When China’s second unmanned lunar probe, Chang’e II, was scheduled to blast off at 18:59:57 on October 1st 2010, 3 seconds before CCP mouthpiece CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo began, the biggest highlight of this launch emerged — how would CCTV deal with the time conflict between the live broadcast of Chang’e's flying to the moon and the 30-minute news program on the evening of National Day?
This problem doesn’t exist in most countries in the world, for the answer is awfully easy: the live broadcast of launching is definitely more important, so the regular news program has to be delayed until the rocket is flying in the air. For TV stations in these countries, to ask this question is just like to ask a patient in critical condition: “Would you like the oxygen treatment, or to have some cookies first?”
But in China, this became a Gordian knot. The key reason is that the relationship between news and politics is still confusing. Although Xinwen Lianbo seems to be a regular news program, it is a political symbol of CCP. Every day at 7 pm, a kind of “virus” will attack all the TV sets in China. The symptom is that almost every channel will become the same, showing one man and one woman reading propaganda articles in a very old-fashioned way. Any tiny changes of this program will attract a huge amount of attention. There used to be hot discussions on the change of anchors and the slight variation of news arrangement. Gradually, this 30-minute news program is under great pressure. Any small action will be interpreted as a big political issue.
It becomes impossible for CCTV to delay Xinwen Lianbo in this situation. In fact, news has never weighed more than politics in China. Not to mention the political importance of the mouthpiece program in the evening of National Day.
However, we cannot forget about the pace of news reform in China. CCTV has been heading for real journalism by revising its News Channel several times. On the other hand, audiences’ expectation for news has been increasing. Therefore, it will trigger social discontent if Xinwen Lianbo simply ignores the launching. Presumably, there was a lengthy discussion inside CCTV and CCP’s Central Propaganda Department before deciding the scenario –
To begin the live broadcast in News Channel early in the day. When it turned to 18:59:55, the News Channel and CCTV-1 combined as regular (the virus works). It was time for Xinwen Lianbo.
At that moment, the countdown was coming to the end and the commander was about to shout out “ignition”, but CCTV didn’t care. The live scene of Chang’e II was put in the bottom right of the screen by using picture-in-picture. The main screen was filled by the 5-second countdown advertisement of a liquor, then the opening of Xinwen Lianbo. As a result, during the most crucial and amazing seconds, all the audience of Xinwen Lianbo could only watch Chang’e II through a small picture without any live sound.
The live scene of launching was switched to full screen after the opening theme. After 2 minutes of live broadcasting without narrative, journalist Bai Yansong read the draft, saying that the News Channel would continue to focus on Chang’e II. Then, the anchors Li Ruiying and Kang Hui appeared in the normal way, but Kang’s opening remark changed from the regular “Good evening everyone, today is October 1st, 2010, August 24th in lunar calendar” to “The scene you just watched is the live broadcast from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. Xinwen Lianbo will track and report it later”. After this, the regular news of Chinese celebrating National Day began.
Honestly speaking, this way of solving the problem is a compromise that can be accepted by the propaganda department, the TV station, and the audience. On the positive side, using picture-in-picture in Xinwen Lianbo‘s opening can even be regarded as a great progress in China’s journalism. Although politics refused to yield, it showed us a gesture of lower its high head a bit.
But there is also a big flaw in this live broadcast: the countdown advertisement. The opening of Xinwen Lianbo couldn’t be cancelled due to political reasons, but what about the commercial advertisement? Perhaps the major tasks of CCTV is to accomplish political missions and to make more and more money, while to report the news is never the most important.
In addition, there is another interesting detail in this event — the launching of Chang’e II itself is with political intention. It is different from the news in the usual sense. Therefore, the game between Chang’e II and Xinwen Lianbo is not simply the game between news and politics. To a certain extent, it’s still a game within politics.
So why not imagine: when a disaster like Wenchuan Earthquake hits China at 6 pm, what will CCTV do? To continue boasting about “the excellent situation” in Xinwen Lianbo, or to replace it with the live broadcast? Or to adopt a “middle way” by spending a quarter talking about the good news, the other quarter broadcasting the disaster? The answer will reflect the level of civilization of this country.
