TELEVISION RATINGS AND SURVEYS

TV ratings and demographic surveys are familiar territory to the institutions of quantitative reporting on the media industries. The need to scope potential and actual audiences for their viewing expectations and preferences has long been part of the competitive commercial and public broadcasting systems in the Western world. In China, however, CCTV has had an absolute monopoly for much of the past forty years, and audiences have had little chance of biting back by switching channel. That

Zhengda zongyi, an info-tainment magazine programme sponsored by the Thailand-based Zhengda Fertilizer Company, began production in April 1990. It features participants from different backgrounds interacting with audiences drawn from ‘work units’.

Throughout the 1990s it maintained consistently high ratings and gained fulsome praise from China’s leaders for its innovative travelogue-style format that provided information about other cultures and societies, not to mention its traditional celebration of socialist values. By the late 1990s its audience share had faltered with increasing competition from its many imitators.

Chan, A. (2002). ‘From Propaganda to Hegemony: Jiaodian fangtan and China’s Media Policy’. Journal of Contemporary China 16.30:35–51.

Li, Xiaoping (2002). ‘“Focus” (Jiaodian fangtan) and the Changes in the Chinese Television Industry’. Journal of Contemporary China 16.30:17–34.