About Television Southern

Television Southern

Television Southern (TVS) was a regional television network based in Guangzhou, Guangdong, and the Cantonese voice of southern China's television industry. Founded on 1 July 2001 as Southern Television Guangdong, it operated as a sub-network under what became Guangdong Radio and Television, as the sister station of Guangdong TV within the Southern Media Corporation. TVS ran a family of terrestrial channels (TVS-1 to TVS-5) from Guangzhou, broadcasting mainly in Cantonese with additional Mandarin programming, and its satellite service — Southern Satellite TV — was the first Cantonese satellite television channel with worldwide coverage. The network ceased to exist as an independent entity on 23 April 2014, when it was merged into the newly formed Guangdong Radio and Television; its satellite channel survives in evolved form as the Greater Bay Area channel of the provincial broadcaster. This profile is written in the past tense for the network's independent era.

Founding and identity

TVS was founded on 1 July 2001. Although technically a state-owned station, it was consciously modelled after TVB of Hong Kong and TDM of Macau — the Cantonese broadcasters across the border — and was targeted by the Chinese government at the Pearl River Delta region, the Cantonese-speaking economic heartland where Guangdong meets Hong Kong and Macau. Most of its programming and broadcasting was in Cantonese, with additional Mandarin broadcasts, and its news reports were carried in both Cantonese and Mandarin. That bilingual, Cantonese-first identity set TVS apart within mainland television, which is overwhelmingly Mandarin: TVS was the mainland's own Cantonese broadcaster, designed to serve the delta's viewers in their own language and to compete for them with the Hong Kong stations whose signals spilled across the border.

The Southern Media Corporation

On 18 January 2004, the Southern Media Corporation (SMC) was founded in Guangzhou through the merger of Guangdong Television (GDTV) and Southern Television (TVS). Under SMC, TVS became the sister station of Guangdong TV within a single corporation, and the network expanded its service to Hong Kong, Macau and North America to compete with TVB and Asia Television, the other major Cantonese-language networks. SMC was a deliberate consolidation: Guangdong's provincial television assets were gathered into one Guangzhou-based group that operated both the Mandarin-facing provincial flagship and the Cantonese-facing southern network, sharing production resources while keeping distinct channel identities. TVS kept its own channels, its own Cantonese character and its own satellite service inside that structure for a decade.

The TVS channel family

TVS operated several channels, numbered TVS-1 through TVS-5, serving Guangzhou and the delta terrestrially and by cable. Of these, TVS-2 was the satellite channel — the service known in listings as Television Southern or Southern Satellite TV — and the family's flagship for audiences beyond the province. Guangdong Radio and Television's later channel tables record the descendants of the family: TVS-2 as the Greater Bay Area satellite channel, launched from the 1 July 2001 start, formerly under names including TVS-2, TVS-★ and Southern Satellite TV, broadcasting in Cantonese by terrestrial, cable, IPTV and satellite in HD and SD; TVS-4 as a film and drama channel with Cantonese-dubbed series and lifestyle programming; and TVS-5 as a children's channel in Mandarin. The terrestrial channels anchored TVS in its home market, while the satellite service carried its name abroad.

The first Cantonese satellite channel

TVS-2's distinction was historic: it covered most of the population in China and was the first Cantonese satellite TV channel with worldwide coverage, including Australia, Canada and the USA. No Cantonese channel had previously been uplinked for the global diaspora in this way; Cantonese-speaking emigrants from Guangdong and Hong Kong, settled in large communities in North America and Australasia, could for the first time receive a satellite service in their own language from their home region. That status was protected inside China as well: when Shenzhen Satellite TV launched in 2004 with much of its early programming in Cantonese, the national regulator designated Southern TV as the sole Cantonese-language comprehensive satellite channel, and Shenzhen TV was required to switch entirely to Mandarin broadcasting. TVS thus held a formally recognised monopoly on the Cantonese satellite niche.

International carriage: the Canadian episode

The satellite channel's overseas life is documented in unusual detail by Canadian regulators. The Satellite Channel of Southern Television Guangdong appeared on Canada's list of non-Canadian programming services authorised for distribution from 22 December 2006. The service was described to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission as a 24-hour general interest third-language service, 100 per cent Cantonese-language, featuring a mix of subjects from Chinese history to current affairs, and from environmental issues to cultural exploration and entertainment. It was removed from the list on 10 December 2013 — a removal that, Canadian distributors complained, had the sudden effect of putting carriers of the service into non-compliance without notice — and in April 2014 the CRTC approved an application to reinstate it. The episode is a small but vivid record of how far TVS's satellite signal travelled: into the cable systems of Canada's Cantonese diaspora, and into the paperwork of its broadcasting regulator.

Merger into Guangdong Radio and Television

TVS's independent life ended on 23 April 2014, when it was merged into Guangdong Radio and Television (GRT), the new provincial broadcasting company formed that day from the merger of Guangdong Television, Radio Guangdong, Southern Media Corporation and Television Southern itself. GRT went on to operate nine radio channels, twelve free-to-air television channels and ten pay channels. Within GRT, the TVS channel family continued — the satellite service evolving through the Greater Bay Area identity as Guangdong's integration with Hong Kong and Macau deepened — but the TVS network as a stand-alone sub-network, with its own name and its founding mission as the delta's Cantonese broadcaster, belonged to the 2001–2014 period. Its corporate parent listings today name Guangdong Radio and Television, and its old corporate website presence is carried through the provincial broadcaster's gdtv.cn domain.

Audience and region

TVS was based in Guangzhou and covered mainly Guangdong and Hong Kong; its stated area of service extended across China and abroad via the internet and satellite. Its home ground, the Pearl River Delta, is one of the most populous and prosperous regions on earth, and one with a strong linguistic identity: Cantonese is the language of the delta's daily life, of Hong Kong's media and of the historic Chinese diaspora. TVS's wager was that this audience wanted a mainland channel of its own — modelled on the professionalism of TVB and TDM, but rooted in Guangzhou, speaking Cantonese, covering the delta's news in Cantonese and Mandarin, and beaming that identity to Cantonese communities worldwide. For thirteen years, it was the only mainland network making that wager at satellite scale.

Legacy

Television Southern's legacy is the proof of a concept: that Cantonese-language television could be made successfully from the mainland, for the mainland's own Cantonese heartland and for the world. It was the first Cantonese satellite channel with worldwide coverage; it held a regulator-recognised position as China's sole Cantonese comprehensive satellite service; it took its place in foreign carriage regimes from Canada to Australia; and its channels outlived its corporate form, passing into Guangdong Radio and Television in 2014, with its satellite service reborn as the Greater Bay Area channel — a name that itself acknowledges the regional, cross-border audience TVS was created to serve. In directories of Chinese television, TVS remains the essential entry for Cantonese broadcasting from Guangdong.