TV News Viewers in China Finally Greeted by Fresh Faces

Viewers of stodgy state-run television were in for a surprise this week when they tuned in to the 7 p.m. news. In place of stone-faced anchors reading dry news reports, a mainstay of the CCTV network for decades, they were treated to two young, smiling faces.

The change Monday reflects growing concern by the Communist Party that its core evening broadcast is losing influence, particularly among young people bypassing its political sloganeering and party line “news” in favor of the Internet, DVDs and livelier privately run stations with their rich diet of practical consumer news and racy entertainment.

CCTV’s decision to present the thirtysomething anchors on a trial basis in the nation’s preeminent newscast won some early plaudits Tuesday, with clips of the show -- featuring female anchor Li Zimeng sporting shoulder-length hair and male Kang Hui with a crew cut and dark suit -- picked up and rebroadcast over the Internet.

“I liked them, the way they smiled,” said Zheng Yuqiao, a 23-year-old real estate company employee, listening to an MP3 player as she walked home from work. “And I think Kang is cute.”

About 11,000 people who participated in an online poll by Sina.com.cn, China’s largest Internet portal, found Li and Kang “fresh, lively and not lecturing,” compared with 546 who favored the old team.

The Beijing Youth Daily newspaper gushed that the change was “an incredible move by CCTV.”

Critics were quick to add, however, that the network will have to do more than redecorate its windows if it hopes to regain momentum. The evening news has seen a dramatic loss of market share, although exactly how much is the subject of debate.

Official figures suggest it is still the most-watched news program in major markets. But some analysts and even some CCTV employees suspect the numbers have been doctored for political purposes.

“CCTV is boring, and even with new anchors the content remains the same,” said Li Jia, 24, a secretary living in Beijing. “They run these long reports on meetings and foreign dignitary visits that just don’t mean anything to my life.”

Monday’s evening broadcast included a 10-minute segment in which President Hu Jintao, at a conference of engineers, enjoined the nation to strive for greater heights of scientific productivity. That was followed by several minutes of reports on meetings between senior Chinese leaders and delegations from Rwanda and the Philippines.

Many Chinese these days prefer more user-friendly news offered by competing stations during prime time. These include reports on rising gas prices, questionable fees levied by state-run banks and expected traffic jams resulting from some of the same visiting delegations, items at odds with the party’s preference for happy news and uplifting themes.

Media analysts said the decision to try out younger anchors was probably made by senior Communist Party officials, given that few at the network would have the clout to push aside well-connected anchors with decades of experience.

“As we know, some in China’s top leadership group are not so happy with CCTV’s declining social influence,” said Zhan Jiang, dean of journalism at Beijing’s China Youth University for Political Science. “They’re hoping to reverse that.”

In March, heated debate ensued when a parliamentary advisor called for the early exit of one of CCTV’s most senior faces, a 59-year-old female news reader a year away from mandatory retirement. Some Internet supporters of early retirement admitted to fatigue after watching the same faces for close to two decades.

China’s Communist Party since its founding in 1921 has championed the gun and the pen as two essential tools in maintaining social control.

In subsequent decades, with core state media viewed as the “throat and tongue” of the party, newspapers, radio and cinema were the major propaganda vehicles.

By the 1970s and ‘80s, however, television was starting to take a larger role, although initially only companies or well-connected party members were able to own a TV set. Zhan recalls crowding around a 9-inch black-and-white model with 100 tool-factory workers in 1976 to watch coverage of Mao Tse-tung’s death.

The era of local, commercially oriented networks able to challenge CCTV’s monopoly dawned after Deng Xiaoping made his landmark 1992 trip to the south, sanctioning economic reform and private enterprise. In doing so, he opened the door to a new breed of local and regional broadcast competitors.

CCTV’s biggest challenge came last year when regional network Hunan Satellite TV garnered 400 million viewers for the finale of its “Supergirl” program, an “American Idol”-inspired singing contest. This outpouring even eclipsed CCTV’s longpopular Chinese New Year programming, upsetting egos at the state network.

China’s censors were not amused, perhaps out of protectiveness of CCTV, perhaps because the androgynous winners in the “Supergirl” contest were chosen by public vote, in stark contrast to China’s leaders. A state directive issued in April sniffed that contests should contribute to “constructing a harmonious socialist society” and “must not make a hubbub about things as they please and must avoid creating stars.”

The dilemma for CCTV, its competitors and to a lesser extent even the censors is how to navigate a world where media players are under growing pressure to compete commercially even as they’re under continued pressure not to deviate ideologically.

“Of course, at the State Administrative Office, their work will inevitably involve some decisions contrary to the public will,” said a blogger in a recent posting. “But they have never thought about the fact that the remote-control devices lie in the hands of the spectators, who have the right to choose.”

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Yin Lijin in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.