A Study On The Communication Effect And Its Influencing Factors Of Health Television Programs In China

With the rapid development of economy in China, the pace of people’s living is speeding up and the pressure of competitive society is increasing. This fast-paced and highly-stressed life leads to a progressive decline in people’s physical health. Thus sub-health has become a widespread phenomenon in our society. As more and more people realize the importance of health, the public demand for health is increasingly growing and health care becomes a hot topic of public concern. In this context, the health TV program emerges and develops to be one of the main forms of health communication. However, most health TV programs set the middle-aged and elderly people as their target audiences. With the excessive spread of such programs, a number of problems are being exposed.Focusing on the communication effect of health TV programs in China and taking Yangshengtang of Beijing TV as an example, this study researches health TV programs’ current status, communication effect and influence factors with the method of content analysis and questionnaire survey. It reaches a conclusion that the topics of health TV programs in China are mainly about physical health closely related to daily life, paying less attention to people’s psychological health and moral health. Generally, there are three advantages of such programs: popularizing health related knowledge, increasing interaction and diversified program forms, and combining with new media. While the four disadvantages are as follows: limited time for broadcasting, monotonous content, miscellaneous information, and low brand awareness.In the fact that the audiences of health TV programs are at all ages and the youth share the same concern with the elderly, this paper argues that such programs should develop to meet the young audiences’ demand for health information. Offering knowledge on health, the current health TV programs can basically meet the social needs for health information. Audiences commonly accept the points of view conveyed in such programs, but more efforts should be made to promote the degree of acceptance. Health TV programs can encourage audiences to have a good health attitude, to adopt health advices, and to keep a healthy lifestyle.Each level plays a role to promote the realization of health communication effect. The more knowledge audiences gain from the health TV programs, the more likely they will be to trust the knowledge, identify with the methods of keeping healthy, and adopt health behaviors. Some factors such as gender, age, monthly income, self-health evaluation and the frequency of watching programs will influence each level of health communication effect respectively. In the process of health communication, five elements such as subject, content and program forms, media, audiences and environment will have corresponding impacts on the communication effect.Based on the current status and characteristics, this study gives three suggestions on health TV programs in China: first, to optimize the topics and check the content; second, to promote more interactions and diversified program forms; third, to establish a professional production team and build its own brand. Specific strategies are as follows: to expand the target audiences, particularly the youth; to establish the perspective of “Big Health” with emphasis on media combination; to adopt social marketing strategy; and to promote humanistic concern, etc.