Seventh International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Through analyzing licensed reality television programs such as China’s Got Talent, this paper examines transnational television formats and their circulation and imitation in contemporary China, challenging the traditional concept that television format trade falls within a West-Rest narrative and highlighting the cultural and media phenomena of interactive “glocalization” of cultural products through hybridizing a universal format with local audience preference. Detailing the localizing concerns, adaptations, and re-adaptations of licensed reality shows in China, this research updates the notion of transnationality inherently embedded in television format trade. China’s Got Talent inspired a series of talent shows in China and East Asia. These programs indicated a recycling and readapting flow of the already-licensed programs. This paper argues that these talent show programs developed with the intention to imitate China’s Got Talent should not be seen as an extension of the Euro-American format power; instead, they should be seen as phenomena of interconnected recreation and circulation of media products in China and East Asia. The study introduces the new “title-only” format production in China, in which the broadcasters only purchase the right to use the format title and alter the setting and plot of the programs. It also discusses how this practice is a bypass and reconciliation between transnational media production and Chinese ideological censorship. In the meantime, the paper also considers how spatiality and temporality in television experiences have been reshaped by these formatted television programs, especially by privileging primacy and audience’s authority.