Southern Television Guangdong

TVS or Southern Television Guangdong is a regional Chinese language sub-network under Southern Media Corporation in Southern China. TVS is based in Guangzhou and covers mainly in Guangdong and Hong Kong. Most of the channels programming and broadcast is mainly in Cantonese.

Founded in 2001, it is sister station of Guangdong TV under the Southern Media Corporation.

Although technically a state owned station, TVS is modelled after TVB of Hong Kong and TDM of Macau.

News reports are in both Cantonese and Mandarin.

The channel offers news, local produced entertainment shows and soap operas.

Southern Television Guangdong (TVS), the youngest provincial TV station in China, has carried out a host of restructuring measures since its launching on December 20, 2001 aimed at organizational optimization, business process reengineering, market repositioning, differentiated competition and brand building and become the leading player in Guangdong with the fastest and biggest growth in audience ratings market share. Currently, over 9 million households can watch TVS 5 channels program via the provincial cable network, including TVS-1 (Economy Channel), TVS-2 (TVS Satellite Channel), TVS-3 (Entertainment Channel), TVS-4 (Movie and Drama Channel), TVS-5 (Children Channel).

TVS Satellite Channel was formally launched on July 28, 2004, covering 11.9 million households and institutions with 43.48 million audiences in mainland China, reaching all the towns and cities of Guangdong. In October 2007, TVS Satellite Channel successfully entered Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regions cable network, and later the networks of Guizhou Province, Hainan Province and Fujian Province. Meanwhile, the channel has entered the cable networks of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Even North America, Latin America, India, South Korea and other Asian countries can watch the channel free through the Great Wall Platform. TVS Satellite Channel has become the first Cantonese satellite TV channel of mainland China covering the whole world.

After 6 years of great efforts, with its annual average growth rate of 3.2% in audience ratings and 100 million Yuan RMB in ads income, TVS raised its viewing market to 19.2% in Guangzhou in 2006 and fell only behind the TVB in market share, securing the second place in all TV operators and the first place in domestic players. From the 2006 Labor Day holiday and National Day golden week holiday, to the holidays of Spring Festival, Labor Day and National Day in 2007, and the Spring Festival of 2008, TVS ranked the first among all operators (overseas ones included) in market share across all these 6 golden week holiday seasons according to statistics from both AGB Nielsen and CSM Media Research.

The rapid rise in its market share by TVS is first and foremost attributed to the precise positioning and market segmentation of its five channels. Clear channel positioning and unambiguously defined market segmentation has contributed to optimized configuration of resources and avoided unnecessary internal competition and attrition, resulting in a desirable situation where all the five TVS channels grow and prosper hand in hand. TVS-1 broadcast in mandarin is extremely popular with the local public for their focused news coverage on life of common people. TVS-2 targeting the Cantonese-speaking group provides the local viewers with a rich variety of practical local information and services. TVS-3 positions itself as Happy TV by catering to viewers love of entertainment show. TVS-4, ranking the first among TVS 5 channels both in ads income and audience ratings, has become the audiences first choice to watch movie and drama in Guangdong. TVS-5, the first kid channel in mainland China, now has grown into the most influential one in South China.

Compared with 2001 when TVS was formed, 2006 saw substantial growth in their market share by the five channels, ranging from 100% to 340%, in which the movie channel TVS-4 boasted the greatest net growth of 4.6 percentage points while the entertainment channel TVS-3 boasted the largest growth range, from 0.8% in 2001 to 3.5% in 2006, an increase of 337.5%. Despite its limited resources, TVS has used its differentiating approach to create a host of localized popular programs which cater to real life and for the general public and has thus formed its core competitive edge. In their creative, lively and fun presentation, the popular City Search and Metro Fun Group programs on TVS-2 provide the local viewers with a rich variety of practical local information and services. In 2006, the average audience ratings for the City Search and the Metro Fun Group, both focused on local culture, reached 5% and 3.8% respectively. News Today on TVS-1 is extremely popular with the local public for its focused news coverage on life of common people. Averaging 3.6% audience ratings in 2006, News Today, in particular, quickly rose to the most viewed program in Mandarin in Guangzhou just one week after its first broadcast, thus putting an end to the dominance of news reporting in Cantonese in Guangzhou and subsequently triggering a series of reform on news reporting in Guangdong. All those popular programs have, in turn, greatly enhanced its channel prestige.

Besides those branded programs, TVS has created a series of big events to reinforce its Southern brand. For example, New Silk Road Model Competition, co-operated by TVS and New Silk Road Model Company, has become the most influential model contest in South China, a batch of models emerged as super models represented by Ms. Wu Yingna who won the title of Miss World after winning the championship of New Silk Road Model competition. Among these big events are TVS Kid Model Competition, TVS Golden Awards, Let Dreams Fly co-organized by Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau.

Faced with the rigorous competition, TVS has analyzed the TV broadcast market and its competitive environment and subsequently re-defined its new strategy targeting the people on the street, with feature channels at its core and focus on audience- and subject-specific localized programs aimed at market maximization. Currently TVS has ushered in a new era of high speed development with its unified image and high quality programs.