As reported by the Hollywood Reporter:
China’s leading popular television news programme will change its format to include more human-interest segments and critical reporting, with effect from 20 June.
State-run broadcaster China Central Television will revamp its flagship nightly news programme, ‘Xinwen Liangbo,’ prompted by a study that showed a waning interest in its dry and predictable reports on government announcements.
The official announcement came during the annual Shanghai International Television Festival when hundreds of foreign content owners and advertisers gather in China’s financial hub to try to sell their wares to China’s 2,300 TV stations. China’s one-party government is in the midst of a new campaign to revamp its image through the media, hiring more English-speaking editors and reporters. CCTV news faces steady competition from Hong Kong’s Mandarin-language Phoenix TV, from pirated satellite news channels from overseas and from news increasingly accessed from the Internet.
Before 1998, the CCTV news program dominated daily ratings with 40 percent of the market. Today, that figure is less than 10 percent.