Across Asia, hundreds of millions of people are moving from villages and farms to ever-expanding cities. Multiple forces conspire to draw them to the urban jungle–hunger, employment, education–but television’s dream weaving surely ranks among the most powerful. “Migration has always been fueled by the desire to attain a better lifestyle, only now it has television as the main stimulant,” says N. Bhaskar Rao, chairman of the New Delhi-based Center for Media Studies.
The lure of the small screen is particularly strong in countries like India and China, where hundreds of millions of people are watching in the countryside. Almost half the 70 million TVs in India are located in rural areas, where an average of 10 people watch each set. In China, 94 percent of the population has access to a television now, and the average citizen watches more than two hours a day.
Producers know their audience, and make plenty of shows about the poor villager who goes to the big city and strikes it rich. In India the first of these programs appeared in the 1980s on the state-run network. But it was the arrival of satellite television in the 1990s that truly shook up life in the countryside. Gokul Ram, a 26-year-old barber from a tiny village in Bihar state, says both his grandfather and father “cut hair before a large mirror under a tree.” But, he says, “I wanted a salon with steel faucets and whirring air conditioners and hair dryers”–like the ones he’d seen stars using on behind-the-scenes specials. So he moved to Mumbai and bought a tin-roofed barbershop near a train station. Ram admits his place is no Vidal Sassoon. “But at least I’m giving modern haircuts,” he says.
Now officials are beginning to worry that the pervasiveness of urban images may be fueling resentments as well as ambitions. In China, the government is so anxious about disgruntled migrants that it limits the air time devoted to the lifestyles of successful citygoers. Officials favor historical dramas or propaganda films, and have recently upped the number of cooking shows. If programs must hand out prizes, it’s best to keep them modest: the Chinese version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” should really be called “Who Wants to Win a Few Thousand Bucks.” Ying Da, one of China’s most famous TV directors, was recently forced to cut a scene from a sitcom because it poked fun at a janitor. “They said, ‘That guy is a cleaner, and if you make fun of him, all the cleaners in the country will be hurt’,” Ying says.
Even a politically correct show like “Old Brother Liu,” in which a retired village leader moves to the big city to live with his son, can’t avoid a familiar message, though. The redoubtable Liu parlays his experience into a vast fortune–and then shares it with the folks back in the village. That’s the kind of propaganda that now moves the masses.
