3-Day Ban Suddenly Lifted : China Lets U.S. Networks Resume Live TV Coverage

In an unexpected move, Chinese authorities Tuesday lifted their three-day-old ban against live television broadcasts from Beijing, and the U.S. networks wasted no time in getting their reporters there on the air.

CBS correspondent Barry Petersen was first on the air here, reporting live from Beijing on “CBS This Morning” at 7:01 a.m. EDT, followed a minute later by Keith Miller on NBC’s “Today” show and John Laurence at 7:25 a.m. on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Approval to resume live telecasts and to send taped news footage by satellite from Beijing was given by Central China Television officials in what CBS correspondent Susan Spencer described as a “call that came out of nowhere.”

After the ban went into effect Friday night here, network correspondents had been reporting on the massive protests in Beijing by telephone or in videotape footage that was carried out of China and relayed from Tokyo or Hong Kong.

CNN Last to Return

All-news CNN--which last Friday telecast live coverage of Chinese officials ordering the network to shut down its Beijing transmissions--was the last to check back in Tuesday, starting at 9 a.m. EDT with a live pickup of a Chinese-language newscast from Beijing that was translated into English, followed by a report by Mike Chinoy that began at 9:15 a.m.

CNN said the delay was due to problems in getting to state-run Central China Television facilities in Beijing, from which the live reports and news footage taped Tuesday were fed via satellite to network relay points.

CNN and CBS, the only U.S. networks with their own portable satellite uplink stations in Beijing, were reported negotiating with the Chinese authorities to let them resume transmissions on those facilities, rather than those of the Chinese.

CBS’ Spencer spoke of the lifting of the live-video ban by phone from Beijing to TV writers gathered at the CBS Broadcast Center here for a meet-the-press session with “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather, CBS News President David Burke and other executives involved in the network’s China coverage.

Resumption of live telecasts technically is a violation of martial law imposed last Friday, Spencer said during the nearly two-hour session. So is the videotaping of certain scenes or interviewing Beijing residents, she noted.

Largely Ignored

But those restrictions have largely been ignored by network correspondents, Spencer said. “I don’t anticipate much of a change, because frankly, nobody’s paid any attention to it,” she added.

Correspondents say it is likely that the restrictions will be lifted in a few days, she said, “based on the fact that martial law has been such a joke.”

Meanwhile, A. C. Nielsen ratings released Tuesday showed that, although CBS was the only one of the three major networks to send its evening news anchor to Beijing to originate the nightly newscast there, the “CBS Evening News” still finished second last week.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” won the network newscast battle by a narrow margin, averaging a 9.4 rating and a 21% audience share against the 9.2 rating and 20% share for Rather’s Beijing broadcasts. The “NBC Nightly News” averaged an 8.2 rating and an 18% share. (Each ratings point represents 904,000 homes.)