CCTV
State-run Chinese Central Television (CCTV, zhongyang dianshitai)) is the main television station in China and China’s only national television network. First broadcast in 1958, it has 22 channels broadcasting to China and the world and in several languages, including Chinese, English and Spanish. Its major channels are CCTV 1 (Integrated Channel), CCTV 2 (finance channel), CCTV 6 (movie channel) CCTV 5 (sports channel), CCTV news channel, and CCTV 8 drama channel. Almost everyone in China watches CCTV in some form or at some time. CCTV 1 is the No. 1 channel in China. CCTV 1 and CCTV 2 also have a lot of news. CCTV broadcasts European soccer matches, NBA and NFL games and Olympic Games events. It also offers other sports program, documentaries and children’s shows — and they're all free [Source: China Whisper, Quora]
CCTV is China’s first television station and its No. 1 ranked TV network today. It began as a single black-and-white television station dedicated to disseminating dispatches of the Communist Party. Color broadcasting began in 1973. Regarded as government mouthpiece, CCTV mostly airs news, sports and shows that serves the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. The news broadcasts have traditionally been dull affairs with party meetings, visits by leaders to factories and farms and meetings with foreign dignitaries.
With over 1.2 billion viewers globally, including millions in the United States, CCTV reaches the world's single largest audience. It makes billion-dollar profits and commands an audience vastly larger than every major television network in the United States and Europe. CCTV is also seen as a microcosm of a Chinese -style state capitalism — a unique combination of market economy and authoritarian state control — and a model of China's post command-economy paradigm. It is a hybrid communist-capitalist media conglomerate that is financially profitable, operationally autonomous, and yet politically dependent. Armed guards are posted outside of its entrance gates.
See Separate Articles TELEVISION AND MEDIA IN CHINA factsanddetails.com ; TELEVISION IN CHINA: CHANNELS, RATINGS AND PRODUCTION factsanddetails.com ; HISTORY OF TELEVISION IN CHINA factsanddetails.com ; GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF TELEVISION IN CHINA factsanddetails.com ; Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC) MCLC ; China Media Project cmp.hku.hk ; China Digital Times chinadigitaltimes.net ; Television Stations chinese-school.netfirms.com ; CCTV english.cctv.com
RECOMMENDED BOOKS: “Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television” by Ying Zhu (2013) Amazon.com; Ying Zhu is a Chinese media expert, a professor of media culture at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island and a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.; the book includes interviews with the network's leading players, including senior executives, investigative journalists, popular news anchors and directors and producers of some of CCTV's most successful programs. “The Chinese Television Industry” by Michael Keane Amazon.com; “Television Regulation and Media Policy in China”by Yik-Chan Chin Amazon.com; “Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV” by Michæl Curtin Amazon.com; “TV China” by Ying Zhu and Christopher Berry (2008) Amazon.com; “China's Window on the World — TV News, Social Knowledge and International Spectacles, Tsan-kuo Chang with Jian Wang and Yanru Chen Amazon.com; “Television in Post-Reform China by Ying Zhu, Amazon.com; “The Little Emperors’ New Toys: A Critical Inquiry into Children and Television in China” by Bin Zhao Amazon.com; “China Turned On: Television, Reform and Resistance” by James Lull Amazon.com;
History of CCTV
Beijing TV Station began broadcasting on May 1, 1958. The first broadcast included a 10 minute report on Labor Day and a model workers report on production outputs. A documentary called “Go to the Countryside” showed Communist officials working with farmers. Other segments included cultural programs, dance and poetry readings, and a Soviet program on “Television.” In 1978, Beijing TV Station was renamed China Central Television Station, or CCTV. [Source: Xinhua]
Ting Ni wrote in the World Press Encyclopedia: As a state-owned and party-controlled instrument of propaganda, television had limited penetration prior to the 1980s and thus figured insignificantly compared with newspapers and radios before the reform period. However, due partly to a more open political atmosphere and an emerging market economy, and partly to the Chinese Communist Party's intent to use television as an effective means for political and cultural propaganda, television programs became increasingly interesting and more relevant to Chinese daily life. [Source: Ting Ni, World Press Encyclopedia, Gale Group Inc., 2003]
By the end of the 1980s, CCTV — the national radio station Central People's Broadcasting Station (CPBS) — had monopolized the broadcast media. They were both under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television, which served as both a news organization and a broadcasting administrative bureaucracy. CPBS's 6:30 to 7:00 morning news and CCTV's 7:00 to 7:30 evening news were transmitted nationwide everyday, making them the most important news programs in the country.As local stations strengthened their capacity for newsgathering and also for producing entertainment fare, they began to be a major program source for CCTV. In 1981, CCTV aired a total of 4,186 news stories; 44 percent of them were furnished by local stations. Of the 118 television dramas that CCTV broadcasted, 81 percent came from local stations. CCTV commenced international newscasts on April 1, 1980. The reception from foreign television news services, such as Visnews (Britain) and UPI Television News Service (The United States), broadened CCTV's world news coverage. China also joined Asiavision, a television consortium among Asian countries, and exchanged news with the African Broadcasting Union and World Television Network.
