About Dalian Television

Dalian Television

Dalian Television is the city television broadcaster of Dalian, the major port city in southern Liaoning Province in northeast China. Known by the initials DLTV, it is the television arm of Dalian's municipal radio and television operation, serving the Dalian metropolitan area with Mandarin news, drama and local programming. Dalian is a prefecture-level city with sub-provincial status, and its television station sits at the city level of China's broadcasting system — below the national broadcaster and the Liaoning provincial broadcaster, and responsible for the city itself. The modern organisation behind the station, Dalian Radio and Television, was officially set up on 15 October 2010, bringing Dalian's radio, television and broadcasting administration together, and it operates eight television channels, from a main news channel to specialist life, public, film, children's, finance and shopping services. English-language documentation of Dalian Television is thinner than for China's national and provincial broadcasters, so this profile records what is verifiably documented about the station, its channels and its radio predecessor, and sets it in the verified context of the city and the Chinese television system.

Overview: a city broadcaster for a port metropolis

Dalian Television's job is defined by its level. It is not a satellite channel beaming a provincial service across China, and it is not a national network. It is the municipal station of one specific city, and its programmes are made for the people of that city. The task assigned to it in this profile — municipal general and thematic channels carrying Mandarin news, drama and local programming for the Dalian metro area — matches the structure documented for the broadcaster: a general news channel at the head of the family, surrounded by thematic channels. That pattern, a flagship general service plus specialists, is the standard shape of a large Chinese city station, and Dalian, as the second largest city in Liaoning and one of the largest cities in northeast China, supports one of the fuller versions of it, with eight television channels in total.

The city it serves: Dalian, Liaoning

Dalian is a city and port in southern Liaoning, at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes its position precisely: it has a good deepwater harbour that is ice-free throughout the year, and an extremely important strategic position commanding the entrance to the Bo Hai and maritime access to Tianjin. The modern city consists of the formerly independent cities of Dalian and Lüshun, amalgamated as Lüda in 1950; in 1981 the name Dalian was restored and Lüshun became a district of the city. The population recorded for 2020 was 4,913,879 for the city and 7,450,785 for the urban agglomeration — the metropolitan audience a station like Dalian Television addresses. Dalian's development was shaped by foreign powers drawn to its port: transformed by the Russians from 1898 into a commercial port named Dalny, it was developed further by the Japanese after 1905 under the name Dairen into a modern city and a major industrial centre. In 1984 Dalian was designated one of China's "open" cities, spurring further economic growth. Today it is a major port, a financial, shipping and logistics centre for northeast Asia, and a popular tourist destination known for its beaches and its Russian- and Japanese-era architecture. A city television station here serves a maritime, outward-looking audience whose working life revolves around a port, shipping, trade and tourism.

Radio roots: Dalian Radio Station, 1945–1946

As in Qingdao and many other Chinese cities, broadcasting in Dalian began with radio, and the radio station is a documented predecessor within the city's broadcasting family. Historical accounts of Dalian broadcasting record that in December 1945 the Dalian municipal authorities appointed Kang Minzhuang to take over the city's central broadcasting bureau and name it Dalian Radio Station, with Kang as its first director; the former site of the station stands at No. 162 Minquan Street in Shahekou District, in the courtyard of what is now the Dalian News Media Group. Dalian Radio was officially broadcast on 16 January 1946, opening with current affairs news, local news and government announcements, and relaying Xinhua News Agency material and commentaries. It broadcast on a wavelength of 281.7 metres, a frequency of 1065 kHz and a power of 1 kW, and accounts describe it as one of the earliest people's radio stations established in the liberated areas after Yan'an Xinhua Radio Station, one that never interrupted broadcasting from its birth. On 1 May 1947, following the establishment of the Kwantung Office, Dalian Radio was renamed Kanto Radio, with the call sign XGTR, and in early 1948 it launched short-wave broadcasting and added an English programme. Television in Dalian came later and inherited this radio tradition of city news and public announcements.

The modern organisation: Dalian Radio and Television, 2010

The organisational milestone documented for the modern broadcaster is 15 October 2010, when Dalian Radio and Television was officially set up. Channel references describe its composition: it was formed from 14 enterprises and institutions owned by Dalian People's Broadcasting Station, Dalian Television Station and the former Radio and Television Bureau. In other words, the city's radio station, its television station and its broadcasting administration were combined into a single radio and television organisation — the same kind of municipal consolidation that took place in city after city in China. For viewers, the change meant that Dalian Television stopped being a stand-alone station and became the television part of a unified city media operation, sharing management, resources and strategy with Dalian's radio services. The station name and the DLTV initials survived the reorganisation, and it is under this combined structure that the eight-channel line-up described below is operated.

