The progress of private enterprises in digital technology and artificial intelligence has become the main starting point for saving the declining ratings of the Spring Festival Gala in recent years.
CCTV Spring Festival Gala is one of the most symbolic TV programs in China, has a special place in the hearts of Chinese, since the popularization of TV in the 90s, it is the world's most watched program, every year after Chinese New Year's Eve, praise, reminiscence of the Spring Festival Gala, or complain, criticism of the Spring Festival Gala, have become a necessary topic for everyone to celebrate the festival.
In the early years, for various special reasons, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala enjoyed unshakable ratings, with a peak of more than 40%. But after entering the 21st century, the ratings have been declining, and in previous years it has fallen to nearly 20%, many people say that "the Spring Festival Gala is dead", and even many people call for the cancellation of the Spring Festival Gala to save people's tax money.
However, the ratings of the Spring Festival Gala have soared in the past two years, and the ratings of the Spring Festival Gala in 2025 will reach 39.3%, the second highest since the ratings survey. I randomly asked my friends around me, the younger I am, the more I have praise for this year's Spring Festival Gala, and everyone generally appreciates science and technology, especially the "air surrounding, time and space condensation" picture created by Alibaba Cloud Tongyi AI in Donnie Yen's program, and Zhang Yimou's ingenious integration of Northeast Yangge and robots is deeply impressed, and the evaluation of the content of the program and the form of stage presentation has also rebounded.
What crises has the Spring Festival Gala experienced? And what transformations has it undergone? Why it has begun to be accepted by everyone again in the past two years, especially the attention of young people, is quite an interesting topic.
(1) In the early days, the stage and live broadcast technology of the Spring Festival Gala were backward, and its high ratings mainly relied on CCTV's monopoly on broadcasting rights and high-quality programs
In 1983, CCTV launched the first live broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala (CCTV had broadcast the literary evening many times before and after the Spring Festival, but it was recorded in advance), and the live broadcast format undoubtedly increased the attention of the audience, "pulling up the atmosphere", and the Spring Festival Gala began to become the most anticipated TV program of the Chinese.
However, due to the backwardness of China's telecommunications technology at that time, it rented the "Symphony" communications satellite jointly developed by Germany and France. At that time, other important programs were also rented foreign satellites, and many live broadcasts were often interrupted by the lessor, which made the audience feel very lost, which was the real "stuck neck". It was not until 1986 that the mainland's Dongfanghong-2 practical communication satellite was launched, and the Spring Festival Gala could be broadcast with self-produced satellites.
The other techniques on stage were also very backward, and the director team relied on four telephones to direct the performance and interact with the audience outside the venue. The stage lighting and recording equipment are also overloaded, and there is a fire hazard at any time, and the fire brigade is on standby behind the screen.
(In 1983, the Spring Festival Gala connected four telephones inside and outside the venue)
In short, now look at this is still a Spring Festival Gala under pre-modern communication conditions, although the actors' performances are very exciting, but the technology is really difficult to keep up.
In 1985, CCTV made an innovation, in order to solve the problem that the studio was too small (only about 600 square meters) and the atmosphere was insufficient, it was changed to the Workers' Stadium, and the result was more problems: the lighting was not enough, resulting in the darkness of the whole venue; The venue was too large, the communication equipment was backward, there was no remote walkie-talkie, and the command was chaotic, which led to a serious delay in the party time, and it took 6 hours to complete the performance; The most important thing is that it was too cold inside and outside the stage, actor Chen Peisi was shivering from the cold, and after the party, he immediately went to the hospital, and the audience rarely stretched out their hands to applaud because it was too cold, and the scene reaction was extremely cold. This Spring Festival Gala sparked unanimous negative comments from the society, and the director team had to apologize to the national audience through "News Network" after the holiday.
However, why is the Spring Festival Gala so popular, and people now recall that the Spring Festival Gala at that time was good-looking? The author is related to the following factors:
First, it was related to the fact that people had just experienced more than 20 years of political turmoil and poor cultural life, and they felt new to everything, which in economic terms, was a strong "marginal effect" of artistic innovation.
Second, it is related to the cultural management system at that time, when culture was still essentially a centralized management system, the Spring Festival Gala was only CCTV alone, and all cultural units and provincial TV stations had to give priority to ensuring the supply of the Spring Festival Gala, making the Spring Festival Gala an annual exhibition of the country's best literary and artistic achievements, Hou Baolin, Xin Fengxia, Li Guyi, Jiang Kun, Dong Wenhua and other big names gathered, of course, its content is incomparable, this is a cultural "national system" products.
