Formatting and Change in

East Asian Television 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 dramas, teenage idol soap
operas, game-shows.

ii
Abstract

Television is increasingly both global and local. Those television industries

discussed in this thesis transact 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 animation and teenage idol soap
operas from East Asian television industries have in common? Through the
systematic use of TV formatting strategies, these television genres have
become the focus for indigenous cultural entrepreneurs located in the East
Asian cities of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei 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 American Idol
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
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

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
Internet 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 copyright 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.

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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 DRAMA SERIALS………………………….…………85

CHAPTER FIVE: THE CASE FOR SINGAPORE:

NEW SINGAPORE, NEW MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES……………..…….….119

CHAPTER SIX: THE REACH OF TAIWAN –

TAIWANESE TEENAGE SOAP OPERA/POP IDOLS………………..….….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 Japan (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 Jin Yong’s novels

in the fields of Film and on Television Broadcasting…………………………....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 Channel 8 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-Chen, 1993)………………….………...139

Diagram 5.5 Descriptive profile of television episodes

of Tomato Twins (Series 1)………………………………………………………151

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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

MediaCorp 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 translation have been used so as to
realize correct translations of programme titles. In Singapore, we used the ‘hanyu
pinyin’ 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 my 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, Australia. 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 Lin-Gun and the
team at Peach Blossom Media, Robert Chua, Dr Janie To, Lee Tim-Shing, Sherman
Lee, Sen Lee, Iris Yang, 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’ living in
industrialised cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taipei, and recently, Shanghai and Beijing (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 (China’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 terrestrial television 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 Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea); 95
percent (Thailand); 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 Asia
Television 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 India 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 Cantopop 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)

This figure is not available online.

Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

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 Tiger,
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 anime 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, telecommunications and entrepot trade are attracting the
presence of transnational firms, including those from media industries, like Rupert
Murdoch’s NewsCorp purchase of Star TV in 1993 (Langdale, 1997). While satellite
television 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 articulation 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 educational animation 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 animations 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
Agreements 2 . 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 Shanghai Media Group (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 Cantonese 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 intellectual
property (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 copyrights. 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 Canada 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 mass
media 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 remake 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 Malaysia 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 Ma, 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 Indonesia.

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 piece-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 sitcoms are less visible because of a fundamental belief that Asian drama
or sitcom 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 Channel 5 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 Chinese language
channels, which also produce Chinese language versions of a select few Western
game show 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 Jack Neo 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-Vietnam 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’ Infernal Affairs, a Hong Kong mafia-police film trilogy helmed
by Hong Kong heartthrobs Andy Lau and Leon Lai, saw the screenplay 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, Raintree Pictures, 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 Money No
Enough (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 cable television 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 Korean drama
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 manner 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 Channel V. 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 Korean wave (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 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. 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 flash animation
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. Charmaine Sheh 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 distribution 5 . 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
reality television 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,
The Amazing Race, 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 genre 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 Latin America 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 mix.
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
plagiarism, 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

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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 remakes 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, Journey to the West; 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

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 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 originality 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).

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 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.

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 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].

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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

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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

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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 Southeast
Asia.

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.

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 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

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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.

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 • 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

This figure is not available online.

Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

70
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.

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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

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 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)

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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

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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).

75
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,
Prose, TV News, Lifestyle
hows, TV Comedy,
Children’s TV
Meta-Recipe/Menu
(broad categories of creative
knowledge that presumes
specific conventions & styles
that aggregate writers into
ifi l )
Play, Drama Serial, Romance, Sci-fi,
Novel, Daily News Western, Martial arts
Programme, Variety, (categories)/
Situation Comedy, Pie; & can be easily
Children’s Animated identified/expected to
Cartoons use elements of
(best forms/popular narrative/themes/charact
forms); can be traded/ ers that aggregate
exchanged/ published readers/audiences
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
Publicity Distributed by
& 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].

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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

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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.

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 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

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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
Rediffusion Television (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
• Actors
• Music publishing company
HK Broadcasting field:
• Special effects
team
• Management 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 television in Hong Kong
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 paper 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, Tsui Hark 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. Gigi Leung, 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 Miss Hong Kong
Pageant 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.

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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

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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 story-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

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

The martial arts or wuxia (武侠), literally meaning "martial arts chivalry" or martial
knight/adventurer 6 ), genre was popularised by 1950s’ writers such as Jin Yong,
Liang Yu-sheng and Gu Long. 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 Tang dynasty (618-907
AD) focused on individual heroes performing extraordinary feats, and the epic tales
of The Water Margin (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].

