Murdoch y China

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http://mcs.sagepub.com Media, Culture & Society DOI: 10.1177/0163443705050467 2005; 27; 155 Media Culture Society Michael Curtin Murdoch’s dilemma, or ‘What’s the price of TV in China?’ http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/2/155 The online version of this article can be found at: Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at: Media, Culture & Society Additional services and information for http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://mcs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/27/2/155 Citations at ITESM-CAMPUS MONTERREY on February 14, 2010 http://mcs.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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Murdoch y China

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Media, Culture & Society

DOI: 10.1177/0163443705050467 2005; 27; 155 Media Culture Society

Michael Curtin Murdoch’s dilemma, or ‘What’s the price of TV in China?’

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Murdoch’s dilemma, or ‘What’s the price of TV inChina?’

Michael CurtinUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON, USA

In May 2003, Rupert Murdoch became the poster-boy for critics of mediaderegulation in the United States, when borrowing from the tabloid style ofMurdoch’s very own news organizations, several grassroots groups bandedtogether to place full-page display ads in major newspapers, featuring fourclose-up shots of a scowling Murdoch over a banner headline that read,‘This Man Wants to Control the News in America’ (https: //www.moveon.org/monopoly/). Widely characterized as the quintessential global mediabaron, Murdoch was then in the process of acquiring Direct TV in the USand Telepiu in Italy, key links in a global satellite TV empire that spansAustralia, Asia, Europe and the Americas. In the eyes of many, this givesMurdoch unprecedented control over media content and, furthermore, itadvances the project of cultural homogenization, as News Corp. imposesideas, images and values on populations around the world. Yet what is theactual value of this global satellite TV system? To what extent canMurdoch impose uniform cultural standards on global audiences? And howmuch ‘control’ can he actually exercise over societies as diverse as the USand China?

Such questions have become the focus of popular concern inmany parts of the world and they have been one of the most importantareas of scholarly inquiry in the field of media studies. This articlecontributes to these debates by closely examining the development ofRupert Murdoch’s satellite services in East Asia over the past ten years.It reflects upon the ways in which ‘global’ satellite TV systems are infact grounded by a set of forces that are materially and culturally specificto societies that fall within their footprints. Such findings suggest thatfurther development of the scholarly literature regarding media

Media, Culture & Society © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaksand New Delhi), Vol. 27(2): 155–175[ISSN: 0163-4437 DOI: 10.1177/0163443705050467]

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globalization will require more careful attention to the institutional logicsof media organizations.

Speculative theories of global media

Although anticipated by earlier work on international media, theories ofglobalization first emerged during the early 1990s when satellite televisionwas expanding rapidly in Europe and Asia. Dramatic political transforma-tions, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the confrontation atTiananmen, fueled scholarly speculation about the impact of transnationalsignal flows via satellite TV. Reflecting upon these events, McKenzie Wark(1994) – invoking Paul Virilio’s notion of vectors – contends that duringthe satellite era, electronic media can easily transmit images and informa-tion from one locale to any given combination of points around the worldat relatively the same cost and velocity. ‘These media vectors connect thesite at which a crisis appears with the sites of image management andinterpretation’, writes Wark (1994: 11). ‘Vectors then disseminate the flowsof images processed at those managerial sites to the terminal sites of theprocess, so they fall from the sky into our lives’. Our responses to suchsymbolic precipitation can engender actions that may in turn produce a setof images that will be relayed back to the site of initiation, therebytransforming the conditions faced by both actors and audiences throughoutthe vector field. ‘A vectoral approach’, says Wark (1994: 15), ‘looks atmovements of information transgressing the boundaries between what wereonce historically distinct sites’. Wark and Virilio furthermore suggest thatthe satellite era is distinctive due to the relentless, competitive developmentof technology that produces homogenized spaces in which ‘vectors canplay freely’ (Wark, 1994: 13).

Numerous other scholars have advanced related hypotheses about theways in which distant media imagery penetrate and transform localexperience, creating what many refer to as the ‘phantasmagoric’ quality ofeveryday life. Most centrally, researchers have suggested that electronicmedia accelerate processes of social integration by restructuring ourperceptions of time and space. Joshua Meyrowitz (1985: 136–7) speculates,for example, that television has a significant impact on power hierarchiesbecause it exposes the backstage behavior of elites on the one hand, whileon the other hand it produces feelings of intimacy with distant others whopreviously were feared or reviled. Thus, in the case of the Vietnam War,television exposed the duplicity of the US leadership, while at the sametime rendering the Vietnamese enemy less fearsome to the Americanpublic. One could apply this principle to numerous instances over the pastseveral decades – from Manila to Gdansk to Baghdad – showing how TVimagery can alter cultural boundaries and group affinities. Moreover, one

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of Meyrowitz’s (1985: 145) most provocative assertions is that TV can attimes permit tens of millions of viewers to experience events from aperspective that emanates from no place in particular. That is, because wesometimes share the same imagery, we then migrate informationally to thesame ‘place’, which is an electronic elsewhere that is geographically lessspecific than in the past. Such moments of convergence not only destabilizeconventional power hierarchies but they also help to enable the creation oftransnational political movements on issues such as ecology, human rightsand nuclear disarmament.

Anthony Giddens (2000: 88–90) extends this rather optimistic assess-ment by pointing out that national regimes no longer have informationmonopolies nor can they justify their actions by reference to tradition or todivine cosmologies. Fate no longer governs human existence, as mediaencourage more active and reflexive citizenries. Indeed, Giddens avowsthat the number of democratic governments has more than doubled sincethe 1970s partially due to changing patterns of media flow. Inspired byGiddens, John Tomlinson (1991, 1999) mounts a convincing argument thatmedia not only alter our sense of time and space but that they are animportant component of what he calls the ‘package of capitalist modernity’.This package includes such elements as a market economy, labor special-ization and professional expertise. It furthermore includes a more promin-ent role for information and ideas as fundamental tools of reflexive socialsystems.

