More Chinese television viewers will see the 76th Oscar Awarding Ceremony on domestic TV channels this year as more TV stations have won the broadcasting right to the global movie extravaganza.

The awarding ceremony will begin at 9:00 a.m. (Beijing Time) on March 1. The movie channel of China Central Television (CCTV), which for the first time relayed the Oscar awarding ceremony last year, will also be the first channel to get the broadcasting right this year.

As China's first local movie channel, Shanghai East Movie Channel (SEMC), which was launched at the end of 2003, has also bought the relay right of the ceremony and got permission from the Walt Disney Company, owner of the Oscar awarding ceremony broadcasting rights. In addition, the Shanghai TV station can make Oscar-related programs and sell them to other TV stations in China.

"The price to get the TV broadcasting right in China's mainland is just below 2 million yuan (US$240,000), much lower than the price of broadcasting a sports game which usually cost millions of dollars," said Xiao Hong, deputy director of the SEMC.

According to Xiao, SEMC will send a special correspondent to Hollywood and present an Oscar movie week, when a series of Oscar winners will be shown on the channel.

As a country of about 1.3 billion people, China boasts over 2,000 TV stations and more than 4,000 TV channels. Among them, at least 50 provincial TV stations have the ability to broadcast programs around the country through satellites and most TV channels broadcast at least 12 hours a day.

"In this sense, China's TV market is of great potential for foreign programs, such as Oscar and Grammy awarding ceremonies," said Xiao.

(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2004)