"Baby one more time". What can you think of when you come across such title? Britney Spears? If you say that, you are not wrong. This article that I came across yesterday featured Britney Spears as their star and talked about her comeback after the fiasco at 2007 MTV VMA Awards and a couple of broken relationships. It summarised her life and her going-to-release album, "Circus".
Here, we witness the success of foreign media, which allows us to have access to foreign products. The case of Spears is definitely one excellent example to show how much we consume foreign products as events like when she got married, how she silenced all critics during her recent sweep at the 2008 MTV VMA Awards are brough to us immediately after an event occurred.
This article and Britney Spears demonstrated the Globalisation of Mass media where media companies attempt to acquire a larger share of the profits available in the international market. Although this article is not a product of the foreign media but the fact that Jive records (the company that Britney Spears belongs to) paved the way for Spears to be known in the Asia market shows the attempt to 'invade' overseas market as they deem their market as saturated. It is obvious that their market is saturated with other pop stars within the region like Christina Aguilera, Pink and Jessica Simpson risng to fame at the same time as Spears. I'm not too sure whether if it is considered as an attempt to acquire a larger share of the profits but since they have made Britney Spears known to various parts of Asia, I assume it is considered too?
If you do not agree with me regarding the point mentioned above, maybe you will agree with this? This article which is a local publication mostly feature the latest trend in town and stuff that will entertain youngsters. However, I came to notice that most of the entertainment section of this publication actually consists of foreign products especially foreign artists and their work. This would then illustrate that because the market of Asia is rather small and our resources are limited, we rely on foreign countries to provide entertainment.
Have you wonder why interregional trade within Asia is limited? Most of us are aware that the Asia market is rather small as our technology is limited. We are not equipped with the advance and high-technology that foreign countries especially the U.S. own. In addition, the different cultures in Asia also play a part in the media globalisation of mass media because the diversity of our cultures have turned us away from other products in fear that we do not understand and appreciate the culture of countries. On top of that, Asia has quite a few undeveloped countries whose economics are not capable of purchasing media products which thus makes the interregional trade increase.
Given all these reasons, it is not surprising that Singapore need to purchase lots of foreign products like from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the European countries. I'm not too sure if we purchase media products from India but I think the answer is 'yes' as recently in a newspaper, I saw this article which states a group of Indians gathering at one place to meet their idol, a Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan. Therefore,since Singapore is small and with limited technology, we are not able to produce alot of different products to suit the locals which then results in the media turning to overseas market to purchase productions that might appeal to us. For example, Mediacorp purchased alot of Korean shows which are suitable for families, Taiwan shows (in dialect) to suit our older population and European products like Harry Porter to suit the young in Singapore.
This leads me to think, since Singapore is a multi racial country, our production ideas would most probably come from the brains of the different race in Singapore, so, why is it that it does not appeal to foreign counties? We see Britney Spears hitting into the Singapore market but i doubt the Europeans know who is Stefanie Sun. That is to say, we see foreign products in our country but we do not see our products in foreign countries. We buy drama series from Taiwan such as the recent Taiwan hit "You are my destiny" but we do not see our drama series like the recent channel 8 show on volleyball being screen in Taiwan. Probably, this situation occurs because the foreign market is too saturated to take in any more production?
Nevertheless, the point here is that we consume alot of foreign products and they are very successful. Maybe after all, we have to admit that local productions are not as appealing as the foreign productions? This can be seen as we see how the upcoming "High School Musical 3" hit local whereas our own productions like "Money No Enough 2" stays within Asia or maybe just Malaysia whose lifestyle are similar to ours.
What I can hope now is probably to pray that one day, the foreign media will have a space for our productions or that one particular local production will interest the foreigners such that they open their market to us to make the trade a two way process.
