Bottom line: The formation of a joint venture between six leading cable operators looks designed to jump start Beijing’s stalled attempt to create a national player that can compete with the big telcos.
After years of snail’s-pace progress at consolidating the nation’s fragmented cable TV operators, a group of leading players is finally taking matters into their own hands with announcement of what could be a breakthrough joint venture. I’ve followed this story for a while now, and, along with everyone else, have been impatiently waiting for a state-supported national cable operator, called China Broadcasting Network Co., to take shape and provide a strong interesting alternative to the nation’s three big telcos for network-based services.
But such a development has moved forward at a pace even slower than molasses, mostly due to the huge bureaucracy involved. That mostly involves the interference of local interests, which are loathe to give up control over municipal and provincial cable TV networks, which they run as personal regional propaganda machines. As a result, all of the nation’s cable TV networks are dying a slow but certain death, as they get overtaken not only by the telcos but also by a rising generation of private sector Internet TV services like Youku and iQiyi. Read Full Post…
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