It is here that countries such as the People’s Republic of China confronta difficult challenge building what they refer to as socialism with Chinesecharacteristics. For the ‘ambiguous gift of capitalist modernity’ is notoffered at the level of individual choice nor is it spread out buffet-style forsocieties to select among the elements that they might wish to incorporateinto their own context. Rather, Tomlinson (1999: 133–41) contends thatsocieties are tugged along by thousands of little decisions on a one-wayjourney from tradition to modernity. For Tomlinson, the synchronization ofmedia practices and the increasing transnational flow of media imagery areimportant features of globalization, and more specifically of processes bywhich modernity is spread throughout the world, engendering a new, albeitcontested form of unicity. Thus, Tomlinson (1991: 175) asserts thatglobalization ‘may be distinguished from imperialism in that it is a far lesscoherent or culturally directed process’. It is ‘the result of economic andcultural practices which do not, of themselves, aim at global integration,but which nevertheless produce it. More importantly, the effects ofglobalization are to weaken the cultural coherence of all individual nation-states’.

It is worthwhile to review these arguments regarding globalizationbecause they help to tease out some of the convergences in scholarlyopinion regarding the mechanisms by which the world is increasingly

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becoming an integrated entity. It also serves as a prelude to consideringJames Curran’s and Myung-jin Park’s (2000) provocatively titled antho-logy, De-Westernizing Media Studies. They reject many of the contentionsof the globalization literature, suggesting instead that the nation-stateremains the most important site of communication institutions, regulationand symbolic interaction (see also Moran, 1998; Schlesinger, 2002). Theyfurthermore attribute anxieties about the diminishing power of the nation-state primarily to Western researchers whose speculations are based ontheir own experiences, especially in Europe and the US.1 According toCurran and Park, this intellectual myopia has fostered a scholarly discoursethat is culturally biased and empirically unsustainable. They assert thattheir anthology:

. . . reveals in copious detail the continuing power of national political authorityto regulate media systems through direct and indirect means. . . . Far fromfinancial markets imposing a global norm of media policy, there continues to bevery great variation in the communications policies of different countries.(2000: 14)

Yet contradictorily, Curran and Park acknowledge the ‘inexorable marchtoward media liberalization’ and marketization in societies worldwide. Insome cases this leads towards democratization and modernization, but inother cases it results in collusion between commercial media and author-itarian political regimes, creating ‘a media-political complex’. Of particularconcern to Curran and Park is the sometimes triumphal inflection ofglobalization discourse, suggesting that modernity is extending around theworld and unleashing democratization and cultural integration as it pro-ceeds. They prefer to emphasize the distinctive and complex historicaltrajectories of national media systems.

The reservations expressed by Curran and Park bring to mind earlierdebates regarding modern media’s role in the production of nationalimaginaries. At that time, scholars such as Benedict Anderson (1983),Paddy Scannell (1989; Scannell and Cardiff, 1991) and Roger Silverstone(1994) directed our attention to the integrative functions of national mediasystems, pointing to the ways in which they foster narratives of commondestiny and help to establish daily routines, annual calendars and animagined cartography that situates various groups and locales within theboundaries of the modern nation. Yet other scholars, such as WilliamBoddy (1990), David Morley (1980) and Lynn Spigel (1992) reminded usof the contested nature of such national imaginaries, showing how theencoding and decoding of national narratives are shot through withstruggles and tensions along lines of class, race, ethnicity and gender. As aresult, one can say with some assurance that although media havefacilitated national integration, their achievements at producing nationalconsensus have been episodic, uneven and obviously contested. What these

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debates over media and nationalism produced, however, was a fairly richliterature regarding media institutions and audiences, something that is stilla work in progress for the globalization literature.2

Accordingly, we may have reached a hiatus point, if not the end of thespeculative moment – a time to turn away from speculative theory andargument-by-anecdote towards a more empirical consideration of mediainstitutions as one of the contested interfaces between national and globalforces. We therefore must bolster our understanding of those ‘sites ofimage management and interpretation’ that Wark skips past in his rush toembrace a vectoral approach. We must examine more carefully the ways inwhich media break down spatial boundaries and refigure social hierarchies,as described by Meyrowitz. And we should start to delineate patternsamong the ‘thousands of little decisions’ along Tomlinson’s one-wayjourney from tradition to modernity. Perhaps no other medium figures soprominently in the study of globalization as satellite television, a mode ofcommunication that crosses boundaries of class, gender, ethnicity andliteracy, in addition to nation. It is for these reasons we turn to a closeanalysis of Rupert Murdoch’s satellite adventures in East Asia.

Flickering Star

During the early 1990s – at the height of industry discourse about a vast,untapped Asian audience – Rupert Murdoch began to express interest in‘the world’s fastest growing television market’ and after nearly two yearsof maneuver, he finally secured a controlling stake in Star TV, a pan-Asiansatellite service established by the Li Ka-shing family of Hong Kong(Chan, 1996). Yet before Murdoch could fully savor this accomplishment,he unexpectedly jeopardized his investment by succumbing to the strato-spheric rhetoric of satellite TV. In a London speech, only a month after the1993 acquisition of Star, Murdoch (1993) enthused that satellite televisionwas breaking down borders and proving to be ‘an unambiguous threat tototalitarian regimes everywhere’. Without specifically mentioning China, hecontinued, ‘Satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungryresidents of many closed societies to by-pass state-controlled televisionchannels’. Murdoch’s hyperbole, which was telecast around the world bysatellite, immediately raised eyebrows in Beijing where officials hadalready expressed misgivings about his purchase of Star and reports soonbegan to circulate that Murdoch’s remarks were perceived as a directchallenge to Party supremacy.

