China Entertainment Television (CETV), AOL Time Warner's flagship channel targeting Chinese audiences, is counting on its revamped programming selection to win over viewership in Guangdong, China's first open-broadcasting region.
'CETV was relaunched on February 17 with a focus on infotainment and leveraging power of its parent company's video library,' vice-president and general manager Ringo Chan said.
Still, Hong Kong-based CETV would continue to improve its programming to help it win market share in Guangdong now that it has approval from authorities to offer programming to local cable-television operators, Mr Chan said.
There is no data to show the market share of CETV which has had programming carried unofficially in China by Guangdong Provincial Cable, one of the province's two dominant cable operators, since 1997.
Hong Kong's two free-to-air TV channels - that are illegally carried by cable operators - account for 60 per cent of the market in Guangzhou, the province's main market, according to media research-agency CSM.
The city's television channels have most of the rest. Satellite-channel Phoenix TV, a subsidiary of Australia-based News Corp, is No 8 with 2 per cent market share.
Before CETV got the nod to offer its channel to cable-television companies in Guangdong, it already had approval to transmit to viewers an unencrypted channel through satellite television operators. It was also authorised to transmit to selected hotels and foreign residential compounds.