This study of China's national television juggernaut is centrally about media producers; and rather than “the” story it actually offers many stories, effectively infusing a big-picture overview of the organization with small-picture accounts from the perspectives of key individuals within the organization. A chronicle of CCTV's development, management and operations during the post-Mao reform period provides the backdrop for a succession of in-depth interviews with people involved in noteworthy programming innovations and successes of the past two decades. Their experiences range from news and documentary to education and entertainment, and to novel blends of content and format emerging from new opportunities, experiments, political negotiations and quests for revenue.

Through a steady accretion of character sketches and tales from the field, the book conveys a critical message that belies what might be expected of this Chinese and, increasingly, global media behemoth. It should not be surprising to find inertia and rigidity at an official state news organization of the scale, resources and outsized importance of CCTV; in the battle between structure and agency, it seems likely that structure would prevail. But that is not the case: agency is very much alive and kicking, and makes all the difference in what media producers can achieve within a media system ostensibly still governed by the Chinese Communist Party.

Author Ying Zhu, professor of media and cinema studies at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, was among the earliest of today's cosmopolitan corps of culturally adept scholars studying mass communication in contemporary China; in particular, she has contributed immensely to studies of post-Mao Chinese cinema and television. She is not the first to explore complexities of Chinese media production; other scholars have done so in varied contexts and at multiple levels – from journalists’ delicate relationships with sources, readers, advertisers and propaganda officials to media corporations’ interactions with agencies of the state and the market. The struggle between “journalistic logic” and “Party logic” that she identifies, and the tensions, contradictions and sometimes collaborations among professional, political and commercial interests, by now are well recognized. But Zhu's book adds new dimensions to our knowledge of cultural production and journalism in China in the context of several decades of social transformation.

This addition to the literature is especially valuable in providing an expansive and detailed view of an organization that is both singular and quintessential – CCTV being the centerpiece of a key media industry, a major purveyor of Party and government policies and priorities, and thus important in its own right, as well as a veritable crucible of cultural, economic and political change common to Chinese media and society more generally. Even as the issues emerging from this brew may manifest themselves in ways specific to the medium and the organization, with idiosyncratic ingredients helping to generate unpredictable results, CCTV's experience also illuminates how China's media producers are incorporating, projecting and helping to shape broad currents of change affecting the country and the world.

As Zhu explains, China's national television system has grown in two decades from a primitive state-funded operation into a major profit-seeking player in the media marketplace. She calls CCTV an “archetype” of the sort of state/commercial hybrid that has come to dominate the Chinese media landscape. Despite the growth of the Internet and social media in China, TV remains hugely influential, still a prime source of news and information as well as distraction and enjoyment. Meanwhile, all media sectors have become sites of fierce competition for audience attention and revenue. Zhu sees CCTV as an especially vivid cultural gauge, both creating and responding to popular taste, and also as a window onto the dynamics of state–society relations, “a site of exchange between official and public discourse” (p. 7) where informal negotiations transpire between citizenry and authorities via boundary-spanning intermediaries answerable to both.

The author observes that CCTV is emblematic of quandaries facing even the most successful of China's media outlets, in that it is “financially profitably, operationally autonomous, and yet ideologically dependent” (p. 256). This hybrid status is an outgrowth of the post-Mao media reforms, as a strong central government and single-party system endeavour to harness the imperatives of the marketplace. This hybridity means that CCTV is a place where old and new ideas mix, where youth and experience coexist, where the inertia of an entrenched bureaucracy vies with fresh management and innovation, and where lines of authority are blurred. It means the state continues to exert ideological and personnel oversight while commanding part of the income supplied by the new market orientation – an alliance that promotes politically inoffensive and commercially successful programming. It means those who produce and present news and entertainment have multiple missions – to convey (or at least not violate) the proper political stance while generating profits. It means media practitioners juggle traditional legacies with modern aspirations, including the time-honoured view of Chinese intellectuals as moral educators along with professional conceptions of watchdog journalism and creative independence.

Adopting an approach aimed at producing what anthropologist Clifford Geerz called “thick description,” this book examines these matters through evidence from the activities, words and interpretations of people directly involved in media production and management at CCTV – largely personal stories obtained in two rounds of interviews that Ying Zhu conducted during 2008, through the Sichuan earthquake and the Beijing Olympics, and during the summer of 2009. Like many observers, Zhu regards Chinese media coverage of the Sichuan disaster as a milestone for transparent and open reporting – albeit to the extent that Chinese news organizations did not question government legitimacy – and she portrays CCTV's coverage as unusually important. The author and many of her sources say this experience suggests that CCTV exercises informational leadership best when it is least controlled.