In a swift and calculated response, Chinese leaders banned privateownership of satellite dishes, prohibited newspaper advertising for foreignsatellite services and selectively showcased the prosecution of violators.Even more creatively, the government began to promote cable TV

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development around the country, making services available at such lowcost that satellite dishes no longer seemed worth the bother. Paradoxically,Chinese leaders chose to proliferate access to government cable systems inorder to limit signal flow, reasoning that cable systems would be easier toregulate than satellite signals from afar. Taken together, these steps initiallyproved so successful that News Corp. managers soon realized they had afull-scale crisis on their hands and it would take years of concerted, almostobsequious effort for the company to regain even limited standing withthe Beijing regime. This contretemps furthermore emphasized that –Murdoch’s remarks notwithstanding – physical infrastructure on the groundwas just as important to Star TV as high-speed conduits in the sky.

Murdoch’s management team discovered it had other problems, as well.Initially, Star had been developed as an English-language, pan-Asianplatform aimed at upscale households across the continent, but it soonbecame clear that the company would have to multiply the number ofchannels and target them more specifically along linguistic, cultural andnational lines. For it became evident to Star executives that elite audienceswere not large enough to sustain the costs of operation, let alone turn aprofit. Moreover, the dispersal of elite viewers across the vast expanse ofAsia proved to be a programming and marketing nightmare. Time-zonedifferences alone made a single program service untenable and, as it turnedout, less than a third of Star’s advertising clients were interested insynchronous continental exposure. Instead, most clients preferred to buyads that would promote particular products in specific media markets. Inorder to serve these customers, Star needed to produce and acquireprogramming crafted to the tastes of such audiences and this, according toJohn O’Loan, the chief of network operations who oversaw Star’stransition to News Corp. control, caused a major shift in company strategy.

After we bought Star we realized that what [the Li family was] doing waswrong. It would be nice if you could get some economies of scale. It would benice if you could squeeze another 1 percent out here and there. And like anyother business, you’ll look for places where you can get those economies, butnot if they’re going to put you out of business by losing touch with youraudience. (interview with author, 8 July 1997)3

At first Star’s new management thought it could cope with thesechallenges by splitting the service in two, creating a northern and asouthern beam, one that would be pan-Indian and the other pan-Chinese.Yet before long they discovered that these markets were further compli-cated by prevailing taste hierarchies within them. For example, it is likelythat a viewer in Fujian province, directly across the Straits from Taiwan,would be interested in Taiwanese television channels (especially thosebroadcast in the southern Min dialect), but highly unlikely that Taiwaneseviewers would be interested in programs from Fujian, since most viewers

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in Taiwan have access to at least 80 channels that compete ferociously fortheir attention. Moreover, it’s unlikely that a Hong Kong viewer would beinterested in either because of linguistic, social and cultural differences,although a (Cantonese-speaking) viewer in nearby Guangzhou might beinterested in the same sorts of Mandarin programming as viewers in Fujianprovince or even Shanghai.

Cultural biases proved to be just as important. For example, Guangzhouand Hong Kong residents both speak Cantonese, and Hong Kong TVprograms are quite popular in Guangzhou, but Guangzhou programs are notpopular in Hong Kong. The reason for this peculiar pattern of cultural flowis best expressed in temporal terms: Guangzhou looks to Hong Kong as itsfuture, while Hong Kong looks inland towards its past. As Koichi Iwabuchi(2002) has observed, such valences are at work throughout Asia and theysignificantly influence patterns of cultural exchange. Given these complex-ities, Star decided that the only way to move forward with its Chinese TVservices was to develop two distinctive Mandarin-language platforms, onefor Taiwan and one for the eastern region of mainland China, while largelyignoring such lucrative but competitive markets as Hong Kong, Singaporeand Malaysia.

By 1995, management had all but abandoned ambitions for a pan-Chinese, let alone a pan-Asian service, since both approaches simplylacked enough advertiser support. John O’Loan, a lanky Australian whohas shuttled around the world launching new satellite services for NewsCorporation, explains that transnational advertising works best for com-panies that are trying to build a brand identity with consumers who areunfamiliar with their product. ‘The people who are the biggest spenders onpan-European advertising are the Japanese, who are furthest from themarket, followed by the Yanks,’ observes O’Loan (interview with author, 8July 1997). Establishing a brand identity is important to these companieseither because they are developing a new distribution infrastructure orbecause they have a product (often a luxury product) that does not rely onmass distribution systems. The advertiser, in such cases, isn’t especiallyconcerned about the competitive dynamics of particular local or nationalmarkets. Likewise in Asia, says O’Loan:

We sell a lot of pan-Asian advertising, but not to Asians. We sell it to theAmericans and we sell it to the Europeans, Volvo for example, but we couldn’tsurvive on that type of advertising. The money that keeps television going issoap, toothpaste, and consumer products, which is national advertising that’stied to a distribution network on the ground. (interview with author, 8 July1997)

Yet within the borders of the People’s Republic of China, Star found thateven national advertising was problematic because, like many other parts ofAsia, distribution networks are rarely national in scope. Infrastructural

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constraints, personnel limitations, banking idiosyncrasies and complexsocial networks all militate against national product distribution. AsO’Loan observes:

If you have a toothpaste factory, you’ve got to have a way to get your productaround the country. In China, right now, there’s no way to do it. The obstaclesare severe because the road and rail infrastructure can’t handle this kind ofthing. Then if you open up different factories in different parts of the country,you have to be careful about quality control, staffing, and you also have theproblem of getting supplies to the factories. China is hardly a unified market.Now consider the problem of calling Asia a unified market. (interview withauthor, 8 July 1997)