In the early 2000s, CCTV had 12 channels, including news, social economy and education, entertainment, film, opera, agricultural news, and western China development. At that time CCTV had established relations with more than 120 stations within about 80 countries. Yang Weiguang played a central role in CCTV’s development. Michael Keane wrote: “Yang was the person chosen in 1985 to oversee CCTV’s transition from a stodgy propaganda institution to a modern media enterprise. Yang’s own words tell how he changed a public institution designed to educate into a ratings champion looking for ways to be innovative.” His successor was Zhao Huayong. “By the time Zhao’s tenure was completed, CCTV had transformed: it had more specialty channels, it was reaching out to the world, and it was seeking out talent, both from within China and from overseas. CCTV’s leaders wanted it to become more like CNN and the BBC, although with one important caveat: it had to remain the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. [Source: Michael Keane, Professor of Chinese Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, Creative Transformations, January, 2013]
In November 2011,Hu Zhanfan was named president of CCTV. Xinhua reported that he was vice minister of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the government agency that regulates Chinese media. His predecessor Jiao Li, was appointed president of CCTV in May 2009. Soon after Hu was appointed there was an uproar over a statement he made earlier in which he said that journalists' primary responsibility was to be a "mouthpiece". The current president of CCTV is Shen Haixiong, who was appointed in February 2018. [Source: Tania Branigan, The Guardian, December 8, 2011; [Source: Edward Wong, New York Times, November 25, 2011]
See Separate Article HISTORY OF TELEVISION IN CHINA factsanddetails.com
CCTV Business and Management
CCTV is a good example of how the Communist Party in China managed to make state-owned companies profitable as the nation become more market oriented and less government controlled, It earned around $2.5 billion in total revenues in 2008, up from $1 billion in 2002. At that time itts advertising rates were rising 20 to 30 percent a year.
CCTV’ has cut marketing deals with the NBC and IMG Worldwide, the global sports and entertainment giant. It sponsors include Coca-Cola, Adidas and Proctor & Gamble. In November 2008, CCTV's annual advertising auction, which draws a bevy of multinationals and domestic companies, netted a record return of $1.3 billion; Procter and Gamble was the biggest buyer.
Michael Keane wrote: There is a commonly held view within CCTV that China’s culture and history make it exceptional and employees in the system have faith in the traditional Chinese concept of sage leadership.” On the other hand, “Western journalists and media scholars have been complicit in constructing an image of impenetrability, and promoting a stereotype of the Chinese journalist as a cog in the wheel of the political apparatus. Certainly there is a degree of truth: this was the case in the past. Many of CCTV’s employees were appointed through political connections. Nowadays cronyism has been replaced by a new managerialism that favours talent scouted on a contract system depending on the nature of projects. [Source: Michael Keane, Professor of Chinese Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, Creative Transformations, January, 2013]
CCTV Programing and Shows
CCTV Headquarters Typical fare on CCTV has traditionally included dull news reports, Peking Opera performances, multi-episode historical dramas, Chinese mini series, copy cat games shows, nighttime soap operas with lying husbands and women that sleep around, reports of the success stories and achievements of the Communist Party and coverage of ribbon-cutting ceremonies and factory tours attended by high Communist officials.
“Much of the network's regular audience are farmers and lower-to-middle income urbanites who tune in to see imperial soap operas and police dramas, singing contests and holiday galas,” Alex Pasternack wrote in the The National. “Though in recent years CCTV has sought to compete with grittier programming from local stations, with shows that forgo nationalist themes (one runaway hit was Divorce, Chinese Style), network executives are also obligated to abide by China's rigid propaganda rules.” [Source:Alex Pasternack, The National, January 23, 2009]
The ”CCTV Spring Festival Gala”, shown on Chinese New Year, has traditionally been one of the highest rated shows of the year on Chinese television. First broadcast in the 1980s and watched by hundreds of millions of viewers, it features hours of comedy sketches and kitschy song-and-dance acts, often imbued with patriotism and themes emphasizing national harmony.
