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Originally Posted by mdo7
Well explain to me why Japan didn't cash in on the drama fad that K-dramas caused (as in exporting J-dramas in huge numbers).
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As I've explained before, Japan has a No.2 complex. They were only interested in chasing the American market which made them blind to the other regions. Also there were serious economic issues in the 90s-00s where the other regions (such as Asian and South America where you pointed out) has little money compared to Japan's huge economy which made the industry deemed it wasn't worth the effort to enter the other markets because the money they can make back is peanuts compared to their local revenue and how much effort is needed to do so (and to a certain extend, still true today). To them, it was "America or nothing". Obviously this is not true for other players like Korea or Taiwan where every extra market is probably a good return for them.
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I think Answerman is correct, Japan is being reluctant and their xenophobic practice could be the reason why Japan didn't cash in on the Asian dramas fad that K-dramas caused around the world.
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No, Answerman is wrong. Japan isn't xenophobic, he wants to blame everything on culture but he is ignoring actual business factors that may be playing a bigger role in all of this. Something a lot of people without knowledge and contact with entertainment business don't know is that they look at piracy and think "wow look at all those people downloading this, if I can make 1 buck off all of these it will surely be a business success!", but in reality that is NOT the case. Hulu is a prime example of how streaming is a very tough business. On one hand licensing fees are expensive across the board, and bandwidth isn't free either. Then you have people who would never pay even if it is a cent and bitch and moan about even 30 seconds of ads because they've been used to no ads via torrents and has no ethical thinking to support the content creators. These are also actual factors as to why the entertainment industry prefers dealing with free-to-air model which involves multi-million dollar TV stations actually capable of paying million dollars worth of royalties and rights to broadcast the shows instead of internet streaming site which the majority operates at a loss, or they crunched the numbers and see that the return for licensing these shows may not actually be profitable. Japan's situation and history had it such that for the longest time they were comfortable locally where the market is self sufficient and they didn't need to expand but they never planned for the "what if" situation - what if the domestic market collapsed? What if the other markets successfully entered our market? etc that is not xenophobia, but just sheer business incompetence and a reactionary attitude due to narrowed vision for being in too comfortable of a position for too long.