In the year of epidemic in 2020, people’s life safety is threatened, their life style is distorted, and the demand for high-quality information becomes more and more urgent, which also makes the value of mainstream media more prominent. In such a special year, what highlights did the mainstream media in China show and how did it change? At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, CTR scans the inventory for you.
First, the more dangerous the moment, the more the highlight of the mainstream media.
When the epidemic suddenly struck at the beginning of the year, which media can respond to the audience’s concerns about hot issues in a timely manner at this critical moment, and which media is truly the mainstream media.
On January 20th, Zhong Nanshan was interviewed by Bai Yansong, and issued the early warning of "human-to-human transmission" for the first time, which became a major turning point in the prevention and control of epidemic situation in China. Subsequently, the Central Radio and Television General Station successively sent more than 200 front reporting teams, and the CCTV news client’s uninterrupted live video broadcast of "Common War" for more than two months became the most concerned epidemic source of the whole network. With the help of WeChat platform, People’s Daily provides fast medical access for those who are infected with novel coronavirus; Hubei Radio and Television’s "Yangtze Cloud" client launched "Fighting against Epidemic ‘ Epidemic ’ The "free clinic" section provides users with convenient services such as free consultation and delivery of medicines to their homes; Hubei Voice Cabin Broadcasting is known as "Battlefield Broadcasting", which has created a new emergency format for broadcasting media. Sina Weibo cooperates with the central media and government departments, and by virtue of the advantages of social platforms, it delivers important information in time, and has also become an aggregation platform for epidemic situation and public opinion.
According to the national TV market viewing data, from January to November 2020, the per capita viewing time was as long as 253 minutes, a record high in the same period of ten years, in which the viewing time of news programs accounted for 17%, up 5% year-on-year. Among them, the viewing share of CCTV news channel increased by 73% in the first half of 2020, and the single-day share reached 8.73% on January 26, which was the highest single-day value since the channel started broadcasting in 2003.
According to CTR’s monitoring and evaluation of the network communication power of eight central media and 38 radio and television organizations at or above the provincial level in the most critical period of epidemic prevention and control (January 20 to February 20), China Central Radio and Television General Station, People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency rank among the top three central media; Central Radio and Television General Station, Hubei Radio and Television Station and Zhejiang Radio and Television Group rank among the top three radio and television institutions at or above the provincial level.
Ranking of Internet Communication Power of Central Media’s Anti-epidemic Reports
Data period: January 20th to February 20th, 2020.
Ranking of Network Communication Power of Anti-epidemic Reports of 38 Radio and Television Organizations
Data period: January 20th to February 20th, 2020.
Second, due to changes, media integration has entered the fast lane of upgrading and deepening.
The year of the epidemic is also a year in which the digitalization process of the audience is accelerated, especially for middle-aged and elderly people, which originally took several years to infiltrate and transform, but was forced to speed up to several months by the epidemic. On June 30 this year, the central government issued the order to accelerate the development of deep media integration again after a lapse of six years. Under the brand-new strategic layout of "5G+4K/8K+AI", the structural reform of the content supply side has been fully promoted by the Central Radio and Television General Station; Hunan Radio and Television’s "Mango Mode" iteration is version 2.0, which has been upgraded from the original "one body, two wings and one pluralism" to "one cloud, multiple screens and one pluralism"; SMG launched the BesTV+ streaming media strategy, and upgraded the streaming media strategy to the overall strategy of the group. The media integration process of mainstream media has entered the fast lane of upgrading and deepening.
According to CTR media monitoring data, as of the third quarter of 2020, the cumulative download volume of self-owned APP products of 11 provincial radio and television institutions has doubled; The number of fans in the single account of 8 radio and television organizations increased by over 100%; On the third-party platform, there are a total of 111 fans with a size of over one million. Taking the short video category as an example, the short video communication of mainstream media will show explosive growth in 2020. The average number of fans of short video accounts in mainstream media reached 1.55 million, of which 37 were tens of millions of top-stream accounts, an increase of 15 over 2019. In CTR- Aauto Quicker media number list, CCTV News, People’s Daily and People’s Daily ranked among the top three media numbers in Aauto Quicker. What’s more worth mentioning is that "CCTV News" Tik Tok achieved over 100 million fans on October 26th, and became an absolute top account.
Video channels with short network transmission in the first three quarters of 2020;
TOP10 list of radio and television organizations at or above the provincial level
Data cycle: January-September 2020
Data cycle: the third quarter of 2020
Along with the strategic upgrade of integration and transformation, MCN of radio and television in various places has flourished. Up to now, at least 20 radio and television organizations in China have been transformed into MCN organizations. According to the joint research of CTR and Aauto Quicker Science and Technology, there are nearly 70 media MCNs on the platform of Aauto Quicker alone, and there are nearly 50 accounts with more than one million fans. The monthly video broadcast volume exceeds one billion, and the media MCN institutions have entered a rapid climb stage from the initial stage in 2018.
