General Introduction of CCTV.com : The Operation and Functions 

------LIU Lianxi cctv.com 10-28-2005 10:40

	Rooftops of Columbia campus(from the website of Columbia University)

	New students attend a lecture at the Graduate School of Journalism (from the website of Columbia University)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Columbia University is one of the famous institutions of higher learning in the U.S., and the School of Journalism is more prominent and influential for its theoretical research and application practices. It’s a great honor for me to be rendered an opportunity to study here and I am expecting to exchange views with all of you.

Being the director of China Central Television Website (CCTV.com), I would like to present to you the panorama of CCTV.com as possible as I can. Today I am going to focus on the general operation and characteristics and it’s major functions. During my final part of my speech, I would like to invite all of you to share our future goal.

General Introduction of CCTV.com

CCTV.com was established and began trial operation in December 1996. It was listed one of China’s key news websites in December 2000. On May 25, 2001, China Central Television set up Internet Propaganda Department, CCTV.com was officially recognized as a unit for CCTV’s program-managing and -broadcasting based on Internet.

After nine year’s development, CCTV.com has made great progress in web-publishing important news, promoting CCTV’s large-scale performances, introducing TV programs and anchors, interacting with TV and constructing net channels. With the betterment of technical service and platform as well as the internal management, CCTV.com is playing an important role in the New Media circle.

CCTV.com holds on to the vision of “Displaying China, Video-casting the world ”, giving prominence to it’s audio-visual characteristic, bringing the superiority of video resources of CCTV into full play. By providing the service of living video streaming and web-based VOD programs, offers the netizens a lively channel of watching. Moreover, CCTV.com keeps on enriching the content on the web, improves the ways of delivery and the watching effect, therefore tens of thousands of netizens have been attracted.

1. The mission of serving CCTV

CCTV.com takes full advantage of internet transmission, giving prominence to new delivery. Till now, seventy percent of CCTV’s programs have been web-casted online and the number of these web programs reached 280 out of CCTV’s total 396.

2. Multi- language communication

CCTV.com has 50 web-based channels, in which 47 channels in Chinese and English, Spanish and French channels.

These 50 channels can be divided into eight types. They are TV information, news, finance, sports, entertainment, education, culture and art and multi-language communication.

The main channels are TV Guides, News, law, Finance, Stock, Agriculture, Science, Education, Health, Travel, Chinese Geography, Military, Video&Audio Online, Anchor, Entertainment, Music, Movie, TV series, Dance, Drama, Globe, Sport, F1, Basketball, Football, Exercise&Leisure, Olympics, Golf, Advertisement, Forum Online, TV Comment, Stories Online, Topic Online, Teenager, Cartoon, Culture, Painting&Calligraphy, History, Folklore, Fashion, Life, Automobile, Shopping, Business, Brand, China’s TV Online, English, Spanish and French.

3. Giving prominence to audio-visual characteristic

Nowadays CCTV.com produces 118 hours’ web-based live video and VOD program every day. Over 78 hours’ live video daily includes round-the-clock streaming of CCTV-News, CCTV-4, CCTV-9 and the brand programs from CCTV-1, CCTV-2 and CCTV-5. CCTV.com provides 40 hours’ VOD daily from the 280 web-based TV programs and news, entertainment, sport, science information. About 300,000 people watch the video program on CCTV.com per day.

4. Multi-media Communication

CCTV.com communicates with netizens through texts, photos, audio and video, BBS and online survey. It publishes 800,000 words and more than 400 photos daily. It also provides a major forum called "Forum Online" with 50 sub-forums where netizens can pose questions and exchange views or comments while watching online television programs. These forums, with over 16,000 comments daily, render a smooth channel for collecting the audiences' advices and suggestions effectively, which have greatly strengthened the feedback function of the website.

5. Welcomed by nitizens home and abroad

CCTV.com reaches wide-range of people with 280 million daily hits and 22 million daily pageviews. Over one million unique visitors visit CCTV.com every day, twenty percent from abroad. According to statistics collected and analyzed by Alexa.com, CCTV.com has entered the global top 150.

Major functions of CCTV.com

CCTV.com has been the bridge connecting CCTV, the Internet and audience since its establishment.

CCTV.com is an important and inseparable part of China Central Television. It is the extension and expansion of CCTV and provides a new online platform for CCTV.

CCTV.com has developed its own characteristics through years of practice and exploration. It absorbs the merits of TV and the Internet and forms a unique way of communication.

1. Providing suggestions for TV programs planning

How to do television programs and what should our programs focus on? To answer these questions, we need to listen to our audience’s including our net friends’ opinions.

CCTV.com initiated the Internet forum “TV comment” and a series of interactive online interviews between TV producers and audience. These have enable TV producers better understanding audience’ suggestions and opinions, thus providing valuable suggestions for TV programs’ planning.

The Spring Festival Get-together Evening Party is one of the most important programs in CCTV and it has been the program that has the highest audience rating in China. Producers of the Spring Festival show in 2004 collected audience’s ideas from CCTV.com and opened an online forum on Spring Festival show. Within several months, producers received valuable suggestions and some original scripts for the show. Director of the show came to CCTV.com frequently to listen to audience’s opinions. According to the online investigation, the 2004 spring festival show invited many popular singers from Hong Kong SAR and won support from much young audience.

