For our country's broadcast program formats to be more actively exchanged and traded in a huger volume as global contents goods, domestic broadcasting networks should take charge of developing and producing formats. Until the present in our country, w...
For our country's broadcast program formats to be more actively exchanged and traded in a huger volume as global contents goods, domestic broadcasting networks should take charge of developing and producing formats. Until the present in our country, when a new program is launched, rather than format development, pilot TV programs based on simple project paper are common, and full-fledged format development or international distribution are not activated. Even when a broadcasting network or an independent production company develop formats, since overseas marketing and contents distribution division do not hold plenty of experiences in format distribution, this also has a limitation. Due to the systemic reasons of broadcasting businesses such as production practices, it was hard to find the cases of systematically settled formats development. Systematically, there used to be on-going format development on new programs and even on existing programs by the government-backed Korea Culture and Content Agency's supporting business; however, it is not up to the phase of further prospecting or estimating any accomplishment of format or distribution.
This study explored necessity and important matters for developing formats of TV programs within a domestic contents distribution market where, not yet global, rather completed programs are distributed in a geographically limited Asian market. To get format trade activated, planning and distribution should be organically combined and alternation as a broadcasting production system should be come first, also, the direction of TV program formats development also was suggested through the analysis from the media sociological prospective on how the media goods of formats should be produced and traded.
This study was looking to see how much producers who plan and make real programs at production are in the know about formats, necessity of format development, and limitations and problems, whether Korea is suitable for format development, also important matter at the systematic level through field studies and in-depth interviews of format experts. The implication of the study can be found from the aspect that the study looked into people in charge of producing TV programs in domestic network environments and figured out foundations for the format development in our country through depth analysis.
Especially the study, compared to other existing studies centered on overseas import program formats and format industry, explored new format development accomplishments and limitations by analyzing existing programs' format production and development, and present condition of new format development industry. In addition, it differentiates itself from existing studies in that not at the level of huge discourse, but looked into practical broadcast production system, and studied distinction of format development and characteristics between broadcast network and independent production company. This study has also divided the important elements that affect format development in domestic broadcast programs format development into internal, external and genre-specific factors. As for internal factors, producer's personal level, production practices level, organizational level have been studied, and as for external factors, systemic level, media industry and media environment level have been studied. From producers' more personal aspect, communications among creative human resource within production practices and rights to compensation on formats should be properly systemized so that format development is also possible. At a more systemic level such as production practices, we could see, in the case of contents market in broadcast networks, investment on broadcast program formats has not been smoothly proceeded, where long term distribution should be expected.
It has confirmed that business investment has concentrated on manufactural completed programmes that can see an instant accomplishment rather than resource development approach. This can be translated into the fact that it has not taken distribution characteristics that expiration of information goods depends on the level of creativeness and complexity, which is media corporations' systematic problem in goods management to devide distribution goods with a standard of profitable number of times. In the end, broadcasting networks have complicated structure to invest in formats value which gets rewarded only through long term investment. We could see that format distribution itself is impossible in a realistic manner since independent production companies or independent producers, even when they come up with their own formats, cannot secure copyrights or licenses on creations due to production practices and systematic rules. In format development and production activation, originator's copyrights recognition and rights to use are confirmed to be important condition and it is shown that fair trade regulations of a broadcasting network should be adopted also toward programs produced by independent companies or independent producers.
We have known that broadcasting review regulations and regulations on indirect advertisements should be loosen up as external matters to affect in format development. To develop formats as commercial goods, we could know that value-added investment is needed, and following systemic revisions on securing production fee such as indirect advertisement and sponsorship are needed. In addition, it has been shown that where overseas' global contents are distributed through network-settled media markets, Korea is still depending on completed programmes within geographically limited Asian market, which has again been confirmed as a negative factor on format development and distribution of various genres and contents, in addition, we have known that a turnabout and awareness on exporting overseas broadcasting contents needed.
Since due to the factor of their contents and genres, domestic broadcasting programs are mostly about entertainment shows focused on celebrities, globally valuable goods need to come up and to that end, diversification of contents and systematic format development should be realized. Along with that, trained staff to develop format's commodity value is necessary and a change in production practices is assured to be needed.