Results tagged “television”

What do the NFL, small Chinese children, and a Taiwanese rock band have in common? Absolutely nothing, until the NFL decided to embark on its latest effort to make professional American football popular in China.

Addicts beware: If you're like us and have been spending more than forty hours on the internet each week, then you're a prime candidate for internet "rehabilitation". But if you happen to miss out on the gulag-styled addiction camps, then chances are you've also been missing a whole lot of exercise, essential vitamins from sunlight, and being social.

This week's Shanghai Rush elimination interviews is a two-for-one, since we only got around to watching the last two episodes on Youku (sorry, but it loads sooo slow outside of China!). Last last week, mother and son team Norma and David got kicked off after failing the map challenge. Then most recently, Brazilian couple Rodrigo and Fernanda came in last and had to go as well.

• China state TV host denies spying for Taiwan [AFP] "A star presenter with China's state television network has denied allegations that she spied for Taiwan, amid reports that she could be under investigation, state newspapers have said. The China Daily, quoting unnamed sources from China Central Television on Friday, said Fang Jing, the 38-year-old face of the network's prime-time military programme 'Defence Watch,' had been 'taken away for a possible spy probe'."
• China's family planning policy shadowed by violations from rich [kazinform] "The rich and famous who break the rules have cast a huge shadow over the policy, denting social equality and even stability. Many mainland women gave birth in the Hong Kong special administrative region to skirt the restrictions, experts say."
• U.S. Births Hint at Bias for Boys in Some Asians [New York Times] "Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion."

We hope everyone's readying their tv sets to watch Shanghai Rush, China's first English-language reality show, which premiers tonight at 8pm on ICS. While others have taken a sneak peek at the first episode - in which we're introduced to the ten teams of two that will be gracing our televisions for the next twelve Sundays - we decided to have a chat with the man behind the scenes: Eric Ransdell, director.

Even as the dust settles over last week's Academy Awards, anti-censorship advocates and gay activists across Asia continue to lambast their local television stations for the censorship of two 'Milk' acceptance speeches — one made by Sean Penn, winner of the Best Actor award, and the other by Dustin Lance Black, who picked up the award for Best Original Screenplay. Both speeches were heavily censored in 53 countries all over Asia from India to Singapore and Hong Kong.

Remember the government's proposed 45 billion yuan effort to ensure that the rest of the world sees a media more aligned with what the central politico wants it to see? It's started!

Shanghai-based wool clothing brand, Hengyuanxiang (恒源祥) has scored yet another epic advertising fail that is destined to be a top case study in the "What Not To Do in Advertising 101" course with this Chinese New Year commercial (aired between 25-31 Jan this year) that promises to rape the eyes and ears of its audience. The company, one of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics, unleashed a torrent of (well-deserved) criticism from netizens with its Year of the Goat television commercial last year, igniting a public furore so huge the ad was eventually pulled. Watch this commercial above and then watch last year's commercial at your own risk. You'll find that things have actually improved. We really can't wait to see what's in store for us next year.

Zhuhai Police sexes up its own image in a snazzy new television commercial designed to attract more recruits. The ad was produced by the propaganda office of the department.

CCTV's new year gala this year was presented in French, Spanish, English and Chinese. Top temples around China, including Fuzhou's Gu Shan Yong Quan Si, Mount Emei's Baoguo Si, Sanya's Nanshan Si, Suzhou's Hanshan Si, and Luoyang's Baima Si, rang in the new year by chiming their bells simultaneously.

From Inaction Hero: "China's 'S&M' Enterprises Seek Innovation"

Danwei points us to the funniest thing we've seen in a long while. We're not sure if this was actually produced for television or just the internet, but this infomercial for a Chinese magic pill which claims to help cure 快男 or "fast men" (a play on Hunan TV's "Super Boys" talent show) of male erectile dysfunction sho' cracked us up!

Summed up in 3 minutes and 37 seconds.

Well, if you don't have time to watch all of the Olympic games, here's the ultra-short mime version, performed on Japanese television. We especially like the swimming.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese enjoy watching sports on some level, but the Chinese sports market is much less organized—and commercialized—than it is in the West, especially the United States.

With 2008 marking fifty years of television drama on CCTV, Danwei shares with us an article from Oriental Outlook on the censoring process that determines just which dramas will be allowed to air on the television network. Danwei points out that "it seems like SARFT is to blame whenever people are upset with film and TV censorship... [but] television stations are ultimately responsible for what they broadcast, so they too employ censors to eliminate objectionable content." CCTV has especially rigorous standards: submitted series must pass an initial screening by the director and executive editor of the Film and TV Department, followed by a detailed review by the Inspection Group. If the series is to be broadcast during prime time, then it needs to be reviewed again following any revisions. While the whole article itself is worth a read, some highlights found by Danwei:
• A ribald folk tune had to be removed from a period piece;
• The mother of a Japanese soldier in a war drama expected him to fight to his death in China, implying that the Japanese people fully supported the war;
• None of the four main characters in a drama about car racing was motivated by the love of the race

What do you think?

