The new normal: from media imperialism to market liberalization – Asia’s shifting television landscapes

Abstract

This article explores television landscapes in Asia two decades after the introduction of satellite television in the region. Exploring both past trends and emergent logics, it argues that whereas nation-states in Asia originally saw foreign, particularly Western, media flows as an existential threat to local culture and identity, and sought to limit them via a variety of gatekeeping mechanisms, the contemporary situation is very different. Indeed, television landscapes all over the continent are generally tilting toward greater openness and greater integration with the global television system, the discursive decline of the idea of media imperialism, and the rise of market-oriented media models, in many cases sponsored by states themselves, all over the continent.

Keywords

Asia globalization markets media flows media formats media imperialism media policy television

In the article titled Media Imperialism Revisited: Some Findings from the Asian Case, Chadha and Kavoori (2000) explored the relevance of the concept of media imperialism in Asia, against the backdrop provided by the initial emergence of satellite television in the region. Analyzing how nations across the continent engaged with the explosive growth of foreign television content delivered by satellite-based services such as STAR TV, we argued that although the forces of media globalization had brought Western media programming into Asia on a large scale for the first time, local media landscapes had resisted being overwhelmed by it. This was due to the operation of a complex trifecta represented by national gatekeeping regimes, competition from local media, as well as audience preference for culturally relevant programming. In other words, we made the case that even though political discourse all over the Asian continent was at the time replete with references to the grave dangers posed by Western media, there was little empirical evidence to support popular and pervasive assertions regarding the destruction of indigenous cultural subjectivities and local media production.

In this article, almost two decades after the introduction of satellite television in Asia, we visit this terrain again, justified on the grounds that Asian television landscapes are more accessible than ever before to trans-border media flows, with satellite television service availability and penetration increasing steadily all over the continent, including in hitherto closed media environments such as Burma, Mongolia, and Vietnam that have come to represent the newest frontiers for growth and expansion (Galace, 2012). We begin by re-examining the factors – national gatekeeping policies, local competition, and audience preferences – that were originally identified as key to limiting foreign, mainly Western, media flows, in order to evaluate their relevance to current Asian television landscapes. This is followed by a tracing of contemporary trends and logics related to media flows in the region.

From fortress to sluice gates? The state of national gatekeeping regimes

The onset of the most recent phase of media globalization which began in the 1990s saw Asian nation-states resolutely opposed to transnational broadcasting, which they typically sought to limit, through an arsenal of ‘convergent’ policy measures aimed at what Schlesinger (1997) termed ‘communicative boundary maintenance’ (p. 374). The intellectual rationale for this approach to transnational broadcasting was principally provided by the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debates of the 1970s and 1980s. During these discussions, which focused on issues of communicative equity, developing nations, many of them recently decolonized, underscored the need to challenge historic imbalances in global news flows and limit the inflow of Western media products into their countries in order to avoid patterns of information dependency and cultural domination. And although these debates were more political than media-oriented and did not offer many specifics ‘in terms of changing media structures and flows’, they nevertheless produced significant ‘conceptual thinking and awareness about the role of the media and their relation to global forces’ (Nordenstreng, 2012: 3–4). And as such, they have historically represented a powerful formative influence on the initial emergence of media regulation in Asia.

Typical examples of such regulatory measures that were established in countries all over Asia in response to the incursions of satellite television included explicit bans on foreign programming and satellite dishes, equity restrictions on foreign media investment, ceilings on media imports, as well as active support of indigenously produced programming. However, these regulatory restrictions, so ubiquitous at the turn of the century, are now neither universally manifest nor consistently enforced. In fact, as things stand, Asian nations that were once united in their stand against foreign media inflows now have governments engaging in variable and, in many cases, increasingly limited degrees of gatekeeping vis-a-vis transnational broadcasting.

Thus, whereas historically media policies in Asia could be imagined as a ‘fortress’, with the state keeping at bay the malevolent (but irresistible) force of Western cultural products, today’s national media policies can be seen as a ‘sluice gate’. By definition, sluice gates are barriers that control water levels in rivers and waterways, selectively allowing levels to rise and impacting flow rates. This analogy can easily be applied to the contemporary television landscape in Asia, where nation-states have generally abandoned their once overwhelming resistance to Western cultural products. Instead, they have chosen to mediate and regulate their influx via degrees of openness, albeit in a variety of locally contingent ways. Metaphorically, thus, whereas a ‘fortress’ implies stone-like rigidity and impenetrability, the ‘sluice gate’ represents greater openness and flexibility – a flexibility that is clearly evident throughout Asia.

