Formatted entertainment in China: change in television production practices

Since the format Got Talent achieved great success in China, we can see the prevalence of format adoption and the television industry’s reliance on western expertise. Television formats have provided Chinese television professionals not only with new creative inputs into indigenous production practices but also with license to experiment with ideas that may not fit in with the legacy of the national culture or the brand of the channel or network.

This study explores the growing trend toward television
format adoption and localization as an industry
development strategy in China, and provides rich data
through qualitative methods such as field observation and semi-­‐structured interviews. The results of the various analyses in the thesis demonstrate, in different ways, how Chinese professionals perceive the development of their practices and that of the whole television industry following the adoption and localization of formats.

Furthermore, the analyses also indicate how China’s political and economic contexts impact on the ways in which television formats are localized.