This article focuses on the regionalization of reality TV I am a Singer from China to Hong Kong. It explores the features of a successful flow of a reality singing contest with the concepts of mediascape, televisuality and cultural memory of pop music. The three research questions: what format structures of televisuality are being integrated in I am a Singer; how locals in China and Hong Kong interpret and appropriate I am a Singer to their experience of cultural identities and how trans-border televisual musicscape facilitates regionalization of television programme, are answered by textual analysis and in-depth interviews with 12 informants from China and Hong Kong. It is found that the focal programme is implemented with excessive performative style that holds audience’s attention, authentic music performance that resonates with post-1980s identity in China and Hong Kong, and dramatic reality contest that links to nationalism and Hong Kong people’s victimized identity. Identity politics is consumed by audience in China and Hong Kong as the dramatized excitement of the focal programme, which nurtures a group of loyal audience across China and Hong Kong.
AlvaresC. (2009). Reception studies as a multidimensional model: Negotiating ethnicity and gender. In Garcia-BlancoI.Van BauwelS.CammaertsB. (Eds.), Media agoras: Democracy, diversity, and communication (pp. 134–157). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
2.
AndersonB. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, England: Verso.
3.
AndrejevicM. (2004). Reality TV: The work of being watched. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.
4.
AppaduraiA. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7, 295–310.
5.
AppaduraiA. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
6.
AssmannJ.CzaplickaJ. (1995). Collective memory and cultural identity. New German Critique, 65, 125–133.
7.
BennettA. (1999). Rappin’on the Tyne: White hip hop culture in Northeast England: An ethnographic study. The Sociological Review, 47, 1–24.
8.
BignellJ. (2005). Big brother. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
9.
BondebjergI. (2002). The mediation of everyday life: Genre discourse and spectacle in reality TV. In JerslevA. (Ed.), Realism and ‘reality’ in film and media (pp. 159–192). Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum.
10.
CaldwellJ. T. (1993). Televisuality as a semiotic machine: Emerging paradigms in low theory. Cinema Journal, 32(4), 24–48.
11.
CaldwellJ. T. (1995). Televisuality: Style, crisis, and authority in American television. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
12.
ChanJ. M. (1993). Commercialization without independence: Trends and tensions of media development in China. China Review, 25, 1–19.
13.
ChanJ. M. (2009). Toward television regionalization in greater China and beyond. In ZhuY.BerryC. (Eds.), TV China (pp. 15–39). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
14.
ChanJ. M.FungA. Y. H. (2012). Structural hybridization in film and television production in Hong Kong. In ChanK. (Ed.), Hybrid Hong Kong (pp. 108–120). New York, NY: Routledge.
15.
ChowC.MaE. (2008). Rescaling the local and the national: Trans-border production of Hong Kong TV dramas in Mainland China. In ZhuY.KeaneM.BaiR. (Eds.), TV drama in China (pp. 201–215). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
16.
ChowY. F.De KloetJ. (2013). Sonic multiplicities: Hong Kong pop and the global circulation of sound and image. Orland Park, IL: Intellect.
17.
ChuY. W.LeungE. (2013). Remapping Hong Kong popular music: Covers, localisation and the waning hybridity of Cantopop. Popular Music, 32, 65–78.
18.
De KloetJ. (2010). China with a cut: Globalisation, urban youth and popular music. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.
19.
FergusonG. (2010). The family on reality television: Who’s shaming whom?Television & New Media, 11(2), 1–18.
20.
FoucaultM.BurchellG.GordonC.MillerP. (1991). The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
21.
FriedmanJ. (2002). Reality squared: Televisual discourse on the real. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
22.
FrithS. (1996). Music and identity. In HallS.du GayP. (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 108–127). London, England: SAGE.
23.
FungA. Y. H. (2007). The emerging (national) popular music culture in China. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 8, 425–437.
24.
FungA. Y. H. (2008). Media consumption and incomplete globalization: How Chinese interpret border-crossing Hong Kong TV dramas. In KimY. (Ed.), Media consumption and everyday life in Asia (pp. 83–96). New York, NY: Routledge.
25.
FungA. Y. H. (2009). Faye and the fandom of a Chinese diva. Popular Communication, 7, 252–266.
26.
FungA. Y. H. (2013). Deliberating fandom and the new wave of Chinese pop: A case study of Chris Li. Popular Music, 32, 79–89.
27.
HallS. (2001). Encoding/decoding. In DurhamM. G.KellnerD. M. (Eds.), Media and cultural studies: Keywords (pp. 163–173). Malden, MA: Blackwell. (Original work published 1973)
28.
iHeima. (2017, January17). The ranking of business performance of variety shows in 2016 [2016 Nian dianshi zongyi shangyu jiazhi paihangbang]. Retrieved from http://www.iheima.com/zixun/2017/0117/160896.shtml
29.
JaramilloD. L. (2013). Rescuing television from ‘the cinematic’: The perils of dismissing television style. In PeacockS.JacobsJ. (Eds.), Television aesthetics and style (pp. 67–78). New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.
30.
JianM.LiuC. (2009). ‘Democratic entertainment’ commodity and unpaid labor of reality TV: A preliminary analysis of China’s Supergirl. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 10(4), 524–543.
31.
JonesP. J. (2005). Entertaining politics: New political television and civic culture. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.
32.
KeaneM. (2006). From made in China to created in China. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9, 285–296.
33.
KeaneM. (2008). From national preoccupation to overseas aspiration. In ZhuY.KeaneM.BaiR. (Eds.), TV drama in China (pp. 145–156). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
34.
KeaneM. (2010). Keeping up with the neighbors: China’s soft power ambitions. Cinema Journal, 49, 130–135.
35.
LarkeyE. (1992). Austropop: Popular music and national identity in Austria. Popular Music, 11, 151–185.
36.
LiY. (2003). An analysis of culture in Hong Kong, Macau and Zhujiang Delta [Gangau yu zhusanjiao wenhua touxi]. Beijing, China: Central Compilation & Translation Press.
37.
LuS. (2005). History, memory, nostalgia: Rewriting socialism in Chinese cinema and television drama. Asian Cinema, 16(2), 2–22.
38.
MaE. K. W. (2001). Consuming satellite modernities. Cultural Studies, 15, 444–463.
39.
MaE. K. W. (2011). Desiring Hong Kong, consuming South China: Transborder cultural politics, 1970–2010. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
40.
MaN. (2015). The rise of ‘Anti-China’ sentiments in Hong Kong and the 2012 Legislative Council elections. China Review, 15(1), 39–66.
41.
MathewsG.MaE.LuiT. L. (2008). Hong Kong, China: Learning to belong to a nation. New York, NY: Routledge.
42.
McIntyreB. T.SumC. C. W.WeiyuZ. (2002). Cantopop: The voice of Hong Kong. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 12, 217–243.
43.
MengB. (2009). Who needs democracy if we can pick our favorite girl? Super Girl as media spectacle. Chinese Journal of Communication, 2, 257–272.
44.
NelsonJ. (1989). Eyes out of your head: On televisual experience. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 6, 387–403.
45.
OuelletteL.HayJ. (2008). Makeover television, governmentality and the good citizen. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 22, 471–484.
46.
ProcterJ. (2004). Stuart Hall. London, England: Routledge.
47.
SkeggsB.WoodH. (2012). Reacting to reality television. New York, NY: Routledge.
YuX. (2016, February14). Kubert Leung: My life with music [Liang Qiaobo: Wo he yinyue lijing cangsang]. Global People. Retrieved from http://www.hqrw.com.cn/2016/0214/45936.shtml
