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.