Temores y ansiedades de los postulantes

Anxiety may be at the heart of all nationalism but, outside the West, its characteristic form is a fear that the price of modernity is Westernisation and consequent loss of cultural authenticity. (Hein, 2008: 450)

Prior to the 2000s, there was little research published on the broadcasting industries in Asia.

The little research that has been conducted on the Asian broadcasting environment has tended to focus on political power and on the system of state control over the broadcasting industry, rather than investigating the industry per se (Park et al., 2000: 111). Therefore research has not addressed the capabilities of the Asian broadcasting industry. During the past decade, however, the broadcasting scene in Asia has changed drastically and much creative cultural content has been produced, especially in East Asia. The rise in these cultural products and the consumption of Japanese animations, the Bollywood films of India, the action movies of Hong Kong and the popular music and dramas of Korea are sufficient to illustrate the emergence and size of the Asian cultural industries.

Based on these successes, the East Asian television industries have subsequently built up their own international media market, on a smaller scale compared to the American market, but having more influence in the region.²² Some Asian research argues that East Asia is

‘peripheral no longer but has truly emerged on the map of the international media market’.

(Erni and Chua, 2005: 5-8) Indeed, the cultural imperialism view of international domination has been greatly affected by the Eastern Asian broadcasting industries, which have become increasingly less reliant on US programme imports. In particular, industrialised countries in East Asia such as Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong have established themselves as broadcasting content exporters as well as importers (Lim, 2008:

35).

Even though there are considerable variations within East Asian countries,²³ overall East

22 The first MIP [Marché International des Programmes de Télévision]-Asia was held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in November 1994. MIP-TV, which has been held in Cannes every April, is counted as the major international trade market for television products, along with MIPCOM [Marché International des Films et des Programmes pour la TV, la Vidéo, le Câble et le Satellite].

23 The position of Japan as a broadcast programme exporter has been particularly different from the positions of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, because the Japanese broadcasting industry has an exceptionally long history of content export, unlike the industries of other East Asian countries. Iwabuchi demonstrates that Japan has become a stable source of content comparable to the United States, due to the maturity of its film

Asia seems to have emerged as a model of the new media market which is not largely subordinate to Western, or more precisely to US broadcasting products. Keane demonstrates that the emergence of the new media market in East Asia is best viewed from

‘the complementarities of institutional realignment and state-assisted responses to competition’; that is, the rapid economic development of East Asia, led by state policies, has also been largely responsible for the development of its cultural field (Ozawa, 2001;

cited by Keane, 2006: 841). In this context, Keane confirms that the state-directed capitalism of East Asian countries has helped to bring about prosperity in the media market.

In addition, Erni and Chua argue that ‘the triangulation of cultural nationalism, postcolonial sentimentalism, and the globalist mood in the Asian media has found an effective form through television’. (Erni and Chua, 2005: 7)

As mentioned above, it is unlikely that the domination of US products in the media and cultural commodities trade will be the definite and final stage in more complex and crisscrossing international programme flows, especially in the case of the Asian broadcasting landscape. Similarly to the European broadcasting scene, ‘the deregulation and commercialisation of television has also unleashed new potential and energies in the Asian market’. (Banerjee, 2002: 533) A noteworthy point is that audiences in the expanded Asian broadcasting market seem to have greatly preferred the broadcasting content produced in that same Asian region. Clearly, several trans-border channels such as MTV Asia or Star TV, first broadcast in Asia in the early 1990s, seem to have increased the share of programmes produced by Asian productions (Lim, 2008: 36).

Lim regards the preference of Asian broadcasters for regionally produced programmes as a sign of the growth of Asia-based networks. In other words, Lim believes that the dynamically expanded production and distribution system of Asian broadcasting industries resulting from the rapid economic development in this region has most likely led to more reciprocal trade opportunities for ‘made in Asia’ programmes (ibid.). In this sense, the popularity of East Asian broadcast programmes in the Asian market implies that there have been other factors which have stimulated the specific regionalisation of the Asian broadcasting market, and which are different from the general trends in international programme trade.

production, its rapid economic development and its large domestic market of more than 120 million (Iwabuchi, 2003: 22-23).

The deregulation and re-regulation process in Asian broadcasting markets

Initially, Asian governments had permitted, willingly or unwillingly, the deregulation and opening up of their broadcasting industries to the strong demands of transnational media corporations since the early 1990s, which was almost simultaneous with the deregulation processes of Western governments. However, Asian governments soon tried to intervene in their domestic broadcasting industries in order to maintain the balance between domestic and Western broadcast programmes, especially on terrestrial television channels.

