Chinese television ready to soak up 'SpongeBob'
Posted on: Tuesday, 18 October 2005, 01:12 CDT
By Georg Szalai and Jonathan Landreth
NEW YORK/BEIJING (Hollywood Reporter) - "SpongeBob SquarePants" is set to splash down in 120 million Chinese households by year's end.
The animation favorite will follow in the path of other shows on Viacom's Nickelodeon network, such as "CatDog" and "The Wild Thornberrys," and air on the dedicated children's channel of state-run broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), sources said.
"SpongeBob" is expected to launch in China on or around December 28, the one-year anniversary of the CCTV Children's Channel.
"The concepts of our shows that we've created here (in the U.S.) travel in China and around the world, even though the language is different," Viacom chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone recently told The Hollywood Reporter.
According to Viacom's MTV Networks unit, "SpongeBob" is its most widely distributed property ever. "SpongeBob" already is syndicated in 170 markets in 24 languages, and the move into China will add another market and another language, the unit says.
The character also has been a big consumer products hit for Viacom, with merchandise available in 22 territories. Globally, "SpongeBob" has generated nearly $4 billion in retail sales since its launch in 2000, according to MTV Networks.
INTERNATIONAL INROADS
Among other successes, the company says "SpongeBob" has this year dominated the U.K. new home video release rankings for kids' TV titles, has been selling about 130,000 monthly magazines in Germany since fall 2004's launch and has garnered nearly 750 million content downloads in a promotion with Brazilian mobile phone carrier Vivo this year.
China's top broadcast regulator, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television, said last year that Chinese TV operators should develop more children's programming domestically. After a leadership change at SARFT at the end of 2004, limitations on foreign involvement in Chinese media have tightened.
Still, some Western media companies have seen success with politically neutral youth entertainment programming. For example, "CatDog" and the Walt Disney Co.'s "Winnie the Pooh" have garnered respectable ratings on the CCTV kids network as measured by Nielsen Media Research. (Nielsen is owned by VNU Inc., parent company of The Hollywood Reporter.)
When "CatDog" launched in syndication on the CCTV Children's Channel in May, it earned a Nielsen rating of 10 in Beijing, according to Li Yifei, Viacom's chief representative in China.
One Nielsen ratings point represents 65,470 viewers in Beijing, which means that "CatDog" at its peak would have been seen by 654,700 people living in China's capital, where the total TV universe, as measured by Nielsen, comprises 6,547,000 potential viewers.
CCTV Children's Channel reaches 120 million Chinese homes and features Nickelodeon programming two hours every day, Li said.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Source: REUTERS
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