It seems that there aren't enough hours in the day to show all the TV series produced in China.

While China has become one of the world's major producers of TV series, almost half the episodes are never aired, a national symposium on series has heard.

Attendees at the symposium learned that last year, 529 TV series were produced, with 14,670 episodes. That was twice as many episodes as were produced in 2000. The number of organizations making series surged nearly six times between 2001 and 2007, to 2,511, a statement from the symposium showed.

Watching TV series has become a major pastime for Chinese, with each spending one hour per day on it on average.

To meet demand -- and raise money -- 89.4 percent of the country's 1,974 channels air series, according to the statement. More than half of the stations' ad revenue came from these shows.

But there's a lot of low-grade material amid the glut, experts contend.

Only 3,000 episodes or so were shown during prime time, and stations only need about 7,000. That means half of the episodes produced remain unshown, according to You Xiaogang, a prominent TV series director.

He suggested that more cooperation between broadcasters and producers, and more audience feedback, could fix the problem.

(Xinhua News Agency February 26, 2008)