Reregulation, such as the imposition of new quotas and gate-keeping policies aimed at restricting foreign broadcast imports, was promptly deployed during the late 1990s, and the temporary craze for US programmes in the Asian market, which had increasingly centred around the mid 1990s on cable and satellite channels, soon began to decline. As regional programmes consequently replaced these programmes, Asian broadcasting became uniquely regionalised.

Hesmondhalgh states that the deregulation of the broadcasting industries has been profoundly related to the permeation of neo-liberalism. According to him, from the 1970s onwards, neo-liberalism depicted public ownership and the regulation of broadcasting as the cause of economic downturn and argued the need for a new programme consisting of regulation changes and privatisation. He referred to neo-liberal terms for such programmes such as ‘deregulations, or more often, liberalisation’. (Hesmondhalgh, 2007: 109)²⁴

Straubhaar argues that US television products had not gained widespread popularity in East Asian broadcasting schedules before the advent of the multi-channel era. As Table 2.1 shows, in the early 1980s more than three-quarters of broadcast time in five Asian countries was filled with domestic programmes, which indicates that dependence on US television programmes generally remained less than ten per cent in these countries in the same period (Straubhaar, 2001: 146-148).

24The notable point is that Hesmondhalgh connects the term deregulation to reregulation; that is, he argues that the changes in broadcasting policies towards deregulation have often introduced new legislation and regulation, in order to maximise the revenue of large private corporations: ‘as governments tried to negotiate competing interests during deregulatory years of the 1980s and 1990s, in many cases they actually introduced new and more complex sets of regulations’. (2007: 109)

Table 2.1 Percentage of nationally produced programming in prime time and in total broadcast day

1962 1972 1982 1991-1992

Prime Total Prime Total Prime Total Prime Total

Japan 81% 92% 95% 90% 96% 95% 92% 94%

Korea 73 76 80 79 89 87 89 86

Hong Kong 23 26 64 62 92 79 95 83

Taiwan 74 64 98 79 89 88 97 78

India - - 98 80 89 88 97 78

Source: Brazil: the Role of the State in World Television (Straubhaar, 2001: 146)

Table 2.2 Percentage of US-produced programming in prime time and in total broadcast day

1962 1972 1982 1991-1992

Prime Total Prime Total Prime Total Prime Total

Japan 19% 7% 5% 9% 3% 4% 6% 5%

Korea 27 24 20 19 7 10 5 9

Hong Kong 72 69 30 28 2 9 0 2

Taiwan 26 36 2 21 6 9 3 20²⁵

India - - 0 3 0 0 0 0

Source: Brazil: the Role of the State in World Television (Straubhaar, 2001: 148)

The supremacy of domestic programmes in Asian television until the early 1990s appears to have been the result of the long-term cultural protectionism policies of every Asian government, rather than of the remarkable capacities of their broadcasting industries.

Banerjee demonstrates that until the 1980s ‘Asian governments had imposed a stricter control over their national broadcasting industry than those of Western countries, and used cultural imperialism as an ideological rationale for justifying control and monopoly over television’. (2002: 524)

With the strong wind of media marketisation in the early 1990s, however, ‘Asian countries have to a greater or lesser extent, adopted the western free market economy, and have been undergoing major changes in media policies, structures and operations in favour of

25 The rapid increase of American programmes broadcast in Taiwan between 1991 and 1992 seems to be the result of proliferation of the cable television industry in Taiwan. Taiwanese cable television channels began to broadcast without a government licence from the 1980s. Because Taiwan is a very mountainous nation with a high population density, it is only natural that cable television channels have prevailed across the country.

deregulation’. (Hong and Hsu, 1999: 226) Increasing pressures were imposed by the US on Asian governments to open their limited media markets through privatisation, like the

‘Super 301’ provisions of the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act which was aimed at eliminating trade barriers (ibid.: 228). On the basis of these pressures, there was an economic demand for major transnational media companies to expand their markets on a global scale (ibid.). Concurrently, these changing circumstances made Asian governments recognise that the deregulation, privatisation, and subsequent commercialisation of broadcasters might bring the advent of a new money-making industry like that in the West. In other words, Asian governments may have recognised that they could reduce the financial burden of managing limited broadcasting services by allowing international and domestic entrepreneurs to enter the broadcasting industry, which led to the growth of the entertainment business, as well as providing additional revenue to the government in the form of tax income (Karthigesu, 1994: 76).

