| In recent years, with the rapid development of new media and the great changes and renovation in media industry, traditional media with TV being the main medium have undergone severe challenge. Competition within the TV industry is also growing, with various forms of TV columns emerging. It seems that no single column can take the lead for a long time. Among all these columns, the TV legal columns that used to catch people’s attention claim smaller market shares. A lot of TV legal columns have suffered from the time compression and transformation. Worse still, some TV stations even have TV legal columns merged or canceled.At the same time, with the process of the development of rules of laws in China accelerating, it has become an increasingly urgent task to strengthen construction of rule of law publicity. The public’s concern with sensational social news and sensitive cases has reached to an unprecedented degree. The great importance attached to the construction of law and the propaganda work by the central government, the growing intensity of anti-corruption efforts, the unveiling of all kinds of new laws and regulations, and the comments on the cases closely related to people’s daily life, all of the above are tightly linked to the development of our society. It is urgent that media bear the responsibility of informing the public in an authoritative, comprehensive and scientific manner.Then, with such a social background, how can TV legal columns stand out from the media "red sea" of fierce competition, avoid the conflicts between commercial agenda and public agenda and take the social responsibility?At present, there is relatively little academic study on TV legal columns. There is no precedent study that takes an on-going TV legal column as the sample, investigates and analysis it’s past history and future direction in great depth, and tries to find out a sustainable path for the struggling TV legal programs under the guidance of news broadcasting theory to meet the needs of broadcasting. Therefore, it is a pressing matter of the moment to carry out theoretical study on TV legal columns in China to make them adapt to the current communication needs and meet the requirement of the viewers’focus.Moral and Legal of Shandong TV Station is the longest-surviving TV legal program in China and enjoys a high prestige. Ever since its first episode during the "First Five-Year" Law Dissemination Project, the column has been broadcast for over two decades, which makes it the representative of China’s TV legal columns. It is one of the advocates and founders of the TV Legal Columns Committee of China Radio and Television Association and presently serves as a member of the council. In its most glorious days, its influence is similar to that of Focus Interview.The author of this article, being the editorial, reporter, host and producer of this program for eleven years, knows well its operation rules. With the progress of China’s legal development as the background, this article uses the emergence, development, boom and being merged of the program as an clue and model, carefully gathers and examines the audience ratings, market share, and other data of the renowned legal columns of other TV stations from the perspective of news broadcasting theories like agenda setting, media judgment and media surveillance, and finally draws up the future trend of China’s legal columns by reflecting objectively from different angles on the real cases showcased in the program.The first part of the article introduces the history of Moral and Law from three aspects:the conditions on which TV legal columns can develop, the birth and development of China’s TV legal columns, and the phases Moral and Law went through.The second part focuses on the hidden cause of the rise and fall of Moral and Law. The shared features of all TV legal columns in China, the agenda setting theory and the representative episodes of Moral and Law in differences phases are taken into consideration.The third part analyses the influence of the changes of topic screening rules and the directions of the topic selection on the viewing trend and the influence of the changes of target audience selection and audience agenda on the audience rating performance. The analysis of the deeper cause of Moral and Law’s development trend from the perspective of individual cases and in comparison of the performance of CCTV’s Legal Report and Chongqing TV Station’s Breathtaking Legal Cases at the about same time is also covered in this part.The fourth part provides effective measures to make TV legal columns regain prosperity by solving the problems mentions in the second part and considering the present development of China’s TV industry.So far, this article is the first attempt to analyze theoretically the trend of China’s TV legal columns on the basis of the study on such a characteristic program as Moral and Law of Shandong TV Station. It will surely be valuable to all the present and future TV legal columns. |
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