In conformity with trends in the international television industry, CCTV has made progress in the direction of specialization, introducing two specialized channels -- the News Channel and the Children's Channel in 2003, and the Music Channel in 2004.
Altogether there are 3,000 television stations across the country. Large international TV expositions, including the Shanghai Television Festival, Beijing International Television Week, China Radio and Television Exposition and Sichuan Television Festival, are held on a regular basis.
Besides judging and conferring awards, these festivals conduct academic exchange and the import and export of TV programs. Shanghai has become the largest television program trading market in Asia.
Multi-media Groups
Since China entered the World Trade Organization, the trend within China's media industry is to form inter-media and trans-regional media groups operated with multiple patterns so as to meet competition and challenges from powerful overseas media groups.
In 2001, the Chinese government put forward a goal of promoting media amalgamation by establishing trans-regional multi-media news groups. It also instituted detailed regulations on media industry fund raising, foreign-funded cooperation and trans-media development.
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, founded at the end of 2001, integrated the resources of central-level radio, television and film industry plus those of the radio and television, Internet companies into China's biggest and strongest multi-media group covering the fields of television, Internet, publishing, advertising, etc. At the same time Chinese media industry is cooperating with overseas media groups.
By 2003, 30 overseas television stations, including Phoenix Television, Bloomberg, STAR TV, Eurosport and China Entertainment Television had entered into China with limitations. At the same time, the English language channel of CCTV entered the United States through Fox News Internet under the jurisdiction of News Corporation.
