Asian+TV

=Discussion Forum: Television in Asia=

TV Serials in East Asia.
//Comment by Ellen Schattschneider:// I'm curious about the history of television serials in East Asia. In Japan, there's usually a serial on NHK, the national public television network, on from 8:15 to 8:30 a.m. each morning. This summer for instance has seen a fascinating long running drama set during the war years. I believe a similar pattern is followed in China; daily episodes of a serial running for weeks or months at a time. I'm not sure if Japan is the origin of this pattern of serialization; I do know that some Japanese melodramatic serials, such as [|Oshin], have been broadcast widely throughout Asia (and indeed throughout the globe).

//Comment by Nadia Hemady:// According to Japanese Wikipedia, it looks like [|NHK "serial novels"] have existed since 1961. Oshin was one of these and was broadcast from 1983 to 1984. [|Television dramas] seem to have a longer history, starting in the early 1940s. They also have listings on some of the pages of all the television dramas of a certain type, such as [|taiga drama]. I suspect there is some connection between TV dramas and [|kami shibai], but I'm not sure how direct of a connection that would be.