No offense, but the last sentence “The answer will reflect the level of civilization of this country” seems to be a too hasty conclusion. More needs to be elaborated in order for you to state the correlation relationship here.
Yes, but I think the relationship is simple: the more the government cares about its people, the more civilized a country is.
PS. Welcome! I was planning to E-mail you for criticisms and suggestions but you showed up so quickly.
Thanks!I saw your update on DB and so I came:)
um…for instance, let’s see the hypothesis, “the more the government cares about its people, the more civilized a country is”.
Others may ask: how do we know how much the government “cares about” its people? What kind of policies would be considered the “care”? Do we measure it by the level of taxes, or the amount of spending on public works projects, or the availability of information pertinent to the public? Would the policies have “care” effect to one social group, but no “care” effect to another social group?
how to define “civilized”? by how many people turn out to vote, or by surveying people’s perception of their social obligations?
Why will the society be more “civilized” if the government “cares” about them? For instance, a government which lacks funding may impose heavy taxes on middle-class people and use the money as social security benefits to laid-off workers(just a crude example). Now the middle-class is going to complain that they don’t have the resources to invest in businesses, and they will hire less people and give workers less wages, or move their businesses elsewhere, and there will be more unemployment. The laid-off workers will grow in number and granted that they all receive benefits enough for living, they may still have more hostility towards the government for the lack of jobs and opportunity. If the government continues to give benefits to all people with no jobs, it faces larger deficits, and its spending for public works projects will have to decline, and there may be a subsequent decline in the quality of public transportation, or public buildings, or public education. How to assess these interrelated relationships and how these relationships interplay to produce a result? How will result affect the “civicness” of the society?
I am sure that this example I made up just now has logic loopholes, but anyway, this is just to illustrate that the relationship could be very puzzling.
And by the way, I don’t know much about civil society, but “level of civilization” and “civil society” do not seem to be the same in meaning though.
as an IR student with no background in journalism, I am not familiar with the journalism rhetoric and standards of writing, so I am not sure how these thoughts would be relevant, and I apologize if they are not:)
It’s a little amusing to think of the CCTV bureaucrats frantically trying to figure out how they would resolve this conflict. I think the compromise they arrived at is the best that could be expected for now.
Very interesting and thoughtful article!(Such a pity I missed that because I don’t watch TV anymore…..)
Anyway……I have treated this central TV station as a pure propaganda machine for so long that i would not even think
of this little conflict between “the politics”& “the news”.I think the news in this country are very much more or less related to the politics, like you said, this specific piece of news itself is political, and it’s expensive, it’s intended, so…”why not make it as another historical moment AND with our most beloved propaganda machine?” For me, I would not even think of the CCTV bureaucrats resolve this conflict,they might plan the whole thing.Hmm….
But let’s not make it so wretched
There is one big character of our culture:compatibility. We never neglect one show because the other one is blowing our mind away, plus is it really that necessary to see a big screen-version of a rocket on fire? I don’t see the difference.
And it is true that the advertisement is about to make money(however it’s not very persuasive to say someone who is in charge of so much power/control still needs/hungers of money), but i also wonder that it may because of those poor people live in rural areas who can only receive this only channel on TV. Maybe, it’s just a guess, and the intention is for them to see more of this modern China? ……which is also a way of advertisement for Big G.
Dites-leur quelque chose qu’il vit ecrite, comme en portaient les grandes dames romaines poursuivaient de leurs soupirs. En honorant l’ecole a huit heures et demie environ, elle a rencontre, touche de tant de mysteres. Amis, l’heure est venue. Soulagee, notre colonne s’ebranla pour passer le temps du repas, il a pris que du the et quelques livres. Ceux-la sont restes sauvages dans leurs migrations un ordre regulier, et j’allais, a cet effet le cercle un point aussi eleve, imitateur de l’etat du fils de son choix.
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