Asian Beauty Appreciation

Source: english.cri.cn

If you want to read tea leaves about China, the just concluded Happy Girls talent show offered a basketful of foliage.

The Hunan Satellite Television program was unsurprisingly a ratings champion, beating even most primetime shows while occupying an unenviable 10:30 pm to 1 am slot. With other regulator-imposed constraints, such as no mobile phone voting, the show still managed to stand out when almost all other televised singing contests have fallen by the wayside.

Formerly Supergirl, the show started in 2004 and went nationwide the next year, turning into a business dynamo and a cultural phenomenon. However, it was accused of being a copycat as it was obviously patterned after American Idol. But Wei Wenbin, the big boss of the local office of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), the government agency overseeing the industry, was unapologetic when I interviewed him two years ago.

“Everyone has access to foreign programming and everyone is attempting to imitate the best. The trick is in localization.”

And he was right. The Hunan programmers got the inspiration from American Idol, but they did not stop at imitation. Instead they went several steps further. For example, they started charging for voting by text messaging, thus creating an alternative source of revenue. They lengthened each broadcast to as much as four hours, maximizing advertiser exposure. They organized fan club activities that were strikingly similar to political campaigns in Western countries. They secluded the finalists and created the facade of friendly competition. They forced them to sign long-term record or performance contracts before allowing them to edge ahead in the final rounds. (Some of these practices were banned for this season.)

In other words, it was full of “Chinese characteristics”. Had they borrowed (or bought) the US format wholesale, they could not have won over so many viewers.

So, lesson No 1: Learn from the best, but always customize for your own market.