China's Got Talent

With a population of over 1.3 Billion, China is indeed an obvious market for talent shows. But still, no one expected the astounding popularity of China’s Got Talent, the Chinese spin-off of Britain’s Got Talent.

According to the show’s partner video sharing site, youku.com (like youtube, but Chinese), featured videos from the show have been viewed over 45 million times. Among those most viewed are: a 23 years old armless pianist who plays beautifully with his feet, a divorced man singing Unchained Melody with his 11 year-old dog, and a husband impersonating a suicidal pig in order to get judge’s attention to set stage for his timid, lovely-voiced, wife.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfc68gy_HIg&feature=player_embedded

Chinese TV is saturated with reality shows these days. From singing to quick dating to dancing to home makeover, these show are different but homogenous in nature: awkward settings, disturbing lighting and magnified frivolous frictions among the contestants.

But China’s Got Talent (CGT) is different. It is professional: Neat camera moves, smooth transitions, and clear narration. From appearance alone, you’d think the crew must be American or British. Actually, it is a Chinese team behind the operation. But unlike other Chinese reality shows that just plagiarize the basic format of the specific US or UK shows they’re based on, CGT actually bought the copyright from Fremantle Media that owns American’s Got Talent and Britain’s Got Talent. Therefore, it follows the same production guidebook as its US and UK counterparts. One producer from CGT said 90 percent of the show is similar to the original in terms of formality.

Apart from the quality of the picture and production, CGT’s success marks the end of “entertainment for its own sake”. If you look back on the history of reality shows in China, its rise ten years ago marked the beginning of the death of the traditional definition of a show: performers were professionals, and acts, songs, dances, and skits, were politically correct and were meant to achieve moral high ground. Most importantly, each show was an occasion to educate audience about national pride and help bring national unity.

Reality shows broke the mold. Average people, with or without talent, could step up and grab the microphone to perform on stage. Also, emancipation from political bondage and ideology empowered show creators to tread new, previously forbidden ground. Pursuit of money, flaunting of personal wealth, and disdain for the underprivileged became the new ideology. Selfishness, conceitedness, and narcissism are the indispensable ingredients that next big star must possess these days.

The most extreme example came when a female participant on a dating show proclaimed that she would rather be in a BMW crying than on the back of bicycle smiling. (Interpretation: when comes to choose a boyfriend or husband, she would rather be with someone who could offer her affluent life without joy, than someone who is poor but could provide happiness). This may sound natural to people in US, UK or other countries, but articulate these words on Chinese TV was unimaginable until recently.

This new wave of shows with shifting values surely irritates the authorities even though they bring in lots of cash. Just recently, the government initiated a new campaign against vulgarity in cultural production. Shows with politically incorrect values and low moral ground are the targets of this campaign.

CGT doesn’t have this problem. It circumvents all the loopholes that trap other shows and presents an interesting show using one technique: connecting each act with a higher narrative.

What does that mean? To put it simply, each performance is backed up by a story or narrative. The contestants don’t just come up on stage out of sheer desire for fame. Rather, they come to the show with a higher purpose, either to fulfill the dreams of one’s wife, or to prove the potential of the underestimated, or to reveal the transcendent empathy between human and animal. In a word, entertainment is not for entertainment itself.It must be connected to something else: friendship, or fraternity, or respect for elders, or family bonding.

When all these elements come together and happens all on one stage, the audience experiences long-forgotten a sense of unity . No wonder some scholars are quick to claim that CGT is a perfect opportunity to remold China’s problematic social values.

The side effect? You could be easily drown in tears.Whether contestants are happy, or sad, disappointed or elated, they always end up crying.

The post China’s Got Talent Too! appeared first on The Faster Times.

For Chinese Internet users, microblogging services are a ubiquitous web 2.0 gimmick. After Twitter’s founding, the number of Chinese copycat sites mushroomed, with some ripping off every aspect of Twitter’s layouts and templates. However, none of these early adopters, mainly computer engineers and geeks, seemed aware of the tool’s potential for cultural significance.