At the same time, the communication innovation of the mainstream media in the epidemic year has also been branded with a strong "epidemic" brand, showing a face of integration of pattern renovation. All kinds of "cloud weapons" such as slow live broadcast, cloud editing, holographic images, AI and AR are in full bloom. The live "slow live broadcast" of "Central Video" launched during the construction of Huoshenshan Hospital and Thunder God Mountain hospital attracted nearly 170 million online "cloud supervisors" in less than two days. Large-scale variety shows such as Hunan Satellite TV’s Singer’s Year of Playing, Sound in the Surrounding 3, Oriental TV’s New Blind Date in China, and Shandong Satellite TV’s I am a Big Star have started the cloud production mode. During the two sessions, Hubei Radio and Television took the lead in launching the "editorial department on the blockchain cloud" and innovating the "news crowdfunding" model. There are also mainstream media-born "New Network Red", such as Wang Bingbing, who is praised by netizens as the host with the most beautiful smile, and Sa Beining, who is the originator of Versailles, who has frequently boarded hot searches for all kinds of words. It can be seen that the mainstream media is becoming more and more proficient in grasping hot spots, creating interesting points and tipping points in the new position of the Internet.
According to the monitoring of CTR media convergence network communication power evaluation system, in the first three quarters of 2020, China Central Radio and Television General Station, People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency ranked among the top three in central media network communication power. Among the 38 radio and television institutions above the provincial level, CCTV, Hunan Radio and Television Station and Shanghai Radio and Television Station rank in the top three.
Comprehensive list of network communication power in 2020
Data cycle: January-September 2020
Third, traditional advertising is under increasing pressure, and media marketing creates new growth.
Affected by the epidemic, economic activity declined, advertisers were more cautious during the epidemic, and the resources of the media itself also decreased, and offline activities as an important income supplement of the media were forced to suspend. CTR’s advertising monitoring data shows that although TV viewing increased during the epidemic period, the advertising in the TV industry did not increase with the increase of viewing. From February to April, the spending on TV advertisements dropped by over 30% year-on-year, and the overall spending on advertising publications in the first three quarters of 2020 dropped by 15.4% year-on-year. For the first time in ten years, the proportion of advertisers who reduced their advertising budget this year was higher than that of advertisers who increased their budgets. Although after the third quarter, with the rapid economic recovery, the decline of advertising expenditure narrowed, and the advertising publication expenditure in October ushered in a double growth month-on-month and year-on-year, of which TV advertising increased by 4.4% year-on-year, but the overall advertising market is still in a state of structural adjustment under heavy pressure, and advertisers’ marketing budget is further concentrated on head media and top resources, and tilted towards media marketing.
In 2020, the "Brand Power Project" of China Central Radio and Television General Station integrated media resources and built a brand-new communication service plan. The business innovation in resources and services was fully recognized by the market, and the pre-sale of "Brand Power Project" increased by 27% year-on-year, achieving contrarian growth.
In 2020, "live broadcast with goods", a new Internet format, ushered in a phenomenal explosion, which was a successful exploration of the mainstream media’s integrated marketing to create new growth. Starting from the public service live broadcast of Hubei specialty products such as "Xiao Zhu Pei Qi" by the Central Radio and Television General Station, with the help of the integration mode of "TV+E-commerce", "CCTV Boys" (Kang Hui, Sa Beining, Zhu Guangquan and Nigmat) brought 1.4 billion goods in three hours, setting a new record for live broadcast, and "buying all over China" drove consumption to pick up on a large scale. Since this year, CCTV’s live broadcast has accumulated goods.
The fact that these media-integrated marketing have created new growth proves that most advertisers’ demand for advertising marketing is not only to release product promotion information, but also to upgrade their own products and solutions. Therefore, tapping media-integrated resources, designing media-integrated products and using big data to create a new digital infrastructure for media-integrated marketing upgrade have become major propositions that mainstream media must answer for survival and development.
Fourth, the international public opinion field presents a new situation, and the new track calls for new kinetic energy.
The epidemic situation has had an important impact on economic globalization and international public opinion field, and the epidemic prevention measures, coping models and international cooperation mechanisms of various countries have become global concerns. Grasping the law of international communication and the new situation of international public opinion field, fully understanding the important role of the Internet in international communication and actively deploying overseas social platforms are one of the highlights of improving the international communication ability of major domestic media.
According to the influence data of CTR overseas social platform, the overseas influence of CCTV ranks first, while People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency rank second and third. CCTV has opened more than 240 accounts on YouTube and Facebook, two major international social media platforms, with a cumulative subscription of 370 million accounts. The cumulative subscription of Xinhua News Agency accounts is 190 million. During the epidemic period, CGTN released "Wuhan War and Epidemic" through YouTube platform, which made overseas audiences know the actual situation in Wuhan for the first time, with a cumulative broadcast volume of 17.89 million.
TOP10 Influence of Overseas Social Platforms of Mainstream Media Organizations in 2020
Image data period: January 1-December 18, 2020.
TOP5, the influence list of overseas social platforms of mainstream media organizations in 2020
January 1-December 18, 2020
Facebook and YouTube
Cumulative subscription of central media on two overseas social media platforms
Innovative communication strategies from the audience, effective use of self-media to convey China’s voice, showing people’s lives through daily scenes, presenting vivid and three-dimensional image of China from the perspective of ordinary people, and combining "hard power" and "soft communication" to complete the transformation from discourse power to international communication ability are another highlight of the overseas communication of mainstream media in 2020.
In the year of epidemic in 2020, China has created two miracles. One is that it has made great strategic achievements in epidemic prevention and control, and the other is that it has become the first major economy in the world to achieve positive economic growth. It can be said that the mainstream media in China lived up to their mission under the heavy pressure of the epidemic and made due contributions to the creation of the two miracles.