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TV programme
Cultural economics of TV cloning
programme cloning: or why India
has produced multi-“millionaires”
35
Amos Owen Thomas
Maastricht School of Management, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Abstract
Purpose – Produced by a local subsidiary of a global media conglomerate, a licensed clone of
Who Wants to be a Millionaire? achieved the highest-ever ratings in India in the early 2000s,
spawning unlicensed clones among its rival channels. This paper seeks to analyse the cultural and
economic factors behind this most widely acknowledged example of television format adaptation in
India.
Design/methodology/approach – Through interviews with media-owners, programme producers,
and advertising agencies, an insider perspective was sought on why some clones had succeeded and
others had not in India’s competitive television market.
Findings – As with other forms of franchising in developing and transitional economies, the industry
rationales for adapting television programmes, global and local, prove to be a paradoxical mix of
economic pragmatism and cultural hybridity.
Practical implications – The strategy of cloning television raises complex issues of imitation
versus inspiration within the increasingly globalised media industries of emerging markets.
Originality/value – The paper examines the impetus for cloning across a variety of programme
genre in India.
Keywords Television, Franchising, Globalization, India
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
When the cluster of production ideas and techniques that comprise a programme in
one television market is used to make a similar programme, usually in another
domestic market, this is defined as format adaptation or programme cloning. While
other mechanisms of the global trade in television programming have been
subjected to extensive analysis, the domestic context and global implications of this
kind of adaptation are little understood and even less investigated. Formulated in
terms of the global television industry, economic exchange can take the form of the
licensing of finished programmes for broadcast in another territory, the practice of
international co-production, and the adaptation of television formats. These
mechanisms of exchange are major dynamics in the development and maintenance
of television services globally. Of the three, format adaptation is the most
challenging from the perspectives of business and culture. This paper will examine
the success and failures of particular adaptations of a “global” quiz programme as International Journal of Emerging
well as the impetus for cloning across a variety of programme genre in India. On a Markets
Vol. 1 No. 1, 2006
wider plane it seeks to explicate the cultural and economic challenges of pp. 35-47
franchising of service products in emergent markets within the global capitalist q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1746-8809
system. DOI 10.1108/17468800610644997
IJOEM Brief history of Indian “Millionaires” [or Background]
1,1 As far back as 1984 the success of a Mexican telenovela in promoting social and
educational themes such as family planning and women’s rights in Latin America
was replicated in India. An indigenous soap opera called Hum Log that ran into
156 episodes and enjoyed ratings of up to 90 percent in Hindi-speaking North India or
an average of 50 million viewers (Singhal and Rogers, 2001). Its success spawned
36 numerous other local soap operas created by India’s film industry co-opted by the
advertising industry because of their popularity with audiences (Khanna, 1987). With
the unprecedented growth of television channels over the 1990s there has been a boom
in the local production of soap-operas, quiz-shows, talk-shows, game-shows and the
like – cloned or otherwise. Bandhu (1992) cited Indian clones of Hollywood movies
such as The Guns of Navarone and The Sound of Music, as proof that the practice was
quite prevalent. He even alleged that Indian producers and directors attend
international film festivals in order to ascertain what can be cloned. The motivation for
cloning by Indian film directors seems an obsession with the high technology and
creativity of foreign films.
