About Chengdu Television

Chengdu Television

Chengdu Television is the municipal television service of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in western China, operated by Chengdu Radio and Television, often abbreviated CDRTV. It runs a family of numbered channels — CDTV-1 to CDTV-6 — covering news, economic information, urban life, film and television literature, public and livelihood programming, and children. Chengdu Radio and Television is described as one of the most powerful mainstream media organisations in western China and as the provincial-capital broadcaster for Chengdu. Its programmes are in Mandarin, in the Chinese language as channel listings record for CDTV-1 and CDTV-5, and they are made for a Chengdu audience: the politics, economy and cultural life of a city of more than twenty million people, presented, as the station puts it, from multiple angles and in an all-round way.

A city station in the Sichuan capital

Chengdu is situated in the west of the Sichuan Basin, in the centre of the Chengdu Plain. The 2020 census recorded a population of 20,937,757, making it one of China's most populous cities and the traditional hub of western China. Its history can be traced back some 2,400 years, and through thousands of years its original name and its position as the capital and significant centre of politics, commerce and military affairs of the Sichuan area — once called Shu — have remained unchanged. Benefiting from the Dujiangyan irrigation project, constructed in 256 BC and still functioning, Sichuan is reputed as the “Land of Abundance.” Chengdu was the place where the earliest paper currency, Jiaozi, was first printed, and it has been famous since the Han and Tang dynasties for brocades and embroideries. A city broadcaster in Chengdu therefore serves an audience with an exceptionally continuous civic identity — and a famously strong local culture of food, tea and leisure, all of which find their way into its schedules.

Distinct from Sichuan Radio and Television

Chengdu Television is separate from Sichuan Radio and Television, the provincial network, although both are based in Chengdu. Sichuan Radio and Television is owned by the Sichuan provincial government, was launched on 1 May 1960 as a local television network in Sichuan and began broadcasting nationally on 1 August 2003; it operates the SCTV family of channels, running to SCTV-11, Kangba TV. Chengdu Television works at the level below: where the provincial broadcaster's satellite channel addresses the whole country, CDTV's numbered channels are ground channels for the city, concerned with Chengdu news, Chengdu services and Chengdu life. The similarity of the names — Sichuan Television and Chengdu Television, SCTV and CDTV — conceals two different institutions with different owners and audiences, a distinction essential to understanding broadcasting in any Chinese provincial capital.

The CDTV channel family

Chengdu Television has six analogue television channels. CDTV-1, the Chengdu News Comprehensive Channel — also listed as the Chengdu News Channel — provides authoritative news information for the city and is the station's flagship. CDTV-2 is the Economic Information Service Channel, highlighting economic information and service as its defining features. CDTV-3 is the Urban Life Channel, created by the station as the “Happiness Channel 3,” devoted to city life. CDTV-4, the Film and Television Literature Channel, is the professional channel for film and television drama and literature. CDTV-5 is the Public Channel, associated with the founding of Chengdu people's livelihood news — the grassroots, everyday-concerns journalism that is a hallmark of Chinese city television. CDTV-6 is the Children's Channel. Beyond the six analogue channels, the station's offer has included a daily television shopping channel and digital services such as Chengdu digital mobile TV, together with specialist digital channels including the Gourmet Tianfu channel, described as the only paid digital television channel in Chengdu at the time of its listing — a fitting specialism in a city famous for food.

CDTV-6 and the Children's Channel

The Children's Channel is the CDTV service whose launch is documented in the most detail. Chengdu Television Children's Channel, officially numbered CDTV-6, produces and broadcasts various kinds of programmes for children and families and regularly organises intellectual activities that interact with audiences. It was founded in accordance with the spirit of relevant documents of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Sichuan provincial bureau, and the requirements of the Chengdu Municipal Committee and Municipal Government. A preparatory group was set up in November 2004; the channel began to transmit pilot signals on 1 February 2005 and was officially launched on 1 June 2005. It is one of the six existing channels of Chengdu Television Station, operates under the leadership of the Chengdu Radio and Television Bureau — Chengdu Radio and Television Station — and uses the same operation system and mechanism as the station's other channels. Its careful, regulation-led launch is a small case study in how Chinese city channels are created: by national policy, provincial guidance and municipal decision acting together.

