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【中文标题】中国受欢迎的电视节目遭砍
【原文标题】In China, popular TV shows get the ax
【登载媒体】洛杉矶时报
【原文作者】Jonathan Kaiman、Barbara Demick
【原文链接】http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-tv-censor-20111018,0,1881096.story
省级电视台在与保守的国家广播电视公司CCTV竞争时，发现他们的节目在政府监察人员看来过于色情和前卫了。
李宇春是湖南卫视2005年“超级女声”歌唱比赛的冠军。上个月，政府命令这个节目停播一年，因为它多次超出国家强制的90分钟播出时间。
太低俗、太具有煽动性、时间太长，或许仅仅是太受欢迎。
所有这些因素，都是中国电视节目具有攻击性的证据。上个月，中国广播电视执法部门对一些最受欢迎的电视节目挥起了砍刀，原因听起来越来越不着边际。
国家广电总局今年大有斩获。首先在4月份，它发布了一则禁令，内容是鞭笞“缺乏思想教育性”的电视节目，并且禁止穿越时空的电视情节，原因是“用轻浮的方式对待严肃的历史”。
上个月，它宣布不再允许极受欢迎的“美国偶像”式电视节目“超级女声”下一季的播出，表面上的原因是这个节目多次超出国家强制的90分钟播出时间。
同一天，监察部门宣布中国北部城市石家庄电视台的一个谈话栏目将被停播一个月，原因是其中一期节目中，一个男人斥责他年老父亲的片段“宣扬了扭曲的伦理和道德观”。
之后，在浙江省电视台克隆“美国偶像”的节目“非同凡响”中，一位变性的舞蹈家金星被排挤出评委队伍。金在接受电话采访时说，是节目导演通知她被接触合约的事情。导演说，他被告知金星的出现“对社会产生负面影响”。
作为中国最知名的变性人，金说：“中国总是这样，导演、指挥、决策的都是局外人，这很荒唐。”她在节目中已经出现过8次，政府从未提出过异议。
中国所有播出的电视节目都需要接受政府的监控，例如，有关西藏分裂主意和天安门示威的主题永远不会被允许。但是，90年代开始的市场化改革促生了众多的省级电视台，由于他们必须脱离政府的支持去自谋生路，所以他们也比国家电视台CCTV受到了较少的政治限制。
为了在竞争激烈的市场中立足，这些电视台的节目表中全都是歌唱比赛和粗俗的约会节目，用泪流满面的参赛者、个人关系的黑幕和自封的英雄赚来了大笔的收入。但是，所有省级电视台都在遵循着一条看不见的路线，媒体监察机构把这条路线当作政府的道德容忍底限。跨越它，就表示将被禁赛。
电视行业的从业者抱怨，监察机构总会出其不意地行使其裁定权，每次都要搜肠刮肚地探寻其原因。
中国传媒大学电视艺术系教授苗迪说：“对于什么可以做，什么不可以做，他们没有详细的标准。基本上，他们就是信口开河。”
一些专家把最近一系列禁令的发布归因于中国影视界的一句格言：在高层官员们看来，娱乐节目必须与电视行业的真正目的相吻合——拥护党的路线。
中国传媒大学的教授袁方说：“明年，宣传节目的比重将加大，因为领导层将进行换届。”他指的是每五年一次的中国高层领导人轮换。
今年出现的禁令的确不少。共产党成立90周年纪念日之前的三个月里，当局停播了所有犯罪和间谍类型的电视节目，取而代之的是红旗飘扬的进行曲和“革命”类型的肥皂剧。
上个月，主办“超级女声”的湖南卫视宣布它将用“提高道德风尚、保护公共安全、为居家生活提供实用信息的节目”替换这档节目。
停播的命令让很多观众既失望又费解。浙江省一个女孩在中国版本的推特——微博上写道：“一个没有‘超级女声’的周末似乎是不完整的。”
“超级女声”与CCTV形成了鲜明的对比，后者内容几乎全是令人昏昏欲睡的新闻报道和共产党的历史课。年轻人尤其容易被情绪激昂的节目吸引，而且其中还有尖酸刻薄的评委，观众甚至可以发短信投票选出竞赛的获胜者。
但是，这种离经叛道的行为激怒了党内官员。前文化部部长刘忠德的讲话在2006年引发了全国范围的争议，他说“超级女声”是对中国传统价值观的攻击，“它毒害了年轻人的头脑，误导他们相信，人不用付出努力也可以成功。”
尽管“超级女声”当季最后一集吸引了4亿观众，这档节目还是被停播了，而且一停就是三年。2007年，所有短信投票评选的“美国偶像”式节目被全面停播。
中国媒体分析人士、网络杂志Danwei.com的创始人Jeremy Goldkorn说，尽管互联网相当普及，“但电视仍然是政府与民众沟通的主要渠道”。媒体监察机构对国家电视台的偏爱，仅仅是因为他们发现地方电视台很难约束。
他说：“这就像一场圈地战争。看到省级电视台如此受欢迎，CCTV就是不高兴。”
监察机构的重手或许反过来也会让共产党付出代价，因为这将淡化电视的意义。斯坦福大学和北京一家咨询公司BDA联合发布的一份报告指出，政府监察机构把电视观众都赶到互联网上，这个媒介更难控制。报告中说，中国在2010年有2.4亿网络电视观众，比上一年增长了3800万。
变性的舞蹈家金说她欢迎这样的变化，“电视里大多数频道都是愚蠢的连续剧和低质量的电视节目。”
原文：
Provincial channels that compete with the staid state broadcaster CCTV find their programs are too sexy or radical for government censors.