Hence, while Asian gatekeeping regimes can be located on a continuum that ranges from a relatively guarded stance to minimal regulation of Western media inflows, the de facto thrust appears to be in the direction of greater decontrol, even in countries which are situated on the more restrictive end of the policy spectrum. In Vietnam, for instance, although the government limits the use of satellite dishes and at one point mandated that all foreign channels on pay TV be translated into Vietnamese to ensure that content did not violate the country’s press and advertising laws (Brummitt, 2013), it has made little effort to actually implement these regulations. And recently, it decided to exempt foreign news channels from the translation requirement altogether (Brown, 2013). Similarly, China while prohibiting private ownership of satellite dishes has not made a concerted effort to enforce rules against satellite dish ownership at the local level, with the result that 56–60 million dishes are being used by Chinese citizens to obtain access to a variety of international channels and programs (Sun and Chio, 2012; Fletcher, 2010). Moreover, although it continues to disallow imported programming during primetime and limits imported content to no more than 25% of a channel’s daily offerings (Jacobs, 2012), China has not only granted so-called ‘landing rights’ to selected Western media companies but permitted various types of joint ventures between domestic and foreign media companies and even allowed the latter to acquire minority ownership stakes in domestic media companies following its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Huang, 2007; Italian Trade Commission, 2011).

Parallel trends are visible in Singapore and Malaysia where despite continuing censorship of content deemed inappropriate by the government (Ang, 2007; Wagstaff, 2010), there are fewer restrictions on foreign media inflows than at any time in the past. Singapore which aspires to become a regional media hub has, for example, made a concerted move to encourage foreign direct investment (FDI) in the media sector, encourage international co-productions, and create a ‘more conducive regulatory culture environment and culture’ as part of the Media Fusion initiative aimed at turning Singapore into a global media city (Media Development Authority (MDA), 2012: 2). Neighboring Malaysia, where broadcasting was once entirely state-controlled, has begun to permit some FDI in cable and satellite operations (US Department of State, 2012), in addition to allowing the expansion of Astro Malaysia, a privately held satellite pay television service which transmits content from transnational broadcasters (Sadiq, 2012).

Similar declines in gatekeeping regimes are also manifest in other countries. South Korea, for instance, has committed to decreasing its long-standing TV content quotas, increasing the allowable content from a single country and locking all other Korean content requirements at the least restrictive level, as part of a trade agreement with the United States (United States Trade Representative, 2009). Likewise, Taiwan has reduced subsidies for domestic productions and lowered long-standing domestic content requirements for cable channels (Economic Daily News, 2013), while in Thailand, international channels will in all likelihood be exempt from the licensing criteria and procedures that are currently being developed by the government (Cable and Satellite Broadcasters Association of Asia (CASBAA), 2012a).

Decontrol is also visible in post-reformasi Indonesia which has not only seen the growth of numerous private broadcasters offering both terrestrial and satellite services carrying a variety of international channels and foreign content, but has emerged as a major potential market for international pay television companies (Holmes, 2012). According to the CASBAA, the leading regional trade group for cable and satellite service providers, Indonesia is characterized by a ‘positive’ regulatory environment in that state subsidies to domestic broadcasters have been reduced and restrictive localization regulations have not been implemented with regard to pay TV, which remains largely unregulated in terms of its business models or program offerings (CASBAA, 2012b). Furthermore, the government has also agreed to open the terrestrial broadcasting sector to some foreign equity participation (International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), 2010).

But it is in India where traditional regulatory bulwarks aimed at combating foreign, (read) Western, media appear to have been most radically undermined. This shift is manifested in new policies aimed at easing previous restrictions on up-linking, service provision, and FDI in the broadcasting sector. Whereas previously only Indian-owned satellite channels could uplink or downlink from within the country itself, now any channel, irrespective of ownership, can do so. Moreover, foreign equity participation in cable networks has been increased from 30% to 49%, with a recent proposal to increase it to 100% (CASBAA, 2013), while 100% foreign equity is permitted in entertainment media companies (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, India, 2013).