The adaptation of Who Wants to be a Millionaire as Kaun Banega Crorepati
(popularly referred to as KBC) in India was first suggested by the Hong Kong-based
head of Asia-Pacific programming for StarTV, a subsidiary of News Corporation, who
sent a video of the original programme to Bombay. Three staff from Celador UK were
seconded to India to train the local production team, and later a team of four from India
were sent to the US for further familiarisation with the concept. Still it was a local
StarTV executive who made the decision to appoint the local movie cult-hero Amitabh
Bachan as its compere. The local questions were designed by Siddharta Basu, producer
for both KBC and Mastermind (a well-established licensed Indian clone of the BBC
programme) along with the help of a team of researchers. Quiz programmes have had a
long history on Indian television, dating from the 1980s on the public broadcaster
Doordarshan (DD) and then other channels.
This first Indian “Millionaire” clone, KBC, was launched to coincide and signal the
StarPlus channel’s repositioning from a global-regional channel offering foreign
English-language programming, into a fully subregional Hindi entertainment-oriented
channel, taking on the market leaders in Indian prime-time television, namely ZeeTV
and SonyET. To that end StarTV spent US $1.75 million for production of KBC, US $1
million for its off-air promotion and US $500,000 for on-air promotions. KBC was slotted
in at 9:00 pm replacing the news in what was explained by the CEO of News Television
India as a strategy of creating “appointment television”. This is where a popular show at
the same day each day makes the viewer keep an appointment with his or her television
set, and this programme loyalty has flow-on benefits of “sticky eye-balls” to the channel
which results in higher ratings (Cable Quest, 2000). StarTV was estimated by an
advertising executive to have raised a total of Rs. 120 crore (US $3 million) in income and
gained Rs. 50 crore (US $1.3 million) in net profit (Interview Ind01.15).
Sawal Das Crore Ka (SDCK), the subsequent ZeeTV clone of Millionaire, used two
actors as comperes but they were much less known and admired actors who also
appeared ill-matched to each other. This might have been an extension of the tendency
to use multiple stars in Indian movies because of pressure from producers and
distributors to almost guarantee success thus (Vachini, 1999). Audiences perceived the
programme as an uninspiring copy whereas KBC was seen as the original, even
though many knew the latter was itself the Indian clone of a foreign program. ZeeTV TV programme
produced SDCK in-house and even though it used the director of its most successful cloning
programme (the film quiz-show Antakshari ) this game-show still failed. This
researcher’s observation of the programme was that it struggled to match the
production values and the electricity of KBC. By December that year, within months of
its launch, SBCK was taken off air, the senior management at ZeeTV was reshuffled
and the comperes were threatening the channel with legal action over their termination. 37
Meanwhile SunTV, a South Indian channel, cloned KBC and its version had been
popular possibly because it was the only one in Tamil, a southern Indian language.
Less than 3 months after its launch, the overwhelming success of KBC was already
causing considerable upheaval in the industry. SonyET advertising revenues were
down 40 percent from its earlier projection of Rs. 800 crore (US $20 million), and while
Zee was not forthcoming with its revenue data, its share price had plummeted. One
response of the rival stations was creating clones of KBC with Kerry Packer’s Channel
9 Gold began planning to launch Greed, SAB-TV negotiating another game-show
format from overseas, and Sony planning a 24-hour game-show channel. Hence
programme production and sourcing budgets were expected to rise not only for
game-shows but other programmes as well by a factor of three or four (Rao, 2000).
Regardless of the final outcome of its clones, as a licensed and quality-controlled
adaptation of a foreign programme format KBC has been responsible for raising the
expectations of viewers for higher production values in Indian programmes.

