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

From time to time certain television shows ‘stop the nation’. In 2002 the localized version of the Celador licensed format2 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? glued over a third of Indonesian television households to their screens at 7pm on Saturday nights.3 Is it the vicarious thrill of winning undreamed-of riches in a country which has been the slowest to recover from the Asian economic crisis of 1997 that attracts the audience? Circuses without bread? Perhaps, but this phenomenon is probably not profoundly related to local matters. We need look no further than the thin, phosphor coated screen. Millionaire, as it is referred to in television circles in Jakarta, is entertaining television. As other chapters testify, it has wowed viewers in countries in very varied economic circumstances. Millionaire is just one of a number of quiz and game show formats screening across all channels in Indonesia and is representative of the core business of international format providers in Indonesia which has been growing steadily since 1994.

Television has been called ‘a Western-originated project’ (Barker 1997: 5) and an institution of Western capitalist modernity. The global circulation of Western-centred, or more specifically, American-centred cultural products, contributes to the formation and dissemination of a global shared culture that reaches across the boundaries of nation-states. In the process American cultural products play a role in the formation of local television cultures.

Taiwan residents enjoy one of the most abundant television diets in East Asia. Eighty per cent of households subscribe to cable television services, offering a buffet of more than eighty channels including niche and full service channels. Taiwan’s television industry, while relatively small in comparison with its competitors in East Asia, has established a reputation for creatively re-generating formats developed elsewhere.

In the eyes of many observers the Philippine cultural icon that is synonymous with travel, as well as being the subject of numerous advertisements is the jeepney, a public-transport vehicle assembled in the style of the US military jeep but lengthened to accommodate from fourteen to twenty-two sitting passengers. What distinguishes the jeepney from run-of-the-mill public transport however is its artistic décor: a clutter and kaleidoscope of various artefacts from miniature steel horses dotting the hood, to massive, jazzy plastic or steel billboards announcing the name of the jeepney, to murals painted in fiesta colours at the sides, to a bizarre combination of items in the front windshield juxtaposing conflicting images of the Sto. Nino (the baby Jesus Christ) and stickers with sexually risqué messages.

Television programme format adaptation is becoming an increasingly significant phenomenon in India as it is in many other countries with an active domestic television industry. Some obvious successes stand out in recent years, such as Kaun Banega Crorepati, the licensed adaptation of Celador’s global format success Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and C.A.T.S., a licensed Hindi version of the US detective series Charlie’s Angels. However, sensitivity to local cultural nuances has been critical to their popular reception by Indian audiences. Yet despite a few high-profile licensed adaptations or copycatting, there are far more instances of unlicensed adaptations or cloning, sometimes subtle, other times not.

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

From the 1967 live satellite program "Our World" to MTV music videos in Indonesia, from French television in Senegal to the global syndication of African American sitcoms, and from representations of terrorism on German television to the international Teletubbies phenomenon, TV lies at the nexus of globalization and transnational culture. Planet TV provides an overview of the rapidly changing landscape of global television, combining previously published essays by pioneers of the study of television with new work by cutting-edge television scholars who refine and extend intellectual debates in the field. Organized thematically, the volume explores such issues as cultural imperialism, nationalism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, ethnicity and cultural hybridity. These themes are illuminated by concrete examples and case studies derived from empirical work on global television industries, programs, and audiences in diverse social, historical, and cultural contexts. Developing a new critical framework for exploring the political, economic, sociological and technological dimensions of television cultures, and countering the assumption that global television is merely a result of the current dominance of the West in world affairs, Planet TV demonstrates that the global dimensions of television were imagined into existence very early on in its contentious history. Parks and Kumar have assembled the critical moments in television's past in order to understand its present and future. Contributors include Ien Ang, Arjun Appadurai, Jose B. Capino, Michael Curtin, Jo Ellen Fair, John Fiske, Faye Ginsburg, R. Harindranath, Timothy Havens, Edward S. Herman, Michele Hilmes, Olaf Hoerschelmann, Shanti Kumar, Moya Luckett, Robert McChesney, Divya C. McMillin, Nicholas Mirzoeff, David Morley, Hamid Naficy, Lisa Parks, James Schwoch, John Sinclair, R. Anderson Sutton, Serra Tinic, John Tomlinson, and Mimi White.

