Desperate Housewives Not Popular in China

When I heard that they were censoring the show I had my suspicions that the show wouldn’t be as great, but there may have been other reasons why Desperate Housewives isn’t as popular in China:

The American soap opera debuted on CCTV8 on December 19 and ran for a week, covering the whole first season. The practice of airing three back-to-back episodes each night was meant to satisfy the Chinese appetite of gobbling up serial drama, but may have left little time for digestion as a consequence, as some argued.

The slot of 10 pm through 1 am is designated for foreign fare since primetime is reserved for domestic shows. That basically winnows out casual viewers and early risers, leaving only rabid fans and night owls.

The protectionist measure can be justified to an extent, but may go against commercial interests: Why should I put a hit show into the late-night line-up when it could have attracted a much larger audience?

Preliminary results show that this award-winning series garnered aratings point of 0.5, compared with the usual 3-4 points for this timeslot. In the United States, it was the most watched new series when it was first launched in October 2004 and, despite some erosion, has been comfortably in the top-10 league. Around the world in 202 territories, it has been setting ratings record here and there, hitting the number one spot in countries as diverse as Germany, South Africa and Singapore.

So, how come a runaway hit ended up running a ground in the largest potential market in terms of viewership?

Besides the inconvenient time slot, some criticize the dubbing forpurging the original flavour from the dialogue. (Chinese dubbingactists tend to have perfect but homogeneous voices and exaggeratedreading, they say.)

The trimming of a few scenes has also been singled out as a culprit,but the authorities in charge explained there was very littlecensorship except for the toning down of some racy lines.

While all these factors might matter, they do not shed light on themost fundamental cultural discrepancy. Just look at South Korean soapssimilarly scheduled. They have been delivering ratings many times thatof ‘Desperate Housewives’, turning legions of nine-to-fivers intonighthawks and creating Monday morning blues every morning.

Ultimately, it’s the show that matters. To put it bluntly,”Housewives” does not have a demographic fit in the Chinese market.True, it is high in quality and has suspense, thrill and murder as plothooks to entice a wider audience. But a typical television viewer inChina is not someone well-versed in Western arts and literature,mesmerized by parallel narratives and ingenious tracking shots. It isusually someone with no advanced education but simply wants to kick offher shoes and relax after a hard day’s work.

The show’s fanfare was whipped up by media types exposed to Westernreports and who have probably already seen it on DVD pirated more orless. As a matter of fact, many people who tuned in to CCTV but foundthe dubbing or scheduling annoying eventually saw the airing as ateaser, turning to the DVD market for the whole nine yards.

These young urbanites may make up a decent market segment for manyproduct categories. But television being a mass entertainment platform,it cannot depend solely on the opinion leaders. Rather, it needs abigger turnout willing to get on the ride.

For one thing, American serials like “Desperate Housewives”, withtheir witty innuendoes and multiple twists, are too fast-paced forChinese taste. Some viewers complained they would get lost with theplot after a bathroom break. But with South Korean soaps, even if youskip three episodes, you can still follow the story lines.

On a deeper level, life on Wisteria Lane, the fictional Californiacommunity in Housewives, is too far removed from ordinary Chinese, eventhe burgeoning middle class. A Chinese teenager would never, in herright mind, advise her single mother on the etiquette of dating. WhenChinese housewives get into an adulterous mood, they would not turn toteenaged gardeners, who are usually migrant workers in rags, but topeople with deeper pockets and higher ranks. A Chinese woman may act asfastidious as Bree Van De Kamp, but she would not take on thearch-conservative stance of an American Republican. A Chinesesuper-mom, in a country with family planning policy encouraging for onechild, faces challenges very different from tending four unruly kids.

Simply put, the show fails to connect with the vast number of television viewers here because it implicitly requires prior knowledge of the US middle-class lifestyle, exaggerated for dramatic effect of course. That shouldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of those who crave for quality programming, but its target audience shrinks from the culturally curious to the culturally adventurous.  from CRI

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