They can stick to European Drama forever, there's a lot of it made. Plus it's probably their 5th choice after US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Then there's Europe in 5th, then the rest of the world is looked at. Right now I would think that Asian production is miles behind all of these but ahead of say African Productions on Mainstream channels.
Bollywood does reasonably well in the UK, as it has a captive and viable audience, despite this, the films are still shown late at night on C4/Film4.
As for African films, there are shops near me in London that have done a good trade in Nigerian DVD's, although I suspect more people are torrenting or watching on-demand for those type of films.
They can stick to European Drama forever, there's a lot of it made. Plus it's probably their 5th choice after US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Then there's Europe in 5th, then the rest of the world is looked at. Right now I would think that Asian production is miles behind all of these but ahead of say African Productions on Mainstream channels.
Bollywood does reasonably well in the UK, as it has a captive and viable audience, despite this, the films are still shown late at night on C4/Film4.
As for African films, there are shops near me in London that have done a good trade in Nigerian DVD's, although I suspect more people are torrenting or watching on-demand for those type of films.
Bollywood is huge around the world but with the very odd exception you won't see it on mainstream UK TV (and there is a big audience in the UK) with the obvious exception of late night films that you point out. If it can't get on screen I see little hope for Korean Shows anytime soon.
Yes, You're right the situation is different. There are a lot of Canadian Shows already on UK and Irish TV. There's a huge amount of Co productions going on Between Canadian, UK and Irish Producers. The point is that there is loads more Canadian TV (English and French) that never sees the light of Day over here. The Canadians have the contacts and a foothold in the Market but they still don't get a lot of their stuff shown. The Koreans have done showcasing for a week, as have 50 or 60 other countries in various ways. When you have to do a showcase week you know you're outside the tent, meanwhile the Scandinavians and the other Europeans (with the Canadians) are inside the tent getting some of their product on Screen. They don't have to do showcase weeks.
Of course they don't need showcase. UK is not far from other part of Europe. That's why they don't need showcase, but if you read the 2 articles about how the UK's subtitled TV dramas got popular. It took a while for European dramas to gain acceptance in the UK:
Quote:
French television police drama series ‘Spiral’, first shown on BBC Four in 2006, was the channel’s first French-language drama series, attracting a modest audience of around 200,000. Firm critical approval led to the BBC broadcasting subsequent series in 2009, 2011 and 2013. In 2008, the BBC also began broadcasting Swedish inspector series ‘Wallander’, with some episodes attracting more than half a million viewers.
Yet it was Danish series, ‘The Killing’, first broadcast on the BBC in early 2011, that became a global sensation, garnering critical acclaim, a cult following and many industry awards. Subsequent series regularly attracted over one million viewers
The Guardian posted:
Aficionados of foreign television now had to hunt for imported boxsets and English subtitles. That is, they did until BBC4 made the bold decision to add international drama to its eclectic menu. While Brazilian favela drama City Of Men tested the waters in 2004, following the success of Fernando Meirelles's film City Of God, it took the Gallic grit of French cop series Spiral in 2006 to provide BBC4's first subtitled sleeper hit. That, of course, was followed by Denmark's The Killing, the show that proved must-see TV can be in any language. Settling into the now-traditional Saturday night subtitled drama slot, by the conclusion of its first series in 2011 The Killing routinely topped the BBC4 ratings.
Please recall
The Killing
first came out in it's homeland in 2007. It didn't broadcast in the UK until 2011. After The Killing, more European dramas got picked up. So judging from reading the 2 article. You just need one unique foreign drama to start a craze and the Killing was the one that "light the fuse". K-dramas on UK TV could be the game changer for East Asian Tv dramas in general.
chinamug posted:
Bollywood is huge around the world but with the very odd exception you won't see it on mainstream UK TV (and there is a big audience in the UK) with the obvious exception of late night films that you point out. If it can't get on screen I see little hope for Korean Shows anytime soon.
