CCTV New Year’s Gala
It’s been a long time since CCTV (China Central Television) started holding the New Year’s Gala and it has become a tradition and seems to the best choice for each and every Chinese family at the Chinese Lunar New Year’ eve. But the fact that it’s too commercialized is gradually eroding young generations’ interests in it; they prefer chatting with friends on the night off and watching the highly-rated or highly controversial pieces of performances days after instead.
But why is this erosion happening?
First of all, I believe that thinking too big is probably one of the most important reasons. For example, one of the skits on last year’s show was trying to incorporate all the widely-spread and popularly-used phrases during the past one year, instead of making it funny but making all the show lame and thus not only failing to achieve its expected performance effects but also stirring up a huge criticism flooding onto the website right after the performance. Yes, people do want to watch something related to our daily life and amusing as well, but improperly piling up bunch of funny stuff won’t necessarily make the entire show interesting and most of the time would make it the opposite.
Second important reason is the gap in between the rumors spread beforehand and what is exactly performed on the day off. Too many misleading rumors would increase the level of surprise of a good show but also would amplify the level of disappointment if the show is way below expectations. More importantly, we can be disappointed only once but not always.
Admittedly we can’t just blame CCTV as it can be understood that it’s really hard to put on a show that satisfies all the generations but CCTV can’t just dominant all the shows. As reported, there is a regulation saying that the CCTV New Year’s Gala is the only show that can be aired at the New Year’s eve and no exceptions. I would like to consider it as a guarantee of their audience ratings but it’s not ethical as least from my point of view.
Anyways, I do hope to see changes in the CCTV New Year’s Gala either in the content or the promotions and I do hope it could be better and better.
Lastly, Happy Bunny Year to everyone! All the best =]