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Crowded skies, divided pie.' With such a dramatically captioned discussion, begins Transnational Media and Contoured Markets, by Amos Owen Thomas, from Sage (www.indiasage.com) .

"Television was seen as essential to the economic strategies of most countries in the developing world since the 1950s and 1960s, and thus a protected national resource. Among them were India, China and Indonesia," chronicles Thomas. These countries `commissioned domestic satellites' to enable `public television broadcasts in support of their nationalistic agendas'.

Things changed in the 1990s. Asian countries experienced intrusion into their media space. By the end of the twentieth century, transnational channels were so many that "rapid entry and exits from the market were quite impossible to keep track of."

An interesting nugget in the chapter on `Mediating Globalisation' is about the origin of the idea of using satellites for global communication. One learns that in 1945, Arthur C. Clarke, a broadcast engineer and science-fiction writer, had spelt out the technical criteria. "Applied to television, satellite technology has meant that costs of broadcasting become independent of audience distance, while costs of downlinking and redistribution of signals are low."

Is there a relationship between advertising and development? "Whether it is a cause or an effect is still in doubt," concedes the author, on the strength of many published research works. For instance, Callahan (1985) found that advertising was correlated to GNP (gross national product) but not to other economic variables such as energy, savings and imports; according to him, "advertising changed the composition of consumption but not the level of consumption."

A chapter on StarTV notes that in the early to mid-1990s, China had "an estimated 10,000 cable operators ... ranging from large ones that controlled up to half a city to small ones which controlled just a street or even one side of a street." It seems StarTV was `readily available in much of the country in defiance of official edicts.' Citing interviews, Thomas writes that some Beijing officials, responsible for cable TV regulation, were supposedly "influenced towards leniency by junkets to the more liberal and entrepreneurial southern parts of China."

In a chapter on `Demarcating Nationality,' Thomas notes how Indonesia adopted a liberal policy towards transnational satellite broadcasts to attract foreign investments and demonstrate `the openness of the society and its politics.' However, "Indonesia did not allow foreign broadcasts to be made from its territory." The gainer, in the process, was "Singapore which uplinked television programming to satellites while forbidding the viewing the same by its own population."

Thomas studies how advertising agencies based in Mumbai, Jakarta and Hong Kong have historically performed. "While the Indonesian attitude towards transnational television might be characterised as disinterested avoidance, the Indian attitude was one of enthusiastic embrace, and that of Hong Kong was one of thoughtful consideration," he opines.

Of concern, in a chapter titled `Relativity of Globality,' is the author's lament that much programming on the largely commercialised television in post-media liberalisation Asia is entertainment such as `soaps, variety shows, game-shows and the like.' These distract people via `bread-and-circuses' instead of addressing the causes of their poverty and other socio-economic injustices endured, rues Thomas.

Is it `global-plus, local-minus,' he asks, when listing the many `strategy paradoxes.' The ultimate impact of transnational TV and advertising in Asia is "the ongoing blurring of the boundaries between the national, regional and global strategies." On this, the final chapter notes that `some dysfunctional mutations may result.'

Alarmingly, "when not managed with sensitivity, the cumulative outcome could well be a form of globalised banality through the extensive cloning of the ordinary in media from abroad." Don't we have enough and more evidence of that already?

Purposeful dissection.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali

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