Educational Media Reviews Online

According to this video, there are 900 million television viewers in China. Advertisers obviously covet an audience of that size and are eager to expose their wares to Chinese viewers. Advertiser-driven programming is becoming more and more prominent on Chinese television. The mechanism by which this is being accomplished and the effect it is having on China are the subjects of No Sex, No Violence, No News.

Eighty per cent of Chinese households own a television, compared to only two per cent that own a telephone. The government-owned networks in China do not have the resources to keep up with the demand for programming, so there is increased reliance on foreign sources. In Shanghai, thirty per cent of the TV schedule consists of programs from foreign countries.

These programs are advertiser-sponsored and are providing Chinese viewers with a window on a consumer society that was unknown during the reign of Mao Zedong. Whereas in Mao’s time, television was used to spread political propaganda, today’s Chinese television is becoming an agent in disseminating a kind of consumerist propaganda. And viewers are eagerly absorbing it. The most popular programming in Shanghai is a home shopping channel.

Foreign programming in China is subject to censorship, and the Chinese government has been reluctant to allow satellite TV networks to beam their programs live for fear of not being able to control content. Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV has attempted to win the government over by dropping BBC news broadcasts from the network and censoring music videos that could be interpreted as criticizing the Chinese government. Another satellite company, CETV, has addressed government concerns by promoting its policy of “no sex, no violence, no news” in its programming, thus taking care of the areas that would prompt government censorship.

The subtitle that appears on the case holding this video reads The Battle to Control China’s Airwaves. “Battle” seems to be an incorrect term, though, from what’s seen in the video. Those fighting the rising tide of commercial television in China, such as the Western scholar residing in the country who’s seen in the program decrying the glorification of consumer culture, are relatively few and ineffective. The government likes the idea of commercial networks because they supply ready material for a hungry viewing audience and the advertisements promote the consumer society China wants to build. Networks are eager to get more programming on Chinese TV and willingly avoid presentation of material that could cause problems for them. Even the workers on the TV programs seem resigned to the state of things. A producer of documentaries says that it’s now allowed to show the negative aspects of life in China, but that probing reports that really get to the heart of a controversial issue are still not possible.

One drawback to this video is that it was produced in 1995. Some of the references in it are outdated. A viewer is left to wonder, for example, if the prior restraint censorship policies of Star TV and CETV have succeeded in getting the government to allow them to transmit all of their networks’ programming live. Nevertheless, the video is still recommended as a case study on the effect of commercial television on an emerging consumer economy.