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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."
If the viewers can't find what they want on the tube, they'll get it somewhere else.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If I had my own country, I would make reality TV illegal too.
But after being pestered by so many Big Brothers and other related horrors, it's very hard for me to frown upon the chinese here.
just go without cable and save yourself 100 bucks a month
So Big Brother shut down Big Brother?
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TV doesn't make people stupid, it just keeps stupid people entertained and out of the public eye, so why is excessively entertaining media a bad thing?
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things...
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
After watching cable TV in the US over the holidays, could I ask that they do the same thing to American TV?
(Only partially tongue-in-cheek).
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Beside the obvious "OMGFreeSpeech" and "OMG1984" arguments, in the face of garbage programming like American Idol, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, etc, what practical non-what-if arguments are there for this being a bad thing?
Excessive entertainment over the tube is one of the lead causes of the downfall of the Western nations.
Turn on the tube if you don't believe me, flip some channels, see how many of the programs are of any value in the first place?
No wonder over 90% of the American high school graduates can't even pinpoint their own country - the United States of America - on the world map.
They have been dumbed down by the entertainment industry.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
That's true of geeks, but I wonder how true it is of most Chinese. We shouldn't underestimate how much the government can shift media consumption patterns by making access more difficult.
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.
You seriously underestimate the spread of technology in China.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
In China, you watch CCTV (China Central TeleVision), in Soviet Britain, CCTV watches you!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Heck, I can't even remember anyone watching fictional TV in that documentary.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Someone in the CCP must have seen Jersey Shore, and decided to stop the trend before it's too late.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Why don't you just turn your TV off?
Seriously I get real tired of the America basing some people feel the need to do whenever anything about another country comes up...
2) Not everyone on the Internet lives in America. Maybe they are interested in news about other countries, ever think of that? Stop trying to steer everything back to your country. There are plenty of discussions on /. about the shit that happens in America. Don't hijack others.
You do realize the GP didn't mention America at all in his comment, don't you? It was only you who mentioned America. In essence, you're doing exactly what you said shouldn't be done.
I'm Canadian, and I had a similar sentiment as the GP. I think _you_ should stop steering the discussion towards America.
Geeks don't grock information, they grep it.
You seem to have gotten there ahead of us.
The very fundamental ideals of Chinese society place family and the greater community at higher priority than the individual's wants or needs. I suspect the vast majority of the Chinese people actually don't mind this. Those that do can certainly access media from elsewhere in the world -- technology is wide spread in China.
You really need to get the image of rice farms out of your heads.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
State run TV means it's going to serve the priorities of the state. It's not a commercial enterprise out to win the greatest number of eyeballs, but a tool of the government first and the entertainment of the people second.
It's not unlike the emphasis the CBC placed on their programming mix when state-run TV was the only option in Canada. I saw a lot of documentaries, docu-drama histories, and educational shows when I was young.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
if the vast majority didn't mind, they wouldn't need banning as they wouldn't have any viewers, while in fact these bans are a part of a war for viewers.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If a vast majority was like how you say the highest rated shows would be educational and news. Yet it seems the highest rated shows are entertainment based.
Hmm, it seems that humans everywhere are the same .. who'd have thought?
...when you get better and more interesting TV programming in a communist country than in the free world.
I weep for humanity.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/newsandevents/pressreleases/china_12152010
Already there bro, already there.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
In England they have closed down most community centers, places that used to be used for playing football have been turned into office buildings or parking, nobody wants to go for a run as the air is polluted, the roads are so congested it makes cycling dangerous, travel is expensive, taking up a hobby like photography will probably get you arrested, and why bother learning an instrument as one day you will be able to karaoke to Robbie Williams on stage and become instantly famous without any of that icky hard work?
People do just turn off the television where I live in France. But then they have put in cycle lanes everywhere, cheap transport so 1e will take you anywhere, there are free football pitches, basketball courts, tennis (nearly free), and the council is always organising events and spectaces. One of the biggest days of the year is "Fete de la Musique" where everybody takes to the streets and plays an instrument or sings in any style they want. There is a web site "On va sortir" where anybody can spontaneously propose an event (poker night, dance lesson, walk in the countryside, whatever) and anybody can register to join in, which is very successful.
We could do worse than steal ideas from the neighbour across the pond.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
We still see video of people falling over themselves weeping when Kim-Jong "mentally" ill dies. Not to say that those videos aren't at least partially staged, but some "undercover" video has leaked out of NK showing that at least some of the weeping, wailing and carrying on was genuine. (I apologize for not having a link ATM. Search on YouTube. It's there.)
Not to say that the new regime isn't weak, it certainly is. But not so weak that ipod clones are going to topple them anytime soon. We see how well "westernization" has "toppled" the communist Chinese government. (IE: Not at all) If Kim-Jong Un decides to modernize and westernize following the Chinese model, Korea isn't likely to see unification anytime in the next century.
Sadly, there really is only ONE way to absolutely topple a government of any stripe. That's with violent revolution. The only way that Korea will unify is if SK invades and defeats NK. With NK's recent round of sabre-rattling, that's looking more and more likely every day.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
There are 'way too many entry points to this discussion. The mass hypnosis of TV and movies undermined Japan's post-war program for a stronger Japan, by "Americanizing" Japanese values. American "reality" TV fosters a view of stupid, immoral Americans, but it also shows the vast difference in wealth between the two nations. This must be a threat to Chinese Government-approved values and economics. Now, 2/3 of the people in Chines TV may be "out-of-work" in whatever way a government-subsidized "production" can exist.
This puts one of China's leading-edge economic industries about where the United States was in 1921.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
> TV channels being a finite resource, a free market of channels couldn't exist, thus regulation is required.
Except for the fact that in most countries, terrestrial broadcast TV is now commercially-irrelevant, and satellite capacity is mostly a function of available capital to launch satellites and how big of a dish customers will tolerate (bigger dish = ability to shoehorn more satellites into a given arc of equatorial orbit). A 75-ohm coax cable can carry several hundred HD channels, and thousands of SD channels. Upgrade to fiber, and you're basically talking about enough raw bandwidth to let every customer have multiple on-demand HD channels of his own. 25 years ago, orbital slots were in high demand. Now, with spot beams roughly 100km diameter, all you need is a more expensive satellite and/or bigger dish with greater selectivity & gain to make any perceived "shortage" of channels or orbital slots an academic abstraction.