TV censorship: how it works

Image via WikipediaDanwei gives us a nice peek in the censorship kitchen of CCTV, China's central TV station, based on an article in Oriental Outlook. It shows the internal censorship systems of the broadcasting station, that is much more important than the official censor SARFT:

Much of the time, it seems like SARFT is to blame whenever people are upset with film and TV censorship (in fact, Oriental Outlook interviewed a SARFT censor on that subject earlier this year). But television stations are ultimately responsible for what they broadcast, so they too employ censors to eliminate objectionable content.

Danwei summarizes a few reasons for the internal controllers to step in:

• A tribald folk tune had to be removed from a period piece;
• The mother of a Japanese soldier in a war drama expected him to fight to his death in China, implying that the Japanese people fully supported the war;
• None of the four main characters in a drama about car racing was motivated by the love of the race;
• A series in which a party secretary was accused of rape only to be cleared in the final episode could mislead viewers who didn't watch the show all the way through to the end

But the whole article is worth a read. I'm not sure how damaging this censorship still is, but some years ago I attended a panel where a director complained that half of the production of his famous kong-fu sequel did not pass the mark, adding substationally to the production costs.
For reality it is even harder to make the mark. Yet one example of a production that did not make it:

He brought up another example: in one series, four out of five former classmates had affairs, two families had been broken, and the one remaining individual decided to pursue love but not marriage. In addition, when children in three of the families started dating while they were still young, two sets of parents said nothing and only one set opposed. And the parents who acquiesced were educated, while the ones who opposed were rude and uneducated...