The channel line-up: eight television channels

Dalian Radio and Television has eight television channels, documented as covering news integration, life, public affairs, style, film and television, children, finance and shopping. The numbered services give the family its shape. DLTV1 is the news comprehensive channel — the main channel — which took the news comprehensive name in 1999: the flagship carrying the city's main news and general programming. DLTV2 is the life channel, devoted to everyday living in the city. DLTV3 is the public channel, launched in 2000. DLTV5 is the film and television channel, described in channel references as an influential professional channel — the natural home of the drama and film content in the family's output. DLTV7 is the finance and economics channel, a fitting specialism for a port and financial centre. Around these numbered services sit the style channel, the children's channel and the shopping channel, completing the eight. The structure is significant: only the first channel is general; the rest divide the audience by subject and age, which is how a city station with limited resources covers the range of interests in a metropolis of several million people.

News and local programming

News is the defining duty of the main channel, and local news is the content no other level of Chinese television can supply for Dalian. National television reports China; Liaoning provincial television, based in the provincial capital Shenyang, reports the province; Dalian Television reports Dalian — its municipal government, its districts, its port, its weather on the Liaodong Peninsula and its street-level life. That local function now extends beyond the television screen. An academic study of Dalian's cultural tourism communication identified the official accounts of the Dalian Radio and Television News Center, under the name "News Dalian", as the leading official voice among the city's cultural tourism communicators, publishing Dalian news, announcements and tourist attractions. In other words, the newsroom behind DLTV's news channel also operates one of the city's principal official short-video and social accounts — a documented example of a Chinese city broadcaster carrying its local news function onto the platforms where audiences now spend their time, while the television channel itself remains the formal, scheduled service.

Entertainment and remembered programmes

Entertainment has always sat alongside news on Dalian's screens, and one programme is documented in local recollection in unusual detail. "Long Time Family Fun" was a Dalian Television variety show broadcast from 1999, in which each episode took a theme and brought together guests ranging from well-known actors to ordinary people from all walks of Dalian life — mounted police couples, models, newly married couples and young women footballers among them — creating what accounts describe as a sense of home warmth for Dalian audiences. The programme team was headed by director Bai Chengjian, and its hosts included Li Yong, who later moved up to CCTV to host entertainment programmes, and, for a period, Bao Jie, who had previously hosted a Dalian TV fashion programme. The detail matters less as nostalgia than as evidence of what a city station did in that era: it made its own studio entertainment, rooted in the city's own people, rather than simply relaying national shows. On the children's channel, trade press reported in 2017 that the animated series Chuck Chicken, also known as KungFu Chicken in China, aired on the Dalian Television kids channel alongside other major Chinese children's services — evidence that DLTV's children's channel also carried acquired animation for its young audience.

Programming, language and the Dalian audience

Dalian Television broadcasts in Mandarin. Under China's Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, effective from 1 January 2001, Putonghua — standard Mandarin — is the basic broadcasting language for radio and television stations, as set out in Article 12 of the law. Dalian gives that rule a local colouring: many of the city's original inhabitants were farmers and fishermen who had come from Shandong Province during the great Chuang Guandong migration, and native Dalianites traditionally speak a Dalian dialect belonging to the Jiao-Liao Mandarin subgroup, spoken in parts of Shandong and Liaoning. A television newsreader in Dalian therefore speaks the national standard to an audience whose grandparents may have spoken a Shandong-flavoured local Mandarin at home — the everyday negotiation between national standard and local identity that city television performs across China. In programme terms, the mix documented for Dalian — news on the main channel, drama and film on the film and television channel, life and public services on their own channels, finance, children and shopping alongside — is the practical expression of the brief in this profile: Mandarin news, drama and local programming for the Dalian metro area.

Place in China's television system

Dalian Television occupies the city tier of a system that was deliberately built in tiers. A broadcasting policy determined in 1983 governed broadcasting at four levels — central, provincial, prefectural or city, and county — and spurred dramatic growth in the number of stations. Academic writing on Chinese television notes that there are up to 300 city-level television stations in the country which produce their own programmes, including news, current affairs, lifestyle and entertainment shows, while smaller grassroots stations mainly relay content from higher levels. City stations tend to stay away from the most expensive productions and build their identity on local content — exactly the position DLTV holds in Liaoning, where it coexists with, rather than competes head-on against, the provincial satellite broadcaster in Shenyang and the national channels of CCTV. Its 2010 consolidation into Dalian Radio and Television, uniting radio, television and the former broadcasting bureau, also reflects the national pattern of combining bigger television stations in developed regions into broadcasting groups together with radio stations and network companies.

Significance

Dalian Television matters because Dalian matters: a sub-provincial port metropolis of about seven and a half million people in its urban agglomeration, China's northernmost ice-free seaport and the chief commercial port of northeast China, needs a broadcaster of its own, and DLTV is it. Its documented record is not that of a satellite entertainment giant, and this profile has not pretended otherwise. It is the record of a municipal station with radio roots in the people's station of January 1946, a main news channel named as such in 1999, a public channel added in 2000, a memorable local variety tradition, and a modern eight-channel family operated since October 2010 by a unified Dalian Radio and Television. For the audience inside the Dalian metro area, that combination — a flagship for city news, specialists for life, film, finance and children, and a news centre that also speaks for the city on social platforms — is the local layer of Chinese television, doing the job that neither Beijing nor Shenyang can do in its place.