That changed with the tragic events of spring 2008. In the weeks following the Sichuan earthquake, and later with the Uighur riots in Xinjiang, microblogging sites, played a central and unexpected role.

However, unlike Twitter, Sina has declined to embrace this type of social relevance. Instead, Sina’s developers have ceded concepts like decentralization and grass-roots spirit in favor of manipulation and celebrity craze in order to secure their success.

Of course, Twitter is entangled in the world of celebrity culture. Ashton Kutcher, was, after all, that first user to gather 1 million followers. But it seems fair to say that this fact was accidental for Twitter. The celebrity obsession is always a factor – from the print era to the bit era – but it was not the essential ingredient for Twitter’s success.

Sina, on the other hand, has built this celebrity craze into the architecture of its microblogging service. The most obvious example of this is the omnipresent and meticulously-detailed recommendation system.

After new users finish registering for Sina, they are provided with different lists of suggested users to follow. Rather than suggest people you actually know, Sina provides a list of well-known people from various sectors, such as entertainment, fashion, sport, media, finance, IT, government, etc. Under each list, there are sub-lists. In the media category, for example, sub-lists include TV anchors, Radio DJs, correspondents and editors. These lists and the number of people included in them are ever expanding.

Another unsavory feature of Sina microblogging is that it collects extensive information about its users. Sina knows where you went to middle school, what company you work for now, and even keeps a record of your IP address.

Censorship is yet another tool that Sina uses to ensure its success. A couple days ago, for instance, I posted the name of the Oscar-nominated documentary, China’s Unnatural Disaster, which is about the students that died in Sichuan earthquake. This topic is a taboo in China’s mainstream media, and the post got deleted immediately.

Of course, the difficult thing about censoring content is knowing when to draw the line. If it is done too infrequently, politically or socially controversial material, which is prone to turn up on these sites, will get the service provider into trouble with the government. If it is done too frequently, annoyed users will abandon the site. To make matters even more complicated, the line is not stable, but fluid and fluctuating. Previous microblogging sites all had issues with content filtering and many sites were forced to suspend or even shut down because of clumsy handling of this delicate matter.

Sina stands out among these sites since it has years of experience in content filtering, as China’s biggest news portal and blog service provider. The learning curve for Sina was not painless. Heavy prices were paid, and valuable lessons learned. However, now Sina has positioned itself better than anyone else to placate both authorities and users.

One secret to Sina’s success is that they employ a large army of men rather than machines to do the filtering. The process is much more accurate and doesn’t suffer from the nonsensical mistakes of robot filters (for instance, censoring images of Garfield the cartoon cat because orange patches are an indication of human nudity).

Sina also maintains tight control over the applications in its service. Instead of outsourcing to other companies, Sina hosts its own photo, music and video sharing service, its own url shortening service, and it develops its own mobile applications.

All told, there are many things to envy about Sina’s business model. And it is, in fact, taking hold among China’s other microblogging services. The question remains as to whether this model will be exported to other parts of world. However given some governments‘ mounting hatred for Twitter, it is safe to say nothing is impossible.

The post Sina Microblogging: An Alternative Model to Twitter? appeared first on The Faster Times.

Ten minutes after the scheduled start-time, there was no sign that the event was soon to begin, as panelists in Beijing were still not ready. Audience members were visibly bored and could be seen seeking out distractions. The two girls to my right exchanged gossip about their friend’s love life–their giggles occasionally disrupted by an SMS ringtone. The ringtone was coming from the male student at my left, whose fingers danced on his mobile phone keypad.

Beatrice Camp, Consul General in Shanghai, appeared to sense this awkwardness. She apologized for the delay and cracked a joke by saying that several panelists were lost inside the US embassy because the newly finished infrastructure was so huge and winding.

Five minutes later, the video finally started to roll. The speech lasted about 40 minutes during which Secretary Clinton reiterated the U.S.’s stance on freedom of information on the internet and unveiled a new State Department initiative to fight Internet censorship.

