The radio, television and film sector of south China's Guangdong Province reported an annual revenue of 7.67 billion yuan (about US$946.9 million) in 2005, leading the nation for five consecutive years.

The province's Broadcasting Media Southern Group (BMS) earned 4.6 billion yuan (about US$567.9 million) in the past year and has become the largest provincial-level media group in China.

Established in January 2004, the group has scored prominent progress through cooperation with other media companies.

The media companies under BMS, including Guangdong TV, Southern TV and other 19 city-level television and broadcasting stations, registered a 44.8 percent audience rating last year, outdoing their competitors from Hong Kong and foreign countries.

A latest survey of the internationally recognized AC Nielsen showed that in Guangzhou the audience rating of all the eight overseas TV channels has dropped from 72.5 percent to 43 percent in the past six years. In the same period that of the domestic channels soared up to 57 percent, with BMS contributing the lion's share in the city.

(Xinhua News Agency January 23, 2006)