US billionaire Warren Buffett may have appeared on this year's chunwan (春晚), CCTV's Chinese New Year gala show, but even that wasn't enough to turn around the long-standing decline of the annual affair. Barbara Demick and John Lee of the Los Angeles Times write that increasingly heavy-handed censorship has caused several heavyweight celebrities to drop out of the show and driven viewers away: more ›

And here it finally is -- the video that Warren Buffett sent in to CCTV to be played at the spring festival gala -- in all its 45-second glory! To send his new year's greetings to 1.3 billion Chinese, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman strummed on his ukulele and sang "I've Been Working on the Railroad" in front of a room-sized model railroad. more ›

What the what?! Apparently Warrent Buffet has already sent in a video of himself singing and playing guitar for this year's CCTV Spring Festival Gala, to be aired on a special web broadcast on New Year's Day (January 23.) more ›

The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) may move to ban all cut-in advertisements during soap operas on all TV channels, including CCTV. more ›

CCTV5, China's national sports channel, decided to cease coverage of the country's best-supported pro sports league towards the end the 2008 in response to a disorderly occurence which took place during a Beijing Guoan - Wuhan FC match. CCTV bigwigs, and presumably all those tuning in at home, were left spluttering into their teacups in disgust when a fracas broke out between Wuhan's big money signing Li Weifeng and Beijing's Lu Jiang. The on-field rumpus which ensued led to the Hubei province-based team pulling out of the CSL in protest at the CFA's decision to ban Li Weifeng for eight matches as punishment for his misdemeanours. more ›

An “Entertainment Restriction” (限娱令) has been issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) to impose further restrictions on entertainment shows of provincial TV stations, Netease reports. Dating and other 6 kinds of programs will be restricted, and only 2 entertainment shows will be allowed to air during prime time (7:30pm to 10pm) on one provincial satellite channel weekly. more ›

It's been two months since Li Yang, the self-styled evangelist of the English language and founder of the Crazy English franchise, was accused by his American wife Kim Lee of domestic violence, but Li has not only NOT been hiding in a hole, he's been going around China talking about the episode to just about anyone willing to interview him! Li was recently in Shanghai for a talkshow where he was unlucky enough to meet the sharp-tongued Jin Xing, the dancer who was unceremoniously booted off a Zhejiang reality show as a judge recently, just because she was transgender. more ›

Jin Xing (金星), one of the foremost figures in Chinese contemporary dance and a judge on the reality television singing competition Fei Tong Fan Xiang 《非同凡响》says she has been kicked off the show by order of the Zhejiang Province Radio, Film and Television Bureau because of her transsexual identity. more ›

Sohu Vice-President Liu Chun (刘春) laments in a post on his Sohu Weibo profile about the anti-Japanese propaganda productions that are shown every September 18, anniversary of the Mukden Incident in 1931, which subsequently led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria:

September 18 -- I'd like to plead with China's film industry workers. Please stop making those obscene, mythological anti-Japanese films where a child destroys a dozen (Japanese) devils, a farmer hundreds, and a guerilla thousands. Are the (Japanese) short-legged or brain-damaged? Each scene requires hordes of cameos to act as (Japanese) corpses. Please, pay a bit of attention to history. Stop turning a 14-year-long brutal war which caused the death of tens of millions into a game. more ›

Allan Wu, the American-born Chinese host of The Amazing Race: China Rush, the reality television series now airing on International Channel Shanghai (ICS), has received flak for comments he allegedly made in the Shin Min Daily News, a Chinese-language broadsheet known in Singapore for its trashy tabloid content. more ›

Elyse Ribbons shares with us this cute little video featuring snippets of Outlook English, an English-language talent competition organised by national broadcaster CCTV for young people, where she appeared as a "celebrity judge". Which "talents" are your favourites? more ›

China's Got Talent ended its second season with a grand finale at the Shanghai Stadium yesterday night attended by a crowd of 80,000. Zhuo Jun, a 19-year-old self-taught dancer from a small village in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, pipped 55-year-old "Auntie Sweetie" Cai Hongping to become the champion. Zhuo wowed audiences with his self-choreographed robotic dance, while Cai, a vegetable seller who has been touted as China's answer to Susan Boyle, sang "Nessun Dorma", the popular aria from Puccini's opera Turandot. more ›