For most part, panelist in Shanghai ignored the screen on which the video was showed. They preferred to look at the printed version of the speech provided by the consulate. There were several moments when the audience in the video burst into laughter or gave applause; however, during these moments, there wasn’t any reaction from the panelists in the room.

During the panel discussion that followed the video, Ai Weiwei, an artist and social activist, was the first to speak. He argued that Secretary Clinton’s speech was a strong indication that the U.S. was stepping up its commitment to freedom of speech in China. His admiration for Secretary Clinton was obvious as he lamented the fact that Clinton had lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama.

Questions from Guangzhou were much more specific and technical. One panelist pressed U.S. diplomats for a more direct answer as to whether the US would fund other proxy softwares that help prevent Internet censorship. (The U.S. Congress had previously provided 2.5 million U.S. dollars for a VPN software called Freegate.) Responses from US officials were quite diplomatic, as they wouldn’t go into detail about the plan and instead reemphasized the talking points made in Security Clinton’s speech. The U.S., they repeated, is committed to promoting Internet freedom as a cornerstone of human rights.

As discussion went on, Chinese panelists continued to ask specific, potentially controversial questions about the U.S.’s stance on China’s Internet freedom. But, each time, U.S. officials disappointed them by dodging the real questions and reciting Clinton’s speech in lieu of an answer.

The exception to this pattern and also the most dramatic moment of the event came when Rao Jin, of anti-cnn.com, lashed out for two minutes against the U.S. government, alleging their own involvement in Internet spying. Anti-cnn.com is a nationalistic Chinese website dedicated to exposing false and biased Western news coverage of China. Jin, who is tremendously popular among young Chinese Internet users, is the country’s most vocal opponent of Western media imperialism. During his tirade, Jin claimed that there is an unholy alliance between Google and the CIA and that the U.S. National Security Agency is the largest employer of Internet spies. He concluded his speech by challenging the motives behind the U.S.’s new initiative.

Following Jin’s speech, U.S. officials clamored to respond. While wording varied, the officials’ responses were in accordance: they don’t comment on speculation, and the U.S. government would only engage in activities that promote Internet freedom and privacy.

The event lasted two hours, during which not a single question was really answered. The two girls beside me were relieved when the meeting came to an end. As they exited, one of the girls turned to her friend and asked: “Where should we go for dinner?”

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At the end of each year, “Journalist Monthly,” a Chinese publication akin to the “Columbia Journalism Review,” lists the top ten fake news stories that have appeared in the mainstream media. These fake stories are not intentional Onion-like spoofs. They are presented as true stories by the “legit” Chinese media.

The 2009 list is just as absurd and entertaining as it has been in previous years: President Obama e-maiied North Korea’s Kim Jong-il and gave him a Mac and an iPhone; the sister-in-law of a corrupt official maintained relationships with 16 cicisbeos; China’s naval fleet confronted an Indian submarine off the coast of Somalia. For a country lacking tabloids or satirical news publications like The Onion, the very existence of these fake stories can seem shocking at first glance.

While the Chinese often doubt the motives and government influences behind the news, until recent years, they could at least expect some small basis in reality from stories coming out of the Chines media.

So what’s behind his outburst of fake news? Ferocious competition in the media business. It’s a misconception that all Chinese media outlets are state-owned. The state still has very tight control over news media ownership, but it promotes competition because it leads to higher profits. Media outlets know that if they stay away from politically sensitive issues they’ll be allowed to make as much money as they can.

The result is that most Chinese cities, both big and small, often have half-a-dozen newspapers and numerous local TV channels. Audience and advertising markets overlap. Competition is inevitable and ruthless. It’s not uncommon to find two or three newspapers belonging to the same media group fighting against each other in the same market.

In this context, exclusive content is pivotal to success, especially for local news outlets. (Looking at past years, it’s easy to see that many fake news stories originated at the local level.) Journalists and editors are under a lot of pressure to provide new content. This is where the fake stories kick in.

Of course, media professionals all over the world are subject to similar pressure, but the problem is exacerbated in China thanks to a history of poor journalistic ethics and the influence of government propaganda.

