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| Do you Agree about the lack of J popularity in USA? |
| Totally Agree, It's tragic |
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28% |
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| Things are fine the way they are now |
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21% |
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| Disagree, it would never succeed in the USA |
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8% |
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| I dont really care, I already watch what I like on my own |
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42% |
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| Total Votes : 75 |
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oasis Joined: 02 Mar 2006 Total posts: 24 Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 12:10 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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are the costs of producing and distributing content for an english-language audience really so onerous? it seems like business processes over the internet could radically reduce these costs.
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RomanceJoined: 18 Jun 2005 Total posts: 690 |
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WroW |
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deathstar550Joined: 26 Dec 2005 Total posts: 12 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:06 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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On the spread of culture --
I personally don't really care if J-dramas become "big" in America. I'll always watch what I like -- it's not as if other people's tastes and prejudices dictate what I do and can't do. So I don't really care either way about the "spread of culture" -- either it spreads or it doesn't, and either way is fine by me.
What I DON'T want is the spread of J-drama (or lack thereof) to change the way in which J-dramas are currently being made. I like it for what it is.
On access to J-dramas --
I'm sad to hear that the television networks are choosing to limit J-dramas in the US, but it doesn't really affect me in any much way. I get most of my dramas from the internet anyway (as do many of my fellow drama fans). If I need anything obscure, I can just ask relatives overseas to buy it for me, or I can just import it like everyone else.
Slightly off-topic, but one thing has been bothering me as I was reading this thread, so I'm going to make a small request (not directed at anyone in particular, so please don't take offense) --
I'd appreciate it if people would not make negative generalizations about certain racial groups -- just because I have some political beef with some nationality doesn't mean that I have to take it out on everyone that was born into that racial category. And in making racial generalizations, I don't exactly speak for my entire race either (no one in human history has ever been qualified to "speak for their entire race"). So please, no stereotyping -- it's incredibly rude and disrespectul, and it in no way contributes to the thread. Thanks.
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WinchetJoined: 13 Aug 2004 Total posts: 5 Location: Munich, Germany Age: 32 Gender: Male |
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nikochanr3Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Total posts: 649 Location: NY Gender: Male |
| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:33 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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| Besides occasional showing of shows on asian channels in specific markets, where exactly has either k-drama or j-drama spread? the only drama i see slated now for a commercial (non import) release is Sekai no Chusshin de, and with the comic not doing so well i'm not even sure that's happening.
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SHDJoined: 08 Apr 2005 Total posts: 183 Location: Hawai'i Gender: Male |
| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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| nikochanr3 wrote: | | Besides occasional showing of shows on asian channels in specific markets, where exactly has either k-drama or j-drama spread? |
courtesy of koreanwiz:
http://www.koreanwiz.org/special-stations.html
it's North America-centric but I think if you combine it with the YesAsia breakoff YA Ent. box set releases of nearly every Kdrama (with eng. subs), KBS America spread through cable and satellite, Korean films at international festival, crossover marketing in/with Japan, is it Taiwan or China? that's trying to institute quotas on foreign entertainment (spec. kdramas)--I'd say there's enough of a buzz to make the initial poster of this thread feel "the spread of kdrama"
wonder if the original poster is still following this thread.
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Twilight RoninGender: Unknown |
| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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I do agree with Groink.
Japanese TV entertainment is primarily made for Japanese viewers, after all, it's shown on Japanese TV. That's where the TV stations in Japan make the money, that's how it is (and consider some 120 million inhabitants, that's a nice market already).
If it would be shown on US or any other western TV, it would have to be either a) dubbed (which is a PITA, I DON'T want to hear Shibasaki Kou's voice being dubbed in Orange Days) or subbed (how many people really want to read subtitles?).
I mean, it's the same with German TV series. They are made for German audiences, no German TV station gives a crap whether people in Sweden like it or not. Sure, you can watch the stuff in Sweden if you have a satelite receiver and manage to find, let's say RTL or Pro 7, but do those stations care about those viewers? No. Simply, because they're unimportant and not the target group.
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| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 6:52 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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Some of you are blowing things out of proportion, and doing a lot of postulating without facts.
Korean dramas are made primarily for the Korean audience too. The dramas that get an international buzz and the air of "Hanryu" (Korean wave), are the shows that star actors like Bae Yong Jun.
