comic Ritz Productions Mr James Wong, CEO, Cuckoo Nest Animation Studios Ms Liu De-Hui, Executive Producer, Azio TV Production Company Ms Sharon Mao, playwright and freelance TV scriptwriter

HONG KONG-BASED respondents Dr Janie To, Head (Research), TVB Mr Lee Tim-Shing, Executive Producer, TVB Mr Robert Chua, CEO, Robert Chua Production House Ms Sen Lee, ex-scriptwriter, TVB Mr Sherman Lee, Asst General Manager, TVBI

254 APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW GUIDE

A. BACKGROUND OF TV EXECUTIVE/PRODUCTION TEAM: CAREER PATH AND AMBITION

1. In what year did you start working in television? 2. What was your first job in television? 3. How did you get started? Please describe your career path in the industry. 4. What is the greatest satisfaction and/or frustration? 5. What do you want to achieve? Would you consider leaving the industry for other jobs? Making a movie, for example?

B. FORMATS & INTERNATIONALISING ASIAN/LOCAL CONTENT This section may be used for interviews with general industry personnel in the TV industry development and content development from regulators to programmers.

6. What, in your opinion, is a ‘format’? In your view, what are the defining features of a TV project that makes it a TV format? What recent TV projects have you heard that would qualify as a TV format, in your view, on TV or at the markets? 7. Some say that for Asia content to reach world markets, the solution is to use formats. Do you agree/disagree with this? And why? 8. What kinds of content do you think ‘travels’? Which other Asian city/country do you think has successively exported their TV programmes overseas over the last 2 years? 9. What programmes do you think have travelled particularly well in the past few years? Why do you think they succeed? What do you think has failed and why?

255 C. SELECTED QUESTIONS ON RELEVANT TV CASE STUDY This section is only for respondents who are involved directly/indirectly with the development/ production/ financing/ promotion/broadcast of a case study.

10. About the programme, and the reasons for producing it. How does it compare with earlier versions/similar programmes in the television market? 11. Free discussion of the programme contents. 12. Please describe the creative process of programme planning and producing the programme, e.g., who originates the ideas, who is most influential, what criteria do the creative team use to determine quality of the script, scenes, actors, music, etc. 13. Why make this/similar programmes so popular? Does the producer/company obtain a licensing fee from writers/format creator to produce and telecast these TV programmes? 14. What are some of the aesthetic and organizational norms in your productions? E.g., How is the production team organized? 15. What kinds of feedback systems do production and marketing people in your company use? For example, do production teams have ideas of people’s tastes or keep track of ratings? Do you care about reviews, or think of winning awards? How do you assess whether a serial is a success? 16. Describe the marketing, promotions and distribution process at your company. E.g., How does your company commonly market and distribute programmes? 17. What kind of promotional tools do you use to market your current titles? Do you have target audience in mind? Do you have any idea about their tastes and preferences? Where do you get the hints of audience preferences? Do perceived audience tastes affect your programme design? 18. Do you care about ratings and reviews? How do they affect you / your company?

256

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