That's why I'm hoping a K-drama on UK TVs could change all that just like how
The Killing
did for European dramas in UK. I mean you guys are probably underestimating K-dramas. About K-dramas fanbase in US, it didn't grow overnight, it took several years for fanbase for K-dramas to grow:
Just this year Cuba, Argentina, and Brazil (Brazil's K-drama fanbase did grew prior to IRIS's Brazilian broadcast) has shown their first K-dramas on TV for the first time.
The Latin American Spanish dubbed K-drama found it's way into Spanish channel in the US like Mundofox and Telemundo showed Spanish dubbed K-dramas which was one of the factor how K-dramas in USA grew.
Europe wasn't immune to the charm of K-dramas:
Romania is one of the few European countries that showed K-dramas:
So yeah, K-drama may not be shown on UK TV yet, but that doesn't mean it'll never happened you know the old say "first time for everything". I'll say this: You can't denied that K-dramas have gain that much popularity around the world.
For some of you that claim that K-drama fanbase is niche, I want to show you an article from 2009, it was reported
that Korean studies in European universities (that
includes the UK
) had seen a huge surge
. It was reported that:
Quote:
Korean pop culture was also popular with European students. Many knew of acclaimed Korean movies such as “Oldboy,” the work of director Kim Ki-duk, and even films that won no awards such as “My Sassy Girl,” “200-Pounds Beauty,” and “A Bittersweet Life,” as well as TV dramas such as “Full House.”
This is from 2009, I don't know how much it grew until now. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Korean studies program enrollment in Europe has grown. But I think it's possible that the fanbase could be big enough to maybe convince the TV executives to show K-dramas in the UK.
I do agree that European dramas have their own charm, Korean (and East Asian) dramas have their own charm too.
I would be disappointed if BBC4, ITV3, Channel 4, and Sky Arts aren't able to show K-dramas. I don't want fans of K-dramas in the UK to accuse them of being narrow-minded or going as far to call them racist. But I have confident that K-dramas may be shown on UK TVs because they may want to diversified their foreign drama selection.
Can these VOD I mention above be used as a alternative method to show foreign dramas (that include the French Canadian drama one of the user mention, and Korean/Asian TV dramas) when they can't be shown on TV? I mean in the US, a lot of our foreign TV dramas from Europe (the one you watched) are shown on Hulu like The Bridge, Spiral, and Braquo rather then traditional TV and has also gain fanbase in the US. K-dramas was able to do this too.
So is it possible for BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4, and Demand 5 to have foreign dramas shown on there instead rather then traditional TV?
Because if that's possible then maybe that could be a good way for other European dramas and K-dramas to be shown to the UK mainstream, by using VOD streaming:
I know 3 of the main Korean TV stations (KBS, MBC, and SBS) have UK partner:
KBS UK's partner: BBC
MBC UK's partners: ITV, and Channel 5
SBS UK's partners: Channel 4, and BskyB
Let say BBC want to show KBS's Empress Cheonchu/the Iron Empress but couldn't show it on TV because it's 78 episodes long. Can BBC put that drama on BBC iPlayer as another way. Can the same thing apply to MBC's King's daughter, Su Baek Hyang. The drama is 108 episodes long (each episode are 30 min). With that length I don't think itv3 can showed the whole thing for 8 weeks, but putting it on ITV player online could solve that issue.
Do you see what I'm talking about? Can these VOD in UK work like how Hulu does in the US for K-dramas and other European dramas that hasn't shown in the UK?
Can these VOD I mention above be used as a alternative method to show foreign dramas (that include the French Canadian drama one of the user mention, and Korean/Asian TV dramas) when they can't be shown on TV? I mean in the US, a lot of our foreign TV dramas from Europe (the one you watched) are shown on Hulu like The Bridge, Spiral, and Braquo rather then traditional TV and has also gain fanbase in the US. K-dramas was able to do this too.
So is it possible for BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4, and Demand 5 to have foreign dramas shown on there instead rather then traditional TV?