For decades it was more important to have the correct political stance than to have your facts right. The goal was to persuade, not to inform. The end justified the means, and any ploy or dodgy tactic was deemed acceptable, as long as you got the story.

Thanks to the commercialization of media, the propaganda mode is starting to fade and western-style professionalism is beginning to take its place. But old habits die hard. Abuse of anonymous sources continues to be a problem. Anonymity is widely and injudiciously deployed in the Chinese media; an “anonymous source” often means a false source or no source at all.

The Internet is also a huge breeding ground for fake news. Gossip, fake interviewees, fabricated data, and digitally distorted photos are abundant and can be obtained at marginal cost online. It’s also very easy to spread and magnify fake news on the Internet. On the other hand, stories that go live online are subject to intense public scrutiny. In this way, the Internet can also function as a fact checker. But the volume of stories on the web is far too high for every story to be scrutinized.

The Chinese public is taking note of the fake news phenomenon. Rather than becoming angry, the Chinese are increasingly cynical — and seem also to be increasingly amused by the absurdity. Maybe the time is right for The Chinese Onion — The Wonton Soup?

The post How the Chinese Media is Turning into The Onion appeared first on The Faster Times.

Previous campaigns have been waged against similar media sharing sites. Several years ago, the government’s compulsory certification process for video sharing sites drove many small operations out of business. What’s significant about the most recent round of busts is the timing of the crackdown.

Next Monday, the world will witness the launch of China’s very first state-run online television station called CNTV. The owner of this new online entity is CCTV, China’s state television station. CNTV will not only stream all the live programs from CCTV, but also open CCTV’s archives, including nearly 400,000 hours of video, to the public. The latest information indicates that all these services are free of charge.

One apparent model for CCTV’s online venture is Hulu, a commercial-supported online video distribution site jointly owned by FOX, NBC and ABC. It allows viewers to stream TV shows, music videos and movies from the big three as well as other networks free of charge. The Hulu-like section of CNTV, called Bugu (cuckoo), already exists in private beta form.

But the creators of CNTV won’t be satisfied if the site is simply a pipeline for CCTV’s content. Instead, they want it to enter a much bigger and dramatically expanding market of user-generated content sites like Youtube and Vimeo. That is why CNTV also plans to release another site called Xiyou (grapefruit).

In these new ventures, CNTV will have considerable advantages over the competition: It won’t have trouble soliciting online ads since CCTV will share its huge pool of advertisers with these new sites; it won’t be short of content since the sites will be streaming content from CCTV; and garnering an audience will be easy since CCTV will promote the sites in its daily broadcasting.

However, despite all the presumed advantages that CNTV has, its relationship with CCTV may drag it down from the beginning.

The very reason for launching this new online affiliate is to attract young people. But this generation is so accustomed to accessing content through the Internet that they may resist CNTV’s attempt to bring features of traditional TV to the web.

It is important to note that young people seek entertainment on the Internet not just because it is easier to access, but also because the programs circulating on the internet, often produced by non-traditional media outlets, are simply better. This means that younger audiences may not be interested in CCTV content. (Two possible exceptions are sports program and movies. However, based on the current version of CNTV’s Bugu, as accessed through the iPhone and the Android, it seems these two valuable parts will not be available through the service.)

CNTV’s user-generated content site, Xiyou, may feature some of the strictly online content that younger viewers prefer, but it is unclear how much. While the existing user-generated content sites like Youku, Tudou and 6CN do nominally censor copyrighted or lewd material, the illicit material that escapes the censors is the main driver of the sites’ success. Another source of traffic for existing sites is video about social disobedience. Xiyou, the forthcoming state-owned user-generated content site, will likely avoid these types of content, which are, ironically, the ingredients for success.

Nevertheless, the good news is many of CNTV’s potential competitors are already out of business because this latest round of closedown for various reasons. At least, that is a gambit.

The post Why the Chinese Government is Launching Its Own Hulu and YouTube appeared first on The Faster Times.

These latest move is a part of China’s grand plan to reintroduce itself to the world.

