By Guo Qiang
One month after the government's war on illegal video-sharing sites, China's first-ever State-level online TV station, funded by flagship national broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), officially launched Monday, spearheading the government's latest attempt to overhaul the online video market that has been marred by copyright issues.
The 200-million-yuan China Network TV station, or CNTV. cn, is china's fourth online TV portal launched by a real TV network, after Hunan Province's tv.hunantv. com, Hong Kong's Phoenix TV, and Shanghai's smgbb.cn.
A plan to set up CNTV.cn was announced on the website of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, China's broadcast watchdog, which waged a war on copyright violations by shutting down several of China's widely popular media file-sharing BitTorrent websites, such as BTChina.net, allegedly to clamp down on pornographic and unlicensed content.
The official launch was headed by Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, at a ceremony Monday, a high-profile move showcasing the site's significance.
Internet users can watch programs broadcast by all channels of CCTV by downloading a video client Cbox. All programs are free of charge and support high-definition mode.
So far the site only has a Chinese-language version.
Apart from traditional channels featuring general news, sports news and variety shows, the website also taps into the online video-sharing market and contains two sub-sites, xiyou.cctv.com and bugu.cctv.com, for video uploading and play on-demand.
Zhao Lifan, the general counsel of CCTV.com, told the Xinhua News Agency that the foremost task of CNTV.cn is to realize the real-time online broadcast of all 20 CCTV channels and add more functions including on-demand, search, download and interactive comment.
According to the introduction posted on the website, CNTV will broadcast programs that have a total duration of more than 1,000 hours and build itself into "China's biggest video-sharing websites that are clear of copyright infringement."
The website's bandwidth could reach 850k while the bandwidth for most online video providers is 500k, said an industry insider, who declined to give his name.
According to Zhang Yanling, an analyst with Analysys International Consulting, CCTV is attempting to pursue a new profit source.
Statistics from the company show that the video-sharing market in China was worth 240 million yuan in 2009 and could jump to 457 million yuan next year.
Many media reports, citing industry insiders, said privately owned video websites would face unfair competition because they have no state-funded support. But some claimed not to be afraid of this.
Liu Qiqi, spokeswoman for Youku.com, one of the largest video-sharing websites in China, said that the launch of CNTV.cn shows that Web-based TV has increasingly become the mainstream in the video-sharing industry, but would not constitute a direct threat to Youku.com.
"CNTV and Youku are complementary in terms of product offering with the former focusing on live broadcast of TV programs and the latter on popular TV shows or the latest Hollywood hits," she said.
An insider from a video-sharing website who wished to remain anonymous cautioned that CNTV is bound to have an impact on private video-sharing websites
"CNTV's strength is that it can provide HD online videos with far better quality than those currently offered by other providers," he said.
There is also possibility that CNTV would develop into a monopoly thanks to its rich resources.
"With its powerful financial strength, CNTV can easily acquire copyrighted online videos. If it determines to buy out any copyrighted content and is unwilling to share it with other portals or sell it to other portals at high prices, it could be a big monopoly in the industry," he said.
Lou Daiqiong, a college student in Beijing who had just visited CNTV.cn, said that the quality of video content it provides is a lot better than those currently offered by Youku.com, Tudou.com and other video-sharing websites.
"But I will still stick to Youku or Tudou because they are quicker and more efficient to offer Hollywood hits, which are more attractive to young viewers like us," she said.
While more sites have been using authorized video sources, some are still mixed with pirated movies or TV programs in order to attract more viewers.
Xiao Xianyi, an expert on new media at the Communication University of China, told the Global Times the launch of the station was expected to reshuffle the entire online video market, since private companies, such as Ku6.com, have being making moves to avoid competition from CCTV's online TV.
"The network will promote the subdivision of this market according to different targeted audiences," Xiao said.
Ku6.com, one of China's leading video-sharing websites, has merged with Hurray! Holding, a China-based music production and distribution company that lists on Nasdaq, Quam News reported at the end of November.
Just one day before the launch of CNTV, PPlive.com, one of the largest online interactive video entertainment platforms in China, jumped on the bandwagon by launching a TV station named PPTV.com that will go online on January 1. The domain name cost 1.8 million yuan.
The company announced earlier this month that it had received 100 million yuan of funding from the Shanghai government, and signed an agreement of strategic partner-ship with Shanghai's largest radio and TV group, SMG.
Song Shengxia and Liang Chen contributed to this story
