In recent years throughout China reality TV shows have becomesome of the most watched programs aired by the country'sstations.

Successful reality programming gets high ratings, brandrecognition and big profits for TV stations, program producers andsponsoring companies. But with fiercer competition, eager tosatisfy audiences these reality shows now require to be moreinnovative and diversified to guarantee future success.

A Sa (R), member of HongKong singing duo Twins, performs on the stage of Dragon TV's "Let'sShake It."

Last year Shanghai's Dragon TV launched a dancecompetition show called "Let's Shake It" to snatch ratings awayfrom Hunan TV's hit national singing competition show "Super Girl."Benefiting from Shanghai's dance tradition the new show became abig hit among local audiences. This was in part thanks to theappearance of celebrities.

At the end of last year a report was published thatanalyzed the value of Dragon TV's four reality shows including"Let's Shake It." The direct returns amounted to 1.4 billion yuan(US$179.5 million). The success was helped by an "industrial-like"chain of program producers, brand management companies, SMSservices and entertainment companies.

"Let's Shake It" alone has earned 1.2 billion yuan (US$153.9million) for those involved. Besides huge profits thesereality shows also helped promote China's cultural industry.Li Lan, of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television'sresearch center for development and reform, pointed out that DragonTV's reality shows not only made its brand more competitive butalso built up an industrial-typed chain combining integratedentertainment sources.

One of the reasons for the success of the show was that itshifted the limelight from contenders, who were ordinary folk, tostar competitors. It put big names into positions normally taken byordinary people.

This year Hunan TV introduced another singing competition "Justthe Two of Us" from BBC Worldwide, which also features starcontenders. The show invited 16 stars to participate in eightgroups. Each group includes one professional singer and an actor oractress. The result will be decided by judges' marks and TVaudience votes. One group will be eliminated after each round. Theshow has entered its fifth round and its ratings are reasonablygood.

Dragon TV is being even more ambitious this year. On January 12it'll launch another reality TV show -- "Fei Chang You Xi"-- which puts traditional Chinese opera into TV competition. Hypedas promoting traditional culture and opera the show, with such aunique content, is looking promising.

Regarding this year's trends for reality shows the generalmanager of Dragon TV, Xu Wei, predicted, "China's TV programs havea big market to develop. There'll be more reality shows this year.Both the quality and value chain of the shows have a lot of room togrow. However, risks still remain."

Professor Yi Hong from Tsinghua University analyzed the risks.He said more reality shows will be produced this year but it wouldbe difficult to overtake established brands and formats. Producershad to consider other show formats including those related tolifestyle and travel.

"In 2007 reality shows are expected to develop by involvingimitation, competition and elimination," Li Lan said.

(CRI.cn January 12, 2007)