Talent TV - Fun While it Lasted

BEIJING --- It might have taken a little longer than we expected, but finally SARFT has got round to enacting specific regulations to govern the most successful genre of programming to emerge in recent years…the talent TV show format (see policy and regulation).

Even as Hunan TV's Supervoice Girls was first capturing the interest of the nation and propelling an unknown and untalented Li Yucheng into national stardom, we were suggesting that the success of viewer voting mechanisms would lead first to a rash of copycats and second to a major SARFT crackdown.

Now that the second stage has come to pass, even China Media Monitor is surprised at the extent of the regulations that go further than any of the interim notices issued over the last two years (CMM passim). Given the furor over rip-off TV voting in the UK and other countries, it is clear that some level of regulation is required, but looking at the SARFT regulations, there can be no doubt that the aim is to ensure that anything like Supervoice Girls can never happen again.

Apart from demanding that all broadcasters' receive SARFT permission for talent shows and limiting satellite channels to just one series per year, SARFT has re-affirmed that no series can last longer than two months or run for more than ten episodes and that no episode may last longer than 90 minutes. This much we knew, but it is further down the list that new tougher regulations appear.

There are three particularly shocking regulations. The first demotes talent TV from the domestic entertainment category and places it in the same dangerous category as foreign TV drama with a ban on shows in primetime. The second suggests talent shows are banned from asking audiences to vote for participants, including voting via cellphones, telephones and the internet.

Fortunately, this loss of revenue will not be a problem for provincial broadcasters, because the regulations also stipulate that only the final show in a series can broadcast on satellite channels, a sure way to limit the national audience as nobody will know the contestants involved.

In light of the above restrictions, few talent TV show producers have bothered reading further and are already moving jobs. If they did read on, they would find that SARFT has also gone to some length to clip their creative wings, requiring that 75% of songs are from the PRC and that participants do not "deviate from the aesthetic ideas of the masses". Even talent show judges have to be pre-submitted for approval and, oh yes, there can be no prizes.

Just in case the above restrictions are not enough to deter international format companies looking to invest in the massive potential of the China market, special permission is required for foreigners to be involved in talent shows in any way.

It was fun while it lasted, but it seems like the Chinese state media's love affair with talent TV is well and truly over. How successful SARFT can be when the format starts re-emerging on the Internet remains to be seen.