Asian dramas and popular trends in Malaysian television industry

Abstract

As one of the popular cultural products, television drama for many years has been an indispensable feature on television around the world. As early as 1970s’ TV soap opera/melodrama have been significantly popular in the East Asia television industry. In the Malaysian context, television drama seems to be one of the major sources of entertainment for the local audience. In the 80s and 90s dramas were imported mainly from America, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Japan but subsequently from year 2000 onwards dramas from other parts of Asia and Latin America were also imported. The popularity of non western dramas in Malaysia, took precedent in the late 1990’s and currently remains as one of the major sources of entertainment for local audience. Asian Dramas alongside local dramas became an important feature in Malaysian television industry with astronomical viewership ratings among local audience. With the development of this trend, this paper attempts to investigate the rapid expansion of ASIAN television dramas and analyse the push and pull factors that encourages its growth within the Malaysian television industry. More specifically, this paper critically examines the impact of imported Asian Dramas have had on television scheduling in Malaysia, principally the question of when and where these programs have dominated the schedules.