Third, of course, this is also related to the relaxed atmosphere of the reform period at that time, and many programs are vivid in form and content, especially language programs full of critical realism, which still make people have endless memories.
(2) The CCTV Spring Festival Gala crisis after the 90s
However, after entering the 90s, especially from 2005 to 2015, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala encountered more and more challenges, and the ratings and quality continued to decline.
Fundamentally speaking, with the launch of the market economy reform in the cultural field in 1992, TV stations around the country also held their own Spring Festival Gala, and everyone wanted to share the "piece of the pie" of the best quality program, Beijing Satellite TV, Dragon TV, Hunan Satellite TV's Spring Festival Gala praise once exceeded CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
Artistic performances are also gradually fully marketized, all kinds of commercial talent shows are wonderful, and outstanding actors no longer regard the Spring Festival Gala as the most important achievement display stage, and the performances of the Spring Festival Gala are no longer strange to the audience by playing most of the "old stalks" and "bad stalks" that they have played before. In terms of the broadcast channels of literary and artistic achievements, it has begun to be not limited to TV stations, and emerging Internet video websites have gradually become the main channels of traffic.
In this case, it is becoming more and more difficult for the Spring Festival Gala to maintain its leading position in terms of program quality and ratings. In the Spring Festival Gala in 2014, the ratings of CCTV's live broadcast were only 9%, falling below 10% for the first time, and the broadcast of 202 satellite TV stations across the country barely exceeded 20%; In terms of age stratification, only 6.2% of the audience between the ages of 15 and 24 are supported, which can be said to be supported by middle-aged and elderly "iron fans". Roughly speaking, the number of viewers who watched the Spring Festival Gala in the late 2010s was less than half of that around 2000.
(3) Digital technology reshapes the Spring Festival Gala and saves the ratings of the Spring Festival Gala
So how did CCTV save the crisis of rapid marginalization and even abandonment by the Chinese people? The author believes that it mainly relies on the following two points:
First, we attach importance to cooperation with emerging technology companies such as Alibaba, DJI, and BOE, introduce the latest digital technology achievements, increase the visual effects of the Spring Festival Gala stage, and meet the visual needs of young people, so as to replace the lack of art flow.
For example, since the 2013 Spring Festival Gala, holographic projection technology and augmented reality technology (AR) have been used, and in 2017, the first Spring Festival Gala launched a VR panoramic live broadcast, in 2018, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala adopted 4K broadcast technology for the first time, 3D+VR technology, and in 2019, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala realized 5G technology all-media communication for the first time, and in 2021, it began to try 8K high-definition live broadcast.
The programs that have left an impression on the audience over the years are no longer Zhao Benshan's sketches or Li Guyi's songs, but various programs full of scientific and technological content, such as the 2019 Spring Festival Gala, AR technology shaped the petal rain in "Bloom" starring Lin Chiling, the digital virtual person in the 2021 Spring Festival Gala program "Listen to Me", and the VR three-dimensional technology in the 2023 Spring Festival Gala program "Man Tingfang National Color".
This year's Spring Festival Gala has achieved another major breakthrough, that is, CCTV and Alibaba Group have fully cooperated to use Alibaba cloud computing AI technology, and China ushered in the first AI Spring Festival Gala in the true sense. In this Spring Festival Gala, almost all of the most popular stage scenes were realized by using Alibaba Cloud Computing and its general artificial intelligence model.
For example, the background effect of Donnie Yen's "Pen Walking Dragon and Snake" mentioned at the beginning of the article was achieved by using the 3D model reconstruction technology of Alibaba Cloud Tongyi AI; In the background of Mok Wenwei and Mao Buyi's "Flowers in the Years", the "oil painting freeze-frame" moment loved by the audience is achieved through the image stylization technology of Tongyi Wanxiang and the video generation technology of the first and last frames; Xue Zhiqian's "Fang Yan" and the ending "Unforgettable Tonight" also make use of the AI generation capabilities of Tongyi Wanxiang.
The second is to break the single channel of live TV broadcast and attach importance to the development of online live broadcast channels. Since 2007, the Spring Festival Gala has been broadcast live online, but due to the immaturity of the technology, the effect is very poor, and the lag is serious, and the online audience is only 22,000 that year, even in 2015, the network rating is only 2.7%, and it is still dominated by TV.
However, since 2017, Ali has begun to provide technical support for the live broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala, which essentially improves the speed and picture quality of the live webcast, and the number of online viewers reached 150 million that year, and the network has since become one of the main viewing channels.
