With the New Year the Chinese government implemented its new policy for television programming. In effect, some 70 percent of the most popular TV shows have been taken off the air (or, at the very least, out of prime time). In their place there are more uplifting or educational programs. In effect, entertainment has been replaced with propaganda. The people are not happy, and TV station owners are expecting big losses as their advertisers react to much smaller audiences. Just another reason for the Chinese people to dislike their government. The government says it wants to keep out poisonous Western culture. But many TV executives see the new policy as a way to get more advertising revenue for the state owned TV network. It's the privately owned TV networks that were producing and showing most of these Western shows (dramas, comedies, variety, and reality type programs). This kind of media manipulation is, after a fashion, backfiring. By forcing more people to seek alternative entertainment more Chinese are making the effort to get around the Chinese Internet censorship system and being exposed to unfiltered news about China today, and yesterday. This is often shocking to Chinese, because the communist government of China has eliminated from the official history the many horrendous past acts of the Chinese communists. This includes even heavier use of censorship in the past. But despite government efforts to stop it, more Chinese are adopting Western attitudes.