Framing the phenomenon

Over the past 20 years, especially since 1990, the market significance of television
programme formats has multiplied exponentially. Of the two recent developments at
work, the first was the 1976 Copyright Act in the US that cleared the way for
programme producers to secure legal protection for formats and has thus helped
formalise an international licensing system (Freedman and Harris, 1990; Kean, 1991).
However, this system is far from perfect and is helpless to deal with piracy (van
Manen, 1994), especially in some parts of Asia where the practice receives state
support. The second development involves the recent worldwide multiplication of
television channels and transmission hours, offering an increasing array not only of
programmes but also of competing services (Blumler and Nossiter, 1991; Noam, 1992).
In ever more competitive national and international environments, broadcasters have
had increasing reason to seek to guarantee success for new television programmes.
The adaptation of successful formats from other national territories is a crucial means
to such an end.
Television programme format adaptation could best be related to franchising in the
business literature, and research on its application to developing and transitional
economies should prove insightful. Recognising that research on transitional
economies is not generalisable given their diversity, Alon and Banai (2000)
investigate the environmental factors that matter to franchising in Russia, the
largest and most developed of them. Yet even some of the unfavourable factors such as
political risk, crime and corruption suggest that having a local partner through
franchising might be invaluable. However, the restrictive laws, poor infrastructure and
limited capital are harder to overcome. Still, Dev et al. (2002) claim that traditional
theories on international franchising do not apply to the hotel industry because of the
IJOEM latter’s concern for transfer of competencies rather than dissipation of assets. Their
1,1 research implies that if a firm’s competencies are irreproducible such as in quality and
organisation, then it tends to utilise management contracts over franchising as its
global market entry strategy. All contributors to Welsh and Alon (2001) seem to concur
that franchising is an invaluable means of promoting small and medium business
development in liberalised developing and transitional economies. But each market has
38 its own particular set of circumstances and it is difficult generalise about franchising
strategies, much less apply theoretical models drawn from the developed world.
If franchising is about transferring a business format in toto Kaufmann and
Leibenstein (2001) question how well this can be done cross-nationally given the many
differences. Many of the assumptions on which its cost-efficiency is based do not hold,
and any adaptations raise costs and reduce economies of scale. Monitoring and
continuing support is also difficult from a distance, geographically and culturally.
While Stanworth et al. (2001) acknowledge franchising as a means of transfer of
technology including managerial expertise, they dwell at length on the challenges of
intellectual property protection, royalty expatriation, differing quality standards and
unfamiliar culture for the franchisor. Only in a concluding sentence do they mention
the downsides of franchising for the recipient society such as cultural homogenisation,
threat to local businesses, loss of economic diversity, repatriation of profits and foreign
control. On reviewing the largely quantitative literature on franchising, Elango and
Fried (1997) call for “fine-grained” research methods such as case studies to be applied.
They argue that such methods are better for understanding the complexity of the
phenomenon, such as the sharing of decision-making between franchisors and
franchisees. Elango and Fried also appeal for empirical research to not just describe
franchising practices but also analyse critically their suitability. This paper will adopt
such a qualitative approach in examining the prevalence of one form of franchising,
namely television programme format adaptations and its role within the cultural
industry in India.

Method for the medium

Television production has tended to be the purview of the political economy school,
while texts and reception that of the cultural studies school within
media-communications research. In the context of soap operas in the US, Levine
(2001) demonstrated a cultural studies approach to programme production, by
examining five factors of production constraints, environment, routines, development
of characters and stories, and audience contribution. Production was found to be
dictated not only by issues of ownership and funding but also of cultural norms and
practices within the industry. There has scarcely been any research done within the
business disciplines. One exception is Windeler and Sydow (2001) who documented
how changes of practices in the German television industry as a consequence of
globalisation, digitisation and privatisation have resulted in the evolution of
organisation forms. Similar pressures to outsource programme production to project
networks of independent creators, directors and technical crews are to be found
increasingly worldwide. This paper will seek to adopt a similar phenomenological
approach to understanding the practice of television programme format adaptation in
the context of India, a developing country cited more often recently as a big emerging
market (BEM).
 Interviews were conducted with industry executives during a fieldwork trip to TV programme
Bombay and Delhi, India in the early 2000s. Bombay is the prime location for the cloning
headquarters of television, film and advertising industry, with Delhi being a
secondary one. Hence of the 23 interviews conducted, approximately two-thirds were
in the former city and one-third in the latter. The industry executives were drawn
from programme producers (6 persons), channel operators (6 persons), market
research organisations (6 persons), trade journals (2 persons) and advertising 39
agencies (3 persons), in order to have a multi-faceted perspective on the phenomenon
of copycat television. The process of identifying key informants or industry
decision-makers, gaining access to them via administrative gate-keepers, obtaining
appointments and simply the logistics of getting to the interviews via dense traffic
and vague addresses was a challenge, as it is in any metropolitan city of a
developing country. This was especially so since the author was based in
geographically distant country, with the fieldwork needing to be completed within
just a fortnight’s visit. Nonetheless almost two dozen interviews were conducted,
averaging an hour and a half in length, and were kept semi-structured to allow for
the differing relationships each executive had with programme format adaptation
and insights they could bring to the phenomenon.
By conducting multiple interviews, it was possible during the data analysis to
compensate for extremes of perception and achieve some consensus of opinion at least
within each profession. Furthermore, the qualitative interviews, which comprised a
major part of this research, were a form of ethnographic study of the television
industry of the country. Survey research of such key decision-makers would not have
been effective since the respondents were likely not to return their questionnaires, if
past experience is any guide. This was probably due to their work priorities and also
because they might have felt that whatever answer options they were given in a
questionnaire did not plumb the depths of the issue’s complexity. Furthermore, there
could be no guarantees about who exactly within the organisation filled out the
questionnaire, regardless of the stipulation of it having to be a key decision-maker.
Besides a mail questionnaire or even a structured interview would simply have failed
to reveal the richness of data on television programme franchising in India.

