New Beijing Media Group Heads into Unchartered Territory

BEIJING --- Ten institutions and five enterprises, including the Beijing People’s Broadcasting Station, Beijing TV and Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Corporation, formally merged on May 28 to form the Beijing Radio, Film and TV Group Corporation with combined assets of RMB10 billion (US$1.2 billion).

The establishment of the new broadcasting corporation is designed to help the city’s broadcasting sector face new challenges and survive tough competition in the coming years, according to Ma Chaojun, a top official with the group.

Ma said the new corporation’s market share and technological superiority will ensure the healthy development of broadcasting and film in the capital city and that it will improve resource use efficiency, promote large-scale production and make the broadcasting and film industry a new economic growth point for the city.

The launch of the new Group comes after the April completion of the merger between Beijing TV (BTV) and Beijing Cable TV (BCTV) (see CMM passim) under the new Beijing TV.

Former BTV President Liu Diyi and Chief Editor Lu Ying have assumed positions as Vice-President and Artistic Director of Beijing Radio, Film & TV Group respectively. The new BTV President is Liu Min, formerly Director of the Beijing People’s Radio Station. Former BCTV Chief Editor Zhang Xiaoai has been appointed BTV Chief Editor.

The new Beijing TV operates three terrestrial channels, four cable channels and one satellite channel. A further eleven cable channels can be added to the former BCTV system and new channel launches are being planned. BTV will continue to move towards niche channel formats, for example News Channel, Film Channel and Sports Channel.

Although the merger is designed to provide a stronger challenge under future WTO trading conditions, there is widespread skepticism about the ability of the new Group to realize the assets it holds in an internationally accepted form. With huge personnel and overhead costs, the profitability of individual enterprises and units differs hugely with none considered to operate in a mature commercial manner.

Internal personnel differences and wide resistance to the shuffling of profitable areas to new power centers will hamper the central group's efforts to sort out its properties and package up the first to be opened to outside investment. For this reason, units within the system that have been concentrating on specific project led ventures may be the first to benefit as they leapfrog more developed areas in which established interests have a strong hold and there is more at stake.

Among the first areas to be directed towards the open market are likely to be non-production sectors. These include the establishment of a permanent organization to co-ordinate the Beijing TV Week and other major media and cultural events along the model employed in Shanghai which has a permanent events company to operate the Shanghai TV and Film Festivals as well as sporting and cultural events.