The first and also the most obvious question would be: why do that? Didn’t the Beijing Olympics bring sufficient media attention to China?

The problem with Chinese news coverage during the past year is that too many stories were crammed into too little time, and international audiences just didn’t have the attention span to absorb it all. From the Lhasa riot to the controversial Olympic torch relay, from massive earthquakes to the Xinjiang bombing, from the splendid Olympic opening ceremony to poisoned milk powder — all of these important news events created “China fatigue” around the globe. Conflicting, inconsistent news reports from fact-deprived foreign journalists added to the exhaustion.

Take the Lhasa riot for example. Foreign journalists flocked to Lhasa to cover the news, but they were largely turned away. Information coming out of Lhasa was too scant to fill the newspapers, so speculation and hearsay from unnamed sources dominated the coverage. Criticism and allegations against the Chinese government for it’s lack of public information were rampant.

Things were different two months later when a massive earthquake hit Sichuan. This time, the Chinese government granted unprecedented access to foreign journalists covering the story, and they were praised in kind by almost every international media outlet. But when the news of poisonous milk powder broke, a firewall against foreign journalists was put up again and pessimistic views on China’s censorship prevailed.

These flip flops have confused those who argue that China is headed down a progressive path towards a more open society.

So, in an effort to reaffirm their commitment to liberalization and in an attempt to promote a more accurate picture of modern China, the government has begun to export the national news channel. Whereas current global coverage of Chinese news is merely a collection of snapshots, these foreign satellites of the Xinhua news station hope to provide a continuous narrative of Chinese life.

It is, after all, an opportune moment for such a venture. At a time when conventional Western news outlets are hemorrhaging cash, the Chinese government is flush with it. There are also countless journalists in need of work, making the cost of staffing these stations a fraction of what it might once have been.

The post China’s New Face: Government News Agency Expanding to Other Nations appeared first on The Faster Times.

After growing up in a semi-deserted inland city, Guo Jingming has made every right move within China’s traditional fiction-writing system and has won fame and fortune writing trendy novels for teenage girls. He churns out novels like an assembly line—a very profitable one at that. He has several publicists and wears flashy designer clothes to capture public attention. He has even posted half-naked pictures of himself on the web.

Jingming’s rival, Han Han, has taken a more dramatic path to success. He achieved overnight success in high school, and promptly dropped out of school. He turned down offers from China’s most reputable universities to become a professional racecar driver, splitting his time between losing races and writing novels about his youthful angst. Despite his racing career, Han Han isn’t flashy; he hates media attention and rarely takes in-person interviews, claiming he’s “too ugly to be seen.” He never holds press conferences for book launches, and even his publishers don’t know where he is.

The differences between Han and Guo are vast. They write differently, dress differently, treat media and fame differently, and they have completely different views about managing and distributing their content.

For Guo, the internet is a means for promoting his books, magazines, music ventures and, more generally, himself. He has a blog that he updated quite frequently when it first launched, but he has since stopped writing new posts because he doesn’t want to give out content for free. For Guo, blogging is a tool for building his brand, not a channel for delivering content. He also edits a chic literary magazine, which is available for purchase on newsstands but not available online.

For Han, the internet serves a very different role. He regularly updates his blog and he rarely uses it to promote his fiction writing (though he does often post information about his failing racecar career). He writes about social issues and appears not to fear getting into trouble for his controversial words. He seldom appears in photographs, but his name generates hundreds of millions of hits. When he opened an online store, selling his books through an eBay-like C2C trading site, turnover was so high that the site believed fake transactions were being conducted and shut down Han’s operation.

The site’s popularity can largely be attributed to Han’s innovative and pluralistic use of the internet. He sees it as a vehicle for communicating with his readers, avoiding barriers that might be created by a third party, like a news media conglomerate. (Recently, Han solicited magazine titles and design ideas from readers for an upcoming project). For Han, the internet is much more than a marketing gimmick, and readers have responded.

