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Sina and CCTV partner for the New Years Gala 2014[/caption] 

THE WORLDS MOST WATCHED TV PROGRAMME AND WEIBO

The CCTV New Year’s Gala is a Chinese New Year TV extravaganza produced by China Central Television, and is broadcast on the eve of Chinese New Year.The Gala has often been described as among “the most watched television programme in the world.” The latest 2014 edition of the Gala drew an estimated 800 million viewers to the broadcast.The 2014 Gala has also built a strategic partnership with Sina Weibo, one of the most popular social media sites in China. Traditional media and social media worked together to set up a new marketing trend in China for the New Years Gala.This year the 2014 New Year gala created a Sina Weibo 2D code. By scanning this code with a mobile phone, New Year Gala viewers were able to join discussions on Weibo and interact with the performers of the show. During the broadcasting period, the official Weibo account of the Gala was also constantly posting background footage and photos of the performance. The official account’s followers have seen an increase from 3.5 million to 6.7 million in the first four days of Chinese New Year, following the New Year Gala.  Most of the celebrities who performed in the show also sent out their New Year greetings through Weibo. Korean Star Lee Min Ho’s new year greeting has received 1,030,000 likes, comments and reposts in three hours and also the trend #春晚我看李敏镐# (I want to see Lee Min Ho in Gala) has received more than 1 million tags in Weibo posts. Hua Chenyu, The winner of the Chinese talent show Happy boy, has received more than 350,000 engagements from his two New Year greeting posts. The active participation of fans and social media enthusiasts has made the New Year Gala was one of the hottest topics this year, and Sina Weibo has garnered more fans to its social media platform as a result of this collaboration.Sina Weibo has rapidly become the most important platform for Chinese Internet users to send out their New Year greetings and wishes to family and friends. This year, with the help from the Chinese New Year Gala, the interaction of Weibo users during Chinese New Year period has broken a new record. The data shows that during the Gala’s four hours live broadcasting period, there were 34,470,000 Internet users who  interacted with the show through Weibo. The word “Chunwan” (春晚short for CCTV New Year’s Gala) has been mentioned over 45.41million times, a sharp increase from last year’s 19 million. In the first minute of the year of the Horse, Sina Weibo has refreshed its record by receiving 863,408 posts, an increase of 55,110 more than the first minute of 2013.     The Gala finished at midnight but the discussions on Weibo continued for a few days. During the first four days of Chinese New Year, there were more than 166 million discussions of the show on Weibo. Data also shows that people between the ages of 24 to 34 are the most active group and female users are more interested in the show.As the most influential social media platform in China, Sina Weibo has become an important partner for big events. In April 2013, Sina Weibo was one of the first sources to report about Ya an’s earthquake, taking just 55 seconds from the end of the earthquake to reaching the millions of users of Weibo. Chinese singer Faye Wong announced her divorce on Weibo in September, after just four hours of the announcement, this Weibo post has been reposted 600,000 times and received over 290,000 comments. In a series of major events, the value of Sina Weibo has been highlighted.With the push from the New Year gala, the activeness of Weibo users has been driven to a new peak. The relationship between major events and social media has become much closer. Weibo is not just a platform to provide information but it is showing its potential value as a platform to reach out to an engaging audience, and its marketing might will continue to grow. Article by: River Huang, Jimmy Robinson