Program Market Overview
As major PRC broadcasters and distributors converge on Beijing for the annual Beijing International TV Week, the China Media Monitor is pleased to offer this exclusive update of the policies, the players and the programs driving the PRC market in the first half of the year.
The most important TV campaigns mounted in China each year are during the Chinese New Year Festival, which falls in late January or February. For this reason (and, of course, fragmentation), many people see the rest of the year as an anti-climax with occasional summer sporting events such as this year's Olympics the only highlights.
This year's Spring Festival followed the trend of recent years with variety gala performances helpless to stop the weakening of their once vice-like grip on the holiday ratings. The decline of variety shows as a staple of Chinese TV schedules was highlighted by a survey conducted by the Shanghai Broadcasting and TV Information Consulting Company during the festive season.
The survey showed that only two, among more than twenty variety shows produced for the holiday, ranked in the top ten in the ratings table, down from seven last year. Meanwhile, the survey revealed ratings of CCTV's 2000 Spring Festival Gala were under 30% in Shanghai this year, down from a peak of over 50% in previous years.
Another casualty of changing audience tastes is Beijing TV's long running
dating show "Tonight We Meet" which was finally axed as the capital broadcaster reacts to new ratings led scheduling practices.
"Tonight We Meet" started airing in 1991and was one of the first batch of dating programs in the country. During the mid-nineties, the program gained a wide audience and was responsible for bringing hundreds of couples together.
The show has suffered from competition from new style dating shows such as "Rose Date" on Hunan Satellite TV and HK-based Phoenix TV's "Special Men and Women". The former show is produced by one of the success stories of Chinese provincial satellite broadcasting.
While many channels have failed to attract audiences in multi-channel homes, Hunan Satellite has built a profitable advertising business based on strong ratings for its mix of game, quiz and dating shows supported by news and feature programs.
At its 2000 Advertising Auction held in December 1999, Hunan Sat TV emerged as the hot place to bid for ad space this year with the final auction preceded by a round of promotional activities in Guangzhou, Beijing and other large-sized cities.
Among the properties to come under the hammer were naming rights to "The Rose Date" which reached RMB 3.9 million and "The Happy Camp" which topped out at RMB 5.68 million. The winning bid for the last 15 second commercial before "The Happy Camp" valued each spot at RMB 90,000, 2.5 times the 1999 figure and exceeding the rate price of the same timeslot on CCTV.
Hunan Sat TV's "Evening News" which was recently revamped also attracted great interest from bidders with the final offer for the prime spot reaching RMB18.88 million from the starting price of RMB8.8 million. The end of year spending in Changsha certainly contributed to strong 1999 national TV station revenues of RMB15.62 billion (US$1.9 billion), up 16% over 1998.
The success of Hunan Sat TV has been complemented in the home market by the strong performance of four of the province's other forward looking broadcasters (Hunan Cable TV, Hunan Economic TV, Hunan Life Channel, Hunan Arts & Sports Channel) along with the TV guides and other publications they publish.
In a mark of the growing power and influence of Hunan's spin-off commercial ventures, the Shanghai "A" share listed Hunan Dian Guang Media Shares Holding Company has been appointed as the co-ordinator of one of China's leading national TV arts awards, the "Golden Eagle" Awards. The 18th edition of the Awards is to be re-vamped and re-launched in Hunan as the "China (Hunan) Golden Eagle TV Art Festival" starting with the 2000 event in October.
Meanwhile, following the epic 1999 saga caused by Hunan's "Princess Huan Zhu - Part II", the market for TV dramas has yet to throw up a monster hit in 2000. According to the SARFT Information Center's Director of Program Information Liu Junqing, a total of 955 titles with 16073 episodes of TV drama are planned for production this year.
“Added up there are currently 118 approved production houses with long-term production licenses and 178 production houses with short term licenses,” says Liu, “the most influential production houses still being the China TV Drama Production Center (Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) and the Shanghai Paradise Film and Drama Group”.
Distribution of TV programming is mainly achieved through TV program distribution companies, however with the emergence of the National Cable TV network distribution will be possible via the network, predicts Liu.
