Shanghai Oriental Television

Shanghai Oriental Television (SOTV) was launched on 18 January 1993 by Shanghai’s Radio, Film and Television Bureau, as part of a move to open up competition in the local television industry. The station has a strong local focus with emphasis on social and educational issues; however, its significance in the local television industry is due to the flotation of ‘non-political’ subsidiary companies (which control advertising) on the stock exchange in 1994. This move, which raised around 800 million yuan in a matter of months, made it the first Chinese television station to raise funds on private capital markets. This figure favourably compared to the total revenue for Shanghai’s television industry (400 million yuan) in 1994.

By 1998 the station’s advertising revenue had reached 500 million yuan. In this way, the station provided a massive injection of new funding for the Shanghai television industry and paved the way for Hunan’s provincial satellite television station under the name of the Hunan Television and Broadcasting Media Company Ltd (Hunan guangdian meiti youxian gongsi), which made a highly publicized and successful initial public offering in December 1998.

At the end of 1995, the station launched a joint venture with Shanghai Scientific Education Film Studios which has now become one of the country’s leading science education and cartoon film-making units (see animation). In May 2001, along with Shanghai’s other television stations and leading media organizations, SOTV was incorporated into the newly formed cross-media Shanghai Culture and Broadcasting Group (Shanghai wenguang jituan). In 2001, the station employed around 600 people, operating two channels that broadcast an average of thirty-seven hours per day, of which seven hours consisted of programming in-house.

KEVIN LATHAM