Comparing these two writers highlights a division among China’s young people. While Guo adheres to the traditional Chinese fiction industry, attracting a sizable fan-base, Han defies the establishment and scoops up young readers who are eager to form a counter-culture discourse. The latter group has been enabled by the internet, and there’s no doubt that it will continue to grow. What the future holds in store for the traditional world of Chinese fiction-writing remains to be seen.

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According to the guidelines, if you go online for more than six hours a day, three months in a row, you are an Internet addict.

The guidelines have spurred an instant uproar in China as many Internet users would be labeled as addicts — or mental patients — if the new guidelines were used in the context of a clinical diagnosis. The guidelines, regarded by many as brainless, seem to ignore the fact that being online is an inalienable part of daily life. In response to harsh criticism from the public and ruthless ridicule from the media, the guidelines’ creators have added new talking points which explain that the guideline is only applied to minors.

This re-calibrated discourse has immediately set off another angry crowd: parents. According to the latest research, four million Chinese children are regarded as Internet addicts under the guidelines. To make matters worse, the news media is tirelessly narrating the story of children who have fallen victim to Internet addiction, vividly depicting the misery of parents whose children skip school, run away from home, resort to stealing and in some cases even rob and beat their parents. For parents, the guidelines are a revelation: yes, my child has problem, and it is a mental one.

In response to the guidelines, recovery clinics — described as “concentration camps” by some of the juvenile patients — specializing in treating Internet addiction are now popping up throughout China. Parents who send their children to these clinics, or camps, believe deeply that they are ill. In most cases, children go into the camps involuntarily, and these camps aren’t situated downtown, in a deliberate move to cut them off from any Internet access. Inmates can’t leave the camp for two to three months if they are to be completely cured (which is what most clinics promise).

Daily life for the children in these camps involves endless military-like training including long distance running and other drills. They also have to attend real life classes (something children accustomed to living their lives in virtual “World of Warcraft” worlds aren’t quite familiar with) in an effort to help them rediscover what it means to be part of an actual team.

The most horrifying aspect of these camps is that children are subjected to electroshock therapy. A therapist asks a question such as: do you still want to go online? Before the child can give a yes or no answer, the therapist presses a button and an electric current is sent through the child’s body, creating a moment of spasms. Therapists defend this treatment, saying that the electric current is not life-threatening, and that its purpose is to make patients feel numb or torpid toward Internet stimuli. In the end, they hope, inmates will feel nausea whenever the word “Internet” is mentioned.

However, people outside the camp don’t buy it. With gruesome stories trickling out from the camps (most of the time via patients), there has been unrestrained outcry and anger on the web, mostly coming from young people who fear they will be sent to these camps by their paranoid parents. The drama reached a climax when a Guangxi patient died inside the camp–not from electroshock therapy–but from a beating by his therapist.

Finally, China Health Ministry has stepped into the picture and called off the practice of electric shock therapy in order to appease public resentment. But the problem is that there is no endgame. The Ministry’s announcement was followed moments after by a denouncement from the parents of “addicted” children, claiming that the Ministry has taken away their final hope to save their children. Some parents believe they see an improvement in their children’s behavior–whether temporarily or permanently–after shock therapy.

On the other side of the Pacific, the US is taking note of what’s happening in China. America’s very first Internet addiction clinic opens in Washington this August.

The post To Electroshock or Not? The Chinese Debate How to Cure Internet Addiction appeared first on The Faster Times.

Those with sufficient English could watch the show straightaway; those who didn’t could wait a couple of hours for translation teams, themselves fans of the show, to have subtitles ready.

After viewing the show, fans swarmed to message boards, either excited or unsatisfied, to discuss the show intensely, commenting on everything from plot to set, actors and creators. Then they waited anxiously for the next week’s episode

Through this process, “Prison Break” became an unprecedented success, one that no other foreign TV drama has ever rivaled. Chinese youth were likely to greet each other with questions like “Have you watched the new episode?” and “Michael Scofield is so cool, right?”

Since people couldn’t get enough of the show, some guys set up an online TV station, illegally streaming the show 24/7. When Fox ended the show after four seasons, Chinese fans couldn’t accept the fact and began writing their own episodes. Some diehard fans are even shooting their versions of “Prison Break.”

