MALAYSIAN REALITY TV: BETWEEN MYTH AND REALITY

The privatization policy that was introduced in 1983 by the mahathiradministration opened up the flood gates for the establishment oftv stations run on a commercial basis as well as for malaysianmedia practitioners to produced more local programmes. however,most of the locally produced programmes tend to be mere copiesof the western genres.the popularization of these genres is also anindicative of the process of the globalization that has taken place.since 2000, malaysian television industry has witnessed the mushroomingof a ‘new’ television genre called reality tv. the ‘new’genre was popularized by the introduction of reality tv game shows,namely survivor and amazing race, which received favourableresponse from the malaysian audiences. subsequently, malaysian’sfirst version of reality game show, explorace was introduced ontv3. the phenomenon spreads rapidly in the later years. satellitetv station astro, on its part, has redefined and introduced a versionof musical type reality tv, akademi fantasia which becomea huge craze in malaysia. since then, more and more so-calledreality tv shows within the musical programmes have inundatedalmost every local television channel. the study attempts to tracethe development of locally produced reality tv shows and to assessthis phenomenon within the context of the malaysian televisionindustry and within the process of globalization. equally important,the study seeks to uncover the myth and reality of the newgenre.