Consequently, Asian broadcasting industries have been through processes of deregulation, privatisation and commercialisation similar to those of Western countries. Even the previously tightly controlled television markets in China and Vietnam have loosened their television programming import policies. For instance, since the early 1970s imported programmes have occupied less than one per cent of total broadcasting hours on the China Central Television Channel (henceforth CCTV) in China. In the late 1990s, the percentage rose to 20 or 30 per cent in different regions of China (Shim, 2008: 25-26). Concurrently, the world’s largest transnational media corporations began to ‘battle in order to capture a slice of the Asian broadcasting market, which contains almost two-thirds of the world’s population and is undergoing rapid economic development’. (Banerjee, 2002: 517) In 1991, Star TV succeeded in launching the first fully-fledged trans-border satellite broadcast in the Asian-Pacific region. Within half a decade, more than a hundred domestic and international channels had been introduced in some industrialised Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea (ibid.: 526-527).

With the advent of the global trend of media commercialisation, Asian governments seem to have discarded their broadcasting monopoly policies with little resistance and permitted the introduction of new commercial channels. The deregulation of television broadcasts in most Asian countries led to the rapid expansion of domestic broadcasting industries centred on new cable channels (Banerjee, 2002: 521). Between 1993 and 1998, the governments of Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore permitted cable or satellite multi-channel

broadcasts. The new cable channels in Asian countries, like the Western broadcasting industries, were heavily dependent on US television programmes due to a serious lack of content and to the limitations of their own production skills, capabilities and finance. For instance, imports of foreign broadcast programmes by the Korean broadcasting industry increased from US$30.5 million in 1994 to US$42.8 million in 1995, the year that 21 cable channels began to broadcast, which was an increase of 40.3 per cent in only a year (KOCCA, 2009b: 14). The cable industry in Taiwan, where the Cable Television Law was enacted in 1993, has also relied more on imported programmes. The share of foreign programmes shown on Taiwanese entertainment and information channels increased to 70 per cent in the mid 1990s (Hong and Hsu, 1999: 231).

However, the processes of broadcasting deregulation and commercialisation, along with the rapid proliferation of ‘West-centric’ US broadcasting content in Asia, provoked different responses from Asian governments. Media marketisation appears to have stimulated not only the internationalisation of Asian broadcasting industries, but also, through Western programme broadcasts, audiences’ desire for more political democratisation. Recognising this changing atmosphere, most Asian governments which maintained a political monopoly system urgently intervened in their broadcasting industries in order to cut off domestic audiences’ perception of their countries’ less democratic circumstances when compared to Western countries.

Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, addressing the Asian Media Conference in November 1998, said that it was necessary to limit the unrestricted inflow of Western media in Asia in order to ‘preserve and retain the fundamental values of Asian society’.

(Lee, 1998; cited by Chadha & Kavoori, 2000: 417) This attitude has also been noted in other Asian political leaders and the Association of South East Asian Nations (henceforth ASEAN) issued a statement ‘expressing the need to formalise a united response to the phenomenon of cultural globalisation, in order to protect and advance cherished Asian values and traditions which are being threatened by the proliferation of Western media content’. (Coates, 1998; cited by Chadha and Kavoori, 2000: 417) Therefore, Asian governments have justified the reinforcing of cultural protectionism policies against foreign programmes imports. With the setting of a new quota system limiting the broadcasting time of foreign programmes, they have attempted to promote domestic broadcasting industries in order to minimise in various ways the importing of foreign programmes (Chadha and Kavoori, 2000: 418).

By the late 1990s, the governments of Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan had set up similar protection-oriented quota policies. The Taiwanese government regulations stated that nationally-produced programmes should comprise no less than 70 per cent of all television content. The Korean, Vietnamese and Malaysian governments also limited the maximum broadcasting time of foreign programmes on terrestrial television stations to 20 per cent of total broadcasting hours. The revised media law of Hong Kong limited the foreign capital stock which could be purchased by broadcasting companies. Meanwhile, the Chinese, Indonesian and Indian governments also implemented strengthened gate-keeping policies to restrict the inflow of foreign broadcast programmes into their countries (Hong and Hsu, 1999: 233-234; Chadha and Kavoori, 2000: 419-421). All of the latter show the revival of broadcasting industry protection policies in Asia. Indeed, as Hamelink points out, the concept of deregulation is ‘somewhat misleading because in fact deregulation tends to mean re-regulation and often leads to more rather than fewer rules’. (1997: 97; cited by Hong and Hsu, 1999: 233)

As a consequence of this re-regulation, on the one hand, US television programmes were significantly less visible and not able to compete with their domestic counterparts. On the other hand, the re-regulation strategies of Asian governments effectively encouraged domestic television production and led to a proliferation of domestic or regional television productions (Chadha and Kavoori, 2000: 421). That is to say, this variety of gate-keeping policies on the part of every Asian government seems to have unintentionally fostered domestic production industries. When broadcasting industries did not have the optimal conditions or the finance to produce their own domestic content, it is highly probable that they imported other Asian programmes rather than Western programmes. Consequently, the share of regional productions in the Asian broadcasting market began to increase. In the late 1990s, almost 90 per cent of top 20 programme lists were occupied by domestic or regional programmes in the majority of Asian countries (ibid.: 423).