Because if that's possible then maybe that could be a good way for other European dramas and K-dramas to be shown to the UK mainstream, by using VOD streaming:
I know 3 of the main Korean TV stations (KBS, MBC, and SBS) have UK partner:
KBS UK's partner: BBC
MBC UK's partners: ITV, and Channel 5
SBS UK's partners: Channel 4, and BskyB
Let say BBC want to show KBS's Empress Cheonchu/the Iron Empress but couldn't show it on TV because it's 78 episodes long. Can BBC put that drama on BBC iPlayer as another way. Can the same thing apply to MBC's King's daughter, Su Baek Hyang. The drama is 108 episodes long (each episode are 30 min). With that length I don't think itv3 can showed the whole thing for 8 weeks, but putting it on ITV player online could solve that issue.
Do you see what I'm talking about? Can these VOD in UK work like how Hulu does in the US for K-dramas and other European dramas that hasn't shown in the UK?
Technically yes, and some catch-up services now have their own unique content that hasn't been broadcast on linear channels. However what you suggest is unlikely to happen with the UK PSBs (BBC, ITV, C4, C5) in the short term, as I doubt the viewing figures for online carriage of these dramas would be high enough to justify the purchase costs. (In BBC terms this would be a public service return value, for ITV/C4/C5 it would be advertising value)
Acquired drama has a cost. The PSBs have to justify this cost (they don't charge a subscription for their catch up service) - and I suspect that the audiences wouldn't be at a level that would work. Plus, if the drama hasn't been subtitled into English, there are likely to be some hefty subtitling costs that the Korean studio selling the series would need to pass on.
My gut feeling is that for niche drama - with a very different format to the European model (usually 13 episodes per series or less) - an international streaming service, rather than a broadcaster catch-up service would be the way to go. I suspect this may need to be subscription based - like Netflix.
In the US are the dramas on Hulu or Hulu+ (which is a subscription service).
Personally I'd love for their to be a streaming service that carried non-English language content - with Nordic, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean etc. language series. I wish Tatort was available for instance.
BBC Three content for example, along with the recent Peter Kay comedy on BBC One got their debut on iPlayer first, but they were all BBC commissions.
Unless the BBC decide to show one of their co-commissions with an international broadcaster on iPlayer first, it's very unlikely until catch-up VOD from linear broadcasters has the type of audiences linear tv gets. iPlayer is on the rise though and a brand that most UK viewers understand.
I would be disappointed if BBC4, ITV3, Channel 4, and Sky Arts aren't able to show K-dramas. I don't want fans of K-dramas in the UK to accuse them of being narrow-minded or going as far to call them racist. But I have confident that K-dramas may be shown on UK TVs because they may want to diversified their foreign drama selection.
It's an interesting way to take the discussion. It's narrow minded to even mention Racism. This is purely down to cost and audience. It is notable that no one to my knowledge has ever tried to start a private 24 hour Korean based channel on Satellite for the UK and Ireland. (I may have missed it) Many other small niche groups have done so with various levels of success. However, private enterprise kind of proves the point, the audience is far too small and the risk far too big. There has been subtitled European TV and Film on TV here since the 70's and probably earlier. The audience might be small... but there will be one. There's no such Guarantee for K-drama, and Using the US and indeed much of the rest of the world's TV audience as proof won't work. The audience in Ireland and the UK is very different to Mainland Europe, lets not even talk about the differences between an UK audience and the audience in Iran and other countries where censorship still exists!
Plus I'm not sure why K-drama needs this anyway, VOD will satisfy any need for K-drama in the near future.
Unless the BBC decide to show one of their co-commissions with an international broadcaster on iPlayer first, it's very unlikely until catch-up VOD from linear broadcasters has the type of audiences linear tv gets. iPlayer is on the rise though and a brand that most UK viewers understand.
I don't think the BBC co-commission or co-produce much, if any, foreign language drama though - it's all acquired.
Indian tv is probably the classic example of how sub-continent output has thrived in the UK thanks to having a viable audience in the UK. Zee TV was providing this output on Sky Analogue back in the 90s and now there are other providers doing the same.
Some of you may remember Cinemoi, the subscription French film channel which may have been viable if VOD technology was as mass market as it is today. French nationals in the UK are higher than from Korea along with a pro-active British Francophone audience, yet they couldn't make it work.