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China Cuts 'Excessive Entertainment' From TV
An anonymous reader writes "Chinese broadcasters have axed two-thirds of popular TV shows in line with a government directive to curb 'excessive entertainment.' From the article: 'The rule, first announced in October, is targeted at what Chinese regulators have called "excessive entertainment and a trend toward low taste," to address the rise of talent shows, dating shows and other such programming aired by China's tightly regulated, but increasingly competitive, regional satellite broadcasters. Authorities also encouraged broadcasters to air more news and educational programming.' according to local media reports."
We tax the snot out of cigarettes and booze because they aren't healthy for society... we've had a TV in every home for 50+ years now, and parents are exposing their children to TV from birth... if you can't restrict people's use of TV, you might as well remove the incentive to watch it by making it more informational/educational, rather than an "opiate of the masses".
We ended up with the evening news in a response to a federal mandate that X% be used for reporting the news, how much better off would we have been if we'd restricted entertainment to Y% of the total broadcast time? How would society be if we limited mass entertainment? Would local entertainment like playhouses still be much more successful?
moox. for a new generation.
There are several online services which offer loads of pirated TV shows and even movies. For example, my wife uses a streaming program called funsion to watch HIMYM, Big Bang and other popular American TV shows.
As of yesterday, those show are no longer available. This was also the case on the two other alternative services.
Granted, one can use a VPN tunnel, but most people will not be willing to pay money for a VPN which is fast enough to stream.
I do happen to pay for premium VPN services, but as I was last in China, it was impressively slow. Enough for real google results and such, but not enough for netflix.
Are people actually choosing to like reality TV?
Or are they choosing to simply watch what the media companies offer?
No sig for you!!
Funny story - the spread of technology in China is almost guaranteed to topple the idiots running North Korea. Firstly, it's made most Chinese despise the North Korean government, which makes the Chinese - North Korean alliance a bit of a farce. Everyone except North Korea (who think China is still their friend) knows that China's only concern now is whether or not it suffer any collateral damage (i.e. bombs, shells, or fallout falling on Chinese soil), and how to deal with the refugees.
More importantly, North Koreans buy black-market goods from China. This includes iPod clones, many of which will come sold pre-loaded with the best Korean entertainment videos, all of which come from South Korea. It's getting harder and harder to explain that they are so superior, when all the South Korean shows are about families which are 10X richer than the families shown in pro-North propaganda.