Provincial Tv Channels. On News Stand

To establish a Journalism-oriented TV station has always been immortal pursuit of TV news practitioners. Indeed, news programs have done and still have a huge influence in less than a hundred years of television history. Yet with the development of the commercialization and industrialization of the mass media, profit became the main purpose of media institutions. The televisions give out the voice in the way of entertainment increasingly and thus become a type of cultural spirit. Media then gradually become the tool for private interest of certain groups, instead of its initial role of public interest watcher.Nowadays, the TV screens in China are also dominated by entertainment programs. Thanks to the monopoly position in policies, resources and coverage rate of the China Central Television, other satellite TV channels concentrate on entertainment actively or passively in the fierce market competition. News programs at the provincial satellite TV channels are fading away.Dragon TV carries the mission of representing the city of Shanghai, and has been known as the flag of news since its establishment. But the task is tough and it hasn't succeeded in obtaining the position in the present territory of Chinese TV industry that matches the status of Shanghai city.This article starts from the eight-year evolution of Dragon TV, comparing with the history and the motivation of media development globally, and explores the social functions of the China's TV media in today's society. It concludes that the mass media must bear the mission of protecting the citizen's right to know and maintaining the interests of all sectors of the society, in spite of the inevitable commercialization. And this relies on not only the self-consciousness of the media, but also the legal regulation. As a media with huge influence, the journalism-oriented stand for TV channels is both practical needs and historical necessity.