Industry insider insights

The extent of cloning foreign formats
As there is little available in published form, the research sought to ascertain the extent
to which programme formats from abroad were cloned in India. Quite predictably,
industry interviewees were able to cite examples of Indian programmes, past and
current, that were apparent adaptations of foreign ones:
There is a short programme on MTV called Bakra (or “goat”) which is a bit like Candid
Camera (Ind03.12).
The Oprah Show has also been copied as Preya and Zamida Kom (Ind02.11).
. . .Star Struck became Super Stars in Hindi – a talent hunt: dancing, acting, singing. . .Bol
Baby Bol is similar to Cosby’s Kids Say The Darnest Things (Ind02.14).
Yet only a few programmes were known for certain to be licensed clones by the
industry executives, as demonstrated by their ability to cite the business details:
IJOEM Price Is Right was produced by Fremantle Delhi as Yehi Hai Right Price (Ind02.14).
1,1 C.A.T.S. – original rights held by Columbia/Tristar. Family Fortune – Fremantle has
rights. . .BBC’s Yes Minister is to be done by HDTV for StarTV (Ind02.15).
Family Feud adapted here and successful (Ind02.17).
Interviewees were rather conscious that a number of Indian adaptations of successful
40 global programme formats had failed in the past and hence were no longer on local
screens. In each case they cited reasons of cultural misfit:
Family Fortunes was done here before and failed. . .Wheel of Fortune also failed – the prises
were not attractive (Ind02.13).
Cincinnati Babla Bo – a copy of Are You Being Served? – did not work because Hindi
language was not able to have the nuances and innuendos as in English (Ind02.17).
Although there are no definitive figures, the incidence of cloning was estimated by
these industry executives to be quite minimal. This was especially significant, as
local production comprised a high percentage of all programming on air on Indian
channels:
Cloning percentage is in single digits. Only KBC, Mastermind, CATS – among the 80-plus
channels. . .Family Fortunes on StarPlus but probably not licensed (Ind03.12).
99 percent of production is of local creative origin (Ind02.13).
Less than 5 percent is cloned (Ind02.15).
Other executives were of the opinion that it was difficult to measure the extent of
programme format adaptation in India for technical reasons:
It is impossible to map incidence of first-run clones against total programmes. . .hard to know
the status of programmes (Ind03.15).
The percentage of cloning in total local production is unknown (Ind03.13).
In one instance an independent director, on learning that this researcher’s
country-of-origin, proudly announced that he was working for an Australian
investor in Indian television. Quite evidently the programme he was producing had
shades of X-Files, yet its director felt compelled to deny that it was a clone when asked:
I’m making a programme called X-Zone – it’s about the supernormal (Ind02.12).
It is the same genre, not a copy. . .Hindi audience will not have seen original (Ind02.12).
Industry executives seemed baffled at the recent success of KBC and consequent
proliferation of game shows when the genre itself had been existence for a long time on
Indian television:
Four years ago many quiz-shows existed on Indian television but were not popular. This
(KBC, etc.) is a sudden trend (Ind02.21).
Sony also is planning similar game-shows (Ind 03.12).
Sony has a (quiz-show) clone too called Chapa Parke with a star as compere, Govinder
(Ind02.12).
Some alluded to the phenomenon of KBC happening because the development of the TV programme
television market in the country was at a particular media-cultural nexus: cloning
KBC is an impetus to copying in all genre – soaps, reality, etc. (Ind03.12).
KBC is the only programme to cross language boundaries in India (Ind01.15).
It’s a peculiar time with KBC. . .phenomenon could have been any other genre (Ind02.16).
41
While format adaptation or programme cloning was a widely acknowledged
phenomenon in the Indian television industry, it is noteworthy that content analysis of
television on northern Indian prime time revealed high divergence between the
channels (Table I). The newer commercial broadcasters, especially those with foreign
parentage like StarTV and SonyET, had the highest incidence of adapting global
programme formats. The public broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) seemed to have nil or a
negligible amount of cloned programmes. However, it should be noted that while there
were scores of channels in India only a select few appear in published programme
schedules such as the one used for this analysis. Furthermore, research respondents in
India may not be aware of the foreign original or source of inspiration and could not
identify a local programme as a clone.