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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 romanticism,
the mythical figures with magical powers, their use of Chinese culture 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).

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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 Zheng, 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].

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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); Mainland China
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].

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 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
The Book and The Sword 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

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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])

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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]

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Sabre Part II, and starred Cheung Ying, in the lead role of Zhang 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 Bruce Lee) 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 Adam
Cheng, 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 Steve Ma King To.

Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 2000 (Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000)
starred Lawrence Ng Kai Wah, Gigi Lai, Charmaine Sheh, Joyce Tang 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 Wong Jing and starring Jet Li 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,

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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
Executive Producer (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

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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 dubbing 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

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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
purchase Screenplay rights for Heaven Sword and
Dragon Sabre, and obtains the rights for a 6-year
expiry period.
Executive Producer (EP) + Scriptwriting team
discuss script treatment, using previous television
ratings of similar dramas as a guide.
Executive Producer assembles the creative team of
5 directors to produce several episodes each.
TVB executives decide to soft launch
Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre2000 via TVBI Entertainment News in Hong Kong
EP assigns a series of episodes to one video release first in 2000. features celebrity pics to HSDS2000
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.
Jin Yong’s name is printed in gold, next to
EP oversees production process HSDS2000 Programme & cover title
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;
TVBI video rentals include
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

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

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. TVB actors, author Jin Yong and the Heaven
are reportedly to TVB management and EP of
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,
TVB’s television ratings of daily telecast processed Dragon Sabre2000, and purchase related
and Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre forums like
by TVB’s research department. merchandise
Network 54, compare Heaven Sword and Dragon 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 ).

108
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: Yes & 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 Sheren Tang 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. Carol
Cheng (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].

109
 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 Yang Guo’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.

111
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 Dicky Cheung Wai-Kin, Ruby Lin 36 2.33 89%
2000 (Lam Sum-Yu) million
A STEP INTO THE PAST Louis Koo 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
ARMED REACTION III Ada Choi Siu-Fan, Bobby Au 33 2.11 80%
Yeung Jun-Wah million
ON THE TRACK OR OFF Ada Choi Siu-Fan, Steven Ma 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 Benny Chan Ho-Man, Chin Kar- 31 2.02 82%
Lok million
ROMANCE IN THE Vicki Zhao Wei, 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:

114
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 Huang Yi (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 (Ming
Pao) 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

116
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

Louis Cha’s novels appear
firstly in print under his pen
name, Jin Yong in
newspapers (1955-1970) &
later re-issued in novels the
1970s. Heaven Sword and
Dragon Sabre was 1st
published in 1961.
cultural production -
Heaven Sword and
Heaven Sword and Dragon
Dragon Sabre Sabre telecasts on TVB Jade;
resold by TVBI to subsidiaries for
rental and overseas
broadcasters; the 1978 and 1986
versions were repackaged and
edited to be released on VCDs in
2003. 2000 version is yet to be
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
Sabre Vol.16
for celebrities and
(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, Los Angeles), 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.

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 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

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(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.

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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

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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

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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, 2004 34 ). 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

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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?].

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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,

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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].

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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 Chinese New Year 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]

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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)

This figure is not available online.

Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

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]

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Robert Chua worked with many Singaporeans 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 the Straits Times 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].

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 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 Neo 40 , 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’, South China Morning Post [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].

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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 Channel U’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].

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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).

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 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.

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 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-

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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)

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 This figure is not available online.
Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

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

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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

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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
animators, 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]

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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].

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 the first in the region to merge the web, the wireless 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

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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].

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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 Shanghai Television 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.

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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.

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Although Asian producers used to see themselves as merely contracted labour for
Hollywood and Japanese animation studios, the low-cost outsourcing 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).

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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

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 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 animated series. 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

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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

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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
episode
1 Episode 7A, MC Kat vs
Prof Twang’. 26 Feb 2003
2 Episode 7B, What time is
it?, 26 Feb 2003
3 Episode 9A, Costume
Trunk, 1 Apr 2003
4 Episode 9B, Fred Pest
Trophy, 1 Apr 2003
Narrative/themes
Kat kitten, nephew of Kat Pest Trophy, visits his uncle and takes
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. Prince 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.
This episode follows from MC Kat vs Prof Twang. Mr Tomato
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.
While Ti-yo and Ti-ann watch a recent movie by Jimbob
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.
This episode follows from ‘Costume Trunk’. Frederick, a new
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.
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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].