Spring Waltz is currently airing right now and it's been sold to various countries. It's labeled as a "Hanryu" product if only because it's the last installment of the "Season dramas" which were pivotal in gaining the overseas attention that Kdrama has. But how many dramas are aired every year? You think a show like "Goodbye Solo" has any of this hanryu nonsense in mind? It doesn't. Indeed, it's interesting how the Hanryu shows and movies usually flop in Korea. Spring Waltz is struggling to stay in top 20 ratings. It's doing that bad. The film April Snow did great in Japan but it too flopped in Korea. Yet Korea produces a lot of dramas and movies every year - the vast majority of which are not so-called hanryu exports.
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groinkLocation: Hawaii Age: 41 Gender: Male |
| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 7:26 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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| Ssang wrote: | | Korean dramas are made primarily for the Korean audience too. |
I totally agree.
That said, I disagree with an earlier post made by someone else when they said that Korean entertainment is a "pull" market rather than "push" market. It may be a pull market NOW, but when this whole Korean wave started, it was 100-percent a push. Almost everything in marketing started with a push. Otherwise, how are you going to even know about the product in the first place? People in Seattle don't just wake up one morning and think to themselves, "Hey! I want to watch a Korean drama!"
It's like illegal drugs (sorry for the comparision)... You have a drug dealer pushing the stuff on people with the "Try this stuff!" attitude. And sell the stuff CHEAP! Most people will not like what it does to them, while some others like the feeling. So the "addicts" will start begging for more. That's when the market turns into a pull market. And in many instances, the price goes up once the demand increases. The only difference with Korean dramas is that the price of everything (DVD box sets, cable subscriptions to KBS America, etc.) is kept low for the consumer.
| oasis wrote: | | are the costs of producing and distributing content for an english-language audience really so onerous? it seems like business processes over the internet could radically reduce these costs. |
When you manufacture DVDs, you must place an order in minimum but large quantities so that you can keep the manufacturing costs low. It is a lot cheaper to produce 10,000 box sets in one shot than to produce 1,000 box sets at ten different times. As for the Internet model, you're going to have to go into more detail describing exactly what you mean by using the Internet to reduce cost (example: streaming vs physical media?)
--- groink
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| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:08 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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| groink wrote: | | It may be a pull market NOW, but when this whole Korean wave started, it was 100-percent a push. Almost everything in marketing started with a push. Otherwise, how are you going to even know about the product in the first place? People in Seattle don't just wake up one morning and think to themselves, "Hey! I want to watch a Korean drama!" |
When Jewel In The Palace (Dae Jang Geum) was broadcast in Chicago in 2004 with english subtitles it became popular there. I don't believe it was meant to be. It was simply aired with English subs on one of its channels, as shows sometimes are. After all, Koreans in Chicago do watch the Korean channel too. Who was doing the pushing then? Is it supposed to be odd (or "illegal") to air a foreign show on a foreign channel with subtitles? Well, after the show aired, I started reading of various non-Korean Americans becoming K drama fans, I've seen message boards made by these fans dedicate to DJG and Kdrama in general, buzz of Hanryu to come along months after. That seems like a pull to me.
When you think of K drama, particularly if you're not a fan (and you're just a J drama fan who happens to be obsessed with K drama for other reasons), chances are you're thinking of the Winter Sonata series- snow in the background, scarf-and-glasses dude in the foreground. That show was made in the year 2002. Who was "pushing" this show when it gained the attention that it has in Japan? Across asia, other shows have been popular before it, such as All About Eve, a show which aired in 2000. I'm not sure this series has had any status in Japan but it did do particularly well in places like Signapore, I think. Yet this show's popularity precedes "Hanryu." Who is doing the 100% pushing here? Is someone pushing the people at Yesasia to subtitle and distribute Kdramas too? I'm not sure what you are suggesting.
Hanryu is something of an aposteriori term labeling a cumulative pheneomena that is itself based on shows that weren't originally intended for "Hanryu." Frankly, your posts would be a bit more reasonable if you were claiming this push were recent. Instead, you are claiming the reverse. That theory doesn't work.
That said, there was this one time at another message board where a poster suggested the odd theory that Korean wave became a factor in Japan as a result of the Japanese government's efforts.. something about improving relationships in order to effect an FTA. I give that theory no credence whatsoever, but I suppose it's not impossible. It's interesting.