Among the companies hoping to produce a hit drama series in 2000 are the UK's Granada with the soap opera Joy Luck Street to go on air in October and Internet company e-tang which was revealed by the Worker's Daily as the first "new media" player to invest directly in original TV drama production in late February.
The free spending e-tang has invested RMB2.5 million to shoot the 20-episode youth idol drama, "Yuan Lai Yi Jia Ren". Investing in TV production has long been a favored promotional tool for Chinese companies and is usually counted as part of the booming "barter advertising" sector.
The Workers Daily also said that e-tang is involved in the packaging and promotion of the drama which it said is to be screened on over 100 city TV stations from July.
Meanwhile, the China TV Drama Production Center (CTVDPC) has beaten off fierce competition to win the adaptation rights for Yao Xueyin's historic novel "Li Zicheng", the story of the leader of a peasant uprising at the end of the Ming and beginning of the Qing dynasties.
CTVDPC will adapt the novel as a 30-episode TV series and is understood to be investing RMB150 million in production. Zhang Shaolin ("The Water Margin") will direct with studio filming at the Wuxi Film & TV Production Base and on-location shooting in Hubei, Henan and Shaanxi provinces where Li Zicheng lived and fought.
Despite this new investment into domestic production, the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT) has issued a circular aimed at strictly limiting the quantity of "royal court" and Kung Fu dramas from Hongkong and Taiwan to 25% of total drama imports.
The circular came into effect on February 15th and stipulates that the same Hongkong or foreign drama cannot be screened by more than 3 provincial-level TV stations at the same time on their satellite channels. Meanwhile, only dramas with specific permission from SARFT can be shown in primetime from 19:00 to 21:30.
The circular also re-confirmed an earlier announcement that production units cannot apply to co-produce 20-episode dramas with foreign partners until they have completed production of at least 60-episodes of home-produced drama and passed examination by SARFT.
The circular stipulated that domestic dramas with cast or crew members from outside the mainland must report to the SARFT Foreign Affairs Department for approval and that completed dramas should be reported to the SARFT TV Drama Censorship Committee following examination by local provincial-level bureaux or higher departments.
They will then receive a "TV Drama Distribution Licence" issued by SARFT.
The circular followed increasing numbers of reports about the re-labeling of imported dramas as domestic productions and the increasing number of Hongkong and Taiwan funded productions that are produced on the mainland and labeled as domestic productions. Both scams have arisen in the context of the tough rules on TV co-operation with Hongkong, Macao and Taiwan.
Another genre which has been forced to rely on imported product is the crucial animation sector and this, too, has been the subject of new regulatory measures by SARFT which should be noted by international distributors. The most recent circular focused on "strengthening the import and broadcast management of cartoons".
The circular emphasized that only organizations authorized by SARFT could undertake the business of importing cartoons from abroad and that all cartoons to be imported should be investigated by the SARFT TV Investigation Committee. If passed by the relevant departments, the SARFT Social Management Administration will issue a cartoon broadcast license.
Meanwhile, TV stations and cable operators must follow the 40th rule of "TV Broadcast Administration Rules" strictly and abide by the restrictions on the proportion of scheduled airtime allowed for foreign cartoons. An addendum to this rule states that the time allotted to imported cartoons should not exceed 25% of the total time for youth programs and should not exceed 40% of the total volume of cartoons shown.
From June 1st, 2000, all TV stations have been forbidden to broadcast imported cartoons without the appropriate license and international activities such as exhibiting, producing special programs and engaging in cartoon trade must be passed by SARFT first. Cartoons that have already been imported, but not broadcast, must be submitted to SARFT for investigation.
Other recent regulations concerning the TV program market are “Circular on Strengthening the import management of TV programs and movies” and the “Circular on Strengthening Co-production of TV Drama”.
Looking forward, the internet is once again proving to be the place to head, even if you're a TV production company. Following the success of the BTV, OTV, GDTV co-produced "China Sports Report" and, more recently, BTV's "China Entertainment Report", the Beijing Guang Xian TV Production Research Center announced it is to produce "China Internet Report", a thrice weekly 30 minute show containing more than twenty pieces of news.