The creators of the show finally came to understand that there is a huge untapped fan base in China and that they should capitalize on it. Wentworth Miller, the actor who played Michael Scofield on the show and is wildly popular among Chinese fans, has come to China three times doing product endorsements and being interviewed on China’s most popular talk show.

All of this happened without a single episode ever airing on a TV station in mainland China. How did this massive phenomenon occur?

In 2003, China Central Television paid top dollar to bring HBO’s superb World War Two epic, “Band of Brothers,” to the Chinese audience. The ratings were abysmal. Why? CCTV ran “Band” two years after its U.S. airing. Those who really wanted to watch had already viewed it via pirated DVDs or Internet downloads.

The lesson for ambitious Hollywood production companies in Hwho want to include China in their international marketing plan is quite obvious: get in fast. Demographically speaking, China’s largest viewing audience are people in their 20s or 30s. They are technologically sufficient enough to get download them online. At the same time, they also want to be treated equally. They want to watch their favorite shows at the same time as the American audience.

Therefore, content providers should think outside the box and allow international viewers to watch programs on the broadcaster’s Web sites. The revenue stream could come from product placement, product endorsements, marketing show-related products, or even viewer donation.

As traditional content delivery mechanisms are becoming increasingly obsolete, it is essential that the owners and creators of content rethink their strategies for global distribution of their products.

The post “Prison Break’”s Underground Success in China appeared first on The Faster Times.

Those with sufficient English watched the show right away, while others waited a couple of hours for the Chinese-subtitled version, which was put together by fellow fans.

After watching, viewers swarmed into message boards, sometimes excited, sometimes dissatisfied, to discuss the show in elaborate detail, from plot to set, from actors to creators. Then, they waited anxiously for the next week’s episode.

Through this stream of distribution, Prison Break has achieved success unlike any other foreign TV drama brought to China. It is a phenomenon.

Since people can’t seem to get enough of the show, one group has set up an online TV station — illegally, of course — that streams the show 24/7. When Fox canceled the show after four seasons, an indication of mediocrity, Chinese fans couldn’t accept this fact and wrote their own sequel to the show. There are even diehard fans shooting their own versions of Prison Break.

Eventually, the creators of the show learned of this huge untapped fan base in China, and decided to capitalize on it. Wentworth Miller, who played Michael Scofield, is widely known in China, has visited three times in one year to do product endorsements and, once, to be interviewed on China’s most popular Oprah-like talk show. Advertisers like Chevrolet have clearly recognized Miller’s appeal, featuring him this April in an ad for their “Chevy Cruze” aimed at young Chinese buyers.

Incredibly, all of this has happened without a single episode having aired on mainland Chinese television. How could this be? Does Prison Break have some intense intrinsic appeal to Chinese viewers, or is it something else?

In 2003, China Central Television (CCTV) spent a huge amount of money to bring HBO’s superb World War II epic, Band of Brothers, to Chinese audiences. But ratings were abysmal. Why? CCTV was already two years behind when they imported the show. Those with any interest had already watched in on pirated DVDs or on the internet.

The lesson is quite obvious for those ambitious content creators in Hollywood who want to include China in their grand international marketing plans. Get in fast. The most likely demographic to watch American TV shows and other Hollywood content is young people in their 20s or 30s, but they are technologically capable enough — and patient enough — to get their favorite content through unconventional means. (If viewers in the U.S. couldn’t watch the latest episode of 24 in prime-time, they would surely do the same.)

Television distributers must recognize this inevitability and tear down the barriers keeping Chinese viewers from American content — such as IP restrictions for audiences outside the U.S. watching full length episodes on the broadcaster’s website. Instead, they should deliver the content to Chinese audiences just as they do to American audiences. Technology and global Hollywood culture have already prepared both the creators and the viewers to do what was once unthinkable: to simultaneously distribute content on a mass scale around the world.

Photo by Ms..G

The post The Underground Success of Prison Break and What It Means for Chinese Media appeared first on The Faster Times.