Australian UNESCO Orbicom Working Papers in Communications No.1, Griffith University, Brisbane
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COVER SHEET Keane, M. Moran, A., and Ryan, M. (eds.) 2003, Audio visual works, TV formats and multiple markets, Australian UNESCO Orbicom Working Papers in Communications no.1, Griffith University, Brisbane. Accessed from http://eprints.qut.edu.au Copyright 2003 Griffith University Australian UNESCO Orbicom Working Papers in Communications: No. 1 Audiovisual works, TV formats and multiple markets Edited by Michael Keane, Albert Moran and Mark Ryan Brisbane, 2003 ISBN 0 909291888 First Published December 2003 Griffith University This report may be cited as Keane, M. Moran, A., and Ryan, M. (eds.) 2003, Audio visual works, TV formats and multiple markets, Australian UNESCO Orbicom Working Papers in Communications no.1, Griffith University, Brisbane. © Michael Keane, Albert Moran & Mark Ryan 2003 This work is copyright. Apart from those uses which may be permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 as amended, no part of this report may be reproduced without expressed permission from the author. Griffith University Nathan Campus NATHAN, Brisbane 4111 Further copies can be ordered from: Professor Tom O'Regan Dr. Albert Moran, School of English, Media Studies and Art School of Arts, Media and Culture, History Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Griffith University, St Lucia, Brisbane, Qld 4072 Nathan, Queensland 4111, Australia Australia ph: 61 7 3365 2211 Tel.+61.7.38449018 (direct) fax: 61 7 3365 2799 Fax. +61.7.3875.7730 [email protected] Email: [email protected] Audiovisual Works, TV formats and multiple markets 2 INTRODUCTION Program formats are increasingly playing a central role in television and multimedia. Yet there is very little documentation and analysis of this important trend. This Occasional Paper is the proceedings of a workshop held at Griffith University, Nathan Campus, on 14 November under the auspices of the Australian UNESCO-Orbicom Chair’s program in communications and is designed to facilitate discussion, documentation and analysis of program formats. The workshop brought together experts in copyright and television formats to look at formats and the trade in international audio-visual rights. The workshop started from the recognition that the TV format presents a vehicle for entrepreneurial producers and production companies to extract intellectual property rents in different locations through the distribution and sale of formats licenses. It also recognized that there are significant problems in securing legal protection for formats with there being little to no copyright protection stoping program ideas being copied and sold on. The workshop was designed to take further the thinking behind Albert Moran and Michael Keane’s edited book Television across Asia: Television Industries, Programme Formats and Globalization (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). (This book had just come off the presses at the time of the seminar.) In particular we were hoping to advance the conceptualization and many of the themes of that publication through assembling many of the book’s authors—Amos Thomas, Philip Kitley, Albert Moran, Michael Keane—together with other participants including the prominent US entertainment industry lawyer and writer Bill Grantham, the author of Big bourgeois brothel: Contexts for France’s Cultural Wars with Hollywood (2000) and other researchers— Justin Malbon, Ben Goldsmith, Mark Ryan, Sue Ward, Lucy Montgomery and Tom O’Regan. The result is an invaluable discussion of the role, shape and character of program formats globally with discussion ranging over the East and South East Asian, European, American, and Australasian contexts. To facilitate discussion, a short paper ‘The Asia Pacific Project’, was circulated to all participants. This paper is included as an appendix to this publication. The concerns of this workshop and its participants are very much the concerns of the UNESCO-Orbicom network. The role played by ‘piracy’ and ‘licensing’ in program format trade raises important national communication and information policy issues such as: what should be the copyright status of formats? How do copyright provisions and licensing systems interact with industry norms to both enable and constrain program format trade? Just how are the rights of the producer and the rights of the user to be balanced in national communication and information policies? The seminar also shows just how important program formats are to media development and management. Program formats are a critical traded component of television and media systems in fragmenting media environments. As such the program format is an increasingly important part of the innovation system with formats introducing television to experimentations in interactive and enhanced