seek the differences: what year was this gala?

media - Even Xinhua loses patience with CCTV's New Year show

Officially the CCTV New Year show is still the media event of the year. It rakes in records in commercials, this year a 500 million Rmb or US$ 65 million).
While is still attracts record numbers of viewers, in the big cities the show is rapidly losing traction as people have other activities that are less boring.
Official competition is now coming from Hunan TV and Dragon TV, but also the internet has become for the urbanites a major draw.
This year even the official newswire Xinhua summerizes the opinions of the critics:

Cross-talks and stand-up routings were among the programs that drew most audience since 2000. However, audience expressed their disappointment at the invariable boring pattern and old faces of actors and actresses.

Update I: Half of the audience of the CCTV New Year show thought it was boring, says a media report on a Sina.com survey, translated by the China Digital Times. I guess it was an online survey, so it might not be representative for the whole Chinese population.

Update II: ESWN translates a rather critical editorial of the Southern Metropolis Daily:

Under these circumstances, the Spring Festival Gala is still expected to accomplish its political mission and disseminate political information. But its current format still uses the old political propaganda methods which will lose more and more of the younger audiences. Young people want to watch truly interesting entertainment programs, not to attend a class in political theories. In my opinion, that type of politicized style is in serious conflict with the market and commercial needs.