The BBC News has a programme entitled ‘Asia Business Report’. Its aim is to communicate the latest business news and up-and-coming, money-making ventures taking place across Asia.
These factors are then evaluated for the effects they might have in the long-term and on a worldwide scale. The 2014 MAMA awards were recently covered on the programme!
K-Pop has been a topic of the programme in the past of course, given its powerful stance as a global Korean export. Rapper TABLO has even been interviewed by presenter Rico Hizon before about his opinions on the power of the genre.
Rico Hizon was at the helm once more on the 4th of December episode when discussing the huge success of the 2014 MAMA awards. Hizon and a Korean entertainment industry expert discussed the staying power of the K-Pop genre and its role as a heavy hitter within the Asian music industry.
Many will probably see their coverage here as treading on old ground, but perhaps this shows that K-Pop has what it takes to subvert expectations and last a lot longer than what many originally thought it would. It seems that the talent of the artists as well as the genre’s versatility has meant that it is not as much of a global trend as it was initially purported to be from many of the Western outlets covering it before.
After such a turbulent year for the Korean entertainment industry, perhaps this is a nice note to finish on as the year draws to a close!
Unfortunately, the episodes are not available to be viewed on the BBC website, and new episodes are played each night on the BBC news channel. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see that K-Pop is still making an impact on the UK media!