Such uncertainties and reversals beleaguer global media conglomeratesthat aspire to expand their operations into the growing markets of Asia.Between 1993 and 1995, Rupert Murdoch invested close to $1 billion in aventure that was losing money at the rate of over $1 million a week (Chan,1996: 175–81). Besides the problems he encountered with Chinese offi-cials, Murdoch soon learned that the idyllic image of 3 billion Asianconsumers was attractive to only a limited number of global advertisers andfinanciers, many of whom had only vague plans for future involvement inthe region. Far more important were the advertisers with existing productsand distribution systems in the numerous, diverse and often under-developed markets of the region. As one senior Chinese media executiveputs it:

Asia is a hell of a big place, and a lot of people come from outside and theymake one big mistake: they assume that it’s a melting pot like the United Statesor even a confederation like Europe. In fact, it’s a collection of tiny places andyou have to keep your focus, otherwise you will be lost. (C.K. Phoon, MDGolden Harvest Entertainment, interview with author, 2000)

For Star to reach audiences in such diverse locales, it had to multiply itschannels and narrow the focus of each service. So instead of a pan-Asiansatellite platform beaming Western programming in from the outside, NewsCorp. managers found themselves saddled with a growing number ofchannels and markets, each with distinctive features and each requiring thepainstaking cultivation of personal relationships with local businesspeopleand government officials.

Murdoch goes courting

By 1995, Star’s Indian and Taiwanese services were off to a capable start,but the PRC (People’s Republic of China) channels were in deep trouble.They had effectively been frozen out of the market by Chinese regulatorswho made it clear that they would not allow Star to ‘bypass state-

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controlled television channels’. Taking the cue, Murdoch initiated discus-sions with a number of potential joint venture partners, among them, LiuChangle, a former officer in the People’s Liberation Army and, during the1980s, a military affairs reporter with Central Radio, one of the mostpowerful media services in pre-TV China. Liu seemed an especially goodprospect because he had expansive contacts and reputed managerialexpertise. Moreover, many of his top staff members were also from thePRC and consequently they understood what audiences had been seeing ontelevision and what they had been missing. Moreover, Liu’s group hadparticipated in the development of mainland broadcasting institutions and ithad a deft sense of the political and entrepreneurial nuances of the system.

Yet, perhaps most important to Murdoch was the fact that Liu had thebacking of an influential political faction within the ruling government.Speculation on this issue abounds, but two theories are often repeated andseem most feasible. According to several sources, the first suggests that agroup aligned with President Jiang Zemin supported Phoenix in preparationfor the 1997 transfer of sovereignty in Hong Kong. This event was to beone of Jiang’s enduring legacies and his supporters were anxious to ensurethat it enhanced his status both in Asia and around the globe. Conse-quently, this group sought to create a commercial satellite service outsidethe state broadcasting system that would provide favorable coverage of the1997 event. Explained one media executive (who preferred to remainanonymous; interview with author, 2000), ‘They needed a service thatlooked independent, but one they could trust’. And since Liu Changle hadbeen ‘nurtured’ for many years during his service in the PLA and atCentral Radio, he looked especially attractive to the Chinese leadership.

A second theory suggests that Phoenix was envisioned with a moreexpansive set of objectives. According to a media consultant (whopreferred to remain anonymous, interview with author, 2003) with ex-tensive contacts throughout Asia:

Liu probably went to some key figures in the State Council and pitched the ideafor Phoenix and probably – as with most important decisions in China thesedays – some pockets were lined. It’s not clear exactly who is behind Liu at thispoint. What is clear is that Liu was given the remit to feel out what isacceptable on TV. This serves the interests of the reformers inside thegovernment and of the people at CCTV [the government’s national TVnetwork], but it’s safe. It’s arm’s-length. There’s plausible deniability if anideological backlash should emerge.

In either case, all agree that Liu has served the interests of powerfulfactions inside the Chinese government and certainly Phoenix exhibits thevery same traits as other Chinese enterprises, known as ‘red chips’, whichmix capitalism with party politics. Yet Liu protests that Phoenix is notsimply a product of political favoritism and indeed, from the verybeginning, Murdoch was reportedly impressed by Liu’s programming and

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marketing proposals, convinced that he understood the intricacies of bothChinese politics and audience preferences.

Phoenix takes flight

In 1996, Murdoch and Liu launched Phoenix as a 45/55 joint venture thatwould complement the Star platform. While Star would continue to beamEnglish-language sports and entertainment channels to the mainland,Phoenix would have exclusive rights to develop Mandarin-language movieand general entertainment channels, with the latter emphasizing news andinformation programming. Just as importantly, the Phoenix staff wouldtake on the time-consuming task of building a marketing organizationinside mainland China and cultivating relations with advertisers andgovernment officials.

In charge of this effort was Howard Ho, the General Manager ofDistribution and Marketing. When I visited him at Phoenix TV, Ho invitedme to be seated near a promotional poster for GTO, a Japanese TV dramaseries. GTO is about the adventures of an unconventional young teacherwho suffers from bad manners and a bad college education, but whonevertheless wins the hearts of his students because his brash, honest andultimately righteous behavior provides a stark contrast to the forces ofinstitutional sloth and indifference at their high school. Known as ‘GreatTeacher Onizuka’ or GTO, the hip young educator is familiar to televisionaudiences in many parts of East Asia and was introduced to China on thePhoenix satellite signal. A slickly produced series, GTO offers bothcosmopolitan gloss and allegorical episodes about the shortcomings ofbureaucracy, a topic that no doubt appeals to many Chinese viewers whomight draw connections to their own experiences in the PRC.

