China phoenix rises
By Anthony Kuhn Posted Wed, Dec 1 1999
At his inaugural press conference last spring, Chinese premier Zhu Rongji was in a jocular mood. He picked Sally Wu, a journalist with the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV to ask a question, explaining, “I really enjoy watching her show.” Wu gushed back, “Mr. Zhu, I just want to tell you that you are my idol, too.”
Since then, Wu and other Phoenix news anchors have been the Chinese news media’s darlings, and the station’s ad revenues have been the envy of mainland broadcasters. And with such enthusiastic viewers at the pinnacle of Chinese officialdom, one would think that the Chinese people would be encouraged to watch. But Phoenix isn’t even legal.
Phoenix’s achievement in reaching an estimated 45 million households despite a ban on receiving foreign satellite broadcasts is largely a success story. It is the best example yet of a foreign firm carving out a potentially profitable niche in the gray areas of China’s fast-changing media.
But it is also a cautionary tale of the price self-censoring media pay to access the Chinese market.
“Phoenix TV has basically won the tacit approval of the government,” says media expert Lin Sun, director of the New Jersey-based China Telecommunications Resources, Inc.
The channel is a three-way joint venture backed by two Chinese investors and the Hong Kong-based StarTV, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Besides mainland China, Phoenix has targeted Chinese-speaking audiences in more than 30 countries and regions since its inception in March 1996.
Technically, as a foreign television station, Phoenix can be received legally only by hotels and residential areas catering to foreigners. Private satellite dishes have been illegal since 1993. The Chinese media view foreign satellite broadcasts, such as Phoenix, as an infringement on China’s sovereignty.
Most of Phoenix’s Mandarin broadcasts avoid the censors’ ire by sticking to Taiwanese and Japanese soap operas and self-produced talk shows on noncontroversial topics. Its top-rated show for the past two years is a dating game called “Perfect Match,” which pairs well-heeled but shy young Taiwanese singles.
Phoenix’s news coverage carefully avoids openly criticizing the Communist Party line, yet it clearly differs from official Chinese “mouthpieces” in its news priorities and sources.
Despite decades of commercialization and reform of the Chinese media, the party’s main mouthpiece, China Central Television, must still prioritize news based on the political hierarchy. On the CCTV evening news, reports of President Jiang Zemin’s doings precede more newsworthy activities of lower-ranked leaders.
Phoenix is not bound by such protocol. The channel covers Chinese news from foreign angles in ways that official media cannot. For example, Phoenix detailed the U.S. Congressional debate over Chinese policy. Phoenix also reports more liberally on Hong Kong and Taiwanese politics than mainland media do.
As a result, ratings indicate that “in households where Phoenix is available, it does well against CCTV and regional terrestrial channels,” says Laurie Smith, News Corp’s chief representative in Beijing.
Those households are typically elite, affluent and mostly urban. Many of the channel’s estimated 165 million viewers live in government-housing compounds that pick up Phoenix’s satellite signals in defiance of the ban on watching foreign broadcasts.
Phoenix viewers are also concentrated along China’s prosperous southeastern seaboard, where regulations are lax. Local cable networks routinely include Phoenix in their programming.
At present, Phoenix’s annual advertising revenues stand at US$36 million, compared with about US$58 million raked in by the market-leading CCTV. Phoenix is expected to break even this year and record a profit in the next fiscal year.
The channel could hardly survive in the mainland market without an intimate understanding of China’s media and the boundaries of permissible news coverage.
Indeed, many Phoenix staff are veterans of China’s news business. The channel’s Chinese chief is the former head of the Beijing Broadcasting Academy. Top presenter Yang Lan hosted one of CCTV’s most popular shows before going on to study journalism at Columbia University.
But Phoenix’s fortunes have also been boosted by Murdoch’s open courtship of China. When Beijing was reportedly angered by BBC reports critical of China carried by StarTV, Murdoch dropped BBC from the network.
Later, Murdoch canceled a deal by his publisher, Harper Collins, to publish a book critical of China by former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten.
By the time Murdoch visited China last year, Chinese President Jiang Zemin was thanking him for his efforts “in presenting China objectively” to the world.