The altered regulatory climate in India is perhaps best summed up by the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry website which states that ‘India has one of the most liberal investment regimes in the world, with a conducive foreign direct investment (FDI) environment’, and touts the benefits of this regulatory regime for the media and entertainment industry (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2014). The Indian government has also adopted a low key approach to content regulation so that the content quotas that were once envisaged as limiting foreign programming have never been implemented. Indeed, in what would seem to be a comprehensive retreat from the gatekeeping that previously defined the country’s broadcasting policy regime, many of the country’s 800 channels are owned by international conglomerates and transmit a range of programs imported from the West (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2012).

From competition to collaboration? Changing media markets

The wide-ranging move away from restrictive media regulation, reflecting the shifting engagement of Asian nations with the forces of globalization, in the post WTO era, has also had implications for both media markets and organizations in Asia. Initially, it seemed that although Western media organizations sought to gain entry into Asian markets in the 1990s, indigenous media outlets such as Hong Kong–based TVBI or India’s ZEE TV which benefitted from access to local and regional markets, connections with political elites, and the ability to provide audiences with culturally and linguistically ‘proximate’ programming operated as a competitive counterforce to them (Chadha and Kavoori, 2000). This scenario, in which ‘domestic’ media companies appeared to be pitted against ‘foreign’ outlets, has, however, been transformed in recent years with the significant expansion of partnerships between Asian media producers and Western media companies. In China alone, more than 300 deals totaling almost US$10.3b have been announced since 2009 (Deng, 2013). These growing alliances between global media companies and Asian media organizations – which have gathered considerable momentum in the last decade or so and include a range of countries – have evolved as a result of significant changes in the situational calculus of indigenous and foreign media producers alike.

Originally, transnational corporations, which mostly entered Asia in the 1990s, had operated on the assumption that their traditional comparative advantage in international media markets would enable them to enter and dominate Asian markets with relative ease. But as it turned out, this goal proved significantly more challenging than anticipated. Indeed, companies like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., who were among the early few to look to Asia, rapidly discovered that not only were they hampered by a variety of regulatory mechanisms but that the very idea of a pan-Asian television built on economies of scale was unworkable given the diversity of the continent (Murphy and Ipsen, 1994).

Moreover, unlike Eastern Europe, where the comparatively sudden transition to a market system and the absence of established market-oriented media organizations enabled foreign players to leverage their capital and expertise to develop local partnerships and political alliances that facilitated market entry (Sparks, 2003), Asia’s media landscape has evolved differently. Not only has the transition to the market model been significantly slower, but the easing of gatekeeping mechanisms has proved to be an uneven and far more closely managed process. Furthermore, in keeping with their dirigiste roots, national governments in the region have continued to play a role in the market by shaping media policies aimed at supporting local players and developing national creative economies capable of succeeding in global markets (Flew, 2013).

Such barriers to market entry in Asia combined with the growing realization that ‘local knowledge’ is essential to successfully negotiating the region’s complex political and economic environments and satisfying audience preferences for local/regional content has gradually led Western media organizations to recalibrate their independent stance. The result has been a move away from go-it-alone approaches in favor of local partnerships. While some collaborations emerged early such as News Corp.’s investment in China’s Phoenix Satellite TV (Huang, 2007), these alliances have since multiplied, involving different players and assuming a variety of organizational and financial forms. These include joint ventures like the ones between Freemantle MediaAsia and Japanese Fuji TV Network and that between Endemol and Astro Malaysia to co-produce and co-develop new format-based programming for Asian markets (Benzine, 2012), as well as an agreement between the Singapore Media Authority and various international media producers or the strategic partnership linking China-based Shanghai Media Group (SMG) and CNBC Asia under which the two companies will exchange content and split advertising revenue from shared programming (O’Neill, 2012). In yet another variation, DreamWorks Animation, the SMG, and China Media Capital (in which the Chinese government has a large stake) have teamed up to establish a studio and produce films and content for Chinese television (Verrier, 2012). In some cases, Western companies have even succeeded in making direct investments in media markets as in the case of India’s Colors and ZEE Turner channels, which are jointly owned by local conglomerates and Viacom and Time Warner, respectively (FICCI-KPMG, 2011). In India, in fact, aside from the homegrown Zee TV, all the major networks in the dominant Hindi language television sector are either owned by or joint ventures with Western media corporations.