The GTO poster, featuring a glamour portrait of its star, TakashiSorimachi, is mounted on the wall in Ho’s office right beside a large mapof the People’s Republic of China that features conspicuously unglamorousthumbnail portraits of provincial officials, accompanied by brief biograph-ical data. Published by one of Hong Kong’s biggest trading companies, themap is perhaps among the most important documents in the office, for oneof the marketing department’s prime responsibilities is to convince provin-cial officials throughout China to allow cable operators within theirjurisdiction to carry the Phoenix channels. Such approvals take placebeneath the radar of national politics, since the government in Beijing hasonly granted Phoenix limited rights to transmit to upscale hotels andexpatriate housing complexes. Yet in fact, thousands of cable operatorsaround the country – with guidance from provincial and municipal officials– exercise local discretion in selecting the cable services they offer in theirlocality. As a result, an ironic pattern of uneven exposure has emerged in

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Chinese television: the closer one lives to Beijing, the more cautious thelocal cable operator. As one moves away from the capital, however, thevariety of channels expands significantly, often providing provincialviewers with broader access to cosmopolitan TV fare than those living inBeijing. It’s up to Howard Ho and his marketing staff to convince localofficials that programs like GTO are distinctive, edgy and attractive, but areat the same time unlikely to create a stir that might draw the attention ofleaders in Beijing.

An effervescent personality, Ho seems amply suited to the task,alternately exhibiting a flair for corporate promotion and for philosophicalreflection on subjects ranging from Chinese culture to corporate strategy.For example, Ho points out that the Phoenix name and company logoactually have great significance. ‘To Westerners,’ he says, ‘Phoenixsuggests a rare bird that has been reborn. In Chinese, however, the word“fenghuang” is a compound of two characters, one meaning male bird andthe other female bird. But the interesting thing’, observes Ho, ‘is that youdon’t know which is the male and which is the female. Is feng a male or afemale? No one knows’ (interview with author, 12 May 2000). Thus, thecompany logo features two lavishly plumed birds, swirling head-to-tailaround a central point. ‘And if you look at the logo more carefully, you seethat it also looks like the iris of a camera. And it looks as if it is rotatingand it will never stop. And it also looks like a fengshui bagua’, which is anamulet representing the fortune telling sticks of the I-Ching arrangedaround a tai-chi symbol, again suggesting a swirling complementarity oflife forces, or the yin and yang. Ho goes on:

We spent a long time designing this logo because it represents the meaning ofour brand. Phoenix represents something that is brand new but also somethingthat is very Chinese. It’s new and old, Western and Eastern. It also tries torepresent a merging of the northern and southern parts of China, and of theircultures, which are very, very different. The southern part of China is alwayscreating, looking forward, and extending outward. But [he leans forward foremphasis, gazing emphatically above his black-rimmed spectacles and slowingthe cadence of his delivery] the real culture of China comes from the north,thousands and thousands of years of history and culture. And the mixture ofthese two areas is a major part of our thinking as we develop the programmingstrategies for Phoenix. (interview with author, 12 May 2000)

Engineered into the Phoenix identity from the very outset was thisversion of Chineseness that embraces the conservative cultural and politicalphilosophies preferred by the Party leadership in Beijing. It acknowledgesthe northern part of China as the ‘middle kingdom’ (the political, historicaland cultural center of the country), while the south is portrayed as acomplementary source of dynamism and experimentation, an image thatjibes with popular perceptions of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shanghai –the engines of economic modernization. In describing the brand, Ho makes

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no explicit mention of the global or foreign elements of the company.Rather than an intrusive or exotic presence, Ho describes Phoenix as adomestic service that fits into every home: a window looking out, ratherthan a signal beaming in. The distinction, he says, is that Phoenix is run byChinese for Chinese. Yet at the same time, Phoenix attempts to distinguishitself from other television services in mainland China. Uplinking fromHong Kong, the brand intentionally plays off the city’s reputation as acosmopolitan center of China and regularly invokes the glitter of the city’sentertainment industry, much as Hollywood media do in the United States.

The Phoenix brand plays upon these multiple meanings. Yet suchambiguities are not solely a product of corporate calculation, they alsoresult from the company’s status on the margins of Chinese television. Notyet fully recognized by the PRC government, Phoenix seeks tacit ac-ceptance of its presence on local cable systems by positioning itself withina dominant framework of Chineseness, while at the same time invoking acosmopolitan gloss that might distinguish it from its competition. Notunlike the city of Hong Kong itself, Phoenix exploits its marginality, whileat the same time obscuring its links to global capital.

In part, this strategy seeks to appease leaders in Beijing, but, just asimportantly, it assists the marketing department as it pursues the enormoustask of getting Phoenix onto cable systems that don’t currently carry theservice. Marketing executives must therefore come up with strategies toingratiate Phoenix with local officials and to generate popular demand for aservice among people who have never had the chance to view its programs.Since it is banned from advertising in newspapers and magazines insideChina, the company relies on a combination of promotional events andword-of-mouth recommendation. For example, in 1997, to celebrate HongKong’s return to China, the company invested over US $1 millionpromoting a stunt driver’s jump across the Hukou falls of the Yellow River(Szeto, 1997). Working with local officials, Phoenix executives spent closeto a year organizing celebrations and festivities that would surround the 1June event. The jump was emblematic of the gap being bridged betweenHong Kong and the mainland but was also designed to build relationshipswith officials in the two provinces on either side of the river. ‘One year ofpromotion and a 10-second jump,’ enthuses Howard Ho. ‘In that one year,the penetration of Phoenix in those two provinces rose dramatically, allbecause of mouth-to-mouth promotion’ (interview with author, 12 May2000).

