For hundreds of millions of mainlanders, watching CCTV's Chun Wan gala has long been a Lunar New Year ritual, along with eating dumplings and setting off fireworks.
Broadcast live on New Year's Eve, which fell last Wednesday, the 4 1/2-hour event features a variety of acts such as dance, music, comedy and magic. It has claimed several world records, such as the most-watched annual variety show in the world, with the participation of the biggest number of performing artists and the longest running time. While concrete figures are lacking, the show reportedly draws between 400 and 700 million viewers each year.
If a comparison has to be made, its distant rival could be the annual Super Bowl American football game, played this morning Hong Kong time. Often billed as the most-watched US television broadcast, the Super Bowl draws an average audience of over 100 million viewers.
But the CCTV gala is not merely entertainment. Because of its huge audience, it carries significant political overtones for mainland officials who use the platform to laud the leadership of the Communist Party and demonstrate national unity.
To their dismay, however, the popularity of the costly show has been in decline in recent years. Going through state media reports and blogging comments on last week's show marking the Year of the Rabbit, one could easily see that the number of comments slamming the event is far greater than the few glowing reports.
According to CCTV's own market research of 2,098 families, some 93.88 per cent of families nationwide watched the latest Chun Wan, and 81.92 per cent of them gave the show high marks. But according to the Beijing Evening News, one online survey of 10,000 respondents showed as much as 59 per cent said they were disappointed with the show and only 6 per cent expressed satisfaction.
More ominously for CCTV, several provincial TV stations including those in Hunan , Shanghai, Liaoning , Anhui , Guangdong and Beijing declined to broadcast its show this year. Instead, they launched their own variety shows to compete with CCTV for audience and advertising money. Recent years have brought increased calls for the cancellation of Chun Wan.