The cloning of Indian-origin programmes

As a means of absolving their industry from the unlicensed cloning of foreign
programmes executives noted that it was common practice to clone domestic
programmes as well:
There are clones of popular Indian-created programmes on rival channels. For instance, the
popular film-quiz show Antakshari on ZeeTV was copied by all other Indian channels
(Interview Ind02.11).
SunTV has a successful quiz show – used a star as well and appeals to Tamil audiences
(Ind02.14).
The practice of cloning programme formats within the country seemed to be justified
or excused on pragmatic business and economic reasons:
SAB-TV is cloning for different slots like afternoon women’s audience (Ind03.12).
SunTV has cloned a game-show for 2 weeks now, and it is popular. But there are high ratings
for all programmes because there is a history of heavy viewing in the South (Ind03.14).

Channel Cloned programs per week Percentage of programming

DD1 National Nil 0.0

DD2 Metro Nil 0.0
ZeeTV 30 min 2.4
SonyET 300 min 28.6 Table I.
StarPlus 240 min 19.0 Programme sources on
northern Indian
Note: Based on a continuous week in January 2002 prime-time
IJOEM Another approach taken by interviewees was to point out that it has been a
1,1 long-standing tradition for Bombay’s film industry, dubbed “Bollywood”, to imitate or
at least emulate Hollywood movies.
There is a long history of Hindi movies copying Hollywood ones (Ind02.12).
Hindi movies borrowed from Hollywood for ages – originals not known among the masses,
42 even some of the middle classes. Originals may not have been aired in India (Ind03.12).
Inspiration rather than copying is the excuse used by Indian film-makers regarding
Hollywood films (Ind02.14).

Motivations for cloning programmes

An obvious impetus for programme format adaptations and production houses in India
has been the rapid growth of television channels and commercialisation of the industry
over the past decade:
The cost of transponders is low; the crunch is software. . .so create soap operas for housewife,
cartoons for kids, detective shows for men (Ind03.14).
Cost of broadcasting has fallen due to digitalisation, so software is now the key cost. This has
resulted in a boom in production houses in the past 6 years. Within the last 6-8 months of
2000, there were about 7-10 IPOs of programme production houses (Ind03.12).
The rise of sub-regional-language channels especially required rapid production of
programmes to fill the hours of programming and was cited as a further spur to
cloning:
Proliferation of similar channels due to subregionalisation by language. . . (Ind03.12).
Growth of language channels means Hindi software gets adapted (Ind03.13).
Certainly a strong motivation of programme producers and channels for cloning game
shows and other programmes has been allegedly the financial returns of advertising
revenue:
Spots on KBC cost Rs. 2.5 lakhs for 10 seconds. They started at Rs. 1 lakh [US $2,500]
(Ind01.15).
KBC is prestigious so even obscure advertisers want to be on for Rs. 3 lakhs for 10 seconds,
formerly Rs. 2 lakhs for 10 seconds (Ind02.14).
Thus the commissioning of game-show clones and other programme formats has been
perceived as calculated strategic business decisions by marketers, advertising agencies
and television stations, most of which have multi-national linkages:
Game-shows, soap operas, etc. are first planned with sponsors.. get six sponsors to cover
costs, other ads are then pure profit (Ind01.15).
StarTV had not made a profit in 10 years but now breaking-even, in the last six months only
(Ind02.14).
Cloning successful programmes from abroad helps reduce the likelihood of a ratings
failure domestically, a claim made in most analysis of the phenomenon. Yet only one
industry executive in India alluded to this:
 Time-tested, don’t reinvent the wheel – so clone (Ind02.17). TV programme
Furthermore, industry executives believed that cloning thrived, in part, because it was cloning
problematic to enforce legal copyrights on programmes in India, as is the case in many
developing countries:
Copyright laws are not strong (Ind02.12).
Laws exist but are not implemented (Ind01.15). 43
It is hard to prove copying. Also the sympathy of the courts is with locals, even though there
are new laws (Ind03.12).

