About Nanjing Television

Nanjing Television

Nanjing Television is the municipal television station of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province in eastern China, operated by the Nanjing Broadcasting System (NBS), also known as the Nanjing Broadcasting System Group. It is a city-level broadcaster — a fact that needs stating plainly in Nanjing, because the much larger provincial broadcaster, Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, is also based in the city. Nanjing Television serves the city itself, with a general channel and a set of thematic channels carrying Mandarin news, current affairs, drama and local programming. It also holds a genuine first in Chinese broadcasting history: when it began test broadcasts in 1981, it became the first city-level television station established in a provincial capital in China.

Not to be confused with Jiangsu Television

Nanjing is home to two separate broadcasters, and their histories intertwine confusingly. The provincial station traces its origin to the Nanjing Television Experimental Station, which began broadcasting on 1 May 1960; that station was renamed Jiangsu Television in 1979 and developed into today's Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, a provincial network owned by the Jiangsu Provincial People's Government and based in Nanjing. The municipal Nanjing Television is a different, younger organisation: its own television company was established on 17 January 1980 and the current Nanjing Television Station started broadcasting in 1981. Reference works on Jiangsu Television make the distinction explicitly, noting that the 1960 experimental station was not the current Nanjing TV Station. In short, Jiangsu Television speaks for a province of tens of millions from a satellite platform, while Nanjing Television speaks for one city — and that city-level remit is the subject of this profile.

Origins of the Nanjing Broadcasting System

The Nanjing Broadcasting System built its television service on an existing radio foundation. NBS set up its radio station on 1 January 1979, initially operated by the Nanjing Radio Corporation and later placed under a subordinate unit of the Municipal Council of Nanjing of the Chinese Communist Party; it operates six radio stations and is also responsible for a radio station in Liuhe District. The television company followed on 17 January 1980, and test broadcasts began on 4 February 1981, delivered on VHF channel 12. With that launch Nanjing Television became the first city-level television station established in a provincial capital in China — a notable distinction in a system where provincial capitals usually saw the provincial broadcaster dominate and city-level television arrived later. The combined radio and television organisation is today known both as the Nanjing Broadcasting System and as the Nanjing Broadcasting System Group, and it owns Nanjing Radio, Nanjing Television, the Nanjing Broadcasting Network and the Nanjing Education and Technology Channel.

The city the station serves

Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu, located in the southwestern corner of the province in the Yangtze River Delta, with 11 districts and a population of 9,423,400 recorded in 2021. Few Chinese cities carry comparable historical weight: Nanjing served as the capital of various Chinese dynasties, kingdoms and republican governments from the third century to 1949, and it is counted among China's Four Great Ancient Capitals. It first became a capital in AD 229, when Sun Quan of the Wu kingdom moved his capital there, and it was later the capital of the early Ming dynasty and of the Republic of China. After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, Nanjing became the provincial capital of Jiangsu in 1952, a status it retains. It is one of China's fifteen sub-provincial cities and a major centre of culture, education, research, politics, economy and transport, home to one of the world's largest inland ports on the Yangtze. A municipal broadcaster in such a city covers not only routine city administration but a living historical landscape that is a standing subject of national attention.

Position in China's television system

Chinese television is a state-run, multi-level system. China Central Television (CCTV), under China Media Group, is the sole national broadcaster; below it, a four-tiered structure formalised in the early 1980s runs through provincial, municipal and county levels, each producing local programming while relaying national output, including CCTV-1. Nanjing Television sits at the municipal tier, one level below Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation's provincial services. The practical consequence is a division of labour visible in any Nanjing cable line-up: CCTV supplies national and international coverage, the provincial channels supply a Jiangsu-wide view and nationally distributed entertainment, and Nanjing Television supplies the city — its districts, its municipal government, its traffic, weather and community life.

A multi-channel municipal broadcaster

Unlike a single-channel city station, Nanjing Television developed into a multi-channel operation. The channels of the Nanjing broadcast and television group have included a Comprehensive News channel as its general flagship, an Entertainment Channel, the Education and Technology Channel, the Eighteen Channel, a Film and Television Channel, an Information Channel, a Life Channel and a Children's Channel. The station has been described as ranking at the top among China's capital-city television stations in comprehensive strength. This general-plus-thematic structure mirrors, at city scale, the way CCTV and the big provincial groups organise their portfolios: a flagship general channel carrying the main news and the broadest mix, surrounded by specialised channels that let education, film and television drama, information and children's programming each have a dedicated home.

The Education and Technology Channel

The best documented of Nanjing Television's thematic services is the Education and Technology Channel, owned by the Nanjing Broadcast and Television Corporation. Its schedule has combined drama — including the Classic Theater strand showing popular television series — with public-affairs programming addressing social issues such as the environment, education, labour, crime and poverty. Its flagship law programme, Rule of Law Live, broadcast nightly, won the annual China News Award in 2003 and maintained high ratings in the Nanjing area, working closely with police, prosecutors, courts and judicial and traffic authorities to present real cases and offer legal guidance. The talk show Dong Fang is Online, hosted by Dong Fang, focused on the emotional lives of ordinary people and on social assistance. On 27 September 2010 the channel was comprehensively revised, with Dong Fang and anchorwoman Zhang Xu co-hosting the new programme Hello Nanjing, a news and public-opinion programme that incorporated material from citizen journalists. In 2011 the channel also organised Millions of Anchorwomen, a large-scale entertainment reality show run with the Youku network to recruit aspiring presenters from across the country.

News and current affairs for the city

News is the core obligation of a Chinese municipal station, and Nanjing Television's Comprehensive News channel anchors that duty for a city of more than nine million people. Its Mandarin news and current-affairs output covers municipal politics, business, transport on and around the Yangtze, education in one of China's great university cities, and the daily life of Nanjing's 11 districts. The public-opinion and supervision format seen in programmes such as Hello Nanjing — combining reporting on the day's important Nanjing news with investigation and with public and online reaction — is characteristic of Chinese city television, where the municipal station is expected to be close enough to its audience to scrutinise local services as well as report official news. Sitting one tier below a powerful provincial broadcaster in the same city, Nanjing Television's clearest editorial territory is precisely this street-level accountability and service journalism.

Identity and branding

Nanjing Television's corporate identity reflects its city's self-image. At noon on 18 January 2013, NBS introduced its current logo — a leaf resembling an uppercase letter N — replacing a previous logo representing a demon. The broadcaster's stated rationale drew on Nanjing's urban positioning as a "modern, international, cultural and green" city. The rebrand is a small but telling detail: a municipal broadcaster markets itself as an expression of its city, and in Nanjing that means presenting a historic capital as modern and green as well as ancient.

Nanjing Television today

Today Nanjing Television remains the city broadcaster of the Jiangsu capital, operating within the Nanjing Broadcasting System Group alongside the group's radio services and its broadcast network, and running a general channel together with thematic channels spanning entertainment, education and technology, film and television, information, lifestyle and children's programming. Its identity rests on three verified foundations: its pioneering 1981 launch as the first city-level station in a Chinese provincial capital; its clear separation from the provincial Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation that shares its home city; and its service to one of China's most historically significant cities, whose past as a capital of dynasties and of the Republic gives its local news and cultural programming a depth of subject matter few municipal stations can equal.