About CCTV-14

CCTV-14

CCTV-14 is China Central Television's children's channel — CCTV Children. Operated by China Media Group from Beijing and broadcast in Mandarin, it was China's first dedicated children's channel, launched on 28 December 2003 for young viewers up to eighteen years old. Animation, live-action drama, comedy, science, games, sport and preschool programmes fill a schedule arranged around the study and rest routines of children of different ages.

Before CCTV-14, children's programmes in China were strands inside other channels — most recently inside CCTV-7, from which children's programming was split in 2003. The children's channel gave young viewers a service of their own, designed around a stated concept: respect, support, guidance and happiness.

Ownership and place within China Media Group

CCTV-14 is part of China Central Television within China Media Group, formed on 21 March 2018 from CCTV, China National Radio and China Radio International. In the CCTV family it is the young audience's channel, complementing CCTV-10's education remit with entertainment and informal learning for minors, and it is produced by CCTV's children's programming operation — CCTV Kids — whose controllers speak for the channel in its international partnerships.

The channel's self-description, published through its partners, sets out its charter: it started on 28 December 2003; its key concept is respect, support, guidance and happiness; it respects the rights of children, supports the exploration of their potential and guides their healthy development; and its basic programme principle is to be healthy, interesting, inspiring and educational. Those words function as an editorial standard against which its schedule is publicly justified.

Origins in CCTV-7 and the 2003 launch

Children's programming had lived inside CCTV-7 — the combined military, agriculture, science and children's channel — until CCTV's specialisation wave separated it. China Daily reported the new service at its launch on 28 December 2003: China's first children's channel, a 24-hour channel targeting youngsters up to eighteen, with programmes aired according to the general study and rest routines of children and teenagers of different age groups.

The launch package was substantial: twenty-six regular programmes, additional children's films and television series in the summer and winter vacations, and a consultant committee of television directors, established educators and respected celebrities formed to review the channel's programmes every month for quality. Familiar presenters of Chinese children's television, including Ju Ping and Dong Hao, fronted the new channel from the start.

Animation at the centre

Animation is the channel's heart, and its mix is distinctly Chinese. A CCTV profile in the channel's first months described a service primarily for young children, broadcasting eighteen hours a day from 06:00 to midnight, whose programmes consisted of educational shows, games, popular science, variety, children's drama and, of course, cartoons, with popular-science shows, cartoons and interactive programmes where parents and children take part proving the early favourites. The channel planned satellite delivery to reach children in suburbs and countryside as well as the cities.

Policy shaped the cartoon supply: from 1 September 2006, foreign-produced animation was banned from state television between 17:00 and 20:00 to protect domestic animation studios, and channel references note that Chinese animation predominates on CCTV-14 because prime children's hours require domestic production. The children's channel thus became the national showcase — and a protected market — for China's own animation industry.

International partnerships: Disney, Nickelodeon and Sesame

From its first week the channel mixed domestic production with licensed international programming. Walt Disney's 'The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh' became a featured film on the channel at launch, with Disney sponsoring a 'Winnie the Pooh in China' painting competition for young viewers. Viacom's Nickelodeon signed as one of the channel's first content partners: from 28 December 2003 the channel carried thirty minutes of Nickelodeon original programming daily, including 'CatDog' and 'The Wild Thornberrys'.

The deepest partnership is with Sesame Workshop. Building on a relationship stretching back thirty-five years to the 'Big Bird in China' special, CCTV Children's Channel and Sesame Workshop have co-produced Chinese New Year segments since 2014, with Cookie Monster, Elmo and Lily joining CCTV children's hosts including Ju Ping and Dong Hao; in 2017 CCTV shot, for the first time, on the Sesame Street set in New York for the Spring Festival special — a children's-channel bridge between the two countries' most famous educational television traditions.

Co-productions and the world's children's market

CCTV-14 is an active buyer and co-producer in world children's television. In 2016 ZooMoo Networks' wildlife strand launched on the channel in prime time for Spring Festival as 'Animal Friends' — sixty half-hour episodes co-produced with CCTV, reaching a potential audience of more than 240 million viewers, with CCTV Animation Studios producing original content in return and Chinese puppet characters, a panda and a snub-nosed monkey, created for the Mandarin version under the China–New Zealand co-production agreement.

British and international preschool series continue to arrive: 'Everything's Rosie' was licensed for the channel with an audience of some 120 million preschool children in view, joining series such as 'Ricky Zoom', 'Mr Bean: The Animated Series' and 'Go Jetters' on CCTV-14. For foreign producers, the channel is the gateway to China's child audience; for the channel, the imports keep its schedule international within the rules that reserve prime hours for domestic animation.

Scheduling around children's lives

The channel's scheduling philosophy was set at launch and is unusual in television: the day is built around children's study and rest routines, with programmes for different age groups placed where those groups can watch them — preschool content in the daytime, school-age animation and drama after school, family viewing in the evening, and extended film and series seasons in the school holidays when the audience is free all day.

CCTV's own early audience research for the channel found the pattern it hoped for: popular science, cartoons and parent-child interactive programmes led viewing. The schedule is also the channel's safeguarding instrument — content for the youngest viewers is kept in the hours when they watch, overseen by the consultant committee of educators and directors appointed at launch.

Audiences and distribution

CCTV-14 is distributed nationally as a free-to-air CCTV channel by terrestrial transmission, cable and satellite, and online. Its potential audience is China's child population — the channel's partners have described CCTV as addressing some 360 million children — and as the country's largest children's television broadcaster, in the words of its licensing partners, it is the default first channel of Chinese childhood.

That scale carries the channel beyond entertainment: public-service messages about safety, health and study reach children here at a concentration no other medium matches, and its hosts — Sister Moon, Red Apple, Green Bubble and their colleagues — are among the most recognised figures in Chinese children's lives.

Digital presence and the official website

The channel's official online home is tv.cctv.com/cctv14 on CCTV.com, with live stream, schedules and programme pages, inside the CCTV digital operation that began as China Network Television in 2009 and became CCTV.com in 2017. Children's viewing has migrated to apps and on-demand faster than any other genre, and the channel's programmes circulate through CCTV's digital platforms accordingly.

For parents, the channel page serves the listings function that matters most — what is on, for which age, and when — backed by the channel's published educational principles.

Why CCTV-14 matters

CCTV-14 matters because it nationalised childhood television in China. Split out of CCTV-7 and launched on 28 December 2003 as the country's first children's channel, it set the standards — healthy, interesting, inspiring, educational — under which Chinese children are served, protected domestic animation in prime hours, and built partnerships with Disney, Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop that made it part of world children's television. For a generation of Chinese viewers, it was quite simply the channel childhood came from.