Page 350 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

328 Perry Hinton

operas such as Dallas and series such as Friends) have frequently achieved very
high audience figures in the host country. This has set the context for public de-
bates in a number of countries where their own audiences are seen as being in-
fluenced by the ‘cultural imperialism’ of these programmes, undermining their
indigenous cultural values and replacing them with those of the many imported
programmes, particularly from the United States of America (Schiller 1976; see
Thielmann in this volume on dominance in other aspects).
One of the most remarkable audience figures for a television programme
was the 200 million people who watched the final episode of the soap opera The
Rich Also Cry in Russia in 1992 (O’Donnell 1999). Its regular audience for the
249 episode run was in excess of 100 million people. These figures are quite
extraordinary, with up to 70% of the country watching the programme. How-
ever, one of the interesting features of this example is that the programme itself
was not a Russian production at all, but a Mexican telenovela from 1979 with
the original title of Los Ricos También Lloran, dubbed into Russian.
On the face of it we can see the phenomenal success of the programme as
evidence for the wide appeal for certain television programmes, despite the
transmission in a different country and many years after its original production.
It could be that the Russians and the Mexicans share a common interest in the
female-centred passionate, tragic love stories of the Mexican telenovelas
(Arias-King 1998). Indeed, telenovelas, from Mexico, Brazil and a number of
other South American countries, are watched in over one hundred countries
world-wide, with estimates of a global audience of around two billion viewers
(Schlefer 2004). Included in these are a range of countries from Eastern Europe,
including the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria and Russia (Sinclair 1999).
Yet the telenovelas are produced by different countries and are targeted to
their home audience in their production. In Mexico, the two big producers are
Televista and TV Azteca and in Brazil the major producer is TV Globo. The
home audiences are large with 34% regularly viewing telenovelas in Mexico
and 73% in Brazil, with the overall audience in Latin American countries of
54% of the population between 12 and 64 years (Soong 1999). Interestingly,
telenovelas are very much part of the home culture in both their choice of sub-
ject and their relationship to the audience. The telenovela Nada Personal from
Mexico dealt with issues such as political corruption. The similarity of aspects
of the storyline to real events would not have been lost on the Mexican audi-
ence. Also, TV Globo monitors audience reaction to its programmes and may
modify a particular storyline development within a telenovela as a result (Soong
1999).
We could argue that this intimate relationship with the audience provides a
local product (as opposed to programmes from other parts of the world) that
audiences prefer (Sola Pool 1977). Furthermore the cultural attributes and the
language (Spanish and Portuguese) of the telenovelas can be seen as engaging