Sichuan TV Festival Faces the Facts
BEIJING & CHENGDU --- The organizers of the 2003 Sichuan TV Festival (SCTVF) that closed on 31st October are citing the effects of last spring's SARS outbreak as the major reason leading to the sharp fall off in international and domestic attendance.
Unofficial estimates by CMM-I suggest that exhibition space in the program market may have fallen by 50 percent, while delegate attendance was thought to be down by 30 percent. However, the SCTVF's broadcast and production equipment exhibition was only marginally down, while the Gold Panda Documentary Awards activities further consolidated Sichuan's role in factual genres.
While SARS has undoubtedly had a negative effect, preventing SCTVF from important marketing efforts between April and August this year, sources close to the event admit that the growth of other markets inside China are a bigger threat to its survival on the Chinese TV calendar.
Although SCTVF received MRFT (now SARFT) permission in 1990 to become the only international TV event in China (alternating with the Shanghai TV Festival), it has always struggled to match its larger rival (which also has its own film festival) and has been sidelined by launch of new events in Beijing, also with SARFT backing.
While the launch of the annual Beijing International TV Week (BTVW) in May 1993 did not provide a direct challenge, the 2001 decision by the Shanghai Television Festival (STVF) to operate as an annual event in June and the launch of the China National Broadcast Expo in August 2003 (CMM passim) leaves SCTVF as the only event held once every two years and at the end of a fair season that includes all its mainland rivals as well as HK Filmart.
Not surprisingly, SCTVF has been re-inventing itself over the last few editions, slowly losing its traditional gala performances and dropping the drama and entertainment categories from its Gold Panda Awards. The growing focus on factual genres is driven not only by an acute sense of SCTVF's need to create a niche position, but also provincial broadcaster Sichuan TV's relative strengths in this field of production.
By strengthening its grip on the documentary sector through the China Documentary Seminars and its Awards program, SCTVF must be applauded for its efforts to consolidate China's production resources and start mounting international co-productions and sales operations. This is a sensible strategy based on market realities that yet might work.
Ironically, as the BTVW, STVF and China National Expo fight it out to attract the relatively small number of international companies prepared to invest in exhibiting at Chinese events in 2004, the organizers behind the SCTVF have a free year to further consolidate their position as the Documentary Capital of China with a series of smaller, specialist events. In this respect, CMM-I is pleased to have reached agreement with SCTVF for co-operation at MIPDOC in Cannes next year. (Please refer to 'Chinese Media Groups Commit to MPTV Special Day')
While politics remain the guiding force in Chinese television, the survival of so many "professional" events will be guaranteed despite the obvious commercial reality that one is enough. It is no co-incidence that the largest domestic exhibitors at the SCTVF were China Media Group (operator of the China National Broadcast Expo), Beijing All-Media & Culture Group (operator of the BTVW) and Shanghai Media Group (operator of the STVF).
At least, now, the smallest and weakest event, the SCTVF, seems to have turned the political corner. Some participants in Chengdu bemoaned the death of the SCTVF, but CMM-I believes that the legacy of what was once described by Television Asia as the "only international event that shows the real state of Chinese TV" has life in it yet – the first one based on reality.