China Cuts 'Excessive Entertainment' From TV 336
An anonymous reader writes "Chinese broadcasters have axed two-thirds of popular TV shows in line with a government directive to curb 'excessive entertainment.' From the article: 'The rule, first announced in October, is targeted at what Chinese regulators have called "excessive entertainment and a trend toward low taste," to address the rise of talent shows, dating shows and other such programming aired by China's tightly regulated, but increasingly competitive, regional satellite broadcasters. Authorities also encouraged broadcasters to air more news and educational programming.' according to local media reports."
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, concerning, free speech, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
But after being pestered by so many Big Brothers and other related horrors, it's very hard for me to frown upon the chinese here.
Big whoop (Score:4, Interesting)
just go without cable and save yourself 100 bucks a month
All power to China (Score:2, Interesting)
Excessive entertainment over the tube is one of the lead causes of the downfall of the Western nations.
Turn on the tube if you don't believe me, flip some channels, see how many of the programs are of any value in the first place?
No wonder over 90% of the American high school graduates can't even pinpoint their own country - the United States of America - on the world map.
They have been dumbed down by the entertainment industry.
Re:Big whoop (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried to do that last month, because I had sold my big screen TV, there being nothing but crap on basic cable any more. Instead Comcast made me a 6 month deal to pay less for internet, and still keep TV service, even though I have no way to watch it. My bill is $20 a month less, so I really don't care how they split it, but it's interesting how hard they tried to keep me on TV service. I wonder if they get paid by advertisers according to audience as measured by subscriptions? Then it doesn't actually matter if I don't watch.
Vice Taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
We tax the snot out of cigarettes and booze because they aren't healthy for society... we've had a TV in every home for 50+ years now, and parents are exposing their children to TV from birth... if you can't restrict people's use of TV, you might as well remove the incentive to watch it by making it more informational/educational, rather than an "opiate of the masses".
We ended up with the evening news in a response to a federal mandate that X% be used for reporting the news, how much better off would we have been if we'd restricted entertainment to Y% of the total broadcast time? How would society be if we limited mass entertainment? Would local entertainment like playhouses still be much more successful?
You would think so, but not so much (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several online services which offer loads of pirated TV shows and even movies. For example, my wife uses a streaming program called funsion to watch HIMYM, Big Bang and other popular American TV shows.
As of yesterday, those show are no longer available. This was also the case on the two other alternative services.
Granted, one can use a VPN tunnel, but most people will not be willing to pay money for a VPN which is fast enough to stream.
I do happen to pay for premium VPN services, but as I was last in China, it was impressively slow. Enough for real google results and such, but not enough for netflix.
Re:Practical arguments against? (Score:0, Interesting)
Government instability. The reason why the U.S. is so full of the crap. Without mass media entertainment to keep the masses distracted they start to turn to other things to take up their time. Among these things, tends to be actually living and being active in society. When the people are active in a society they question things, get involved in things, and yes challenge things they feel aren't right. This is a huge responsibility on the part of those in power. If they don't keep the masses entertained, they can't really do all the shady things they like to. Just look at how successful Rome was with its Colosseum and all the plays, operas, etc. Imagine if they didn't do these things how hard it would be to maintain the society?
Hell, you don't even have to look that far back in time, just look at the U.S. Look at how many things the government gets away with while the citizens just sit around feeling like they can't do anything anyway, and don't want to waste time trying especially when their time could better be spent watching American Idol and drinking at the pub. Did you see what happened in Europe when the government tried to change the retirement age? The people freaked out. Did you see what happened in the U.S. when the government did raise the retirement age? TV shows cheered by telling wonderful stories of working while your old. Working while your old is living, as no old person wants to be idol, or so said the media. They were right. No old person wants to be useless sitting around, but I think Grandma would prefer having a real life, with friends, family, etc. instead of john, joe and sue manager.
So where am I going with this? Well, the issue for China is going to be how are they going to control the masses with news and education programming? Edutainment maybe? It'll be interesting to see, how much more active Chinese citizens get, which might not be a bad thing, wish it would happen here.
Re:All power to China (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Its hard for me to critisize this move. (Score:5, Interesting)
Are people actually choosing to like reality TV?
Or are they choosing to simply watch what the media companies offer?
Re:That's true (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny story - the spread of technology in China is almost guaranteed to topple the idiots running North Korea. Firstly, it's made most Chinese despise the North Korean government, which makes the Chinese - North Korean alliance a bit of a farce. Everyone except North Korea (who think China is still their friend) knows that China's only concern now is whether or not it suffer any collateral damage (i.e. bombs, shells, or fallout falling on Chinese soil), and how to deal with the refugees.
More importantly, North Koreans buy black-market goods from China. This includes iPod clones, many of which will come sold pre-loaded with the best Korean entertainment videos, all of which come from South Korea. It's getting harder and harder to explain that they are so superior, when all the South Korean shows are about families which are 10X richer than the families shown in pro-North propaganda.
It's a sad, sad day (Score:4, Interesting)
...when you get better and more interesting TV programming in a communist country than in the free world.
I weep for humanity.
Re:Lucky Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)
In England they have closed down most community centers, places that used to be used for playing football have been turned into office buildings or parking, nobody wants to go for a run as the air is polluted, the roads are so congested it makes cycling dangerous, travel is expensive, taking up a hobby like photography will probably get you arrested, and why bother learning an instrument as one day you will be able to karaoke to Robbie Williams on stage and become instantly famous without any of that icky hard work?
People do just turn off the television where I live in France. But then they have put in cycle lanes everywhere, cheap transport so 1e will take you anywhere, there are free football pitches, basketball courts, tennis (nearly free), and the council is always organising events and spectaces. One of the biggest days of the year is "Fete de la Musique" where everybody takes to the streets and plays an instrument or sings in any style they want. There is a web site "On va sortir" where anybody can spontaneously propose an event (poker night, dance lesson, walk in the countryside, whatever) and anybody can register to join in, which is very successful.
We could do worse than steal ideas from the neighbour across the pond.
Phillip.