Similarly, three years later, the Phoenix marketing team organized a roadrally to commemorate the new millennium. Starting from Athens andtraversing the Middle East and Central Asia, four-wheel drive vehiclesraced across six provinces of China before reaching their destination at theGreat Wall. Wherever they stopped along the way, Phoenix arrangedfestivities – arrival ceremonies, welcoming parties and musical perform-

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ances – each event aimed at promoting goodwill and popular buzz. Therally was furthermore designed to maximize visual appeal (from thedeparture at the foot of the Acropolis to the arrival at the Great Wall), sothat the entire road rally might be covered continuously on the Phoenixchannel. Like the Silk Road travel routes of ancient times, the journeyemphasized connections between China and the outside world, while at thesame time it elevated the country’s status by establishing the Great Wall ofthe Middle Kingdom as the destination of the winners.

The ultimate objective of all these marketing activities is to increaseaudience penetration figures. Penetration and viewership are the two mostimportant indicators that advertisers use when negotiating the purchase ofairtime from a satellite telecaster. In markets like Taiwan, viewership ismore important because advertisers already know that most channels havecomplete penetration. In China, however, penetration figures are mostimportant for services like Phoenix, which try to demonstrate their growingvisibility in a vast and complex media environment. As of 2003, Phoenixclaimed to reach 42 million households, or 13 percent of the total (Phoenix,2003). ‘Compared to CCTV, we’re just a small child’, observes HowardHo, ‘but with our market surveys we can prove to our advertisers that thesehouseholds are more affluent and more socially influential’ (interview withauthor, 12 May 2000).

Indeed, by 2000, Phoenix’s audience profile was impressive enough toattract close to US $65 million in revenues from a roster of 300 advertisers,less than 30 percent of them international firms (Ho, interview with author,12 May 2000). Equally important, total ad sales more than tripled duringthe late 1990s, generating a profit of close to $5 million in 2000 (Phoenix,2000: 5). Moreover, Phoenix executives express confidence that thecompany’s growth potential is tied to the overall growth potential of theadvertising economy in China. As Ho observes:

The total ad-spend in China compared to the total GDP is still really low [0.5percent] compared to Hong Kong or the USA [1 percent]. Secondly, if you lookat the ad-spend in these other countries, you’ll see that the TV is about 45percent of the total – that’s an average – but if you look at China, it’s about halfthat. So there’s a lot of room for growth. (interview with author, 12 May 2000)

Apparently, investors agreed with such estimates. An initial publicoffering (IPO) in 2000 valued the company at $700 million, but investorsquickly bid it up to a $2 billion valuation before it settled back to a figurecloser to $1 billion (W. Pfeiffer, CEO, Celestial Pictures, interview withauthor, 2 March 2002). Yet despite the fact that Phoenix has proven itselfto be a capable operator in a large and growing market, its profitabilitysince the IPO has been erratic. Revenues have grown to over $90 million,but costs have also spiraled, generating a loss in 2002 of $21 million(Phoenix, 2002: 7). In large part, these fluctuations stem from its recent

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expansion to a third channel – a financial news service, Phoenix Infonews,that is currently losing money at the rate of about $1 million per month.Expansion into Europe and North America is also a drag on the bottomline. Yet perhaps the biggest worry is debt collection from advertisingclients in the PRC, an issue that may not be resolved until nationalregulators grant Phoenix official status as a mass audience televisionprovider.

Exactly when that might happen remains unclear. The central govern-ment tacitly acknowledges Phoenix’s presence while continuing to with-hold official approval, expecting Phoenix to prove it is in earnest about itsstated intentions to provide a complementary service that will not under-mine the PRC television system nor challenge the authority of theCommunist Party. The government has effectively turned Phoenix to itsown purposes by controlling access to cable systems, by prohibitingnewspaper advertising for foreign satellite services, and by explicitlypunishing Murdoch for his display of hubris in 1993.

Dangerous topics

Yet Phoenix also benefits from government regulations in a number ofways. On the one hand, broadcasting services inside the PRC weredeveloped with the aim of fostering national unity, requiring that allchannels broadcast in Mandarin. Despite the many different varieties ofspoken Chinese, this policy made it possible for Phoenix to fashion aservice aimed at viewers who were accustomed to Mandarin programming.Another regulation that benefits Phoenix is the fact that local and provincialstations – many of them quite popular – are discouraged from coveringnational and international news, a domain reserved for CCTV, the Beijing-based national network that is closely monitored by government censors.Ironically, this forbidden terrain has become Phoenix’s programmingpreserve: ‘Dangerous topics are Phoenix TV’s strength’, declared LiuChangle in a toast to Hong Kong journalists in 2001 (Cheng, 2003: A8).‘When you turn on Phoenix, no matter whether in Sichuan, Hunan orYunnan, it looks different from all of the other channels’, adds HowardHo:

When you look different, people will spend time watching you, if only becausethey are curious. We are very lucky at this moment. It won’t be the same in tenyears. There will be more competition and we may have to regionalize ourservices within China, but right now we are very lucky because wherever weare, we look different from the competition. (interview with author, 12 May2000)

Indeed, Phoenix current affairs programs tackle issues that provincialand municipal broadcasters conspicuously shun. For example, in 2000, the

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Beijing leadership aggressively criticized the presidential election campaignin Taiwan because the political party of a leading candidate, Chen Shui-bian, openly proclaimed its support for Taiwanese independence. Theelection was clearly marked as a sensitive issue, since the PRC governmentconsiders Taiwan a renegade province of China rather than an independentcountry. Consequently, mainland stations have a long-standing policy ofdeferring to CCTV, which cautiously toes the Communist Party line in itscoverage of Taiwan.