For their part, local players who were once deeply wary of being edged out by foreign, notably Western, competitors have come to view such relationships favorably. Indeed, there is a widespread recognition in local media circles that while local conglomerates possess clear advantages in terms of their ability to produce culturally relevant programming, they often lack adequate financial resources as well as technical and production knowledge. To them, global conglomerates consequently represent not only sources of potential capital but also the opportunity to obtain the critical operational know-how that they require in order to position themselves effectively in regional/global markets (Burkitt and Smith, 2012). And it is such indigenous players, anxious to turn their content into ‘tradable culture’ (Lim, 2005), who have often played a critical role in lobbying Asian governments to introduce policies designed to foster international media partnerships.

Local but formatted? Audiences and cultural consumption

While both gatekeeping regimes and media markets in Asia have come to be characterized by visible shifts over the past two decades, on the surface at least, audience dynamics in the region appear to have remained relatively stable, in the sense that large majorities of audiences continue to privilege local and regional content as they did in the years following the introduction of satellite television. This is certainly reflected in cultural consumption patterns across the continent, whether in the case of India where Bollywood-related content dominates both large and small screens or China where locally produced reality shows and Korean dramas are among the most watched shows (Jacobs, 2012) or the ubiquitous ‘sinetron’ or soap operas popular in Indonesia (Huat, 2012). In other words, television continues to be ‘tied to local and national cultures’ (Waisbord, 2004: 360), and there remain a variety of ‘lacunae’ or barriers that continue to make Western-made content less attractive to audiences in Asia (Rohn, 2009). Such barriers, however, do not seem to operate vis-a-vis imported formats in quite the same fashion.

As defined by Keane and Moran (2004), formats ‘constitute processes of systematization of difference within repetition’ (p. 200) and involve an adaptive reconfiguring of television programs in which the latter are localized in ways that combine culturally specific elements with their original structure and visual look and feel. Historically, the rise of formats can be understood in terms of structural shifts such as the deregulation and liberalization of television markets and the emergence of multi-channel environments that created new demands and opportunities for programming. As such changes made television markets increasingly competitive, broadcasters sought ways to avoid the inherent uncertainties of media markets. Format-driven programming offered a solution to this problem, both domestically as well as in the international markets that began to gain significance in the 1970s and 1980s.

The recognition of the potential of successful formats as low risk, easily reproducible, and salable programming eventually combined with two globalization-fueled developments. The first being the growing connectivity between television systems that encouraged programming trends and business practices to move beyond national boundaries, while the second was the desire of global media companies to circumvent protectionist audio-visual policies by finding alternatives to the ‘canned’ foreign programming that such policies sought to limit (Waisbord, 2004). The result was the emergence of formats as the basis of an expansive transnational trade currently valued at over US$4b (Chalaby, 2012).

With programs flowing mainly from West to East (albeit with occasional contra flows, most notably from Japan), Asia has emerged as a major market for formats, complete with industry organizations such as the Singapore-based Asia Television Forum and ContentAsia, as well as impresarios like Michel Rodrigue, all geared to facilitating interactions between local and international media broadcasters and producers. In China alone, 35 new formats have been licensed since 2002 (Waller, 2013). Formats have also been licensed in countries ranging from India and Malaysia to Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Typically, the formats that tend to find favor in Asia are various types of game and reality shows based on so-called super formats such as Survivor, Big Brother, and Idols that tend to be ‘culturally odourless’, in that they lack distinct cultural or national markers (Iwabuchi, 2002: 24). That is to say, they represent a new kind of localization – that one could term ‘formatization’ – which moves seamlessly between global (typically Western) genres and local cultural preferences.

Reproduced under licensing deals with local broadcasters or by global format producers like Endemol and FreeMantle Media, these shows which include Your Face Sounds Familiar, The Money Drop, Step Right Up, Deal or No Deal, and variations of the Idol franchise have been ‘domesticated’ via the insertion of both linguistic and culturally specific elements. In India, for example, format-based reality shows such as Indian Idol or Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire) draw on Bollywood for hosts, judges, and content. In China, musical reality shows have been adapted to satisfy the audience’s desire for quick results by reducing the number of participants compared to the original formats (Xi, 2011). Similarly, in Indonesia, Big Brother avoids sexual themes, focusing instead on emotional issues like the homesickness of participants, and in Malaysia, Endemol has only produced Deal or No Deal in Chinese, to avoid offending the sensibilities of the Muslim majority who are opposed to the gambling it implies (Miles, 2012).

