CCTV debuts online TV, video portal
- Source: Global Times
- [03:14 December 29 2009]
- Comments
By Guo Qiang
One month after the government's war on illegal video-sharing sites, China's first-ever State-level online TV station, funded by flagship national broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), officially launched Monday, spearheading the government's latest attempt to overhaul the online video market that has been marred by copyright issues.
The 200-million-yuan China Network TV station, or CNTV. cn, is china's fourth online TV portal launched by a real TV network, after Hunan Province's tv.hunantv. com, Hong Kong's Phoenix TV, and Shanghai's smgbb.cn.
A plan to set up CNTV.cn was announced on the website of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, China's broadcast watchdog, which waged a war on copyright violations by shutting down several of China's widely popular media file-sharing BitTorrent websites, such as BTChina.net, allegedly to clamp down on pornographic and unlicensed content.
The official launch was headed by Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, at a ceremony Monday, a high-profile move showcasing the site's significance.
Internet users can watch programs broadcast by all channels of CCTV by downloading a video client Cbox. All programs are free of charge and support high-definition mode.
So far the site only has a Chinese-language version.
Apart from traditional channels featuring general news, sports news and variety shows, the website also taps into the online video-sharing market and contains two sub-sites, xiyou.cctv.com and bugu.cctv.com, for video uploading and play on-demand.
Zhao Lifan, the general counsel of CCTV.com, told the Xinhua News Agency that the foremost task of CNTV.cn is to realize the real-time online broadcast of all 20 CCTV channels and add more functions including on-demand, search, download and interactive comment.
According to the introduction posted on the website, CNTV will broadcast programs that have a total duration of more than 1,000 hours and build itself into "China's biggest video-sharing websites that are clear of copyright infringement."
The website's bandwidth could reach 850k while the bandwidth for most online video providers is 500k, said an industry insider, who declined to give his name.
According to Zhang Yanling, an analyst with Analysys International Consulting, CCTV is attempting to pursue a new profit source.
