China curbs ‘vulgar’ reality TV show

BEIJING: When viewers tuned into China’s most popular dating show this spring, they saw beautiful women, brutal rejections and plenty of money worshiping, as when a female contestant was asked by a possible date whether she would like to go for a bicycle ride.

“I’d rather sit and cry in the back of a BMW,” she said.

Or when another woman, asked for a handshake, responded: “Only my boyfriend gets to hold my hand. Everyone else, 200,000 renminbi per shake,” or about $29,475.

Such witticisms made “If You Are the One,” produced by Jiangsu TV, the most watched reality television program in the country. Then the censors started watching.

Late last May, central government propaganda officials issued a directive calling the shows “vulgar” and faulting them for promoting materialism, openly discussing sexual matters and “making up false stories, thus hurting the credibility of the media.”

So the dating show, and others like it, got a makeover. Gone are fast cars, luxury apartments and boasts of flush bank accounts. Now the contestants entice each other with tales of civic service and promises of good relations with future mothers-in-law. One show now uses a professor from the local Communist Party school as a judge.

China’s television programmers are not far behind their Western counterparts in tapping demand for salacious entertainment. But that tends to conflict, sooner or later, with official notions of propriety and taste in China, which are a lot further behind. 

“Traditionally for the government, there are several functions of the television industry,” said Ouyang Hongsheng, a media professor at Sichuan University. “Entertainment is last.”

Although all television stations are still state-owned, stations owned by provincial governments now compete with one another for ratings, national cable distribution and advertising revenue. The profits from these stations go back to local agencies, so provincial-level officials often think more about padding their budgets than enforcing decorum in the public media.

Still, central government propaganda officials reserve the right to intervene. And the minders in Beijing have no financial stake in the shows.

Since its debut in January, “If You Are the One” has been at the center of the storm. Each episode is like a game, as 24 women are presented with a parade of eligible bachelors. The men are subjected to abrasive questioning and ego-deflating sound effects of rejection. The entire process, 30 minutes in taping, is edited down to about 10 minutes on screen. The result is what might happen if the “The Bachelor” and “The Gong Show” produced an offspring with attention-deficit disorder.

Before the changes, the courtship tended to focus on financial matters, and the decisions were swift and ruthless. Personal introduction videos were stamped with “owns car, house” (or the unfortunate opposite) on the bottom half of the screen.

During one precensorship episode, a woman said to a potential 33-year-old suitor, “You say you’re good at what you do, but then how can you still just be a salesman?”

Another contestant, the 20-year-old son of a wealthy businessman, showed off his multicolored sports cars and bank statements that indicated a balance of six million renminbi (about $884,000).

Ma Nuo, 22, the woman who professed to prefer crying in a BMW over riding a bike, denied in an interview that she thought too much about money. She said the producers played up her comment for publicity. “I only wanted to reject him, but in a creative way,” she said.

Men began sending Ms. Nuo marriage proposals attached with pictures of themselves in BMWs. She did not write back to them. She chose a photographer as her date on the show.

Viewers flocked to the program for its off-screen scandals as well as for the on-screen romance. Producers were accused of making up life stories and using actresses as contestants. After every offensive comment or awkward moment, video clips quickly appeared on Web sites.

As the ratings of the show climbed, its critics became louder and more numerous, calling it a frightening window into the degradation of social values. Censors may have seen an opportunity to present themselves as do-gooders, reining in a form of entertainment many thought had gone too far, said Chris Berry, professor of film and television at Goldsmiths, University of London.

By June, a triumvirate of news organizations run by the Communist Party, the Xinhua news agency, People’s Daily and China Central Television all ran reports extremely critical of the show’s attempt to win ratings at the expense of quality. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television stepped in.

“In this situation, if we don’t correct it, it will have a negative influence on all of society,” Zhu Hong, a spokesman for the state body, told CCTV. “Lots of people on the Web have said, ‘You can’t not control this!’ “

The shows are now forbidden to “hype up marginal issues, show the ugly side of things, or overly depressing, dark or decadent topics,” according to the directive. Instead, the shows have to “maintain core Socialist values.”

Some dating shows, like Zhejiang TV’s “Run Toward Love,” were canceled. All have toned down references to material wealth and sex.

“If You Are the One” added a new co-panelist: a psychology professor from the School of the Jiangsu Provincial Communist Party Committee.

During an episode broadcast June 27, Huang Han, the mild-mannered psychologist, sat on stage and nervously adjusted her headset microphone.

“Oh you know, I’m so old, you’re a young girl in my eyes,” she said to a female contestant who worried about being older than her date. “These days, everyone works for a few years before they start looking for a duixiang, right?” she responded, using an outdated term for significant other.

In the same episode, Gao Fang, 23, enthused about his volunteer work during the Olympics, which led Yang Yi, 24, to fight back tears as she talked about taking care of disabled orphans.

Ratings have slumped since the changes, according to a spokeswoman for the show who declined to be identified. She attributed the drop to competition with the World Cup, even though the show did not compete directly with live soccer broadcasts.

And then there are the fan reactions.

“Volunteering? How fake is that?” said Du Shibin, 48. “Who doesn’t ask about houses and cars these days when looking for someone to marry?” – (Xizun Yang, NYT News Service)