Michael Keane wrote: ““Unlike its rival provincial broadcasters CCTV has not been so successful in game shows, although it has successfully copied a number of international formats....The pressure of producing ratings pushed producers to adopt game shows such as Happy Dictionary, a clone of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and Lucky 52, a copy of Go Bingo, the latter hosted by the charismatic Li Yong. By 2009, the channel had moved back to its core strengths, namely finance and economics, with game shows shunted to CCTV3. [Source: Michael Keane, Professor of Chinese Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, Creative Transformations, January, 2013]
The Rise of the Powerful Nations is a documentary program that tapped into the underlying aspiration for Chinese soft power. It has been compared with River Elegy, a controversial documentary about China’s problems broadcast prior to the Tiananmen Square massacre. Half the Sky was a women’s program that broke new ground by moving beyond the usual practice of selecting and celebrating role models.
Impact of Super Girls on CCTV Programming
In 2009, CCTV, China's state broadcaster, overhauled its programming to become more competitive with other national satellite channels. In the process, one-third of its shows were canceled. Ying Zhu wrote: “The overnight sensation of a singing competition show, Super Girls, from a provincial TV station in 2004 sent a shockwave through CCTV's leadership, which promptly denounced the show as "a rogue program" produced by "the rogue broadcaster." [Source: Ying Zhu, Asian Creative Transformations, April 2, 2012. Ying Zhu is author of Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television (New Press)]
“Feeling the heat for becoming increasingly irrelevant to the masses, especially the youth it was mandated to reach and unify, CCTV aired a story in June 2005 to criticize the prevalence of entertainment shows modeled on foreign programs and their detrimental impact on Chinese society. On July 19, 2005, CCTV sponsored a much publicized industry summit attended by top propaganda officials and television hosts from major broadcasters around the country. Three of its anchor hosts spoke at the summit and criticized Super Girls for being vulgar and condemned ratings as "the source of all evil." Wang Taihua, general director of SARFT, complained that there were too many low-quality and lowbrow reality shows that cater to the least common denominator and that the government must strengthen supervision of entertainment programs and restrict the number of reality shows allowed on TV . CCTV pledged to adhere to its vocation of "spreading advanced culture" and "actively advocate mainstream values in line with the times."
“In private, the network lobbied the central propaganda department to cramp down on the show. The SARFT announced a ban on airing talent shows during prime time (between 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.) starting in October 2007. Under the new rules, the programs must be no more than 90 minutes, and offer no prizes to attract contestants. After a year of siesta in 2008 when the Beijing Olympic Games preempted all other events, Hunan TV made an attempt to re-launch Super Girls under a different name, Happy Girls, in 2009. Hunan TV submitted to SARFT conditions that Happy Girls would only last for two months and each episode would air only after 10:30pm. The draconian directives of the SARFT were astonishingly amusing: judges must hold themselves to some decorum; publicity revolving around the private lives of contestants is banned; and text-based and online voting systems are no longer allowed; Finally, competitors are forbidden from hugging each other or expressing extreme emotions on stage, and no fan groups are allowed to cheer for contestants in the studio. As my 12-year-old daughter puts it, "This is ridiculous. A reality show is all about the instant display of raw emotions."
“As CCTV condemned Super Girls, it aggressively launched its own talent quest show, Dream China, in 2005, and entrusted Li Yong, CCTV's king of pop culture as its host. Li later claimed in his interview with me that the idea of Dream China came before Super Girls and that Hunan TV could not possibly measure up in market share and cultural influence to CCTV. To show national unity, Hunan TV took great pains to drive home the point that Hunan TV and CCTV are not enemies. The point was delivered to me during my interview with top-level policy makers at Hunan TV in July 2009. While asked if CCTV has attempted to create hurdles for Hunan TV, I was told that "the rules are handed down by SARFT, although people do link CCTV with SARFT."
New CCTV headquarters under construction in 2008
CCTV News
CCTV is under the direct control of the Chinese government. As an instrument of the State it is censored and presents news and entertainment in way that is endorsed by the government and promotes government goals like engendering pride among Chinese and representing China as a happy, harmonious place. CCTV journalist travel with the president and politburo leaders; they disseminate government news bulletins and often get approval for “exclusive interviews” with important public figures that no else has access to. Bai Yansong, Jing Yidan, and Cui Yongyuan are three of CCTV’s best known news anchors,. Bai’s said that commercialisation has been a positive counterforce to state control and that CCTV needs to become an authoritative voice in news programming before it can claim to be a competitor with CNN.
