About Chongqing News Channel

Chongqing News Channel

Chongqing News Channel is the dedicated news channel of Chongqing Broadcasting Group, the municipal broadcaster of Chongqing in south-western China. It broadcasts Mandarin rolling news and current affairs for the municipality, distinct from the Chongqing TV satellite flagship. Regional ratings reporting has listed the Chongqing TV news channel among the municipality's main channels, and the channel is known for Daily 630, its long-running evening news magazine whose title records its 6:30 start time. Chongqing is a directly administered municipality — a city governed at provincial level — which gives its broadcaster, and its news channel, an unusually large territory and remit for a city station.

Chongqing Broadcasting Group is a government-owned television network representing the culture and development of south-west China, founded in 1981 and based in Chongqing. Its news channel provides the continuous journalism service within a group whose channels cover news, entertainment, fashion and education.

Ownership and Chongqing Broadcasting Group

Chongqing Broadcasting Group, or CBG, is the broadcasting organisation of the Chongqing municipality. Company references describe it as a government-owned network founded in 1981, providing television channels covering news, entertainment, fashion, education and more, together with radio services. Chongqing Radio, within the same broadcasting family, has operated five specialised channels including news, economy, traffic, music and city life. The television news channel is the group's specialist journalism outlet, produced in Chongqing for Chongqing, and institutionally separate from the satellite channel that carries the municipality's image to the rest of China.

A municipality the size of a province

Chongqing is not an ordinary city market. The municipality covers a vast area of south-western China around the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, taking in dense urban districts, industrial suburbs, county towns and rural counties, with a population in the tens of millions. Its broadcaster therefore performs the role that a provincial station performs elsewhere, and its news channel must report both metropolitan stories — transport across a mountainous, river-divided city, industry, property and public services — and affairs in distant counties administered from Chongqing. That provincial scale explains why Chongqing sustains a full dedicated news channel of its own.

Daily 630 and the channel's identity

The news channel is known for Daily 630, the news magazine whose name records its early-evening slot. A named, appointment-to-view evening magazine gives a rolling news channel a flagship: the programme by which local audiences judge the channel's reporting on Chongqing life, public affairs and livelihood issues. In Chinese city and provincial television, such early-evening news magazines are often the most locally rooted programmes on air, handling consumer complaints, municipal services and neighbourhood stories alongside the day's headlines, and Daily 630 performs that role for Chongqing within the news channel's schedule.

History of television in Chongqing

Scholarly histories of Chongqing broadcasting describe a local station that grew into a conglomerate. In 1989 a new channel, CQTV-2, was launched specialising in local financial news and entertainment, financially independent but administratively under Chongqing Television. In 1994 and 1996 two further services appeared, Chongqing Cable TV Network and Chongqing Education TV. The consolidated CQTV came to comprise twelve television channels, each specialised for different audiences. The news channel emerged from this specialisation: as the group multiplied channels by genre, continuous news acquired a channel of its own rather than windows on a general service.

The red television episode

Chongqing television became internationally known in 2011-2012 when Chongqing Satellite TV, under municipal party chief Bo Xilai, suspended commercial advertising and replaced prime-time drama and news with 'red culture' programming, including a programme of Maoist anthems called Daily Red Songs. After Bo's removal in March 2012, China Daily reported that the satellite station resumed popular drama series and news programmes in prime time, and red programming was reduced. The episode concerned the satellite channel rather than the news channel, but it forms part of the institutional history of the group within which the news channel operates, and it demonstrated Chongqing television's national political salience.

Programming and editorial focus

The channel broadcasts Mandarin rolling news and current affairs for Chongqing. Its agenda combines municipal government and policy, the Yangtze River economy, transport in a city of bridges, tunnels and steep terrain, industry, education and public safety, with national and international news for context. Rolling coverage matters in Chongqing for practical reasons: summer heat, heavy rain, river conditions and mountain transport incidents are recurring stories on which residents rely on local television. Ratings reporting that lists the news channel among the municipality's main channels indicates that this local focus holds a significant audience against national competition.

Digital and converged media in Chongqing

Chongqing's mainstream media also operate CQNEWS.net, established on 20 December 2000 with the approval of the State Council Information Office as a key provincial-level news website. In 2009 CQNEWS was merged with the Chongqing broadcasting news site under Chongqing Daily News Group, Chongqing Broadcasting Group and the municipal state-owned cultural assets company, developing into Chongqing's first portal news website combining newspaper, radio, television, mobile news and other media. The television news channel's journalism circulates within this converged environment, in which Chongqing's official news is produced across print, broadcast and online platforms under shared municipal direction.

Distribution and audience

Chongqing News Channel is a terrestrial and cable service for the Chongqing municipality, broadcast in Mandarin from Chongqing. Its audience is the municipality itself — urban districts and administered counties alike — rather than the national audience of the satellite channel. Technical modernisation has supported that distribution: in 2008 Net Insight announced that Chongqing Television had selected its Nimbra platform to build a digital terrestrial television network for contribution and distribution across the city, rolling out in phases through 2009. Viewers find the news channel within the CQTV family in local lineups, alongside the group's entertainment, film, children's and other specialised channels.

The channel in context

Chongqing News Channel is the journalism service of a broadcaster whose scale matches its unusual city: a provincial-level municipality, a group founded in 1981 that grew to a dozen specialised channels, and a newsroom known nationally through the red-television episode and locally through Daily 630. For Chongqing's residents it provides the municipal layer of Chinese television news — continuous, Mandarin-language coverage of a great Yangtze city and its counties, produced by the group that has spoken for Chongqing on air for more than four decades.

The news channel and the mountain city

["Chongqing's physical character shapes its news channel's journalism in ways visitors to the city quickly understand. Built across steep hills between the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, Chongqing depends on an extraordinary stock of bridges, tunnels, cableways and rail lines, and its weather — extreme summer heat, fog and heavy rain — is itself a recurring news story with direct effects on transport, construction and health. A municipal news channel in such a city functions partly as an information utility: residents check it for the practical state of their city as much as for politics or policy. Daily 630's early-evening position suits that function, catching commuters and households at the day's turning point with the news magazine format Hong Kong and mainland audiences associate with livelihood reporting. At the same time the municipality's provincial-level status means the channel covers affairs — rural counties, river-basin development, inland shipping and industry along the Yangtze — that in any other province would belong to a provincial station. Chongqing Broadcasting Group's own development, from the 1989 launch of CQTV-2 through the twelve-channel consolidated CQTV described by scholars, gave the municipality the channel capacity to sustain that double role, and the news channel is where the double role is most visible: a city channel with a province's responsibilities."]