(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
business run by the Chinese party-state, and endorsed journalists with a privileged
socioconomic status. Private and transnational media operations have also started to
appear and expand in China: transnational media corporations such as Time-Warner,
News Corporation, Bertelsmann, have entered Chinese market in print (book),
television, film, and new media markets. Riding on the tide of media privatization and
marketization, many of the establishment journalists have started their own private
media production companies, or recruited by private and foreign companies to run
media production businesses, such as the key players in Jindun, Huayi, and Enlight
Media. As Yuezhi Zhao succinctly points out, the division of labour in Chinese media
industry rests with three major players—the party-state media, transnational media
and domestic private media: “party-state media inform the nation through their
domination in news and informational content provision, transnational media groom
the elite with exclusive international news, business information, lifestyle tips, and
niche market entertainment, and domestic private media productions amuse the
masses and mediate their multifaceted lived experiences with popular entertainment”
(Zhao 2008, 195).
Television drama, which is the most popular genre in Chinese television, is one of the
major businesses of private, foreign and joint productions. It is said that there were
over 2000 television drama production companies in 2009, with more than 80% of the
market share in China. 4 Jindun and Huayi are only two of the 2000-odd private
companies in the television drama business.
As private companies, they must work with triple clienteles—SARFT, television
stations, and advertisers. SARFT dictate the “mainstream melody” and controls the
permits to produce and distribute a show. Without the two essential permits, no
television drama is allowed to be produced or distributed. When the show is done, it
needs to be sold to television stations at national, regional and local levels. Since all
television stations are state owned and control the broadcasting channels, it is
important that private companies maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with the
state broadcasters, often through bribery to the latter. State broadcasters serve as a
second tier of power in shaping television drama production and distribution. After a
show is bought by state broadcasters, selling advertising time to advertisers and
4 Personal communication via telephone and email, 2010.
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