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groinkLocation: Hawaii Age: 41 Gender: Male |
| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:48 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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| Ssang wrote: | | groink wrote: | | It may be a pull market NOW, but when this whole Korean wave started, it was 100-percent a push. Almost everything in marketing started with a push. Otherwise, how are you going to even know about the product in the first place? People in Seattle don't just wake up one morning and think to themselves, "Hey! I want to watch a Korean drama!" |
When Jewel In The Palace (Dae Jang Geum) was broadcast in Chicago in 2004 with english subtitles it became popular there. I don't believe it was meant to be. It was simply aired with English subs on one of its channels, as shows sometimes are. After all, Koreans in Chicago do watch the Korean channel too. Who was doing the pushing then? |
In this instance, the TV station in Chicago did the pushing UNLESS people in the broadcast area made the request for the show to be subbed and broadcast. In my experience in Hawaii with KIKU-TV, KIKU-TV and JN Productions did all the pushing back in the 1980's. Today, it's definitely a pull because we're constantly calling the managers there to bring in X and Y.
| Ssang wrote: | | I've seen message boards made by these fans dedicate to DJG and Kdrama in general, buzz of Hanryu to come along months after. That seems like a pull to me. |
Again, it's NOW a pull. Your local TV station in Chicago was the pusher. But now you're doing the pulling by giving them feedback that you like the stuff, and that you want more.
| Ssang wrote: | | When you think of K drama, particularly if you're not a fan (and you're just a J drama fan who happens to be obsessed with K drama for other reasons), chances are you're thinking of the Winter Sonata series- snow in the background, scarf-and-glasses dude in the foreground. That show was made in the year 2002. Who was "pushing" this show when it gained the attention that it has in Japan? |
For the US market, it really started in Hawaii about that time via KBFD-TV. General Manager Jeff Chung of KBFD-TV started pushing the dramas in Hawaii in the 1990's, as a way to promote his Korean heritage. He's talked about this in several places, including the Honolulu Advertiser (local newspaper) and in the various local-based Asian magazines. As for other TV stations in the continental US, much of the shows you saw more likely came from KBFD-TV, just like how KTSF-TV was licensing JN Production's subbed goods back in the 1990's.
As for in Japan, Korean dramas was introduced to them via the NHK network, which is a Japan government-funded TV network, much like PBS in the US. But instead of using subtitles, NHK hired some talento from the Japan entertaiment industry and dubbed shows like Winter Sonata in Japanese. From sources I've read in the past, NHK approached the Koreans and obtained the licenses, and then pushed the content out to the Japanese viewers. Then soon after, it too turned from a push to a pull. NHK obtaining the content wasn't anything special... They've done that sort of thing for decades. In the 1970's, NHK approached NBC and delivered Little House on the Prarie, again dubbed in Japanese. The Japanese didn't ask to see Little House... NHK just pushed it. Remember that one of NHK's goals is to provide their viewers with content from all walks of life, much like how PBS brings in Monty Python from the UK or ballet from Russia.
Rather than addressing every point you made whether it is a pull or push, the point is that in ANY market, it is always a push, UNLESS the consumers out of the blue heard about the product (read it in a magazine, word-of-mouth, or just plain searching for alternative entertainment). A pull that occurs before a push is more likely a totally spontaneous moment. For example, man wanted to cook his meat so that it wouldn't spoil as fast. So they had to invent a method of producing fire anytime they wanted it. That's a pull market. More recent, an average man without any government or college/university ties wanted Internet access, so he demanded that the Internet become privatized. That's a pull market. If he didn't demand Internet access, the Internet would still consist of only schools and government.
The ONLY way your argument of Korean entertainment originally being a pull market would work is if the people spontaneously made the telephone calls and asked the TV stations to start subbing and televising Korean dramas, without any encouragement from the TV stations or Korean TV networks.
For a clearer definition of push-pull strategies, read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push-Pull_strategy
--- groink
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| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:00 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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| I think that's straying through equivocatoins. In one sense, pretty much everything is a push, however that is not the sense I got when I've read your rants about "the Koreans" in this and the other thread. One wonders why you make such a big deal out of it.