cinema, television and gaming. In addition the program format is one of the important vehicles through which cultural materials are exchanged in television and multimedia systems. With the increasing significance of program formats and format franchises to television and digital content more generally professional training will increasingly need to take greater account of and provide training for format production. Audiovisual Works, TV formats and multiple markets i The research summarised here was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery award for the project "Economic, legal and cultural dynamics of TV program format flow in the Asia/Oceania region" obtained by Moran, Keane, Malbon and Thomas for the period 2002-2004. This is the first in a projected series of occasional papers produced under the auspices of the Australian UNESCO-Orbicom Chair. Tom O’Regan Australian UNESCO-Orbicom Chair of Communication Griffith University Audiovisual Works, TV formats and multiple markets ii CONTENTS Page Introduction Tom O’Regan i Contributors iv Two or three things I know about formats Albert Moran 1 Discussion 5 Formatting in East Asian television markets: the precursor to a new business model? Michael Keane 7 Discussion 10 Who wouldn’t want a ‘Millionaire’ Program? Market context of Indian TV clones Amos Owen Thomas 15 Discussion 22 All the eggs in one basket: The new TV formats global business strategy Justin Malbon 26 Discussion 39 International law and TV Formats: perspective and synthesis Bill Grantham 43 Discussion 50 Concluding Remarks Tom O’Regan 54 List of Participants 56 Appendix: The Asia Pacific Project Albert Moran and Michael Keane 57 About the UNESCO-Orbicom Chair of Communication 63 Audiovisual Works, TV formats and multiple markets iii CONTRIBUTORS Bill Grantham Bill Grantham is an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles who has organised finance for such features as Terminator 3. He has degrees in literary studies from the University of Liverpool and Oxford University and a law degree from the University of California. Previously, he was a media journalist attached to the Paris bureau of Variety and was also founding editor of TV Business International. Well know for his book Some Big Bourgeois Brothel: Contexts for France's Culture Wars with Hollywood (University of Luton press, 2000) he was a visiting lecturer in the School of Law at Griffith University in late 2003. Michael Keane Michael Keane is an Australian Research Council Post-doctoral fellow at the Queensland University of Technology. Interests are Asian media systems and television program formats. Recent publications include Media in China: Consumption, Content & Crisis (RoutledgeCurzon 2002); Television Across Asia: Television Industries, Programme Formats and Globalisation (with Albert Moran 2003); and Out of Nowhere: New Television Formats and the East Asian Cultural Imagination (Hong Kong University Press 2004 forthcoming). He is also the moderator of Creative Industries Research East Asia. http://cirac.qut.edu.au/asia/. Justin Malbon Dr Justin Malbon has a broad legal and academic experience. He was a partner in a small law firm in Adelaide for five years and appeared as a Barrister in numerous jury trials in the Supreme and District Courts. He taught at the Law School at Melbourne University, was the Research Manager at the Melbourne Office of Blake Dawson Waldron (Solicitors), the head of the Legal Branch in the Queensland Division of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs and Assistant Parliamentary Counsel. Justin is a Senior Lecturer in the Law School at Griffith University. He co-produced a short film Grace for the Shifting Sands series of films created by Indigenous filmmakers for SBS, and is a member of the board of QPix Ltd, Queensland’s screen development centre. Albert Moran Albert Moran is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts, Media and Culture at Griffith University. He has written extensively on film and television in Australia and in other parts of the world. His interest in TV program formats stems from research that led to Copycat TV: Globalisation, Program Formats and Cultural Identity (University of Luton Press 1998). More recently, he has co-edited Television across Asia: Television Industries, Formats and Flows (RoutledgeCurzon 2003). Current related research includes writing a handbook that deals with business, devising and legal aspects of formats and a study of how formats might be given legal protection. Audiovisual Works, TV formats and multiple markets iv Amos Owen Thomas Amos Owen Thomas is senior lecturer in marketing and international business at Griffith University, Gold Coast campus. His somewhat eclectic research interests include the political economy of international communications, global marketing and advertising strategies, and business ethics in developing countries.