About China Entertainment Television

China Entertainment Television

China Entertainment Television (CETV) was a Mandarin-language satellite entertainment channel founded in Hong Kong by the veteran broadcaster Robert Chua. It was famous from its launch for a single editorial promise — "no sex, no violence and no news" — a family-entertainment formula designed to make a foreign-based channel acceptable to audiences and authorities in mainland China. Experimental broadcasts began on 1 December 1994, and the regular 24-hour service launched on 11 March 1995. The channel later moved its operations to Shenzhen, passed through the ownership of AOL Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting and then TOM Group in partnership with TBS Networks, and ended broadcasting on 31 December 2016.

Founder: Robert Chua

CETV was the creation of Robert Chua Wah-Peng, a Singaporean broadcaster who had settled in Hong Kong in 1967 at the age of 21 after working as a producer at Radio and Television Singapore. Chua was part of the launch of TVB in 1967 and created Enjoy Yourself Tonight, the TVB variety show that became one of the world's longest-running live shows, lasting 28 years. In 1974 he and his wife Peggy founded Robert Chua Productions. Chua had been travelling to China on business since 1979, as the country began to open up, and had been thinking about a Chinese channel since 1986, when Hutchison Whampoa hired him as a consultant on a Hong Kong cable television licence application. CETV, which he founded in 1994, was the product of that long preparation: a Chinese-language family channel beamed by satellite into China and around Asia.

"No sex, no violence, no news"

The channel's defining idea was its content formula. "CETV will have No Sex, No Violence, No News," Chua declared, a line he repeated throughout the channel's early years. He argued the point by reference to Walt Disney: "You don't have to produce sex and violence to make money. Walt Disney made a lot of money. I believe I can do the same thing here by following his lead." The formula was both a moral stance and a commercial strategy for the mainland market: "What I'm doing with CETV is really Government-friendly. I've been in China since 1979 — I understand the cultural sensitivity." Critics added "no viewers and no revenues" to the slogan; Chua conceded that revenue had not reached earlier projections but insisted the viewers were there.

Launch in 1994–1995

A 100-day countdown to the official launch began on 1 December 1994, with experimental broadcasts from that date, and CETV began full 24-hour broadcasting in Mandarin on 11 March 1995. In its first year of operations, CETV became the first satellite television channel outside China to jointly produce a live New Year variety show with a mainland province, Shandong, followed by other provinces — a landmark in the cautious opening of mainland television to outside broadcasters. Chua said the channel had built a loyal following among Asian viewers, including some 33 million households in China which could access its signal, a figure also cited when the channel was relaunched under Time Warner: at the alliance in 2000, CETV was described as a 24-hour Mandarin family entertainment channel reaching an estimated 33 million households in Asia.

Money troubles in the late 1990s

CETV's finances were precarious almost from the start. Chua and Peggy invested millions of US dollars of their own money in the project alongside other private shareholders, but advertising revenue proved much harder to generate than expected because of competition from other channels and a lack of hard audience data, a problem affecting all China broadcasters. Several attempts to recapitalise the company failed. A consortium of five Chinese companies agreed to take an 80 percent shareholding but ultimately did not fulfil its financial commitments, and by January 1998 Chua was fighting publicly to save the station, threatening legal action over the failed purchase, cutting pay in a bid to keep CETV operating, and at one point even appealing to viewer donations. Chua later called the experience a very expensive education in doing business in China.

The Time Warner alliance

Rescue came from the United States. AOL Time Warner became a CETV shareholder in 2001 — the partnership was struck in June 2000, when Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) Asia Pacific agreed a strategic alliance with the Hong Kong-based broadcaster. Under the deal, Turner provided the channel with selected programming and worked closely with CETV to produce original Chinese-language fare, breaking into the Chinese-language programming market through the alliance. Chua remained chairman of CETV and continued to oversee the channel's content, while remaining a shareholder. For a channel that had nearly collapsed two years earlier, the backing of the world's largest media group of the period was a striking turnaround, and it rested on exactly the asset Chua had built: a family-safe Mandarin channel with mainland reach.

TOM Group ownership and the Shenzhen years

In 2003 CETV was acquired by TOM Group, the Hong Kong-based media conglomerate; the broadcaster was thereafter owned jointly by TOM Group and TBS Networks. The station, originally Hong Kong-based, later moved across the border to Shenzhen. Under TOM Group the channel continued as a Mandarin family entertainment service, but it no longer commanded the attention of its pioneering years: mainland provincial satellite channels had multiplied, and the scarcity value of a Hong Kong-based, mainland-friendly entertainment channel had faded. TOM Group kept the service running for more than a decade after the acquisition before finally closing it.

Closure in 2016

TOM Group closed CETV in 2016, and the channel ended broadcasting on 31 December 2016, twenty-two years after its experimental launch. The closure passed with little of the public emotion that attended the end of ATV's terrestrial channels in Hong Kong the same year, reflecting CETV's position as a satellite service aimed mainly at mainland households rather than a local Hong Kong institution. Its founder had by then returned to production work in Hong Kong, including the 2015 reality show Someone Who Cares for TVB, and in 2020 he was named an International TV Distribution Hall of Fame honoree by VideoAge, with CETV cited among the achievements of his career.

Significance

China Entertainment Television occupies a distinctive place in Asian television history. It was one of the first satellite channels built specifically for mainland China from outside the mainland, and the first outside channel to co-produce a live New Year variety show with a mainland province. Its "no sex, no violence, no news" formula, often mocked, was a serious attempt to solve the central problem facing every foreign broadcaster of the 1990s: how to be entertaining enough to win audiences and safe enough to be tolerated by mainland authorities. That the channel survived for twenty-two years — through near-bankruptcy, a Time Warner partnership and a change of owner — suggests the formula worked better than its critics allowed, even if the advertising market Chua hoped for never fully materialised.

At a glance

China Entertainment Television was founded by Robert Chua in Hong Kong in 1994, began experimental broadcasts on 1 December 1994 and launched its regular 24-hour Mandarin service on 11 March 1995. It broadcast family entertainment by satellite across Asia, reaching an estimated 33 million households at its peak, later operated from Shenzhen under TOM Group and TBS Networks, and closed on 31 December 2016. Its legacy is the proof of concept it offered in the 1990s: that a privately founded, Hong Kong-based satellite channel could build a mainland Chinese audience at all.