CCP Local Television Stations Fall Into Crisis — Analysis: Collapse of the Fiscal Support Model

CCP Local Television Stations Fall Into Crisis

[People News] China’s economy is in recession, CCP governments at all levels are deeply in debt, and civil servants in many provinces and cities have begun to experience the pain of unpaid wages. Television stations, once powerful machines for singing the Party’s praises, spreading propaganda, and brainwashing the public, used to enjoy boundless glory. Now, as grassroots governments run out of money, local television stations are facing “cut-off rations” and wage arrears. When employees who carry out CCP propaganda orders begin to taste the hardship of unpaid wages themselves, will they still be willing to continue manufacturing lies for the CCP and deceiving the people?

According to an Dajiyuan report, recently a television media professional described the current situation of local television stations on a self-media platform, triggering widespread resonance. He wrote that television stations are now responsible for their own profits and losses; even directors’ salaries are not fully paid, with some delayed for several months. With poor operating performance, hundreds of channels have been shut down or merged. Wage arrears have driven many people away; those who remain at the stations are busy running side businesses, doing livestream sales, or taking freelance jobs.

This television media professional believes that today’s television programming is unwatchable. Turn on the TV and it is all “brainwashing propaganda dramas,” commercials, and public service advertisements looping endlessly. News is dull, lacks timeliness compared to new media, and is hollow in content. Programs are crudely produced, lack creativity, and are even detached from everyday life of ordinary people. Television stations are public institutions, and their propaganda content is produced strictly according to government instructions. Fresh and lively content cannot pass internal review quickly, while self-media can publish instantly without review.

In the past, better provincial stations had NBA broadcasts. With more choices on online platforms, traffic was siphoned away from traditional media, and ratings gradually declined. Later, online platforms moved to paid models, CCTV gradually increased its live NBA broadcasts, and ratings recovered, while provincial stations basically no longer had NBA broadcasts.

More seriously, program production teams have become rigid, with few newcomers joining. There is a generational gap in program production, and development space is limited. Interns receive no pay for months, with regular employment a distant prospect. Even after becoming full employees, wages are still owed, and pay cuts happen frequently. “Benefits never reach you, delays and excuses deceive people. Connections grab the spotlight, you spend your whole life at the grassroots. Staffing positions sit until retirement, employees dance a two-person routine.”

Netizens commented that working at a television station used to be the ceiling of job prestige: “It had face, money, good food, a sense of achievement, access to information, and smooth connections everywhere. Now, the good days of television stations have finally ended.” “Many local stations should have been shut down long ago—no efficiency, no one watches ads, and programs are poorly made, pure negative assets.” “One province only needs one satellite channel.”

“There was a saying: ten years ago, media professionals said their wages hadn’t increased in ten years. Now, can they even hold up basic living expenses?” “I know people in television stations—basically none live on their salaries alone. They all have side income or their own businesses. The identity of a TV station employee is just a stepping stone. Now even radio hosts often go do small events or commercial performances to earn extra money. The era of living on wages ended years ago.”

A netizen from Guangdong using the name “yeo” said, “Here we’ve already been turned into a state-owned enterprise. We have to be the mouthpiece and also make money. Holiday duty, all kinds of propaganda tasks. Where is any journalistic ideal? You have to do propaganda and make money, yet still can’t make money. Even in first-tier cities, incomes are very low.”

Netizens believe that once self-financing and marketization begin, this outcome is inevitable, because television stations are “bound hand and foot” in the market but are not allowed to close. Wanting everything at once makes true marketization impossible. Television stations are part of the propaganda apparatus, serving the system and leadership, with content under strict control. Compared with the relaxed and natural content of self-media, traffic levels are naturally worlds apart. “The truth is always on Douyin, not on television—this is the core issue.”

Propaganda TV Has No Viewers — Television Station Revenues Cut Off

In recent years, as advertisers have shifted from traditional media to new media platforms, television station revenues have plummeted. In August 2024, Shenzhen Television’s Public Channel and Entertainment Channel officially stopped broadcasting. In January 2019, Shanghai Media Group merged its Entertainment Channel and Star Channel into the Urban Channel.

