ABSTRACT
Once we believed that globalization of culture could bring hope to people who live in worlds deprived of freedom, democracy and equality. Among the various processes of globalization, new forms of television – in the form of either hardware (such as satellite television and the internet) or software (television dramas, shows and formats sold internationally) – were supposed to play a major role in ‘flattening’ international differences and opening up politically closed regimes. However, what I am going to describe in the case of China tells an opposite story: the globalization of television genres does not seem to confirm the liberalizing thesis. In this chapter, I focus on the growing trend of the cultural adoption or ‘cloning’ of global television genres and formats in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The explication of how these global television genres or formats have been localized, nationalized or infused with state ideologies, and the rationale behind such modification, illustrates the role today’s new television plays in a developing state. It also explains how, while globalizing television may connect worlds that are poles apart, the implications and the consequences for different cultures and states can be very different. In this chapter, based on ethnographic observations from a selection of
major Chinese television stations (including Chinese Central TV (CCTV), Shanghai TV, Hunan TV, Wuhan TV, Guangdong TV and Shenzhen TV), I provide a concrete illustration of how global genres or formats are being appended to, cloned into or adapted to local productions. Informed by interviews (necessarily remaining anonymous) with producers from these stations over 2005-8, this discussion examines the rationales and philosophies behind the localization of global television genres. Global culture has inspired hundreds of Chinese television programmes, and so it is impossible to give a comprehensive account of all the global television genres being adopted or localized. Therefore I will concentrate on some important globally adopted examples, television genres such as quiz shows, game shows and idol shows, to illustrate the situation (see Table 17.1).
