Research on the Media Economy of China's East and West Regions

Author: Wu Xinxun et al. / Country:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: Eastern Television: From Local Media to National Media, Entering the 21st Century with Uncertainties. Shanghai Media enters a new era. At this time, Shanghai Television is rebranded as Eastern Television. Using the conventional questions of brand building and management: When and what kind of brand should Eastern Television establish?
I. From Shanghai Television to Eastern Television
First, let us understand what "today" truly is.
1. Current Status of Shanghai Television:
Shanghai Television, launched in October 1998, has gained widespread recognition and respect over five years due to its Shanghai characteristics, attractive packaging, high-quality production, and stable programs, establishing a relatively fixed audience base. However, from a higher standard and nationwide perspective, its creativity, impact, and appeal are still insufficient, not quite matching Shanghai's rapidly developing economic strength, urban image, and international status.
2. Current Status of Audience Needs:
Since Shanghai Television has primarily rebroadcast programs from other local channels in Shanghai, the content for Shanghai audiences has been mostly "replayed," lacking significant appeal. For audiences outside Shanghai, understanding the city's development through Shanghai Television has been somewhat satisfactory, but it falls far short of meeting the demand for fresh, exciting, and imaginative portrayals of Shanghai.
3. Current Status of Competition:
- (1) Central Television's Professionalization:
Since the late 20th century, the rapid increase in provincial television stations, intense newspaper competition, market segmentation, and the rapid development of the internet have forced Chinese television to explore the path of channel specialization. Central Television took the lead, launching 12 professional channels, including finance, sports, variety, movies, and news.
- (2) Provincial Television Stations Seek Transformation:
In the mid-to-late 1990s, provincial television stations like Hunan Television underwent reforms, shaping the current landscape of Chinese provincial television. During this process, provincial stations sought their own brand positioning:
- Hainan Television – Travel Satellite TV (TSTV)
- Hunan Television – Information and Entertainment Channel
- Hubei Television – Public Service Channel
- Zhejiang Television – News and Comprehensive Channel
- Guizhou Television – Western Golden Satellite TV
- Guangdong Television – South China Information Superstation
Among these, apart from specialized channels (e.g., Hainan Travel Satellite TV), the "regional" provincial stations deserve special attention, such as Guizhou Television (positioned as "Western") and Guangdong Television (positioned as "South China"). From the current situation and future trends, advertisers may gradually become accustomed to selecting strong regional provincial stations to replace Central Television in regional markets.
- (3) Overseas Satellite TV Gradually Penetrates:
Phoenix TV's Chinese and English channels, Sun TV, Star TV, and Huayi TV have expanded their influence by leveraging major domestic and international news events, documentary content libraries, and innovative entertainment programs. Taking advantage of policies, they have landed in Guangdong and other regions, employed staff, established production bases, and engaged in advertising recruitment, directly competing in the domestic provincial television market. Their potential threat is already emerging.
4. Current Status of Industry Development:
Entering the new century, especially in recent years, media transformation has been fierce. In the television industry, this transformation primarily reflects innovations in systems and mechanisms, including production-separation, capital operations, company pilot programs, and shareholding discussions. Faced with such trends, Shanghai has adopted proactive strategic measures. By merging cable and wireless networks, it integrated Dong Shanghai Television and Shanghai Television, forming the Shanghai Media Group, which integrates television, radio, and newspapers, achieving specialized division of television channels. On this basis, it decided in October 2003 to fully revamp the original Shanghai Television, launching the new Eastern Television.
The basic positioning of Eastern Television, as mentioned earlier, is historically inconsistent with its status among national provincial television stations. The original Shanghai Television's position among national provincial stations does not match Shanghai's domestic and international status. The reform's fundamental idea is to break regional boundaries and better serve the entire country. This means we must create a new brand for Shanghai television.
What is a brand? From a marketing perspective, a brand is simply a way to effectively distinguish the superiority of one product over another, as well as an effective marketing tool to stimulate consumer purchases. With Shanghai's urban development level, economic and financial advantages, Haipai cultural background, international attention, and future potential, Shanghai Television should highlight its regional advantages and live up to expectations, truly becoming a satellite television platform with Chinese characteristics, modern features, and Shanghai-specific traits that promotes the city's image, showcases its urban spirit, aggregates national resources, and gains broad recognition and support.
To achieve this goal, we will shape the media brand image of Eastern Television from the following four aspects: Urban, Quality, Open, and Shared.
1. Urban – China's Urban Flag.
The market positioning of Eastern Television can be summarized as: Rooted in Shanghai, supported by the Yangtze River Delta, serving the country, and radiating overseas. Its brand positioning, however, is primarily "urban." Only by carrying the banner of urbanity and showcasing urban temperament can Shanghai and its television station distinguish themselves from others, including Beijing and other provinces and cities (stations), demonstrating their avant-garde, unique, noble, mysterious, appealing, and irreplaceable nature.
In the 21st century, China has entered a stage of comprehensive urbanization in social development. Urban architecture, landscapes, transportation, information, opportunities, interpersonal interactions, convenient lifestyles, and leisure and entertainment are common aspirations or appreciations across various regions, strata, and family backgrounds. In China, only Shanghai is the best model of city and urban life.
The economic capital, fashion capital, urban representative, urban image, and urban spirit—all are present here: international, modern, civilized, cultural, stylish, bright, experimental, youthful, prosperous. At the same time, the reflection of urban civilization is not just simple "urbanization" or "fashion," nor does it necessarily mean extravagance or luxury. It also represents humanity's level of civilization, culture, development, and understanding depth. It still embodies suffering, struggle, vitality, youth, democracy, scientific spirit, legal spirit, and so on, down to concerns about rural, farmers, and agricultural development.
Therefore, the theme of urbanization should be of concern to the entire society. According to a nationwide television audience survey, as China's rural urbanization process accelerates, urban audiences and suburban and rural audiences are showing converging trends in viewing behavior, psychology, needs, and even interests to varying degrees. Notably, in several categories of programs that satisfy spiritual and cultural needs or have high cultural and artistic connotations, the proportion of rural audiences who "often watch" is very close to or even exceeds that of urban audiences. For example, in music programs, "often watch" rates are 28.7% in rural areas and 26.5% in urban areas; in game and entertainment programs, they are 42.7% and 34.9%, respectively; in sports programs, they are 28.7% and 28.8%, respectively; and in fashion programs, they are 14.0% and 16.0%, respectively. Additionally, the gaps between urban and rural audiences in documentary, women's, educational lecture, financial news, and social service programs are no more than 2.5 percentage points.
These data reflect that under the radiation of large cities' economic and cultural influence, rural and county residents are showing a new trend of valuing the use of television to enrich their spiritual and cultural lives. (See Ye Jiazheng et al.: "Viewing Characteristics of Urban Television Audiences in Contemporary China and Media Strategies")
Here, let us borrow a quote from Sun Yusheng, the deputy editor-in-chief of Central Television: "Targeting farmers or elderly audiences means that the production and programming of television programs must fully respect their viewing psychology and spiritual and cultural needs, and design them based on their life rhythms. It does not mean that the programs for farmers only reflect agricultural production, rural life, or the appearance of farmers, nor that the programs for the elderly only reflect their daily lives, joys, sorrows, and struggles."