China must just be one of the countries with the most televistion stations in the world, and at the same time has an audience with the least choice. Just take the remote control and flip through (if you find yourself so bored) and you will find a thousand channels with the same face, similar to the point of unbearable. At the same time you will learn that except for the minority of greasy-rich channels like CCTV, the majority don't seem to be doing so well, because they all seem to be airing the same vapid commercials: breast enlargement, infertile? sterile?, how midgets increase height, fat wives get thin quick and easy. Nobody with half a brain believes these commercials; their pollution of the senses leads almost everyone to despise them. But the second that SARFT bans them from the air, the stations lose sixty percent of their revenue (according to the August 3 issue of The Beijing News). This just goes to show that far too many cruddy televistion stations rely mainly on trickery for existence, and from a legal standpoint have almost no commercial value, are doomed be money-losing rubbish. But this doesn't stop television from existing; in fact the number of television stations continues to grow. In a few years, rural-level television stations might even become more common. There's no way they'll survive off public funding, though, and as no normal manufacturers will be willing to invest in advertisements, business with fraudsters is the only road left. That's why I'm not in favor of SARFT's ban. As soon as the ban on these five kinds of advertisements blows over, it's expected they'll be back soon enough.

On Monday, under the banner of Time-Warner Group, cable television network CNN released its “grassroot news” site CNN Exchange. On the front page are several lines of eye-catching keywords: “CNN Exchange invites you to connect with the news: Share your stories, your pictures, your videos wherever you see the I-Report logo.” “Did you witness a news event? Have a tip or story to share? Send your breaking news to I-Report.” If you turn the ‘I’ into ‘我’ [Chinese for ‘I’], then it appears that personal views are the focus of this column.

According to CNET, this innovation was probably inspired by YouTube. At the beginning of this month, in covering the conflict in Lebanon, CNN broadcast segments of video from YouTube. This clip of video has now been viewed over 360,000 times, with over 3600 comments. Work originating in a warzone like this undoubtedly possesses a much more natural and irreplaceable angle than any CNN journalist.

Of the traditional global media brands, Time-Warner counts as one of the easiest to associate with the internet. In 2000, they completed a merger with top-of-its-game AOL worth USD 100 billion, and their market value instantly shot up to USD 290 billion. As of today, their market value is less than a quarter of what it was then. After the burst of the first internet bubble, the planned merger with AOL was struck out from the company name. As with [Chinese software company] Dashoubi six years ago, the recent series of Time-Warner's moves toward embracing new media will only amount to little. Aside from CNN Exchange, AOL also plans to put out a video site, hoping to use the advertising revenue from new media to gradually replace their declining internet operations. AOL's plans give traditional television media a new avenue by which to broadcast content, and CNN Exchange significantly alters the way video content is produced. If you say the 2000 merger resembles the blind spending of [China's] nouveau riche, then these tiny changes are the steady developments of a matured environment.