While such ‘localization’ strategies reduce the so-called ‘cultural discount’ of format-based shows and potentially render them open to varied engagement by audiences, their prevalence, as Waisbord (2004) points out, by no means implies cultural diversity. In fact, television schedules in many parts of Asia, ranging from India and China to Indonesia and the Philippines, demonstrate little variety, seemingly colonized by format-driven reality shows that although culturally and linguistically flavored, nevertheless offer deeply limited representations of social reality, focused as they are on the values of individual profit and consumption.

Emergent logics

Mapping contemporary television landscapes in Asia reveals a complex and heterogeneous reality – a reality that combines national variations (particularly in terms of degrees of integration with the global television system, and thus calls into question monolithic notions of an ‘Asian’ media system) with more pervasive, emergent logics that simultaneously characterize the region.

The discursive decline of media imperialism

Striking among these logics is the discursive decline, even death of the notion of media imperialism, once the lynchpin of the discourse surrounding transnational media flows in the region. Following the introduction of satellite television, governments across Asia defined border-eroding television flows as a serious existential threat to ‘Asian’ identity, and culture and political leaders in countries ranging from China and India to Malaysia and Singapore underscored the need to restrict what many at the time dubbed ‘the invasion from the skies’. Similar concerns were also reflected in the pronouncements of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which called for the need to formalize ‘a united response to the phenomenon of cultural globalization in order to protect and advance cherished Asian values and traditions which are being threatened by the proliferation of Western media content’ (Coates, 1998).

But whereas a profound cultural anxiety coupled with a desire to safeguard the integrity of closed national spaces from external influences clearly dominated early responses to media globalization, the region’s current media discourse represents a decisive pivoting away from this position. In fact, ideas such as ‘media imperialism’ and ‘cultural pollution’, which evolved out of the anti-colonial sentiments that historically characterized many Asian nations, find little contemporary articulation within the public sphere. Consequently, statements of the type made by the then leaders such as Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammad, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, or even Indian nationalists, who engaged in persistent polemical attacks against Western media and programming (Chadha and Kavoori, 2000), are now rare.

This, of course, is not to claim that concerns associated with Western media inflows are wholly absent. China, for example, has argued before the WTO that ‘cultural goods and services’ represent ‘vectors of cultural identity and values’ that ‘justify the implementation of specific regulatory measures’ (Timmer, 2009), while its former President Hu Jin Tao accused ‘international forces’ of trying to Westernize and divide China ‘by using ideology and culture’ (Bloomberg News, 2012). But not only are such rhetorical flourishes infrequent but perhaps more importantly, they no longer constitute the basis of attempts to mobilize a common ‘Asian’ cultural identity against the West as they did in the late 1990s when satellite television first emerged (Ang, 2001).

Instead, it would appear that Western television programming, once a key component of the cultural contestation that defined early media globalization debates in Asia, does not seem to be similarly significant in contemporary discussions. Put differently, the West versus the rest paradigm that previously dominated media globalization debates in Asia appears to have little resonance within public discourse. Certainly, Western cultural products no longer rouse the type of intense moral or cultural concerns that they did at the outset of this current phase of media globalization. Instead, such concerns are much more likely to be centered regionally. In the Middle East, for instance, it is Lebanese-produced entertainment programs, notably reality television shows, that have raised the ire of religious and political leaders (Kraidy, 2012). Similarly, in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is Indian programming that inspires moral panics (Bhushan, 2013), while in China, it is the fear of South Korea’s impact on the local television industry that has motivated the government to crack down on television imports (Jacobs, 2012). In Asian contexts, arguably, the ‘Other’ is thus no longer automatically Western in nature.

Underpinning this development clearly are larger shifts in the continent’s media landscapes. For one, the emergence and growth of new media all over the continent has meant that the regulatory center of gravity has shifted away from television. In fact, the locus of governmental control seems to be increasingly directed online, with states engaged (albeit with questionable success) in monitoring Internet content, both cultural and political. Evidence of such efforts can be seen in governments seeking to ban or limit access to pornography in the case of many South East Asian nations, the Indian government’s periodic moves to remove politically objectionable videos from YouTube, or the Chinese attempts to censor micro-blogs.

