CCTV in the reform years: A new model for China's television?

Founded in 1958 and originally known as Beijing Television, China Central Television (CCTV) is the only national television network in China. Beijing Television was renamed CCTV in 1978, the year when China entered the reform era. Reform has entailed both the introduction of a market sector into China's economy and the adoption of a responsibility system in the state-owned sector, in which each economic unit is expected to be responsible for its own financial viability rather than rely on state support. From 1958 to the late 1970s, CCTV mainly functioned as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an ideological vehicle through which were advocated continuous political movements such as class struggle, the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1958, the Great Leap Forward of 1959, and the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Since 1978, like other economic, political, and cultural institutions in China, CCTV has experienced numerous changes: it has undergone organizational restructuring, its financial resources have been redefined, its roles and functions have been adjusted, and its programming content and development strategies have been redesigned in an effort to make it a world-class television network. The significance of the changes that have occurred within CCTV goes far beyond CCTV itself. CCTV is often viewed as a window on China's politics, economy, and society, and changes in CCTV demonstrate that the country has been moving toward a society of mass consumption with a public-oriented civic culture, even while it is sternly maintaining communist ideology. This article examines, accounts for, and considers the implications of what has changed and what has not changed at CCTV since reform began in the late 1970s, with an emphasis on the last fifteen years.