CCTV's flagship evening news program, Xinwen Lianbao (“Network News”) is carried on every local news channel across the country, by orders of the government, and had an estimated nightly viewership of more than 660 million in the early 2010s. At that time "rather than Who, What, Where and When, the program concentrated on Hu and Wen — China's president and premier — with lavish coverage of their every statement and gesture.” When asked about CCTV's obligations to the Communist Party, one producer said, “But we're paid by the state...How can we not run stories about our leaders' activities”?
The anchors on Chinese television news programs have traditionally been grim-faced, and stoic and lacking in style. But this is less the case today. In the mid 2000s, CCTV began featuring half-smiling pretty women and slick-looking men as anchors. An informal poll taken by Sina.com found that many Chinese favored the change, with many agreeing with the statement that the new anchors are “fresh, lively and not lecturing.”
When U.S. President Bill Clinton visited China in the 1990s a news conference and friendly debate between him and Jiang Zemin was shown live and uncensored on CCTV. Chinese audiences had never seen anything like that before and liked what they saw. CCTV was among the first to report officially on the 2008 Tibet uprising and Sichuan earthquake, in both cases presenting the government’s take on events there. The violent protests in Tibet received surprisingly thorough coverage but were accompanied an endless stream of tragic stories told by Han Chinese victims and references to a conspiracies by the “Dalai Lama clique”.” That story receded when the devastating 2008 earthquake struck Sichuan province. The network received some praise for its unprecedented coverage of a national disaster but it did so to preempt online reportage. When unofficial reports started trickling out from the earthquake zone despite a gag order by the powerful Propaganda Department, CCTV's coverage was taken up a notch, highlighting military rescue efforts and the generosity of citizens but avoided death tolls and investigations of school collapses that killed thousands of children.
CCTV News Shows
The CCTV evening news is the world's most watched news program. Watched by around hundreds of million viewers every night, its a boring affair featuring scenes of Chinese leaders shown in descending rank and seniority meeting foreign dignitaries and visiting factories and party meeting around the country. There is very little international news or anything that could be described as interesting.
Michael Keane wrote: ““One of the reasons for CCTV’s success in the past is its monopoly over news. But some shows like News Probe, a magazine-style format, eventually were cancelled as they were unable to strike the right balance between being a ‘mouthpiece’ and digging up the truth about corruption and abuses of power. [Source: Michael Keane, Professor of Chinese Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, Creative Transformations, January, 2013]
Dialogue is a talk show on CCTV 9 that deals with international and local issues. It often features domestic commentators who like to be critical of the West and international guests willing to make concessions to Chinese culture for its ways of managing conflict. Interviewees often make the point that China has to be understood, not through Western comparisons, but through comparisons with its own history and culture. Oftentimes this is a convenient way out of difficult questions pertaining to democratisation.
Lecture Room is a popular CCTV television news and talk show. In 2008, the main lecturer for the show Yan Chongnian was struck by someone when he was doing a book-signing. Many people sympathized with the attacker because Yan was often accused of “monoplising the rights of speech.”
“Tell It Like It Is” was a popular panel-format talk show that encouraged audience participation and “straight talk.” It was launched in 1996 with Cui Yongyuan as host. It quickly found an enthusiastic audience for whom Cui's quirky personality was as interesting as the topics under discussion. After fourteen years on the air, the program was canceled in 2009, ostensibly due to declining ratings, and current host He Jing is being blamed for failing to hold on to the substantial audience that Cui had built up. [Source: Danwei.org, September 25, 2009]
Te cancellation of “Tell It Like It Is” was largely seen as a shift by CCTV's away from serious discussion toward more lightweight entertainment. Among the shows that moved to the night spot that “Tell It Like It Is” occupied were Wang Xiaoya's “Happy Game” and Li Yong's “Feichang 6+1", both game shows, as well as the celebrity interview program “Art Life. Other more serious or education-oriented shows that were axed included “Today's Stories", "Story of Movies' , "Wellness Weekly" , "Half the Sky", "Ethics Observer" , "Approaching Science" , "China Onstage" , "Pinwheel", "Samsung Knowledge Express” and “Us” .
