Anxious netizens await crackdown on TV shows

By Liu Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-14 09:28

Xiao Jing, a 27-year-old translator, has been feeling closely connected to the characters of Lost, the American TV series she has been following.

What bothers her so much is a regulation issued on March 31 by the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT), China's top industry regulator.

It ordered that all domestic and foreign films, TV series, animation pictures and documentaries transmitted online must be licensed by the media regulator. For many young Chinese Internet users, this means they may lose their free lunch of foreign TV series.

"At first I felt shocked, then worried but since I found no big change had happened yet, I feel confused," says Xiao.

American TV series like Prison Break, Lost and Desperate Housewives, are widely popular among young Chinese, who have been used to watching the latest episodes on local video-sharing websites like Youku.com and Tudou.com.

Prison Break lead actor Wentworth Miller is so popular in China that he was hired as the face of a Chinese casual outfit label and when he came here to promote the clothes last year he was treated like a superstar.

Most American TV shows were first recorded onto computers by overseas Chinese, who then made them available online through peer-to-peer software like Bit Torrent or video-sharing websites. Some went further by translating the script and including subtitles.

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