About Beijing TV

Beijing TV

Beijing TV, also known as Beijing Satellite Television or Beijing Weishi, is the flagship satellite channel of Beijing Radio and Television Station, based in the Chinese capital. Broadcasting in Mandarin from Beijing, it covers China, Asia and North America with news, drama and entertainment. It is owned through a government-owned network controlled by the Beijing Municipal People's Government. Beijing TV occupies an unusual place in Chinese television: it broadcasts from the same city as the national broadcaster, China Central Television, it shares a name history with CCTV's predecessor, and yet it is a municipal, not a national, station, serving Beijing first while distributing its flagship channel nationwide by satellite. Its official website is brtv.org.cn.

Owner: Beijing Radio and Television Station

Beijing TV is the flagship channel of Beijing Radio and Television Station, known as BRTV, formerly Beijing Media Network, or BMN. BRTV is a government-owned television network in China that broadcasts from Beijing. The channel is available only in Chinese. Broadcasts in Beijing are made on AM, FM, cable FM, digital radio, digital television and online, reflecting a combined radio and television organisation rather than a television-only company. The network's owner is the Beijing Municipal People's Government, the government of the capital municipality, which places Beijing TV in the same category of municipally owned broadcasting as Shanghai's and Tianjin's services, but with the added prominence that comes from being based in the national capital.

The present organisation was reshaped recently. On 1 June 2020, Radio Beijing Corporation, together with Beijing Television and Beiguang Media, merged into Beijing Media Network. In October 2022, BRTV took a minority ownership stake in Kuaishou, the short-video platform company. That investment is notable because it links a traditional municipal broadcaster formally to one of China's major online video platforms, at a time when Chinese broadcasters are distributing their programmes and galas through online and social platforms as well as through cable and satellite.

A necessary distinction: the old Beijing Television

Any history of Beijing TV must first separate it from an earlier station of almost the same name. China Central Television was called Beijing Television from 1958 to 1978. The national station that began test broadcasts in May 1958 and regular service that September was Peking or Beijing Television, and it was renamed China Central Television on 1 May 1978. That history belongs to CCTV, not to the present Beijing TV. The present municipal Beijing Television dates from 1979, the year after the national station took the CCTV name, which freed the Beijing Television name for the city's own station. Confusing the two produces a false 1958 founding date for the municipal channel, and reliable listings for BRTV are careful to direct readers to CCTV for the history of Beijing Television before 1978.

Founding in 1979 and early broadcasting

Beijing Media Network was founded on 16 May 1979, and BTV started broadcasting its television station on that date, on VHF channel 6. Reference listings also give the founding of Beijing Radio and Television Station as May 1979. The radio side of the organisation is older: Radio Beijing Corporation, in Chinese Beijing Renmin Guangbo Diantai, literally Beijing People's Broadcasting Station, was a family of municipal radio stations including news, music and sports in Beijing, with a first air date in 1949, and Beijing News Radio traces its start to 2 February 1949. The television station of 1979 was therefore added to an established municipal radio organisation, a pattern common in Chinese broadcasting, where provincial and municipal radio stations predate their television counterparts by many years.

For its first two decades Beijing TV was principally a city station, broadcasting terrestrially and by cable to Beijing audiences. Its transformation into a nationally available channel came, as with Jiangsu, Shanghai and other leading stations, with satellite distribution at the end of the 1990s.

Satellite broadcasting from 1998

BTV started satellite broadcasts on 1 January 1998, during the drive by regional television stations to begin nationwide broadcasting, and in line with the government's plan to increase the percentage of television viewers from 85 percent to 90 percent by 2000. That context matters: the satellite launches of 1997 and 1998, which included Jiangsu TV in December 1997 and Beijing TV on New Year's Day 1998, were not isolated commercial decisions but part of a national expansion of television coverage in which provincial and municipal flagship channels were uplinked to satellite and carried by cable systems across China.

Since then the flagship service has been known as Beijing Satellite Television, Beijing Weishi. It covers China, Asia and North America, according to the network's own description. Cable systems in urban mainland China usually carry all the CCTV channels, the channels of their own municipal or provincial station, and the main satellite channels of other province-level stations, and metropolitan stations such as BTV are among the additional channels carried in that way. Beijing TV's satellite presence therefore depends on the same national cable carriage system as every other provincial satellite channel, while its home terrestrial and cable presence in Beijing remains its core local audience.

The BRTV channel family

Beijing TV the satellite channel is the first of a family of channels operated by the group, formerly numbered sequentially as BTV-1, BTV-2 and so on. The group has ten primary channels. They include Beijing Television itself, the flagship satellite service; the BTV Arts Channel; the BTV Science and Education Channel; the BTV Entertainment Channel, devoted to film and television drama; the BTV Finance Channel; the BTV Sports Channel; the BTV Lifestyle strand within the family; the BTV News Channel; and the children's service associated with the Kaku brand. Alongside the primary channels, the network provides BTV International Channel for overseas viewers, available on Dish Network in the United States, and the BTV Theater Channel, a digital television drama channel.

