How to Get 50 Channels in Less than Two Years

BEIJING --- SARFT has this month once again provided further clarifications about its vision for the development of digital and pay-TV services in China. After not saying much about the development of pay-TV services in China over the last five years, SARFT has been on the offensive the last few months issuing bold predictions about where the development of digital services on CATV networks is headed in the near future.

Last month SARFT officials noted that they had divided the country into four major zones including the independent municipalities, the Eastern, Middle and Western regions with plans for each region's cable networks to be upgraded for digital services by 2005,2008,2010 and 2015 respectively (CMM Passim).

Last March SARFT Vice-Minister Zhang Haitao's announced at the 4th Sino-International Cable TV Executive Management Conference that there would be at least 30 pay channels available to Chinese cable viewers by 2005.

SARFT has amended the above predictions by this month claiming that by 2005 China will have between 50-80 pay-TV channels with more than 150 channels upgraded from analogue transmission to digital.  SARFT went on to note that there would be 30 million users of set-top boxes throughout the country by then.

SARFT has not, however, indicated how China's broadcasting industry plans to develop and launch  50-80 channels within one and a half years, or indeed who is planning to develop them.

To roll out at even the low end of the predictions (50 channels) in less than two years would mean the greatest explosion of programming within the shortest time that any television market throughout the world has ever seen.

Assuming each new niche channel broadcasts only 8 hours of original programming per day, this calls for the production of 2,800 hours per week; a substantial amount given China's limited, albeit growing, production resources.

So how does SARFT imagine China's television industry will manage to launch all of these channels in such a short period of time?

First of all, the new channels will not be created from scratch by China's already strained television production sector. Instead, the channels will by and large be created through consolidation of already existing broadcasting resources.

The next year and a half will see a large amount of consolidation amongst already existing channels being re-packaged as niche channels. CCTV has followed this strategy when it launched its 24-hour news channel (CMM Passim) by moving news programs from already existing channels over to the new channel.

It will be the broadcasters who already have a large number of channels under one roof such as Beijing and Shanghai (not to mention CCTV) and the provincial players with relatively homogenous programming between them that will be leading the charge to launch new channels (please refer to 'China Launches Comedy Channel'). It will be simply impossible for any broadcaster to create new channels otherwise.

Second of all, not all of that production will be developed in-house.

China's broadcasters have already shown a willingness to work with foreign content producers in developing new programs for the domestic marketplace. One need only look as far as last April's between Dow Jones and the Shanghai Media Group (SMG) to jointly develop programming to see models for cooperation.

Simply put, although China's airwaves are poised for an explosion in available airtime that can be met to some extent through already existing programming, but there is not nearly enough to cover the gap and that demand will have to be met through foreign programming.

At the upcoming MIPCOM television programming festival in France this October, Chinese program buyers will be keenly aware of this and modifying their buying strategies accordingly.

CMM subscribers with content to sell would do well to keep abreast of which niche channels are planned to be rolled out over the next year and gear their sales efforts at the television stations accordingly. All newly announced plans for channel launches will be covered in the CMM.