Asia, Central, South, and East

Among the world's continents, Asia has both the largest geographic expanse and the largest population. Approximately one-third of the world's land mass lies within Asia, and the number of people living in Asia, at 3.9 billion, is greater than the rest of the world combined. Media of the region are of a similar scale. The three countries with the largest daily newspaper circulations are in Asia. Audiences for broadcast media exploded in the 1990s, and today the world's two largest national TV audiences are also in Asia. Separate entries on India, China, and Japan that go into more detail on those countries can also be found in these volumes.

The global trend toward liberalization of economies beginning in the 1980s had a large impact in Asia, and the continent therefore experienced the same media restructuring as occurred elsewhere. In Asia, this took the form of media consolidation and—especially in broadcasting—privatization of outlets. Whereas previously most countries in Asia had media that were directly or indirectly managed by government agencies, liberalization effectively weakened or eliminated policymakers' control. A direct result of the growth in specialized media was an erosion of readership for general interest magazines, especially [Page 106]those that were offered as regional publications. One of the leading news magazines of Asia, AsiaWeek, ceased publication of its print edition in 2001, although its online presence continues. Another leading newsweekly, the Far Eastern Economic Review, converted to a monthly publication in 2004.

Broadcast media have experienced the greatest changes as a result of economic reforms leading to privatization of media ownership. Print media in most non-socialist countries had already been in private hands before the shift to liberal market-oriented principles began to affect ownership of broadcast media that had generally been under public or state control. Some observers argue that the privatization trend was a good thing, in that government restrictions were inevitably loosened when ownership passed to private parties. However, in practice, this was mitigated somewhat by the fact that the shift from government to corporate control has its own problems. For example, in a number of countries the new private owners were cronies of political leaders, and their corporations demonstrated little independence from government.

Literacy has been a significant impediment to the broad use of media in many countries. Although definitions of literacy vary, there is little doubt that in South Asia this problem has been particularly acute, with most countries there having populations of which less than 50 percent are able to read and write. Afghanistan, for example, reports that less than a third of its citizens have attained literacy. Comparable figures for East and Southeast Asia are generally higher. Compounding this issue is the language complexity found in nearly all countries of Asia, which leads to the question, if an individual has gained literacy skills, does this provide access to the literature and mass media common in the country or region? So, even if a Sri Lankan resident is literate in Tamil, he or she would still be excluded from the readership of the major language newspapers in Singhalese and English. An additional factor affecting literacy is the variety of scripts in common use across the continent. In Sri Lanka, for example, the Tamil and Singhalese languages employ entirely different scripts.

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