That portfolio shows a full municipal broadcaster's range: a general satellite flagship, local arts, science, finance, sports and news services for Beijing viewers, a children's brand, and an international service for the diaspora. The satellite channel draws on that whole production base for its news, drama and entertainment schedule, while the specialist channels serve the capital's local audience in greater depth. Listings of the group's radio services show the same breadth on the audio side, with multiple FM and AM frequencies for news, music, sports and other formats, all also available via the internet as of 2021.

Programming: news, drama and entertainment

The satellite channel broadcasts in Mandarin from Beijing, covering China, Asia and North America with news, drama and entertainment. As the capital's station, its news carries particular weight on Beijing municipal affairs, national events taking place in Beijing, and major ceremonies and public events in the capital, while its drama and entertainment compete in the same national prime-time market as the other provincial satellite channels. Its schedule follows the standard pattern of a Chinese flagship satellite channel: news through the day, including the nationally relayed evening news that satellite stations carry, prime-time television drama in the evening, and entertainment and gala programming at weekends and on public holidays.

Because BRTV is a combined radio, television and online broadcaster, its programmes are not confined to the broadcast schedule. Broadcasts are available online as well as on digital television and cable in Beijing, and the group's later connection with Kuaishou reflects the distribution of broadcaster content through short-video and streaming platforms that now accompanies satellite transmission for all of China's major television groups.

The Spring Festival Global Gala

Beijing Television's best-known entertainment event is its Spring Festival Global Gala. BTV began producing the show in 2010 with the aim of promoting Chinese culture. Among the many Spring Festival galas produced by local networks across China, the BTV gala stands out for its international cast and its mix of Eastern and Western cultures. Reporting on one edition described the gala as aired at 7:30 p.m. on 24 January, lasting 130 minutes, featuring nearly 150 foreigners, with artists from around 20 countries and more than 700 Chinese artists participating. Stations in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States were to broadcast the show at a later time. The gala has no language barrier in its presentation: its hosts spoke both Chinese and English. While CCTV's gala featured Chinese-language performances such as crosstalk and sketches, the BTV gala focused on both Chinese and Western music, dances, acrobatics and magic tricks, with famous foreign performers invited since 2010.

The gala illustrates how a municipal channel uses a festival event to reach beyond its city. A Beijing gala that is bilingual, internationally cast and sold or relayed to stations in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States is aimed at a global Chinese and international audience, not only at Beijing households. Later editions of the Beijing Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala have continued to be scheduled for the first day of the New Year and to attract wide attention for their line-ups of film, music and Olympic-related performers, keeping the event as the channel's signature seasonal production.

Children's programming and Kaku

Within the BRTV family, children's programming is associated with the Kaku brand. The Kaku Children's Animation Spring Festival Gala, also known as the BTV or BRTV Kaku Children's Animation Spring Festival Gala, is an annual animation-themed gala made by Beijing Radio and Television Station's Kaku network, based on characters from the children's television station Kaku Kids, starring Kaku's own original mascot characters and characters Kaku is licensed to use. It dates from 25 January 2009 and has continued as an annual event. A related show, Kaku's Big Plan, can be considered a live version of the gala, performing many of its storylines in live action. The Kaku example shows the depth of the municipal group behind the satellite channel: it maintains a dedicated children's brand with its own mascots, galas and spin-off programmes, alongside the general, news, arts, finance and sports channels.

Distribution and availability

Beijing TV is available in Chinese only, and its broadcasts in Beijing are on digital television, cable and online, with the wider BRTV group also using AM, FM and cable FM for its radio services. The satellite channel's stated coverage of China, Asia and North America is delivered through satellite and cable carriage and through the BTV International Channel for overseas viewers, including carriage on Dish Network. For viewers inside China, the practical route to Beijing TV is the same as for other provincial satellite channels: the local cable or IPTV system, which carries the flagship satellite services from across the country alongside CCTV and the viewer's own local channels.

Place in Chinese television

Beijing TV's significance rests on its position rather than on a single programme. It is the capital city's own broadcaster, founded in 1979, uplinked to satellite on 1 January 1998, reshaped by the 2020 merger into Beijing Media Network, and now operating as Beijing Radio and Television Station. It competes nationally from the city that also houses CCTV, it speaks for Beijing in a way the national broadcaster does not, and its Spring Festival Global Gala gives it an internationally visible entertainment brand. For directory purposes its key facts are: channel, Beijing TV or Beijing Satellite Television; owner, Beijing Radio and Television Station, formerly Beijing Media Network; owner government, Beijing Municipal People's Government; headquarters, Beijing; language, Mandarin; television founded 16 May 1979; satellite broadcasts from 1 January 1998; official website, brtv.org.cn.