As we mentioned earlier this week, the Ted Koppel special "The People's Republic of Capitalism" is currently airing on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. For those of you who can't wait for the bittorrent, here are some clips from the series, most of which was filmed in Chongqing.

Three weeks after Canada's CBC News announced that it had re-secured permission to broadcast live from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics, more announcements have come out indicating that BOCOG is moving toward giving games broadcasters more freedom to report in Beijing this August.

Photo from jessielein

A Date With Lu Yu《鲁豫有约》is one of the most influential talkshows in China which has been known to constantly push the envelope and to broach topics previously considered too hot to touch. One such episode is the one below which features two homosexual men from the Sichuan Province — who, long before the word "gay" had entered the Chinese lexicon — married each other, adopted a son and have been together for 21 years.

Less than a month after airing this commercial featuring Richard Gere driving the new Fiat Delta from Hollywood to Tibet, Italian automaker Fiat has been forced to withdraw the ad, and issue a statement extending its "apologies to the Government of the People's Republic of China and to the Chinese people". Readers of this blog (a group which no doubt excludes anyone from Fiat or their agency) will be aware that Richard Gere is a vocal proponent of Tibetan autonomy/independence. Earlier this month, when Fiat's Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne first showed the ad to journalists, he was reported to have said in no uncertain terms:

"I obviously like it."

One week after last month's deadly Sichuan Earthquake, we brought to you the heartrending story of Chen Jian (陈坚), a young man who was pinned under the rubble for 73 hours, but unfortunately didn't make it after rescuers managed to extract him after working on him for six hours. Today, Zhang Qian (张倩), the reporter who was by Chen Jian's side in his last moments still breaks down whenever she thinks of him. In this interview with CCTV, she tearfully recounts of how she and her cameraman could not help but weep when they entered Beichuan that fateful day and saw how it was completely flattened by the quake, and of how she shuddered to think of how many people were under her each time she had to walk over the rubble. She also highlights the bravery of one Jiangsu rescuer by the name of Ouyang Honghong (欧阳宏宏) who risked his own life by taking off his helmet because that was the only way he could enter the rubble and help reposition Chen Jian's body.

Nationalism has made its way into Olympic advertising as as this new television commercial by Chinese sports brand Anta shows. JWT Shanghai (part of the WPP Group) conceptualised the ad for Anta, saying it was "inspired by Chinese people’s response to the earthquake". Said the China chief executive of the agency, Tom Doctoroff:

“We decided to extend the brand message from individual glory to national glory, encouraging everyone in China to stand tall through these obstacles.”

So that live fish key chain souvenir didn't turn out to be very official, but this latest Olympic cheer, "Go Olympics! Go China!" (奥运加油！中国加油！) definitely is, as it comes with the stamp of approval of the Party Office of Spiritual Civilization Development and Guidance (GODPP), the Ministry of Education, BOCOG, and CCTV. There are four highly complex moves to the cheer, but don't worry because Danwei has this step-by-step pictorial guide to help you along. Expect to see lots of this on telly in the 64 days left between now and the Olympics. No excuses now — you have more than ample time to master the moves.

By Thalia Kwok

ESWN draws our attention the heart-rending story of Chen Jian. Be very sure you watch all the way to the fourth video, or don't watch at all if you don't intend to cry today:

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Well, it's all over the news. Hunan TV is going to do a Chinese version of the hit US TV show Ugly Betty. According to a report from the BBC, the lead character—the Chinese Betty—has already been chosen. A Chinese article that we read, dated March 7, says that Hunan TV wants to hold nation-wide auditions to find the ugliest girl possible. So we're not sure what the case is, but in any case, whoever is chosen will soon have their identity known to the world, because the show is supposed to start shooting in April. The plans are to stretch the show out over ten seasons, with about 40 episodes each, for a total of 400 episodes. However, unlike in the US, there aren't going to be longish breaks between seasons (and presumably, no writers' strikes either).

It’s shaping up to be a bad week for the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (the catchily acronymed SARFT) – and it's still only Wednesday. Recent events surrounding bans of video sharing site Tudou and then actress Tang Wei (汤唯) seem to suggest that SARFT is slipping into farce.