New Year gala reaches out with new media partnerships

The annual Chinese New Year China Central Television (CCTV) gala is promoting the show to overseas markets on social media platforms, while this year's gala features an unusual three comic routines themed around China's anti-graft campaign.

Video-streaming website iqiyi.com will be the first website after the official website of CCTV to put on the live show of the gala. The website will be streaming the live show for both domestic and overseas audiences, the Beijing Youth Daily reported Friday. It added that partners for CCTV also included Tencent Weibo, Youtube and Twitter.

A CCTV employee on Saturday confirmed the cooperation with Twitter and Youtube, both of which domestic Internet users are unable to access.

"I hope everyone can become a part of the gala. They can not only enjoy the visual-audio feast but also have fun," Ha Wen, the director of this year's gala, told the People's Daily, noting this year's emphasis on new media.

On Thursday, a promotional trailer was screened in Times Square, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The gala will be broadcast in foreign languages including English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese and German, under agreements with 24 foreign media outlets, reported the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, among the 36 routines in this year's gala that will last from the evening of February 18 to after midnight, three, including two traditional crosstalk routines and a comic play, will echo the Communist Party of China's strongest anti-graft campaign in decades by mocking corruption.

Routines in previous Spring Festival galas since 1983 were occasionally sarcastic about social problems, but a gala that include three shows satirizing corruption is believed to be rare.

One of the crosstalk skits, titled These Are Not Mine, depicts a government official taking bribes including cash, houses and even a mistress, while trying to cover it up, reported Chengdu-based newspaper West China City Daily.