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Nina Varghese

CHENNAI, May 30

Though it seems a bit like comparing oranges with apples, the tastes of television audiences in India and China are quite different.

While Indian audiences are engrossed in the goings on in Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki and Kasauthi Zindaghi Kay, Chinese audiences are spell-bound by the weather forecast in Beijing, the News perspective in Shanghai and by a drama series in Guangdong.

According to TAM ratings, Kahanni Ghar Ghar Ki topped the chart with a rating of 10.7 points followed by Kasauthi Zindaghi Kay with a rating of 10.6 points from April 27 to May 3. The TV ratings for the weather forecast by Beijing Satellite were 14.9 points from March 30 to May 10. During this period, Shanghai TV News Channel's News Perspective notched up ratings of 15.9 and in Guangdong the drama series from Zhujiang TV was rated at 17.1 points.

The main reason for this is that in China the Government continues to treat Cable TV as a utility rather than as a commercial business, according to a survey on the Asia Pacific Cable and Satellite Markets 2003 brought out by Media Partners Asia Ltd (MPA), a Hong Kong-based research and publishing firm.

As a result, most global media distributors and investors have pursued an advertising-dependent model in their pursuit of mainland media prosperity with focus largely on acquiring interest in advertising, channel distribution, content production, print media and outdoor.

Mr Vivek Couto, Executive Director, MPA, said that Indian programming was superior in that there were stronger domestic and international news, sports, music, movies and sports channels. While there were only a few in China, he said.

Cable TV subscriptions had grown in China to more than 90 million while the rates were between $1 and $2, the lowest in the world.

The state-owned broadcaster CCTV still controlled the market (both advertising and audiences), which was quite unlike Doordarshan in India, Mr Couto said.

Only recently CCTV had begun to improve the resources and content of its news coverage with the launch of a 24-hour News channel.

AOL Time Warner's CETV and the wholly-owned subsidiary of News Corp Xing Kong channel were given broadcast rights in 2001 in Guangdong. MTV was given the rights earlier this year again in Guangdong.

Mr Couto said that there was also increasing competition from provincial and satellite channels. The trouble in China was that while content in improving, few international broadcasters were allowed to broadcast on a 24-hour basis and if they were, they were often restricted to Guangdong.

The others just broadcast in hotels and foreign compounds or as a part of a one-hour programme block on CCTV.

So in terms of access and revenues, India was currently worth a lot more as a pay TV market for channel providers. Also in China, there was only one revenue stream for foreign channel providers — advertising which earned $2.5 billion on a national level in Guangdong.

There was no sub-revenue stream, which made things difficult particularly as the foreign channels had been unable to secure really strong ratings in Guangdong to generate meaningful advertising, he said.

The plans for conditional access are not on the same scale as in India. According to MPA estimates for 2002, there are around 95,000 set-top boxes. The momentum has been slow because of the high cost of the STBs and service rates offered by cable systems.

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