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groinkLocation: Hawaii Age: 41 Gender: Male |
| Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:33 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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| Ssang wrote: | | I think that's straying through equivocatoins. In one sense, pretty much everything is a push, however that is not the sense I got when I've read your rants about "the Koreans" in this and the other thread. One wonders why you make such a big deal out of it. |
I believe I've been consistent with my writings on my blog, on the KIKU-TV board and on D-Addicts. I've always said the South Korean industry is aggressively pushing their content. Whether it is directly to the consumer, using local TV stations like KBFD-TV, or through printed and on-line media - they're the ones doing the pushing.
When I make a huge deal out of it, it is when someone starts comparing the Korean drama market to the Japanese drama market, saying the Koreans are doing everything right and the Japanese is missing (or ignoring) the opportunity, which is the inspiration of this topic, and which is my argument all this time. For example, in my blog, people write to me saying that In the US, the Korean drama market is kicking the crap out of the Japanese market, when in fact it isn't true at all. When it comes to the US market, the Koreans are all by themselves because the Japanese do not market their dramas in the US. I do not appreciate the comparison when in fact there is no US-based Japanese drama market to compare with. It gives the naive people out there the impression that the Japanese are not using common sense, when in fact they're using their freedom by deciding to keep their dramas within Japan. Again, I've never publicly ranted about people watching Korean dramas. I only rant when the comparison with Japanese dramas are made. That opens up Pandora's box. And when they do so, I'm coming out with guns-a-blazing, defending the Japanese dramas I heavily favor!!!!
And remember, I also criticize the Japanese full-on. There are some big issues with the geinokai that I have. So I criticize even the industries that I like - fair and balanced.
--- groink
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Twilight RoninGender: Unknown |
| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:02 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0 |
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Indeed.
Additionally I don't think that the market in the west would be as big as people claim.
Consider this: How many Korean or Japanese movies really make it into our cinemas? Sure, they appear at movie festivals. But how many really manage to be released into our cinemas in a way like the average Hollywood movie makes it? 2 per year? Maybe even just 1? Personally, I can't remember any Japanese or Korean movie that had a regular release around here in 2005. Hmm, in fact, I think Chakushin Ari had a normal release, but only in Germany (and Norway I think). Needless to say that only a few people saw it, even when compared to German movies.
Or take German TV series that usually have higher ratios than any US series that hits the screens here. It's normal. Surely people watch the US series, but no US series on German TV can compete with the old Lindenstrasse, for example, when it comes to viewer ratios and market share.
If they are released? They're either dubbed (oivech) or subbed. And the same old problem comes back. I've heard people say "Why are you watching this stuff? I don't like reading when watching a movie". I'd say that's the majority.
But, there are Japanese series on TV in the west. Believe it or not. The German station VOX has been showing Kozure Okami. Now, here comes the "fun" part. The series is dubbed into German and is usually boradcasted after midnight on Friday nights and you get 5 episodes at once. It's currently the only non-anime series from Japan that made it on German screens. The fanbase is small, I'd say, mainly those who have watched Japanese stuff already. There is a German DVD edition of the first 6 episodes available on amazon, that's it. That's all there is.
Personally I think that's the maximum you can get. I don't think that there's a "big market" for that stuff in the west. There are people in the west who like it, and that's good. But I'm 100% sure you'll never see Gokusen 2 on prime time TV in the west. Simply because who would watch it? Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf who just came home from working at a steel factory? Or Josie Smith in Crackapplecove, Maine, who just came home from working at the local burger drive-in? Surely not. Hans would go for some football or the latest Big Brother, or maybe he'd watch the latest "Wetten dass?" because Janet Jackson is there and there might be another chance for a boob-flashing incident, Josie would go for the latest edition of Oprah... The people who'd watch it would remain a minority. Think over it, how many people do you all know IRL who watch Japanese or Korean TV series? Then compare it to how many people you know IRL who watch Baywatch, Star Trek, etc...
I'd give my right arm and leg if the German/French arte would show Gokusen, or Beach Boys, after all, arte is the one station that shows most Japanese and Korean movies around here (usually just subbed). But will they ever show Gokusen? Beach Boys? Or even Remote? I seriously doubt it. Same goes for DVD releases in the west. I don't think any western publisher will release DVDs with a series that has never been seen on our TV screens.
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