Yet Phoenix TV drew widespread attention by not only providing livecoverage of the election but also by promoting news specials and talkshows on the topic as a prominent part of its schedule. Estimated audiencesaveraged 35 million viewers and viewership was especially high on cablesystems further afield, away from the direct oversight of Beijing officials.In Fujian province, little more than 100 miles from Taiwan, Zhong Pengtu,a tax collector, gathered with friends regularly to follow the coverage onPhoenix and reportedly became so engrossed in the political drama that heand his friends placed bets on the outcome. ‘We were so happy when ChenShui-bian won’, Zhong recalls, ‘He was the underdog and he speaks ourdialect, Minanyu. We understood every word of his victory speech inTaiwanese. It was great entertainment’ (Cheng, 2003: A8). Meanwhile, inBeijing, where cable operators dare not carry the Phoenix channel on theirsystems, the signal was only available in upscale international hotels and inthe residential compounds of government leaders. But, reportedly, uni-versity students were so intrigued by the democratic transfer of power inTaiwan that groups of students pooled their money to check into five-starhotels where they could follow the campaign, even if they couldn’t affordthe room service.

According to Howard Ho:

As long as we said, ‘Taiwan election’ and not the ‘Republic of China’ election,we knew we were safe. And we’d say, ‘Chen Shui-bian got elected.’ We didn’tsay he was elected President of the Republic of China. CCTV only ran veryshort, one-minute reports on election day, but we went in-depth and did analysisof what was going on. People in China, even [Premier] Zhu Rongji, like towatch Phoenix. People like to have that kind of information. And for more thanthree months, we were the only station broadcasting that kind of news aboutTaiwan and we enjoyed very good ratings. (interview with author, 12 May2000)

This was not the first time that Phoenix trumped CCTV, the nationalChinese network. One year earlier, when NATO bombers destroyed thePRC embassy in Belgrade, killing two reporters, Phoenix lavished ex-tensive attention on the event. Indeed, British press reports criticizedPhoenix for pandering to officials in Beijing (Davis, 1999: 23; Vines, 1999:18). Other observers noted, however, that Phoenix was probably as much

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concerned with audience sympathies as it was with government favor. Saysone Chinese media critic (who wished to remain anonymous):

Phoenix was trying to do what CCTV was not allowed to do, which was to tapinto popular outrage and fervent nationalism. The Chinese stations were notallowed to do this because the government worries about stirring up nationalistfeelings. The government is afraid of any kind of popular movement that itdoesn’t control, even a nationalist movement, because once the genie’s out ofthe bottle . . . (interview with author 2000)

He shrugs and waves his hands, as if to suggest a loss of control.Howard Ho dismisses the notion that the Phoenix was catering to PRC

censors or trying to whip viewers into a nationalist frenzy, but he doesn’tdeny that the channel’s coverage sought to elicit audience sympathy for thevictims. ‘If you take a close look at the coverage, we never said anythingsubjective, such as, the US government is to blame. We never said that,’ hedeclares as he taps the table top lightly for emphasis.

If, however, you look at our coverage compared to the coverage of the Westernnews services – that particular picture of the demolished building and theremoval of the bodies – you’ll see that it only happened once on CNN, but withPhoenix you saw those images on and on. But we never tried to promote apolitical line. If we did so, we might get in trouble with the government.Instead, we were trying to promote sympathy with those who suffered a loss oftheir friends and families. (interview with author, 12 May 2000)

Indeed, the Phoenix coverage was not so different from the sort ofcoverage one might expect from US cable news channels in the wake of anAmerican tragedy. Yet it is difficult to overlook the irony of a marginal TVservice plucking the heartstrings of a country where the government isexceedingly cautious about appeals to popular emotion. Here again we seePhoenix testing the boundaries of possibility in Chinese television, whileallowing those inside the ruling regime and the government mediahierarchy who benefit from such experimentation to maintain a plausibledistance.

Clearly, Phoenix news and public affairs programs are dancing close tothe fire, but they have not yet been burned in large part because manyPhoenix executives have experience inside mainland broadcasting organiza-tions. Liu Changle spent five years as a chief editor at Central Radio duringthe 1980s. ‘He knows what can be said and what cannot be said,’ observesone Chinese media executive. ‘I think he understands what the governmentwould like to hear, but more important, what they can tolerate and whatthey cannot’ (anonymous, interview with author, 2000). Liu himself refersto it as risk management, saying, ‘We have a team of professionals whoconstantly measure our programming for sensitivity’ (Cheng, 2003: A8).

Such awareness makes Phoenix rather successful in the mainland and yetat the same time precludes it from attracting audiences in places like Hong

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Kong or Taiwan, where viewers are accustomed to even more free-wheeling news coverage of Asian politics. Consequently, Phoenix benefitsfrom its ability to negotiate the complex shades of political discourse onthe mainland, but, interestingly, that same sensitivity limits the scope of itsaddress. Although the company’s Internet homepage (http://phoenixtv.startv.com/mainpage.htm) represents Phoenix as ‘A Global Satellite Tele-vision Group Reaching Chinese Communities Around the World’, it mustconstantly balance the economies that may be achieved by broader appealwith the need to position itself in relation to mainland competitors andgovernment policies. Although it has the technological potential to reach aglobal Chinese audience, Phoenix in fact focuses most of its effort on onlya portion of the viewers in the PRC, a far cry from what had beenimagined only a decade ago by executives at Star TV.

Conclusion

Maps of satellite footprints were perhaps one of the most intoxicating yetdeceptive representations of the early satellite era. In the case of Star TV,they suggested blanket coverage across Asia, from Lebanon to thePhilippines and south to Indonesia. In fact, however, the development ofStar and Phoenix has been shaped by numerous factors on the ground:infrastructural, political and textual. At the infrastructural level, govern-ment regulation and market forces significantly influence the configurationof delivery systems for satellite TV. Rather than bringing a totalitarianregime to its knees, Star TV was forced to accommodate Chinese officialsin an attempt to gain carriage on government cable systems. Moreover,Rupert Murdoch’s dreams of exploiting a pan-Asian market were dashedby the cultural diversity of audiences and the logistical demands ofcompeting with local and national television broadcasters. Likewise, thecomplexity of product distribution networks on the ground underminedthe possibility of expansive advertising strategies in the sky. And, finally,the promotional chores associated with building services inside China wereexacerbated by restrictions on newspaper and magazine advertising.