Li Yuchun was the winner of Hunan Satellite TV's "Super Girl" singing competition in 2005. Last month the government suspended the show for a year after it repeatedly overran its state-mandated 90-minute time slot.
Reporting from Beijing— Too risque. Too subversive. Too long. Or perhaps just too popular.
All of the above can be capital offenses for Chinese television shows. In the last month, China's broadcasting regulator has given the ax to some of the most popular programs for reasons that sound increasingly capricious.
The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has been on a roll this year. It kicked things off with flourish in April with a statement admonishing shows for "lacking ideological significance" and banning time travel as a plot device for "treating serious history in a frivolous way."
Last month, it announced that it would not allow the enormously popular "American Idol"-type show "Super Girl" to air next season, ostensibly because it repeatedly overran its state-mandated 90-minute time slot.
On the same day, the watchdog handed down a one-month suspension to a station in the northern city of Shijiazhuang for "magnifying distorted ethics and moral values" after a segment in one of its talk shows showed a man berating his elderly father.
Then Jin Xing, a popular transsexual dancer, was removed as a judge from an "American Idol" clone, "Feitong Fanxiang," on Zhejiang province television. Jin, in a telephone interview, said she was informed of her dismissal by the director of the show, often called "I Am the One," who said he was told the dancer's presence would have "a negative influence on society."
"China's always like this: People outside of the circle are directing, guiding, decision-making. It's ridiculous," said Jin, perhaps China's most public transsexual. She had appeared on the show eight times without the government raising objections.
All broadcast material in China is subject to government censorship, with Tibetan separatism and the Tiananmen Square protest perennial no-nos, for example. But market reforms in the 1990s gave rise to a number of provincial television stations that are driven by ad revenue rather than government support, making them subject to less strenuous political control than the state broadcaster, CCTV.
Locked in fierce competition for ratings, these stations stack their schedules with singing contests and ribald dating shows — fast-paced fare brimming with tearful participants, personal revelations and unlikely heroes. But all provincial stations walk an invisible line, with shows that the media watchdog deems out of whack with the government's moral agenda in danger of being whisked off the air.
People in the television industry complain that the watchdog's rulings often come out of the blue, leaving them scratching their heads trying to fathom the reasoning.
"They don't have any detailed standards for what you can do and what you can't," said Miao Di, a professor of television arts at China Communications University in Beijing. "Fundamentally, it's just, whatever they say goes."
Some experts attribute the recent restrictions to an old axiom in China's television industry: For powerful officials, entertainment programming only gets in the way of television's true purpose -- to espouse the party line.
"Propaganda programs will be very important next year because of the leadership change," said Yuan Fang, a professor at China Communications University, referring to the shuffling of the country's top leadership that occurs every five years.
This year has seen a slew of restrictions. Three months before the Communist Party's 90th anniversary this summer, television authorities suspended all crime and spy dramas, replacing them with flag-waving marches and "revolutionary" soap operas.
Last month, "Super Girl" broadcaster Hunan Satellite TV announced that it would replace the show with "programs that promote moral ethics and public safety, and provide practical information for housework."
The suspension has left many viewers disappointed and confused. "A weekend without 'Super Girl' just doesn't seem complete," one girl from Zhejiang province wrote on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.
"Super Girl" was a refreshing contrast to CCTV, the state broadcaster, known for its roster of soporific news reports and Communist Party history lessons. Young people in particular immediately took to the show's emotional outbursts, ACerbic judges and text-message voting system that allowed users to choose the competition's victors.
But its unorthodoxy grated on party officials. Liu Zhongde, a former culture minister, unleashed a nationwide controversy in 2006 when he called "Super Girl" an attack on traditional Chinese values. "It poisons young people's minds, misleading them to believe one can achieve success with no effort," he said.
Although the season finale of "Super Girl" that year attracted 400 million viewers, the show was taken off the air and wasn't revived until three years later. Off-site voting for all of China's "American Idol"-style shows was banned in 2007.
Jeremy Goldkorn, a China media analyst and founder of the Web magazine Danwei.com, said that despite the rise of the Internet, "TV is still seen as a vital part of the way the government talks to the people." The media watchdog, he explained, may simply favor the state broadcaster over regional stations that it finds more difficult to control.
"It seems like sort of a turf war," he said. "CCTV is not happy when a provincial broadcaster has a show with such popularity."
The heavy hand of the censor may be backfiring on the Communist Party by making television increasingly irrelevant. A report by Stanford University and Beijing-based consulting firm BDA blamed the government watchdog for pushing viewers onto the Internet, a significantly more difficult medium to control. According to the report, China had 240 million online TV viewers in 2010, an increase of 38 million over the previous year.
Jin, the transsexual dancer, welcomes the change. "Most channels just have stupid TV dramas and low-quality TV shows," she said.
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发表于 2011-10-28 09:24