This phenomenon may be seen as a result not only of government re-regulation, but also of audiences’ preference for Asian programmes based on geo-linguistic affinities and other similarities. Banerjee claims that audiences have become a key factor in television programme decisions in commercialised broadcasting contexts (2002: 531). Interestingly, Asian audiences may have shown clear preferences for Asian programmes over Western programmes in more commercialised broadcasting environments. For instance, Star TV in Hong Kong, which started broadcasting in 1991, mainly broadcast Western products in the

early stages, but soon began to increase its broadcasting of programmes produced in Hong Kong or other Chinese territories, and almost all foreign language programmes were dubbed rather than sub-titled, in order to cater to the tastes of audiences (ibid.: 533-534).

Moreover, the new cable channel or satellite services in Singapore and Malaysia which were launched in the early 1990s mostly broadcast domestically produced programmes (Chadha and Kavoori, 2000: 422-423).²⁶ This specific condition, in conjunction with the active intervention of Asian governments, discouraged transnational Western media companies from entering the Asian broadcasting market, but encouraged small domestic and regional programme productions.

The specific cultural nationalism of Asia

This specific reaction of the Asian countries against the popularity of Western broadcast programmes implies that the inflow of Western broadcast content since the early 1990s may well have brought about the juxtaposition of cultural nationalism and globalisation in these countries. It is probable that the Asian countries, which shared the experiences of colonisation in the early 20^th century, have regarded the inflow of Western broadcast content as another threat from the Western world. In other words, the import of Western broadcast programmes tends to have acquired a greater significance for these Asian countries because of its resonance with ‘issues of cultural decolonisation’.(Murray, 1997: 9)

Nationalism has been generally defined as the central factor leading a nation ‘to achieve coherence within a nation state’. (Murray, 1997: 3) In the academic discussion of nationalism and national identity, it is worth noting that ‘culture’ has taken a significant position in the formation of nationalism. Gellner claims that the nation is a kind of invention which ‘can be defined only in terms of the age of nationalism’. (1983: 55) He argues that ‘general social conditions make for standardised, homogenous, centrally sustained high cultures, pervading entire populations and not just an elite minority’ in the age of nationalism (ibid.; emphasis added). In this sense, Gellner regards cultures as the

‘natural repositories of political legitimacy’ and states that under these conditions nations can be defined in terms of both culture and political unity (ibid.: 56).

26 Regarding this situation, Variety’s interview with Ken Lemberger of Columbia TriStar Pictures in February 1998 is worth quoting. According to Lemberger, ‘local television production has become far more popular in Asia over the last several years and the market for local language and local culture programmes will grow substantially over the next ten to twenty years’.

Anderson maintains the idea that the start of the nation was conceived more in language than in blood and that this conception has been strengthened by national culture on the basis of linguistic texts such as national anthems or literature. Anderson, like Gellner, regards nationalism as a kind of ‘imaginative power’ to strengthen the fellowship among national citizens (1983: 153). He claims that throughout history nationalism has been the product of people’s imagination, but that the inspiration for this ‘invented’ notion is strong enough to gain people’s self-sacrificing love. Thus, according to Anderson, nationalism is a kind of historical concept which was created in order to confirm the existence of nations, creating an imagined community (ibid.: 141, 145-146). Anderson summarises the imaginary notion of nations as follows: ‘through that language, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed’. (ibid.: 154)

Anderson maintains the idea that the start of the nation was conceived more in language than in blood and that this conception has been strengthened by national culture on the basis of linguistic texts such as national anthems or literature. Anderson, like Gellner, regards nationalism as a kind of ‘imaginative power’ to strengthen the fellowship among national citizens (1983: 153). He claims that throughout history nationalism has been the product of people’s imagination, but that the inspiration for this ‘invented’ notion is strong enough to gain people’s self-sacrificing love. Thus, according to Anderson, nationalism is a kind of historical concept which was created in order to confirm the existence of nations, creating an imagined community (ibid.: 141, 145-146). Anderson summarises the imaginary notion of nations as follows: ‘through that language, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed’. (ibid.: 154)