Mobile TV company ROK has announced that its Chinese arm, ROK New Net, has made the Chinese CCTV 2007 Spring Festival Evening Gala, one of
Chinas most popular annual television events, available to consumers
in the UK on mobiles via its RokTV and FreeBeTV services. ROK New Net
streamed the Gala, which took place on Saturday evening, live, in
conjunction with CCTV.com, as part of a video streaming trial.
The Evening Gala is one of the highest-rated TV shows in China, and one
of the highest-rated worldwide. It has become a Spring Festival
tradition for millions of Chinese families to watch the
four-and-a-half-hour long Spring Festival Evening programme on Chinese
New Years Eve, which is the last night of the Lunar Year, and the most
important night of the year for the Chinese people.
After the live stream on Saturday on ROK TV and FreeBeTV, the Gala will
be replayed on FreeBeTV until 5 March. FreeBeTV is available to
compatible mobile phones, with the content streamed over GPRS. Viewers
can sign-up to FreeBeTV online here in the US, and here in the UK.
We are very excited to be working with CCTV.com in delivering this
spectacular live and recorded footage of the Spring Festival Evening
Gala to mobile subscribers” says ROK New Net CEO, Paul Lessells. We
will be concentrating our marketing efforts on generating viewers
from amongst the Chinese communities in the US and the UK in
particular.
The Mobile TV market is predicted to become a multi-billion dollar
industry globally over the next five years. CCTV International Network
Company Ltd. (CCTV.com), with its focus on the development of Mobile
TV, is currently the largest Mobile TV service provider in China.