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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).

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 Diagram 5.6 Screenshots of Tomato Twins versus Powerpuff Girls

This figure is not available online.

Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

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]

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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

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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 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

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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 Chinese voice-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)

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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.

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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 -- imitation, 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

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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. Taiwan Television 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, Formosa Television (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:

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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

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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

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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

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 ‘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

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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 Jerry Yan, Ken Zhu, Vanness Wu 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 boy band. 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

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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 Tigers (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 television show, 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 Harlem Yu on Taiwan’s pioneer television variety show,
Super Sunday. It therefore seems an organic outgrowth of this cultural circuit of talent

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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 Taiwanese literature or hsiang-tu literature

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(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

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 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
Chinese idol 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. Yoko Kamio 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)

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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 China Television
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.

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 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
Chai (EP of CTS) approaches
Shuiesha (publisher) to purchase
Screenplay rights for Hana Yori Dango,
and obtains the rights for a 2-year
period.
EP works with Shuiesha publisher on
storyline. Then EP selects local playwright
to discuss TV script treatment using only
the comic as guide
Executive Producer assembles the
creative team of 1 MTV director, 2 Asst
Producers, 1 scriptwriter and co-opts
variety show production team and
transform into drama unit. She forms
her own company, Comic Rtiz
Productions.
EP works with director and scriptwriter MG2001 gets airing on CTS, 8.15pm once a F4 and Big S (Shan Cai) appear in
closely. She also makes the creative week (for the 1st 4 weeks) and then is variety shows. They have their own
decisions in casting, hunting telecast every weekday till run ends. shows as well.
‘worldwide’ for 4 male leads to play the
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 gets sponsors for series and in Hong Kong-linked movies.
MG2001 is resold as VCDs and then
places products in script.
DVDs, with many pirated copies floating in
East and southeast Asian cities.
F4 and MG2001 merchandise appear
everywhere. Include puzzles, cups,
EP supervises EP announces F4 will resume acting stint
flags, fashion accessories, etc.
postproduction & editing with MG2002 in works, after music tour of
to determine completion date. key cities – East Asia, North America, etc.
EMI launches MG music album with old
hits repackaged with MG TV drama cover.
EP pre-sells MG2001 to Satellite &
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
Fan fiction, 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 Shueisha 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 Yue 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 Taiwanese people 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 Barbie Hsu (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
adaptation
1 Storyline 29 volumes of HYD used
2 Characteriza HYD’s main cast include
tion F4, Tsukishu, elder sister
to Doujimou, and
Tsukishi’s friends like
Xiao Ying and Mu Zhen
Zi.
3 Mise-en- HYD is a black-and-white
scene/ comic book set out frame
Setting by frame. It is set in Tokyo
and far-flung locations
from New York to
Switzerland.
Meteor Garden2001
The 19 episodes feature most of volume 1-29 except
those parts not realizable such as Shan Cai going to
New York.
Meteor Garden retains the names of the leading lady
and F4 from the comic by selecting similar
sounding names to the comic as follows:
Shan Cai = Tsushuki
Dao Ming-Si = Doumyouji,
Ximen = Soujirou
Hua Ze-Lei = Hanazawa Rui
Meizhou = 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.
While attempting to retain the ‘comic book feel’ of
HYD, Meteor Garden had to fulfil the audio-visual
needs of a live-action drama. This meant a full
colour treatment of the scenes, concern with
lighting, music and props not drawn in by the HYD.
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?

This figure is not available online.

Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

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

189
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-Asian idol dramas.

49 See Lin (2002).

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CHAPTER SEVEN: EAST ASIAN TELEVISION AS REGIONAL
FORCE OF MEDIA GLOBALIZATION
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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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

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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

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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 the Academy
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

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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 retail, 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:

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Diagram 7.2 Comparison51 of 3 East Asian cities along Curtin’s (2003) media capital
Cities Hong Kong
Centres of media Co-pro MOU with
activity related to Canada (1994);
other cities (eg. Geopolitcially linked to
FTAs/MOUs China- hinterland
with countries, or (1997)
other forms of Television and film
cultural exchange content inspired by
or migration to Cantonese and Beijing
and from these opera and film
cities) production in
Guangzhou and
Shanghai.
Presence of 130 pay TV channels
global and operated by 5 pay TV
regional media platform owners.
networks. 1 domestically owned
international satellite
-- Is there a company, Galaxy
concentration of Broadcasting Services.
global resources, 2 foreign satellite TV
reputation, broadcasters based there
talents (NatGeo, and Star TV).
(exportable)? 4 free-to-air terrestrial
TV channels, 1 public
broadcaster using 2 free-
to-air TV channels, and
a few free terrestrial
digital TV channels.
Presence of HK talents are famous
media talents and actors, directors,
enterprising novelists, and martial
people/ arts choreographers for
companies action and martial arts
film, and Canto-pop
music stars, mediate
circuits in Hollywood,
Taipei and Hong Kong.
Examples include Jin
Yong (martial arts
fiction), Jackie Chan
(film), Chow Yuen-fatt
(tvandfilm), Samo
Hung,(film) Michelle
Yeoh (film), Coco Lee
(music), Maggie Cheung
(film and tv), Tony
Leung Kar Fei (film)
and Tony Leung Chiu
Wai (film and tv), Tsui
Hark (film and tv), John
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.
Singapore
Co-pro MOU with
Canada, (1998); Signed
1st Asian FTA with
Japan (Jan 2002); SIN-
Taiwan FTA (TBC Mar
2002); FTA with USA
(2003), followed by
other FTAs with
Australia (TBC) and
MOU with South
Korean
60 pay TV channels
operated by 1 cable TV
system. 15 foreign-
satellite TV broadcasters
based there. 1
domestically owned
regional news channel,
Channel News Asia
(Mar, 2005). 5 free-to-
air TV channels with 1
of them offering 3
thematic belts (all are
quasi-public
broadcasters). 1 free
mobile TV channel.
Singapore stars,
directors and other
talents are associated
closely with other Asian
(eg. HK or Taipei)
media industries or
Hollywood. Examples
include Nickson Fong
(animation), Fann Wong
(film, tv and music),
Stephanie Sun (music),
Jack Neo (film and tv),
Eric Khoo (film and tv),
Royston Tan (film), Lee
brothers (music), Gurmit
Singh (tv), Dick Lee
(music), Jacintha
Abishiganedan (music),
etc.
Government-linked
companies that invest in
Taipei
Seeking FTA with
Korea, and other
countries but have
established informal
business ties with PRC
and other countries.
(However, as FTAs are
tied to political stature
and global relations.
Such linkages are fragile
given Taiwan’s
uncertain status vis-a-
vis the PRC.
132 pay TV channels
offered by 60 domestic
and 19 foreign
companies, of which
there are 69 cable
operators (Feb 2004).
Most operate out of
Taipei. As of 2005,
there are 5 free-to-air
commercial channels,
inclusive of 1 stand-
alone public
broadcaster.
Taiwanese directors,
stars, singers, producers
actors and other talents
that tend to become
famous abroad
regionally or
internationally – Lee
Ang (film), Teresa Teng
(music and tv), F4
(tvand music), 5566
(music and tv), Chin
Han (film), Sylvia
Zhang (film), Angie
Chai (tv), Gu Long
(martial arts fiction),
Qiong Yao (romance
fiction), etc.
Family-owned media
firms such as Eastern
Multimedia Group and
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 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

Mediating role(s) The base for Cantopop,
in popular culture martial arts fiction, films
and television dramas;
kung-fu styled special
effects and animation.
like Discovery.
The base for Asia The base for Mandopop;
Pacific satellite TV weepy romance fiction,
broadcasters; hybrid and translation of
forms of new Asian Japanese pop culture
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,

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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potential content buyers for the shows. Tomato Twins creators were interviewed in
Singapore’s tabloid newspaper, The New Paper (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 touch 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-animator 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

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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

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 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

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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

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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 pop
idol 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 Three Kingdoms, 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

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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 television in Japan,
such as Astro 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

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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].

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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, Xu 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].

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 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.

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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

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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 Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2003)
are highly nationalistic in their expression of martial arts genres.

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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 Chinese animation. 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].]

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 ‘bricolage’ - 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]

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 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

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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.

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 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.

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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
Hunan 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 Apprentice 61 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.

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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

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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

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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 television producer 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.

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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

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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 Japanese language. 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].

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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.

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 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.

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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, Brunei, 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 (Hokkien). 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.

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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 Cyberport 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)

This figure is not available online.

Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

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

This figure is not available online.

Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT Library

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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