In 2003, CCTV launched a 24-hour news channel. It reaches Chinese audiences around the world and seems mainly to have been launched as a response to the Phoenix network's new channel. Before this channel was launched CCTV was known for its lack of coverage of real news. It didn’t cover the September II attack until a day after it happened. In 2003, both the regular news programs and the 24-hour news channel had extensive coverage of the Iraq war, often with anti-American slant.
Changes at CCTV Network News
CCTV’s Network News had traditionally been divided into “three segments”: the first ten minutes talk about how busy the leaders are, the middle ten about how happy people are across the country, and the final ten about how chaotic other places in the world are. The first segment was typically a fulfillment of the mocking ditty.” There's no meeting that's not solemn, no closing ceremony that's not a success, no speech that's not important, no applause that's not enthusiastic, no leaders that aren't attentive, no visit that's not genial.” [Source: Chang Ping, China Newsweek]
In early 2009, CCTV’s Network News broadcast went through a major overhaul. The formulaic half-hour of reporting on the activities of national leaders and positively-spun national events was replaced by programing that aimed to bring the show “closer to the people, with segments similar to the “cold news,” “hot news,” and “in my words” on news broadcast on Hunan TV. [Source: Danwei.org, August 26, 2009]
Some wondered whether eliminating reports on the activities of China's national leadership was really the best way to improve the program? In a column for China Newsweek, journalist Chang Ping wrote: Network News has had a redesign. I've watched a few days of it and find it pretty strange...The biggest change is that reporting on meetings and the activities of leaders has practically disappeared.
“The second and third segments have not changed a whit: it's just that the first ten minutes have turned into “everyone in the country is working hard.” Previously, no matter how dry the reporting about meetings and leaders' activities may have been, it was at least news that basically contained the “Five Ws” (apart from “what? and “why?). However, now you don't hear “today,” “yesterday,” or even “the day before yesterday.” It's all about “the first half of the year” or even “for the past few years.” Compared to moving news how “the country's great efforts to broaden areas and channels for private investment” “extols and demonstrates the new fighting force,” we'd be better off seeing what the leaders have been busy doing, and how many meetings have been held at the Great Hall of the People.
CCTV's Overseas and English-Language Programing
CCTV has made a great efforts to increase its presence overseas. It is broadcast in six languages and has more than 50 bureaus abroad with plans to increase this number to 80. Its international programs outperform Japan’s NHK in terms if quality and quantity. CCTV reaches 30 million Chinese living overseas. It has international channels broadcasting in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and other languages. The network is leasing space in Manhattan and building a United States broadcasting center in Washington. While American television networks are closing foreign bureaus CCTV is opening new ones and expanding its foreign coverage and hiring more overseas producers and journalists. CCTV distributed its mandarin language channel 4 and its English language channel 9 to overseas cable networks, usually in exchange for providing reciprocal landing rights in southern Guangdong province.
China's increasing sensitivity about its image abroad is reflected in CCTV's television broadcasts. In a New Year's essay, China's propaganda director Liu Yunshan emphasized the importance of burnishing that image. “It has become an urgent strategic task for us to make our communication capability match our international status,” he wrote. “In this modern era, who gains the advanced communication skills, the powerful communication capability and whose culture and value is more widely spread is able to more effectively influence the world.”
CCTV launched an Arab-language television station June 2009. Around the same time Xinhua began English-language television broadcasts in Europe. “CCTV has the resources needed to become a serious global news outlet like al Jazeera, if not the BBC," one CCTV producer told Pasternack. “We have a very competent staff; we have our own money to send journalists and correspondents around the world." He added that the network was also dedicated to capturing the attention of the world — a seduction its stunning and elusive architectural wonder has begun.
CCTV 9 is CCTV’s English-language television. In addition to broadcasting in English it is known for airing panel news shows with frank discussions on controversial issues of the day. Established in 1986 with only six employees, it now broadcasts around the clock, is accessible on cable or satellite and is watched by over 210 million people worldwide. Many of its personalities were born in Chinese born and educated abroad. The main anchor for English-language CCTV International was veteran Australian reporter and weatherman Edwin Maher. He told the Los Angeles Times he has to be careful about what he says. He can’t say, the phrase “mainland China” for example, because it implies that Taiwan is not part of China and said he doesn’t mind being a mouthpiece for the party line. “If the reports aren’t balanced, there’s nothing I can do,” he said. I can;t stand up and say, “You’re not giving the other side.”