Since then, the online live broadcast channel has become more and more important for the Spring Festival Gala to regain ratings. By 2025, there will be 286 million users watching the Spring Festival Gala on vertical screen mobile phones alone, with 496 million broadcasts, and the number of on-demand ratings on the entire new media terminal will be 2.817 billion times, based on the national Spring Festival Gala audience of 553 million that year, it is estimated that at least 400 million people will watch it through the new media side, and the mobile platform has become the main battlefield for the Spring Festival Gala ratings.
In addition, relying on Alibaba Cloud's global network, the overseas broadcast volume of the Spring Festival Gala reached 73.37 million times, an increase of 21.39% year-on-year, providing a new channel for promoting China's cultural soft power.
This profoundly shows that the cooperation between CCTV and technology companies has introduced digital technology into the stage and channel communication, which has successfully saved the crisis of the times faced by the Spring Festival Gala, and to a considerable extent solved the problem that young people do not like to turn on TV and do not like to watch the Spring Festival Gala, and have created a new life for the Spring Festival Gala.
(4) The historic vicissitudes of life from "the time for satellite leasing has arrived" and the four telephones to global cloud live broadcasting; As well as the combination of emerging digital technology and the "ancient" program of the Spring Festival Gala, so that it has been reborn and regained national attention, there are several issues worth thinking about behind this transformation process.
First, the scientific and technological innovation of private enterprises has played a major role in the progress of science and technology and business models in the Spring Festival Gala. The new technologies we watch the Spring Festival Gala almost all come from the inventions and creations of private enterprises, especially when we look at the progress of the stage technology and broadcasting technology of the Spring Festival Gala in the eighties and nineties, which is very slow, and a new breakthrough in the past ten years, comes from the accumulation of private enterprises in the early stage of reform, innovation and speed, and this "national program" "provides the most attractive form of expression.
Second, why Alibaba Cloud. This time, Alibaba Cloud became the first technology partner in the history of the Spring Festival Gala, once again showing Ali's special role, and the Spring Festival Gala is a stage with political significance, reflecting the country's reaffirmation of Ali's corporate value.
Ali has been a long-term partner of the Spring Festival Gala since 2016, and the Alipay red envelope grabbing activity launched by the Spring Festival Gala that year raised the audience interaction of the Spring Festival Gala to an unprecedented height, and since then, Ali has helped the Spring Festival Gala in online live broadcast, VR, 8K and other aspects, which can be said to have played a special role in the new transformation of the Spring Festival Gala.
Technically speaking, Alibaba Cloud is the world's leading cloud service provider, and Alibaba Cloud's AI capabilities and large model products are at the forefront of international authoritative lists such as Gartner, IDC, and Omdia. Alibaba Cloud serves more than 4 million customers in more than 200 countries and regions around the world, and has been an IOC partner since 2017, providing high-quality live TV services to 4 billion viewers. Therefore, from the perspective of security and stability, Alibaba Cloud should also be a unique choice for the Spring Festival Gala.
（阿里云发布的大模型跑赢GPT-4o）
Third, this Spring Festival Gala also gives us an opportunity to understand the role of cloud computing in economic and social life. In fact, cloud services provide a developed information highway system for the national economy, which greatly accelerates the efficiency of enterprise R&D, operation and management, and is a new infrastructure in the information age. Internet sales, life services, and intelligent manufacturing in mainland China are so developed that they have overtaken many developed countries in a corner, and to a large extent, they rely on digital platforms built by cloud companies such as Alibaba and Amazon.
From the perspective of AI competition that everyone is concerned about, cloud computing is also a fundamental factor affecting AI computing power. At present, the mainstream model of global artificial intelligence development is "cloud computing + model company", for example, OpenAI relies on Microsoft Cloud, and more than half of the large models in mainland China (Baichuan Wanwei, 010,000 Things, Fudan University, etc.) are also running on Alibaba Cloud.
Therefore, only a strong cloud service provider will give birth to AI products with strong computing power, and the significance of cloud computing in the competition of great powers is actually no less than that of chips and large aircraft.
In the future, the focus of the competition between China and the United States will be computing power, AI and robotics. The most important computing power is chips and clouds. Ali's appearance on the Spring Festival Gala this time also highlights the background color of its technology. In the midst of a new round of global changes, Alibaba Cloud is an important card for China in the field of science and technology.
The new year has come, in the past two days we have continued to have good news in science and technology, DeepSeek has triggered a shock in the American technology industry, Alibaba Cloud's newly released Tongyi Qianwen open source vision model Qwen2.5-MAX won the championship in 13 authoritative evaluations, comprehensively surpassing GPT-4o and Claude3.5, may the country and the people be safe, and may China have more qualitative breakthroughs in the field of core technologies.