Online rumors say Hunan Television laid off staff, Guizhou Radio and Television owes wages, and Henan Television pays a monthly salary of 3,500 yuan. Last August, a television host from Anhui posted a photo of his pay slip showing an actual take-home pay of only 2,863.83 yuan.

According to statistics from mainland media, 50% of people do not watch television, and ratings for some television stations are close to zero. Some stations pay only 38% of full employee salaries. Currently, more than 700 television media outlets are at risk of bankruptcy.

Former Guilin Television reporter Zeng Jieming confirmed to Dajiyuan reporters that Guilin Television was unable to pay wages for half a year in 2023, and dozens of employees hung banners to demand their rights. Local television stations have two types of staffing: a small number of leaders are fiscally funded, while most employees are on public institution staffing. When performance is poor, wages are not guaranteed, and there are also employees without staffing status. Now, with a wave of private enterprise bankruptcies, where can the advertising revenue of the past come from? Once local finances tighten, television stations are the first to have their rations cut.

He analyzed that after 2018, three major events occurred in China: first, the consequences of ultra-low birth rates began to fully emerge, with a collapse in the young population; second, rigid demand in the real estate sector broke, leading to the collapse of land finance and uncontrolled local debt; third, central fiscal “recentralization,” leaving local governments to “fend for themselves.” The result: even education and healthcare are being squeezed; the propaganda system is seen as a “cuttable item,” and local television stations immediately experience wage arrears, zero performance pay, layoffs of non-staff personnel, and failure of self-financing. He said, “The death of television stations is fiscal, not technological.”

The CCP Abandons Television — The “Local Mouthpiece” Becomes History

Some netizens said, “I used to think print media would die before television stations; now it’s hard to say, since print media can still force institutional subscriptions.” “Before, television knocked out radio. Now Douyin has knocked out television stations. It’s not just Douyin, but the entire internet media ecosystem.”

Zeng Jieming believes that the judgment twenty years ago that “television would inevitably overwhelm newspapers” implicitly assumed a market society: television has high production costs but broad coverage, making it suitable for commercial advertising, while newspapers are slow and have aging audiences and would be eliminated. This logic largely holds in the United States, Japan, and Europe, but it does not apply to China. That is because China’s media are not market competitors, but rather “fiscally supported + political tools + administrative units.” Once the regime’s operating strategy changes, the rise and fall of media reverses.

He points out that the fundamental reason local television stations are declining before newspapers is the collapse of the fiscal support model. Under the CCP system, local television stations are public institutions and “mouthpieces” of the propaganda department. They rely heavily on local finances and administrative advertising, are not content-driven organizations, but broadcasters of leaders’ speeches, showcases for political achievements, and policy repeaters.

The second factor is the high cost of television stations. They are overstaffed with complex hierarchies. Producing television programs costs far more than making short self-media videos. Filming, editing, broadcast control, and transmission are all fixed costs. What the CCP truly needs now is low-cost, high-density, quickly editable, algorithmically distributable propaganda. Television is completely unfit.

Moreover, young people no longer watch television. The problem is that the CCP most needs to brainwash young people, and young people are only on Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, and WeChat. Thus, an extremely ironic scene has emerged: local television stations are producing “programs no one cares about” for “audiences no one watches.”

Faced with the new situation, CCP authorities have cunningly chosen “platform-based propaganda” and are gradually abandoning television. The CCP’s real choice in recent years has been to give up local television stations and shift propaganda resources to Douyin matrix accounts, government new media, and platforms uniformly coordinated by the Cyberspace Administration. This means that television, as a historical “local mouthpiece,” has been technologically eliminated and politically abandoned.

He also said: “Television stations in the CCP’s China have already shown obvious ‘late-stage institutional cancer symptoms.’ Historically, there is a very clear parallel: Soviet local television stations (1985–1991) were also nominally ‘propaganda positions,’ but in reality ‘no one watched them,’ wages were long in arrears, staff took private jobs and engaged in gray businesses, and young people all fled. The rapid decline of television stations is a sign that the CCP is approaching collapse.” △