Regionalizing media flows

In other words, while new media are perceived as posing a challenge at both social and political levels, satellite television, once a threatening novelty, has acquired a taken-for-granted, even routine, position in Asian mediascapes. This is largely a consequence of the proliferation of both channels as well as the substantial expansion of regional television flows, fueled by the growth of regional media alliances. Recent examples of such alliances include Hong Kong–based TVBI’s efforts to enter the Chinese domestic market via a joint venture with the SMG (Want China Times, 2012); the Smart Alliance between six commercial broadcasters from ASEAN countries to collaborate on the development of content, marketing strategies, and technology (ABS-CBN News.com, 2009); or Zee TV’s sales of dubbed Indian programming to countries in the Middle East (Deccan Herald, 2012).

Thus, even as media flows continue to be disproportionately dominated by the West, particularly the United States on a global scale, media products developed in ‘media capitals’ based in the South (Curtin, 2003) have become much more pervasive in Asia. The growing traffic in such cultural products, which include elements ranging from Bollywood films to dramas produced in Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand, not only involves a plurality of players, multi-directional flows, and regional powerhouses such as India, Korea, and Japan (Thussu, 2006) but also reflects the evolution of what have been called ‘South-South flows’ (Nederveen Pieterse, 2006). According to Huat (2012), numerous examples of such regionalized media flows are currently visible in Asia, such as those linking Thailand to countries like Burma, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as those connecting India to countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. In fact, the Middle East constitutes a new and vibrant manifestation of regionalized media flows that have resulted in the creation of a transnational pan-Arab market (Kraidy, 2012: 190) of a type that was imagined but never actually materialized in other parts of Asia. In the Asian context, it is apparent as ‘capital and cultural products from peripheral countries crisscross and realign in the region, defined by common cultural linguistic and historical connections’ (Kim, 2010: 4), Western programming has not only been increasingly de-centered from television schedules but also evacuated from discourses about television.

Normalization of the market model

But even as Western program imports have experienced a loss of both programmatic and discursive significance, ironically, globalization and the market-oriented media model associated with it have become normalized, ideologically speaking, across much of Asia. While this process had begun to develop at the beginning of the millennium in the form of the growing commercialization of broadcasting in Asia and resultant challenges to public broadcasting, they have since gathered a powerful momentum. This is evidenced in the fact that nation-states which previously perceived broadcast media as key elements of post-colonial nation-building and employed them for purposes ranging from the dissemination of development strategies and educational messages to national integration (Kitley, 2003) have moved to adopt a range of neo-liberally inclined policy measures (Held et al., 1999). These include the dismantling of state-owned or public broadcasting monopolies, the creation of dual broadcasting systems by opening the broadcast sector to private operators, and perhaps most significantly, the easing of restrictions on the presence of foreign (often Western) media both in the form of direct investment as well as content provision on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

In fact, Asia has come to be characterized by a reworking of the intimate linkages between political and economic power that characterize the contemporary capitalist formation. In this reworking, nation-states recognizing the potential of national media industries as both economic drivers and sources of soft power have backed away from their historic and reflexively protectionist stance toward broadcasting and instead come to play the role of ‘enablers’, moving actively to assist their media industries to succeed in global market places (Flew, 2013). Consequently, the region is increasingly marked by a consistent pattern of what we would like to term ‘state-sponsored marketization’ – a role that straddles policy, product development, and, indirectly, audience tastes. This institutionalization of the primacy of the market, embodied in this stance, has put television systems in Asia firmly on the path to greater integration with the global system – an integration that is not predicated on imported content flows, but rather on shifts in terms of media structures, policies, and production processes, that are being transformed on lines that closely parallel Western trajectories.

Lost in this ongoing process are both the discourse of media imperialism and the institutional politics (policy statements, quotas, gatekeeping) that resonated with the first wave of satellite television – a reflexive reliance on historically grounded post-independence protectionism, and a 1990’s resurgent nationalism. But while the old paradigm and policy responses arising out of it are evidently in a state of decline, what is emerging in its place? This remains unclear. Are we witnessing the first wave of a new kind of global media order? – one that assumes multiple centers is aggressively ‘post-western’ (with new soft power centers in Mumbai, Seoul and Rio) but nevertheless speaks in a language that is un-problematically grounded in concerns of consumption, access, and consumer identity (rather than those focused on the national or third world subject)? If this is indeed a new world media order, its current shape is coming together before our eyes – and while its ultimate shape is still indeterminable, the emerging contours may well represent the continued and familiar dominance of capital and market forces.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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