60 People, 60 Stories

Going for a global audience

By Laurie Lew (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-30 09:07

In the mid-1980s, I taught English at Tsinghua University. When China Central Television (CCTV) started broadcasting 15 minutes of news in English at 10 pm, the other foreign teachers and I would watch on a tiny black-and-white television set. We watched for the novelty as much as for the bits of news from outside the country.

The 15 minute-broadcast grew, and in September 2000, the 24-hour English Channel was launched. A month later, I started working part-time as a copy editor.

Two years later, CCTV-9 went live round the clock.In 2003, coverage of the Iraq War brought in live foreign television images and live studio interviews. In 2007, we covered the return of Hong Kong.

In May 2008, the reporters went to the quake zone in Sichuan province. In August 2008, it was 17 Days, the special live programming for the Olympics, an exciting and exhausting time.

CCTV, the nation's broadcaster, wasfounded in 1958 and has an operating income of 1.12 billion yuan with 19 channels. It has village-to-village TV coverage,a multi-dimensional Internet platform spurred by the Beijing Olympics and international channels in English, French, Spanish, and most recently, Russian and Arabic, all within a decade. There are also plans for an English News Channel by 2011, separate from CCTV-9.

We are now part of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Bringing the celebrations to the world is part of CCTV's mission of "Going Global".

Laurie Lew is a copy editor at CCTV-9.