"NETIZENS will get a chance to choose a new temporary judge for "China's Got Talent," in place of songwriter Gao Xiaosong, for the program's new episode recording on May 19, officials of the TV reality show said yesterday. Gao was detained for drunk driving in Beijing on Monday and he might face detention of between one to six months. Producers of the show temporarily appointed Antonio Chen, a Taiwan music producer and composer, to fill Gao's slot on the judges panel for the recording on Tuesday. But the recording for the next episode on May 19 will have a new temporary judge, selected largely based on online votes on the program's Sina microblog by May 18. The 10 candidates are mainland film directors Lu Chuan and Feng Xiaogang, singer/composer Wang Feng, actress Xu Jinglei, pop idol Faye Wong, Hong Kong music producer Harry Hui, Taiwan singers Jonathan Lee, Lo Ta-yu and Fei Yu-ching, as well as Antonio Chen." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Shanghaiist reader Andy Shum sent us the following screengrabs from a 1st season episode of Criminal Minds, a CBS police procedural drama that premiered September 2005, that also happens to be one of the most popular US TV series on Tudou. "This, being episode 20," says Shum, "would have aired in May, 2006. Coincidence?" more ›

The Amazing Race's China Rush is returning for a second season, and for all of you in China, here's your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of the show! more ›

Move over, "Little Fatty". China's new singing sensation comes in the form of a farmer from Zhulou Village in Shandong Province by the name of Zhu Zhiwen (朱之文). Zhu became an instant celebrity after clips of his audition at a talent show on Shandong TV, "I'm a Big Star", went viral on the internets. Like Susan Boyle, Zhu arrived on set poorly dressed, and had most people in the audience thinking he was just another nutcase. But they changed their minds as soon as he opened his mouth: Zhu's rendition of the theme song of the movie drama “Romance of Three Kingdoms” had the audience up on their feet by the time he was done, and judges on the show were so shell-shocked by his voice that they had to make sure he wasn't a shanzhai farmer putting on a lousy coat. more ›

We like it when China gets play on the Colbert Report, especially when he interviews people who know things about stuff. Last night The New Yorker's China correspondent Evan Osnos went on the show for his second time to face Colbert's wit-laden badgering (or as Osnos describes it on his blog, to play the role of "informative tackling dummy".) more ›

How did we miss this?! China's Got Talent finally began auditions for its second season yesterday, and they started with Shanghai! Reports about the number of registrants who showed up in Zhabei district yesterday vary - Sina says around 9,000, which is three to four times the number of participants last year. more ›

Sopranos and tenors are a fixture at every year's spring festival gala show on television, but what happens when show producers, in their overzealousness to connect with younger audiences, make them sing songs that were never meant to be sung by them? The result, ladies and gentlemen, is a CATASTROPHE, as you will see in the following clip from Beijing TV's show: more ›

The Chongqing Broadcasting Group has just announced its plans to send ratings for Chongqing Satellite TV, one of fourteen channels in its portfolio, down the toilet. And what revolutionary plans they are (trying to be punny here) -- all prime-time drama serials between 7.30pm and 11pm have been cancelled and replaced with such inspiring shows as Liberating the Southwest《解放大西南》, Moving Ahead for New China《为了新中国前进》, Sounds of Gunshots on the Plains《平原枪声》, Everyday Red Songs《天天红歌会》and Liberation《解放》. more ›

It looks like the latest international television programme to be lined up for broadcast in China is... The Office. Ricky Gervais wrote in his blog on Thursday; “I have some amazing news ... We are about to start work on developing a Chinese 'The Office.' How cool is that?” more ›

We introduced you to some of the more amazing acts on China's Got Talent (中国达人秀) a few weeks ago, now another contender has appeared: 23-year-old armless pianist Liu Wei, who plays with his feet. more ›

The mailbox shared by employees of the discriminatory, transphobic talent show known as China's Got Talent has been hacked into and completely emptied. Confidential documents, including a US$400,000 production manual purchased from Fremantle Media are now gone, reports Shanghai Daily:

All 900 e-mails about the program's detailed running schedules, plans and contestants' resumes were deleted. But the biggest loss is the production manual of the "Got Talent" series, which was purchased from Fremantle Media. It is valued at about US$400,000. more ›

Wow. We never thought we'd live to see this day. With so many American Idol / Britain's Got Talent copycat shows around here, you wouldn't think that the real deal would come to mainland China some day, but apparently it has, and they're starting auditions soon: more ›

But will anyone really buy this?
more ›

That's it. We're packing our bags and moving to Hunan. Not content with having the best TV station, a decent claim to the best food, and some pretty stunning scenery, the south-eastern province also has a pretty cool party official. Well, relatively cool we mean. more ›

If you're a fan of The Amazing Race and you've got a month to kill in Shanghai, why not try out for ICS' upcoming reality show: Shanghai Rush more ›

Four men were arrested yesterday for allegedly kidnapping a real estate mogul and taking a 5.8 million yuan ransom for his release. The four said they had gotten the idea for their scheme from a television drama. more ›

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

Youku Buzz draws our attention to this shameless copy of Transformers inspired new TV series called “Hyperwiz” (百变机兽), coming soon to a gogglebox near you. The logo of the show is made to resemble the traditional Chinese character for car, “車”. more ›