At the political level, Murdoch found that the Beijing government wasfar more complicated than popular conceptions of authoritarianism mightsuggest. On the one hand, Chinese leaders could initiate sweeping changesto media policy on relatively short notice. Yet, on the other hand, thesepolicies were executed with significant discretion at the local level, aphenomenon indicative of the devolution of power in China over the pasttwo decades (Goodman and Segal, 1994). Moreover, within the nationalgovernment various factions vie for power. Among the many groupsinvolved, some are reformers bent on experimentation and often connectedto transnational enterprise, while others are guardians of Mao’s peasant

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revolution who are suspicious of foreign threats to the supremacy of theCommunist Party. In such a context, global capital can be figured either asan exploitative force that seeks to extract value from Chinese society or asa productive force that can be put to use for the development of a nationalmedia system. Yet even those who perceive positive benefits from a globalenterprise such as Star or Phoenix do not necessarily believe that satelliteTV will democratize China or enlighten its citizens. As we have seen, suchservices can just as easily incite nationalist passions as they can stimulatereasoned deliberation on important social issues.

Finally, at the textual level, each satellite service must establish a styleor a brand that can capture a niche among competing forms of informationand entertainment. Accordingly, Phoenix intentionally represents itself as aservice transmitting from an electronic elsewhere on the margins of China.With its headquarters in Hong Kong, Phoenix appears at once familiar andproximate to Chinese viewers but also edgy and cosmopolitan. And, likeCCTV, it presents itself as a national Mandarin-language service, but itfocuses on upscale, influential audiences in the eastern part of China. In sodoing, the Phoenix brand invokes both a locality (eastern/cosmopolitan)and a temporality (innovative/modern) to suit its commercial purposes, butthis also restricts Phoenix’s appeal to audiences within the PRC, sinceChinese residents of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vancouver see little in itsprogramming that is especially provocative when compared to the othertelevision services at their disposal.

These three levels shape satellite TV services around the world and theyprovide a template for assessing some of the scholarly speculation aboutsatellite media as agents of globalization. We can see, for example, thatmedia imagery does not simply ‘fall from the sky into our lives’ (Wark,1994), but rather is shaped by powerful institutions that are competing forpower and control under very dynamic circumstances. Although at certainmoments forces may conspire to move us ‘informationally to the sameplace’ (Meyrowitz, 1985), that place is not a vague elsewhere, but is in facta locale that is structured by influences that emerge on the ground just asmuch as they emanate from the sky. Finally, even though it is perhapscorrect to contend that choices being made by Chinese TV institutions aresmall stepping-stones along the one-way path to modernity (Tomlinson,1999), it is nevertheless important to remember that each stone isdistinctive and the moment of arrival uncertain.

Such uncertainty no doubt surprised Rupert Murdoch when he firstventured into East Asia and one still wonders if his gamble will pay off.Murdoch’s stated ambition is to put together the first global satellitenetwork and then float a public stock offering in hopes of recouping hisinitial investment. An important part of that portfolio will be Star andPhoenix, but many media executives in Asia wonder if either service willever turn a consistent profit. Indeed, to witness Murdoch kowtowing to

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Chinese leaders, currying the favor of provincial bureaucrats and panderingto nationalist sentiments of Chinese audiences invites us to reconsidersimplistic notions of power that paint him as the quintessential mediabaron. Perhaps ‘This man wants to control the news in America’, or China,or elsewhere, but Rupert Murdoch’s experience in Asia reminds us thataspiration and execution are two very different things.

Notes

Thanks to the Taiwan National Endowment for Culture and Art and the USFulbright Commission for providing research support during the 1999–2000academic year. I furthermore want to express my appreciation to colleagues at theInstitute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica and the Foundation for Scholarly Ex-change who graciously hosted my sabbatical in Taipei, and to colleagues andstudents in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong where I served as a visiting professor during the 1996–7academic year.

1. Their argument is similar to Doreen Massey’s (1992) critique of thepostmodern North Atlantic boys’ club or Marjorie Ferguson’s (1992) reservationsabout the mythologies of globalization.

2. An example of a useful study of global media institutions is Moran (1998)and of global audiences Iwabuchi (2002).

3. This article is part of a larger research project that included interviews withmore than 100 film and television executives in Hong Kong, Taipei and Singaporebetween 1997 and 2003. Star TV executives were interviewed in each of thesecities as to local and transnational operations of the satellite network.

Interviews

Anonymous media executive, 2000.Anonymous media consultant, 2003.H. Ho, General Manager, Distribution and Marketing, Phoenix TV (12 May 2000).J. O’Loan, Director of Network Services, Star TV (8 July 1997).W. Pfeiffer, Chief Executive Officer, Celestial Pictures (2 March 2002).C.K. Phoon, Managing Director Golden Harvest Entertainment (12 May 2000).

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Michael Curtin is Professor of Communication Arts at the University ofWisconsin-Madison. His books include Redeeming the Wasteland: Tele-

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vision Documentary and Cold War Politics (Rutgers, 1995), Making andSelling Culture (co-editor; Wesleyan, 1996) and The Revolution Wasn’tTelevised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict (co-editor; Routledge,1997). He is currently writing a book about the globalization of Chinesefilm and television and, with Paul McDonald, co-editing a book series forthe British Film Institute on ‘International Screen Industries’.Address: Department of Communication Arts, Vilas Hall, 821 UniversityAvenue, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706 USA. [email:[email protected]]

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