2.Collecting feedbacks from audience

How many people have watched our programs? Who are they? Where are these audience located? What are they? And how do they think of the programs? All these questions are what TV producers are asking and the answer can be found through CCTV.com.

CCTV.com deals with emails from audience. We get more than 2,000 emails from audience each day. We are responsible of collecting valuable feedbacks, filing them and giving them to concerned CCTV leaders or departments. In this way, CCTV.com realizes its function of collecting feedbacks.

3. Providing interaction between TV and audience

CCTV.com not only provides online TV programs, live videos and VODS, but also offers a platform for interaction. It has opened 50 BBS and invites TV stars, TV anchors, film celebrities, scholars, commentators and TV producers to the website to answer net friends’ questions and discuss with them. Some of the topics are scheduled while others are impromptu put by audience.

For example, TV drama Emperor Han Wu has been one of the most attractive programs in 2005 and it triggered heated discussion on the Internet. The historic fact, the scenarios, the actors as well as some shots became topics of discussion. A net friend named Ardewei pasted a piece “Fault Finding on Emperor Hanwu”. 36,033 nitizens have read this article, and 146 ones have voiced their opinion following Ardewei’s piece.

4.Originality

To develop its own characteristics and realize the sustainable development, CCTV.com goes far beyond copying CCTV’s programs. Instead, it initiates series original programs combining the merits of TV and the Internet. These programs include TV Comment, Story Online, Audiovisual Online and Topics Online. Also, CCTV.com opened fifty BBS and put original contents on line.

CCTV.com recently open news channel and entertainment channel targeting at young netizens. It includes ten programs and three categories that are live programs, programs on demand, and interactive programs. From August 8th to October the 8th, we have produced 222 editions, which include 5,000 pieces of video news. Each day we broadcast sixty-minute-long original programs and transmit other programs for about five hours.

Since its establishment, more than 30,000 people have visited news channel and entertainment channel. And average daily visit has reached 110,000 times.

Compared with other websites, Internet television has its unique characteristics. It is original, interactive, entertaining and of practical use. It attracts net friends to participate and provides a platform for them. Original programs enable CCTV.com to own advantages over other websites and attract more people. They also lays a solid foundation for CCTV.com’s future development.

5. International communication

As an Internet media created by China Central Television, CCTV.com is supposed to shoulder the responsibility to introduce China to the world. China has undertaken great changes. It not only has a long history and glorious civilization but has made great achievements in economy and politics. We should provide a channel for those interested in China and Chinese civilizations to know more about China. Meanwhile, China needs to know more about the world and integrated itself in the world. Satellite TV and cable TV are unable to reach some remote areas in China due the geographic position or high cost. The Internet makes it up to some extent.

Besides simplified Chinese, CCTV.com also runs in complicated Chinese, English, Spanish and French. We try to enrich our programs and walk the first step towards realizing global communication to let the world better understand China and China know better about the world. And the result is quite satisfactory.

The exploration of above five major functions makes CCTV.com fully combine TV with the Internet and achieve a win-win situation for both TV and Internet. We believe this exploration will be helpful for CCTV to establish a multi-dimensional and multi-functional way of communication.

Prospect of CCTV.com

So far, China, as well as the world, the media market is dominated by TV, subordinated by newspaper, magazine, radio, books, and film, supplemented by video products. The Internet co-exists with these media, competes with them and together form a multi-media structure and a win-win situation. With the development of Internet technology, especially the “three in one” network technology, which will integrate telephone, cable TV and Internet into one transmission network, the high-speed, interactive and multi-media broadband net will gradually become mainstream media.

With this undergoing trend, the current relatively independent media will integrate into an all-around pan-media platform on which information is transmitted through broadband. That is, it will unify all information sources and communication medium and transfer comprehensive and precise information to as many as possible audience at high speed and with a low cost. In this way, various medias can coordinate with each other and realize their maximize value.

CCTV.com is coordinating with CCTV and other provincial TV stations and trying to create an era of the TV & Internet communication.

Ten years ago in 1995, China begun to put the Internet into use. Until now, it has been the second ten years for Chinese Internet development. According to statistics from CNNIC, till June 30th 2005, people surfing on the Internet have reached 103 million; computers connected with the Internet reached 45.6 million. And there are 677,500 websites with 53 million broadband users. Broadband has become the top choice of Chinese Internet users.

In the future, CCTV.com will base itself on CCTV and Internet audio service. Meanwhile, we will fully use other communication medium and cooperate with international famous medias. We will stand our feet on China while embrace the world.

The goal of CCTV.com is to develop into the No. 1 website in China and a famous new media in the world. We hope where there is the network, there are voices and pictures of CCTV.com.

We sincerely welcome you to visit CCTV.com and hope we can have further communication and cooperation in the near future.

Thanks!

Editor:Wang  Source:CCTV.com