China’s Got Reality Shows.docVIP

China’s Got Reality Shows 　　The much anticipated second season of The Voice of China premiered this July on Zhejiang Satellite TV as scheduled. The Voice of China is a reality singing show adapted from a Dutch program. In the show， contestants attempt to achieve stardom by enduring a series of “trials” before winning the chance to compete for a record contract and the opportunity to perform in a highly visible and prestigious concert. The program’s inaugural season proved remarkably successful， with revenue from ads and royalties topping 300 million yuan in only four months after its debut in July 2012. Talent shows are relatively new to China. Many Chinese television stations weren’t even familiar with the concept until a decade ago， but such programming has quickly become commonplace in the East. Producers learned talent show operating modes， how they deal with copyrights， and that their foreign counterparts produced television programming similarly to shooting a Hollywood movie. In 2004， Hunan TV launched a talent show known as Super Girl， which marked the introduction of the Western talent show model on Chinese TV. At first， reality shows were mostly directly copied from the West without copyright consideration， as evidenced by the few early popular programs such as Happy Camp， Super 6+1， Lucky 52， and a few others where the “original foreign looks” remained noticeable. In recent years， many international television producers have become smitten with the large Chinese market. They have surmised that although China’s television production has gradually improved with the development of the economy， Chinese producers still seem to lack experience in creating and running such shows. Yet， at the same time， Chinese spectators are creating higher demand for similar domestic programming due to the proliferation of internet video， which makes foreign programs more accessible. Against this backdrop， in 2007 Chinese TV stations began buying and localiz-