Coverage of Mexican-American youth gangs has been a staple of local television news in the United States for decades, and its form and content have come to embody many journalistic cliches: the rising tide of violence, the spread of drug addiction, the alienated minority youth. But as this bold new study argues, these stories contain gross exaggerations that lead to the reinforcement of stereotypes about Mexican-American young people and the Mexican-American community in general. Indeed, the police and community leaders greatly influence the content of this coverage by deciding what information to make available to the news media, while reporters select certain sources and ignore others, thus slanting the story even further. Source: Publisher

Singapore has changed dramatically in the last forty years, moving in the 1960s and 1970s from domestic import substitution to low-cost exportoriented goods. Then in the 1980s developing a regional financial and business hub and now increasingly positioning itself as an exporter of capital and expertise (Courtenay 1995: 90). With exceptionally high economic growth rates most years, a GNP per capita of US$6,000 more than Australia and three times Australia’s annual average growth, Singapore has attracted a high percentage of foreign direct investment. Despite exhibiting similar advantages to Australia in terms of a well-educated workforce, competitive pricing, developed transport and telecommunications and citizens from culturally diverse business, family and personal networks throughout the region, Singapore’s media and resultant civil and civic development has not been as progressive and liberal as Australia’s and indeed has not kept pace. So it would appear that state existence, security and prosperity as desired ends for Singapore do not necessarily rely on an equal strengthening of the public sphere, or at least this is not evident to date.

Japan in the 1990s differs vastly from what it had been two or three decades earlier. The Japanese state has undergone such a fundamental change that it has been described as a ‘regime shift’ (Pempel 1998). Although the longterm ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has returned to power after its defeat in 1993, it no longer has an absolute majority in the Cabinet. Surrounded by numerous scandals and corruption charges, both the government and bureaucracy have undergone major reforms to increase transparency and reduce bureaucratic influence over the policy-making process. The Japanese Diet has, for example, passed the Information Disclosure Law to increase openness in the administration. Economic policies have also been transformed to cope with the malaise characterised by continuing problems of bad loans in the financial sector, rising unemployment and declining manufacturing productivity.

The question of why civil society presents such appeal for commentators, scholars and journalists writing about developing nations is an important one. The most likely explanation is that a kind of global faith exists in civil society as the driving force of a new world order. This global transformation, exemplified by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, celebrates people’s freedom to participate in public discourse, and ultimately in processes of directly electing political representatives. In this sense the concepts of civil society and the public sphere come together to describe a global anti-authoritarian groundswell where the power of ideas is linked to global cultural development.

Television was introduced to Indonesia in 1962 as part of President Sukarno’s flurry of nationalistic ‘symbol wielding’ associated with the Fourth Asian Games (Feith 1963). Televisi Republik Indonesia’s (TVRI) legal status as a creature of the president was reinforced further in Presidential Decree #27, 1963, when it was absorbed after the Games into the ‘Spirit of Sukarno Foundation’, a highly personalised institution under the direct control of the President. TVRI was established as a Foundation in its own right on 20 October 1963, with the President as General Manager (Presidential Decree #215, 1963). Article 3 nominates TVRI as the sole organisation authorised to establish and develop television stations in Indonesia, a highly significant provision which made the commercial broadcasters established in the 1990s dependent on TVRI. TVRI’s status as an activity of the TVRI Foundation was not formally revoked until the enactment of Broadcasting Law #24, 1997, although in administrative practice it came under the control of the Department of Information in 1966.

Modern Malaysia was established in 1963 following a drawn-out struggle against British interests which had occupied territory on Penang and Singapore and the Straits of Malacca in 1786, 1819 and 1824 respectively. In 1867 these outposts came under the control of the British Colonial Office and were governed as a Crown Colony. Although Britain did not directly colonise the Malay States, which remained legally autonomous, it imposed effective administrative control over Malaya and the Borneo territories from the late 1870s until the Japanese occupation in 1942.