In 2012 CCTV "launched programming for American viewers produced out of a new office building steps away from the White House. Among the producers of the English-language news broadcasts were several U.S. journalists hired from Bloomberg TV, NBC and Fox News in bureaus throughout North and South America. CCTV said its operations in the USA would have autonomy from the People's Republic of China. [Source: Calum MacLeo, USA Today, February 8, 2012]
Pressures on CCTV: Young Viewers, Internet and Its Own Employees
Pasternack wrote, “While the internet is forcing officials to rewrite their rule books (the country's propaganda chief issued a memo in November insisting that state media be the first to report bad news), CCTV executives are scrambling to rejigger their marketing plans. “More than any other force, the internet has shocked CCTV out of its Sybaritic stupor,” said David Wolf, a Beijing-based consultant on Chinese media. “The data its leadership has collected over the past five years has corroborated what advertisers had been telling them: the internet was no longer a toy of students and foreigners,” but was starting to steal crucial young audiences from television. “CCTV knows it cannot long survive as an enterprise — or, indeed, fulfil its political charter — if it loses young urban professionals.” [Source: Alex Pasternack, The National, January 23, 2009]
“But for young and educated urbanites, tired of state-run news, bombastic war films and imperial soap operas, the internet and pirated DVDs hold more appeal. “Few of my friends watch any TV,” said Liang Jingyu, an architect in Beijing. “They're liars, a mouthpiece, and want to brainwash everyone.” Even the CCTV producer told me he doesn't watch his own network.” CCTV is trying hard to attract young viewers: last year it added a number of US programs to one of its high definition cable channels, including Desperate Housewives, 24 and Lost. A large part of the new building will be devoted to internet programming, which will distribute video to computers and mobile phones.” And the [new headquarters] building itself — the anti-icon icon — seems designed to appeal to those same disgruntled youth. “The building all but screams 'look at us — we're big, we're cool, we're global, and we're everything a smart young Chinese aspires to,” David Wolf says. “People who see the building as an talisman of bureaucratic ego miss the point. In both location and style, it is a monument to what CCTV aspires to be to its own audience.”
In December 2013, CCTV producer Wang Qinglei was fired for writing a post on his Weibo account criticizing the Chinese government’s campaign-style attacks on prominent social media figures. In his final post he wrote that he intended to “record the truth” about “the era in which we live.” ““None of us actually believes the things we report,” he wrote. He recalled one of his superiors saying, “When you’re deciding what to cover, ask yourself first what you’d most like to report on, what you think most deserves coverage. That’s what you can’t report on.” Every year, Wang wrote, CCTV producers receive upwards of a thousand directives informing them which topics are forbidden. For these producers, the daily routine consists of “wracking their brains for ways to frame their pitches so that the higher-ups won’t reject them, then walking a tightrope while doing their best not to get their superiors in trouble.” [Source: Hu Yong, China File, Foreign Policy, November 24, 2014]
“ “During the 10 years I worked for CCTV, our national media went from being a respected institution to a reviled one.” His CCTV colleagues echoed his verdict. One senior editor said in private, “These days we’re embarrassed to wear the official logo when we go out in public. We’re afraid someone’s going to yell, ‘Look, it’s that pack of liars.’” Another colleague corrected him, saying that the epithet du jour is not “liars” but ”rumormongers.”
CCTV Headquarters
The most striking symbol of CCTV’s success is it relatively new $700 million headquarters, an architectural wonder designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2010, 10,000 CCTV employees moved into the digitally-equipped headquarters at the center of Beijing's cosmopolitan Central Business District, which places the company on the map, literally and figuratively. The new location is seen as an obvious hint of the network's ambition, according the National, of shedding its starchy, closed-circuit reputation and hurl itself into the 21st century as China's answer to the BBC.” [Source: Alex Pasternack, The National, January 23, 2009]
The National reported: The "building's design — a skyscraper bent into an angular gravity-defying doughnut — that truly screams CCTV's battle plan to a global audience. Coincidentally or not, Koolhaas' new headquarters resembles a mouth open in proclamation, or hung agape in disbelief, as if trying to figure out how it twists so much steel and glass...For CCTV the building is not just a new home: it is a logo writ large, an icon for network and state alike.”
“Many employees were nervous about moving in. One told the National that the building's size and maze of 75 elevators are a widespread source of concern, threatening to turn the building into the setting for a Kafka story. “We'll spend half the day getting to the top,” he said. “What we need is a new building that is larger and practical, not an extravaganza.”
See Separate Article MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN BEIJING factsanddetails.com
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Last updated May 2022