Querying the franchise [or Discussion]

Given the rapid growth of television in much of Asia triggered by the deregulation
and newer technologies of satellite and cable, cloning was one obvious means of
coping with the need to fill the programme hours and compete for advertising
revenue. But the television industry must recognise that while cloning gives some
hope of achieving a ratings winner, that outcome is by no means guaranteed. The
clone in another country could fail, do just as well, or even outstrip the original’s
performance in its own country. Original programmes, imported into another country,
run the risk of failing completely in the foreign market or at best catering to a small
minority – for example US or UK programmes succeeding with those in Asia
well-educated in English and somewhat Anglophile in their cultural tastes. Once a
culturally-contextualised clone has demonstrated significant audience demand for it
domestically, invariably other channels, programme producers and advertising
agencies seek to replicate its success in other segments of the market. When
imitations of foreign programmes on rival stations are decimating one’s ratings and
the commensurate advertising revenues, great pressures exist for cloning new
programmes, whatever their origin. But the secret to success with television ratings
seems to be the skilful hybridising of a “global” programme format with “local”
cultural nuances. Producers of programme clones might thus be cultural marginals
bridging both the “global” and the “local” worlds, and managing the nexus. Even
with licensed franchising, Tuunanen and Hyrsky (2001) find that entrepreneurial
behaviour and innovation by the franchisees as they gained confidence, tended to
provoke conflict with the franchisor. Hence, the perceptions of the benefits and
drawbacks of franchising appear to be paradoxical and over time the franchisor
support lost value and the fee became a source of resentment anyway.
Non-licensed clones may be of concern to producers of original programmes but
audiences may not care whether they are licensed or not, or even the fact that they are
clones and not originals. Producers are inclined to take legal action not because
consumers are being defrauded through an imitation, possibly of poorer quality, but
because they are losing significant income (Zaichkowsky, 1995). The same is even truer
with television programme clones that cause broadcasters loss of audience market
share and thus advertising revenue, and producers the loss of licensing income. Being
intangible and transient, are service products easier to clone than physical products,
yet harder to prove that they are indeed clones? It does seem that while one can
demonstrate, for example, that a hamburger had similar ingredients, packaging and
name, it is much more difficult to allege that the performance of the serving staff was
IJOEM cloned. Likewise allegations of unlicensed cloning of television programme formats are
1,1 frequently met with the claim that such programmes are simply inspired by the
programme genre. Only when these past adapters of programme formats develop
expertise at developing original creations do they become more concerned about the
plagiarism of their own efforts by others from within their country or beyond and the
potential deprivation of revenue through royalties.
44 But when is a programme format adaptation a clone, licensed or otherwise, and
when is it simply yet another manifestation of a programme genre, even “inspired” by
the success of certain programmes (Table II)? Based on observation by the researcher,
the India news on StarTV closely resembled that on BBC and CNN. The channel even
had an interview programme called Star Talk that clearly imitated both BBC’s Hard
Talk and CNN’s Larry King Live. While the sitcom Friends aired on Star World, the
international programme channel of StarTV, an Indian version called Hello Friends
aired on StarPlus, its Indian programme channel. The talk show Preya was widely
perceived within India as a clone of the Oprah original and has in turn been cloned
within India. Instead of licensing formats, Indian producers certainly preferred to
claim “inspiration” from foreign programme formats. Applying the legal theory of
incomplete contracting to franchising, Windsperger (2002) argues that the greater
intangible assets of the one party, the more the ownership rights were transferred to it.
This results from the inescapable fact that there are always residual rights that are not
specified in contracts. According to this property-rights perspective, initial fees are the
remuneration for transfer of know-how while royalties are incentives for further
intangible contributions to maintain brand-value. But is a clone of another Indian clone
still a clone of its foreign original programme format, and to which does it owe
royalties? Given the language and cultural diversity, the Union of India may be better
compared to the European Union than to a more homogeneous market like the US or
even China. Should an Indian-language clone of another Indian-original programme be
a legal non-issue simply since it is not strictly a global but a national or subregional
one?