The book situates in-depth conversations in the context of CCTV's evolution from a state-subsidized propaganda organ to an increasingly diverse and far-flung entity compelled to be self-supporting and even expected to contribute to state coffers. The structure of programming supervision that endures consists of state regulation combined with Party propaganda management that ultimately holds the trump cards; the practice of “rule by directive” (p. 26) leads to a climate of uncertainty and self-restraint that nevertheless creates openings for new initiatives from those bold enough to press the boundaries. The experience of policy swings along with periodic revamping and restructuring have become part of the socialization of a new generation of media professionals who must cater to audiences, the market and intellectual ideals along with demands for loyalty to Party and state.

A closer look at the history of CCTV through the reform period describes major developments under three successive administrations, with key developments in operations, financing, human resources and programming shaped by domestic and international concerns as well as by the propensities of individuals at the helm. Many veterans view the 1990s, under a forward-looking president now recalled fondly as a maverick, as a critical transformational period. During that decade, infusions of new talent arrived through changes in the hiring system that employed contract labour to bypass rigid state management, allowing production units to retain part of income. These years also saw programming innovations, from documentary series and historical dramas to news magazine shows, with shifting fates depending on the political climate. The subsequent regime introduced further commercialization, along with proliferation and branding of new channels in response to regional and overseas competition. The next administration has reinforced a concentration on news, desiring to make a mark on global broadcasting akin to CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera.

Intertwined with this history are the results of Zhu's extended discussions with media practitioners, including pioneers of documentaries, news magazines and investigative journalism; news anchors, whose once stiff official style has given way to greater informality and even celebrity status; producers and hosts of talk shows, finance and economics programs, and lifestyle and consumer-oriented programming; the strong personalities promoting lucrative light entertainment, such as game shows and variety programs; and those behind the production of popularized educational programs.

The conversations reveal a range of strategies for succeeding as a CCTV practitioner, with some stalwarts struggling to promote professionalism, advance notions of ethics and serve the public interest despite political and commercial pressures, and others availing themselves of the new market ethos to extend their own ambitions while delivering content welcomed by consumers. Some of those interviewed are frank about China's need for wholesale political reform, some believe government needs and civic interest can be aligned, while still others are more concerned with making the most of television's ludic potential. Their experiences illustrate how Western concepts have entered Chinese media workers’ parlance and are influencing practice: in news, a limited pluralism is emerging amidst the workings of self-censorship, while in entertainment, values of assertiveness, personality and even individualism are coming to the fore.

One chapter introduces China's movement to extend its “soft power” through investment in CCTV's global media outreach. The results have included increased broadcasting aimed at overseas Chinese, the development of an English-language channel, and further development of Spanish and French services. CCTV received a boost in government funding leading up to the 2008 Olympics for going-global initiatives, and subsequent additional infusions to develop formats catering to Western viewers. Results have included the opening of major operational centers in New York and Nairobi, steadily increasing programming revolving around the Americas and Africa, and the addition of non-Chinese professionals to CCTV's corps of overseas producers and correspondents. Scholars such as Liang Limin of the City University of Hong Kong have begun to track and analyse these developments.

This book also examines some domestic challengers to CCTV, particularly from most successful provincial satellite station, Hunan TV, and the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV, which maintains a close relationship with the Chinese government while escaping some of the more stringent factors for control. Other chapters offer fairly thin overviews of women's programming and sports programming, but the cursory nature of these sections can be excused given the strengths of the rest of the book.

In tying together the many facets of her fascinating study, the author makes some provocative observations that should prompt debate amongst scholars. She likens the Chinese TV audience to a quasi-public sphere, an assertion certainly worth additional scrutiny. She proffers the notion of the “manufacture of consent,” developed by Herman and Chomsky with reference to the US, as increasingly important in a Chinese society dependent on the power of ideas. She identifies a dynamic of Chinese exceptionalism in the stories her sources tell, paradoxically incorporating both a sense of historic grievance and continuing victimization along with confidence. And beneath these strains, she hears rumblings of economic stagnation and social distress.

In eminently readable style, and in a manner that extends the knowledge of senior specialists while also being accessible to students, this book covers a period of dramatic change that concludes with the arrival of a new CCTV president as of November 2011. At that point, “cultural cleansing” is the latest watchword and more disruptive regulatory fiddling is on the horizon; the only solid prediction is for more change, with options expanded by the Internet in ways yet to be seen. Meanwhile, Zhu writes, practitioners at CCTV “are soldiering on” (p. 265) and the author is in awe of their efforts and commitment.