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AOL to show Chinese TV

AOL-Time Warner is taking Chinese state television into US homes in a deal announced on Monday that makes the company the first foreign broadcaster given direct access to Chinese audiences.

The exchange lets AOL-Time Warner break into a fast-changing Chinese market where nearly every home owns a television and viewers number in the hundreds of millions.

Communist authorities regard television as a key propaganda tool and carefully control it, though millions of Chinese watch television from abroad with illegal satellite dishes. Officials appeared to be willing to relax restrictions slightly in exchange for access to US audiences.

AOL-Time Warner said broadcasts of its Chinese-language CETV channel would begin next year on cable systems in Guangdong province, a prosperous part of China's southeast.

In exchange, China Central Television's English-language Channel 9 will be carried by Time Warner cable systems in New York City, Los Angeles and Houston, said Tricia Primrose, a spokeswoman for the company in New York.

No financial details of the deal were released.

China's huge audience and potential advertising market have attracted interest from other foreign broadcasters. News Corp of Australia is trying to negotiate a deal similar to AOL's.

The agreement Monday is a "significant step in the growing relationship between AOL-Time Warner and the people of China," said the company's chief executive officer, Gerald Levin, in a statement issued by the company. It quoted Zhao Huayong, president of China Central Television, as calling the deal a "milestone, which has turned a new page in China's TV industry."

Chinese officials weren't available for comment late Monday.

The Chinese programming that US audiences will see on CCTV-9 resembles a slower, less adventurous version of US educational television, with a mix of news, music and cooking shows, documentaries on nature and travel, Chinese lessons and sports.

Broadcasting officials express hope that showing it in the US will change US attitudes about China.

Yet CCTV-9 will have difficulty competing for attention with scores of US cable channels. Its programs can be interesting -- especially nature and travel documentaries -- but production quality is uneven and shows are staid compared with US television.

The exchange gives AOL-Time Warner access to one of the most affluent areas in China, while minimizing the impact on official controls.

The channel is to be carried on cable systems in the Pearl River Delta northwest of Hong Kong, said Primrose, the AOL spokeswoman. She said she didn't know how many households those systems serve.

Viewers there already can watch television from neighboring Hong Kong. The former British colony is not covered by central government censorship, and its television stations are livelier -- and their news reporting more aggressive -- than state-run mainland media.

CETV's programming is a mix of entertainment, cartoons, game shows, movies and sports, according to Primrose. She said it has no news programs.
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