Economic imperative and cultural hybridity [or Concluding commentary]

Among Indian cultural products such as movies and television there appeared to be a
commonly accepted practice for there to be some imitation of ideas both from the

Indian programme Foreign programme Genre Channel Status

C.A.T.S. Charlies’ Angels Police drama SonyET Licensed

Movers & Shakers Jay Leno Talk show SonyET Unlicensed
Hello Friends Friends Sitcom ZeeTV Unlicensed
Family Fortunes Family Feud Game show StarPlus Licensed
Tara Bold & Beautiful Soap opera Unlicensed
Saans Dallas Soap opera StarPlus Unlicensed
Table II. Mastermind Mastermind Game show BBC World Licensed
Clones of foreign Kaum Banega Crorepati Who Wants to be a Millionaire Game show StarPlus Licensed
programme formats Sawal Das Crore Who Wants to be a Millionaire Game show ZeeTV Unlicensed
in India, apparent X-Zone X-Files Police drama ZeeTV Unlicensed
and alleged Preya Oprah Talk show Unlicensed
“West” as well as from other parts of the country. There were clones of Indian and TV programme
foreign movies made into serials or soap operas, many of which adopting typical local cloning
characteristics such living in extended families, arranged marriages, musical
interludes and high melodrama. Is then being cloned by another producer a source
of flattery for the original producer – recognition of innovation, creativity and
excellence by the wider fraternity of producers? Could the practice of programme
cloning possibly be not culturally objectionable (or at least less so) in emergent markets 45
because it is often seen as learning from and emulating a master? Hence programme
cloning may not attract the kind of response from government regulators,
media-owners, marketers and consumers, as is the expectation in the “West”. Or
should cloning be seen as fully understandable and totally excusable when it is being
done by a “poor” nation and possibly depriving some “rich” multinational corporations
of royalties? But are good cultural products strictly non-replicable or eminently
replicable globally? How then is “good” in the context of television programmes to be
defined: in marketing terms – as being popular with mass audiences or as addressing a
discerning culturally elite audience? Evidently there are more questions than answers
at this stage of our understanding of the phenomenon of the adaptation of global
television formats.
Where previously a lack of cultural affinity served as a partial barrier to the
global trade in television products, the incidence of programme format adaptation
co-opts national, even subnational broadcasters into complex economic alliances
within the global cultural services industry. The connections between production and
reception of KBC in India are thus a microcosm of the relatively under-examined
connections between economic and cultural aspects of the global trade in television
products and services. In contrast to other forms of global television trade,
programme cloning or format adaptation has the capacity to be hybridised in a
national television context, thereby subtly circumventing questions of cultural
imperialism and economic dominance. Whether such hybridity represents
convergence to a global culture or is evidence of the persistence of cultural
diversity in the face of economic globalisation pressures might still remain a matter
of perspective or preferred prejudice. Hence critical analysis of the actual process of
television production across different emergent economies could well prove a
worthwhile path for further research on the processes of cultural and economic
globalisation. Yet such in-depth investigation of this phenomenon of television
programme cloning or format adaptation may well undermine conventional notions
of the “national”, “ethnic” “regional” and “global” in the near-invisible trade in
hybridised cultural products and services.

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About the author TV programme
Amos Owen Thomas is an Associate Professor of International Business at the Maastricht
School of Management, The Netherlands, where he is involved in teaching graduate students cloning
from and/or in over 30 developing and transitional economies. In an academic career spanning
16 years he has taught at five other universities in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore
as well as a visiting professor at a few others. Prior to his academic career, Amos worked for
14 years for multinational corporations, governments and non-profit organisations around the
Pacific Rim. His research interests are in the political economy of international trade and 47
investment, the global/transnationalisation strategies of the media industry, inter-cultural
dimensions in management and business education, and the socio-ethical issues facing
globalising economies. Apart from a recent book entitled Imaginations and Borderless Television,
he has written about three-dozen journal articles and book chapters. He can be contacted at:
thomas@msm.nl

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