Since the Korean War (1950-53), South Korea (hereafter Korea) has undergone a series of political changes. The move towards democratisation was largely spurred on by the demonstrations and riots occurring throughout the 1980s. In 1987 massive demonstrations forced the then President Chun DooHwan to call a new presidential election, and President-elect Rho Tae-Woo to implement more social reforms. The notion of civil society in Korea has been a relatively new concept until very recently, mainly because it has not achieved wide recognition from the public, media or the state. The development of a people’s movement advocating democracy could be said to be the foundation of ‘civil society’ in Korea.

Television first appeared in Hong Kong in 1957. It was a cable television service run by the Rediffusion Company which had operated a highly successful wired sound broadcasting service since 1949. Hong Kong was the first British colony to have television. But the Rediffusion television service was very expensive. Its monthly subscription fee was HK$55. In 1958, a technical worker’s monthly wages were HK$360 and an unskilled worker earned only HK$75 (Hong Kong Government 1959: 32). A year before the introduction of free-to-air television in 1967, Rediffusion television had only 67,000 subscribers (Hong Kong Government 1967: 206). Thus before 1967 television was an elite medium and its social impact was minimal.

The reform of media regulation can be read as part of the wider movement towards democratisation in Thailand in the 1990s. Real progress was made in media reform, yet as the traditional control of the Army has been reduced, the power of commercial media monopolies has grown. The main threat to further media liberalisation is now the growth of private monopolies. This was exemplified by the election of Thaksin Shinawatra in January 2001, as he is a media magnate on an international scale comparable with Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. Both men have used their communications business as a path to political power. The first part of this chapter will summarise Thai ideas about civil society, television regulation and the political context of media reform, followed by an analysis of how civil society issues are represented on Thai TV. Broadly, there are urban news and current affairs programmes of an investigative nature, and then there are rural-oriented programmes featuring community participation, notably Lan Ban Lan Muang. Finally, the prospects for media regulation since Thaksin’s election will be considered. The progress towards media reform made in the second half of the 1990s has since stalled under Thaksin’s new government.

In the uprising of 16-20 January 2001, which ousted former Philippine President Joseph Estrada from power, two forces stood out as pivotal: television (specifically the coverage of the impeachment trial which was the centre of public attention) and civil society (which was instrumental in the uprising itself). In this chapter I argue that notwithstanding the central importance of television in this most recent national political change, the regulation of the sector and its long-term associations with crony capitalism have established barriers to civil society finding its voice on television.

Since its invention, television has been one of the biggest influences on American culture. Through this medium, multiple visions and disparate voices have attempted to stake a place in viewer consumption. Yet even as this programming supposedly reflects characteristics of the general American populace, television-generated images are manipulated and contradictory, predicated by the various economic, political, and cultural forces placed upon it. In Shaded Lives, Beretta Smith-Shomade sets out to dissect images of the African American woman in television from the 1980s. She calls their depiction "binaristic," or split. African American women, although an essential part of television programming today, are still presented as distorted and deviant. By closely examining the television texts of African-American women in comedy, music video, television news and talk shows (Oprah Winfrey is highlighted), Smith-Shomade shows how these voices are represented, what forces may be at work in influencing these images, and what alternate ways of viewing might be available. Smith-Shomade offers critical examples of where the sexist and racist legacy of this country collide with the cultural strength of Black women in visual and real-lived culture. As the nation's climate of heightened racial divisiveness continues to relegate the representation of Black women to depravity and display, her study is not only useful, it is critical.

In January 1987, the Indian state-run television began broadcasting a Hindu epic in serial form, The Ramayana, to nationwide audiences, violating a decades-old taboo on religious partisanship. What resulted was the largest political campaign in post-independence times, around the symbol of Lord Ram, led by Hindu nationalists. The complexion of Indian politics was irrevocably changed thereafter. In this book, Arvind Rajagopal analyses this extraordinary series of events. While audiences may have thought they were harking back to an epic golden age, Hindu nationalist leaders were embracing the prospects of neoliberalism and globalisation. Television was the device that hinged these movements together, symbolising the new possibilities of politics, at once more inclusive and authoritarian. Simultaneously, this study examines how the larger historical context was woven into and changed the character of Hindu nationalism.