Gyrating undergarments , snake oil remedies and life-changing watches may be seeing less airtime, as China’s television watchdog puts new limits on infomercials

November 1, 2013 Leave a comment

October 31, 2013, 6:22 PM

Bye Bye Vibrating Bras: China Limits Infomercials

Gyrating undergarments , snake oil remedies and life-changing watches may be seeing less airtime, as China’s television watchdog puts new limits on infomercials. The country’s satellite TV stations will be allowed to air infomercials for a maximum of three minutes per hour, under new rules issued this week by the State General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.The rules, effective  Jan. 1, also ban infomercials specifically between 6 p.m. and midnight and stipulate that programming shouldn’t include “news reporting, anchorpersons hosting and exaggerated ‘hawking’ voices and actions.”

Taking aim at one Chinese television staple, the regulator is also forbidding breast firming and body slimming products on infomercials. In addition, all promotional TV must now be labeled as advertising in the right corner of the screen.

The new rules are meant to clean up programming, with the media watchdog agency saying infomercials harmed “people’s interests and affecting the social image of radio and TV.”

Chinese TV stations are packed with promotional TV, selling everything from jewelry and massage contraptions to limb lengtheners and vibrating bras. But nearly half of China’s TV shoppers say they have been cheated at least once by TV, according to asurvey by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece.  Of the nearly 1,800 consumers surveyed, 14.3% had TV shopping experience and only 5% were satisfied with the results, the survey showed.

The move is among the latest by regulators that will impact China’s satellite stations, which have gained popularity in recent years, rivaling China’s state broadcasters.

China’s state TV regulator announced earlier this month that starting next year, satellite TV broadcasters will be allowed only one new TV show a year based on a foreign format, such as China’s version of “The Voice.” The authorities are also requesting that TV channels abstain from broadcasting shows based on foreign formats during prime time—between 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.—next year.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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