Overall Trends in Broadcast Television Flows My expectation that regional imports would be preferred to U.S. or other

Overall Trends in Broadcast Television Flows My expectation that regional imports would be preferred to U.S. or other

international imports was strongly supported by the data for several regions.

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This regionalization trend was evident early in smaller Latin American or Asian countries, such as TVB exports of melodramas and comedies, for example, to Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. But it was also seen in Brazil, where regional programming began to appear in

prime time in 1991, mostly in the form of evening telenovelas. Overall, some types of programs, such as soap operas and variety programs, seemed over the years of my study to primarily flow between countries within a geocul­ tural or cultural-linguistic region, such as Latin America (Antola & Rogers, 1984; Sinclair, Jacka, & Cunningham, 1 996), greater China (Chan, 1996),

or the Arabic-speaking world (Boyd, 1 993 ).

My expectation that U.S. or international programming would remain strong in certain genres was strongly supported by the data from Brazil and

Chile, which revealed that U.S. genres too expensive for Latin American countries to mass produce, such as action movies, action shows, and cartoon shows, were still being predominantly imported from the United States. In addition, the second part of the theoretical prediction, an overall decline in imported U.S. programming, was also supported by the data from Brazil,

Chile, and the U.S. Hispanic market. As these data for East Asia have revealed, four decades of television pro­ gramming in several countries, most notably South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, showed U.S. programming has decreased in both total time and prime time and that international programming witnessed a small but noticeable increase by 200 1 . However, the regionalization of television trade that might be expected was not strongly apparent in my own East Asian data. The strongest genres among the limited regional trade were Japanese cartoons and Hong Kong martial arts dramas, along with a very recent rise in Korean dramas. This lends some support to the idea that

regional genres are concentrated in genres that are relatively expensive or difficult for individual cultures or nations to produce, such as animation

and highly produced melodramas or action/drama series. Furthermore, U.S. programming declined in the region and eventually included only high-cost productions, such as action series, documentaries, and movies.

In neither Africa nor Europe did my data reveal much evidence of a regional market. Schlesinger ( 1 993) and others have noted the lack of lin­ guistic and cultural coherence in Europe as a potential market, especially during the early stages of the changes that the European Union could bring to this market. The same could certainly be said of Africa, which is divided not only by its former colonial languages, English, French, and Portuguese, but also by the hundreds of dialects that are spoken throughout the region. In both the Europe and Africa, American imports were still used heavily in key genres that were not widely produced nationally.

1 80 Chapter 7 My expectations of regional markets with regional cultural prox1m1ty

were validated in Latin America and in the U.S. Hispanic market, but this trend was only beginning in East Asia. Perhaps the East Asian countries that

I chose to review are, in fact, the television producers; if I had looked at other, less developed countries in the region, I might have found countries on the importing end of a regional market. Other research about Southeast Asia indicates that those countries imported more from other Asian producers

(McDaniel, 1 994, 2002). Also, a closer scrutiny of the East Asian countries in my survey showed many historical and political barriers to regional imports over the decades in my study. Many of these barriers were reduced by 2001 , and perhaps that is why my data have reflected the very beginning of such a regional East Asian television marketplace.

Global Flows Some types of programs are created for and distributed to a truly global

audience. The programs, films, and series that most often sell and flow directly across borders are usually precisely those that are the most expen­ sive and the hardest to adapt as genres to national or regional production. The most widely sold programs are action series and films, news (usually footage not finished programs), dramas, soap operas, animation, documen­ taries, and music videos. Soap operas and music videos are also widely dif­ fused as genres and widely produced at local levels; some genres also have relatively universal appeal, as well as being cheap and easy to produce (Singhal & Udornpim, 1 997). With such genres, however, the trend is

toward more regional and national production, even while some soaps and music videos still flow globally.

The United States still dominates the export of international news, action­ adventure programs, drama, melodrama (both daytime soaps and evening programs such as Dallas or Desperate Housewives), scientific and histori­ cal documentaries, animation, music videos, and feature films, all of which require huge investments. Another factor in the exportability of action­ adventure programs is that they don't require a great deal of cultural capi­ tal, language ability, or sophistication to understand.

Many other producers at various levels are beginning to compete with the United States as exporters. The Japanese have caught up fast in global exports of animation to many countries, even placing quite a few programs on both broadcast and specialty cable television channels in the United States. Hong Kong is cutting into the global market for action-adventure with both con­

temporary and costume martial arts dramas and serials. China, Great Britain, Japan, and Hong Kong produce a great deal of historical drama.

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A comparative study of television fiction in five European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain) showed that "fiction pro­ grammes from the US and Latin America, apart from no longer being at an

advantage in terms of cost, are continuously losing favour with audiences" (Bechelloni, 1 997, p. xvi). This suggests a change in the economics of televi­

sion, favoring local production against the ongoing temptation to import what once seemed irresistibly cheap American imports (Allen, 1995). Another part of the trend shown in the five-country study in Europe was the move­ ment toward adaptation and creation in Europe (and elsewhere) of usable genres (Buonanno, 2002). In fact, European producers see themselves com­ peting with both American series and Latin American telenovelas, showing that Latin American producers, notably Mexico and Brazil, have succeeded in creating a genre that rivals American series in exports.