China's Lunar New Year Gala TV show may soon be shown in other countries as China Central Television has announced that their company is making the show's rights available to foreign broadcast firms.
The Spring Festival Eve Gala is one of CCTV's most watched and longest-running shows on television.
According to Zheng Weidong, deputy managing director of CSM Media Research, an estimated 700 million people tuned it to the show live, while some opted to catch the replay on TV in 2014.
Meanwhile, around 110 million people opted to view the hours-long show via streaming over the Internet.
This year, CCTV has made the rights to the show available overseas so that Chinese in other countries as well as people who would like to know more about the Chinese culture would have access to the annual show.
The New Year's Eve Gala has been an annual major viewing event in China since 1983.
Ma Runsheng, general manager of CHNPEC, the media rights agency partner of CCTV, has reported that the Spring Festival Eve Gala would be shown in other languages, with English, Arabic, Hindi, German and Portuguese included. This was made possible with the company's arrangements with 24 foreign media firms.
To market the event and hype up the annual gala, CHNPEC has also lined up a social media campaign to promote the event, which is scheduled on Feb. 18.
A compilation of the show's "greatest hits" would be shown on different social networks, including Twitter, Google Plus and YouTube to inform people outside China.
"Our purpose is to make our gala available to more overseas Chinese and overseas foreign viewers who love Chinese culture and want to learn about Chinese culture through this festive celebration," said Ma.
In 2014, film direcror Feng Xiaogang directed the production, which was met with negative feedback. According to Feng, he was unable to transform the vision he has for the show because he was not given much "freedom" to do what he pleased.