News, livelihood and city life programming

News is concentrated on CDTV-1, whose remit is authoritative news information for Chengdu, while CDTV-5's public, livelihood orientation covers the everyday concerns — prices, services, neighbourhood problems — that city stations handle best because they work closest to their audience. CDTV-1 has also experimented with lighter interview formats: its network quarterly micro-interview strand Life View, on the News Comprehensive Channel, featured, in October 2021, the baritone Liao Changyong, born in Chengdu's Pidu District and president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, talking about his music, competitions and his feelings for his home city during the 13th Golden Bell Awards for Chinese Music, held in Chengdu. CDTV-3's urban life brief and the station's food channels extend the same localism into lifestyle: happiness, eating and everyday pleasure treated as serious subjects for a city that regards them as such.

Documentaries: Chengdu Life and The Rise of the Big City

Chengdu Radio and Television's documentary work has travelled beyond China. The documentary series Chengdu Life, produced by CDRTV, tells the stories of foreigners living in Sichuan province and covers tourism and the culture of the region, revealing the recipes of traditional Sichuan cuisine; fully adapted into Russian, it began broadcasting to Russian audiences through the TV BRICS network in October 2020, after Chengdu Radio and Television and TV BRICS signed a memorandum of cooperation in the spring of 2020. At home, the station spent half a year producing the three-episode large-scale political documentary The Rise of the Big City — Chengdu Practice of the New Development Concept, under the guidance of the Propaganda Department of the Chengdu Municipal Party Committee; it was broadcast in evening prime time across Chengdu Radio and Television's channels over three nights in April, accompanied by the station's new-media matrix. Together the two productions show the range expected of a big-city Chinese broadcaster: outward-looking cultural export on one side, and authoritative documentation of its own city's development on the other.

Sport and the Universiade

Sport has given Chengdu Television citywide moments. When the Youth Song Festival for the Chengdu Universiade — the World University Games hosted by the city — was staged at the Sports Center of Chengdu High-tech Zone, Chengdu Radio and Television Station broadcast the event live through the official Universiade website and simultaneously across many network platforms, and then rebroadcast it on all six of its channels, with CDTV-1, CDTV-2, CDTV-3, CDTV-4, CDTV-5 and CDTV-6 each carrying the festival in an evening slot. The episode demonstrates a practical advantage of the numbered channel family: a single station can give one civic event blanket coverage across news, economy, life, film, public and children's services at once, turning a concert into a shared city occasion.

Food, pandas and the Chengdu it reflects

No account of Chengdu Television is complete without the city it reflects. Chengdu is the centre of Sichuan cuisine, renowned for fiery and bold tastes, particularly the pungency and spiciness resulting from liberal use of garlic and chillies and the unique flavour of Sichuan pepper; dishes such as kung pao chicken belong to its Chengdu substyle, and UNESCO has declared Chengdu a City of Gastronomy — the first city in Asia to receive that designation. The station's food programming, from the Gourmet Tianfu digital channel to the cuisine sequences inside Chengdu Life, draws directly on that heritage. Chengdu is also the home of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, established in 1987 near the city, and Sichuan is the homeland of the giant panda; panda imagery is a symbol of Sichuan that appears across Chengdu's public life. A municipal broadcaster's schedule of food channels, life channels and cultural documentaries is, in Chengdu's case, a faithful portrait of what the city itself prizes: flavour, ease and local pride.

Place in China's television system

Chengdu Television operates in a national system overseen since 2018 by the National Radio and Television Administration, in which China Central Television is the national broadcaster, provincial stations such as Sichuan Radio and Television can transmit by satellite, and municipal stations broadcast to their own cities as ground and cable services. Cable systems in urban China carry the channels of the relevant municipality and province alongside the national services, so CDTV's six channels sit in Chengdu homes beside SCTV's. Within that structure, Chengdu Television is among the strongest of China's city broadcasters — a mainstream medium for the west of the country whose numbered channels map neatly onto the life of its city: news on CDTV-1, money on CDTV-2, daily happiness on CDTV-3, drama on CDTV-4, people's livelihood on CDTV-5 and children on CDTV-6. For Chengdu's residents, it remains the station that shows Chengdu to itself.