nan | 楠木

Phoenix TV is bring out some new programs for the new year, and one of their plans is to re-enforce their position as a channel with serious news coverage. The particular plan I’m talking about is their branding of their “star” analysts, who have now each got a special show with names related to them.
In fact, it’s always been Phoenix’s tactic to stress their analysts with some intentional hype and branding, only this year, they’ve pushed it one step further to the step of personal idolization. I’m not entirely against this approach. Indeed, it’s probably the best cost-effective way to differentiate yourself from the competition. If the audience consider your anchorman and your analysts to be better than what other channels can offer, then that’s a big advantage in winning the audience.
What’s interesting though is Phoenix appears to be the only channel I know in China that is consciously doing this. Or at least doing it consciously and effectively. CCTV has quite a few strong reporters/anchormen, such as Shui Junyi, but the marketing is sorely lacking. In fact, when you think about it, the only bit of really pushy marketing I see on CCTV is those in the program 百家讲堂 on CCTV 10 (a popular show where scholars talk about history or literature). All of the scholars are heavily marketed as experts or learned wise men whose opinions are really interesting and important. The message is probably delivered 100 times per show, which can be quite maddening. Anyway – it’s a bit of a overkill, but I guess it works. CCTV surely could learn a few things from Phoenix.
Phoenix TV is in no way a world class TV channel. It may lead us to believe so – which indicates that it’s far better than almost all mainland channels – but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. As to the rest of the pack, the majority of the cable channels which are just on my TV for me to skip past, well, maybe they could start by learning from Phoenix.