Imagine being stuck in a hotel room, not being able to leave, with nothing to do, no magazines, and no English radio or movie channels. Perhaps you've experienced this, but if you haven't, I can assure you, it's not a desirable position to be in.

Yet this is where I found myself in June this year, captive in a Chinese hotel room, while waiting to meet somebody for an interview - that had been a nightmare to schedule... Cigarette smells in every corner, a broken internet connection, and a hotel menu with nothing remotely Western on it.  But wait... What's this? .... Is it English    ?   Oh, - I have just heard a CCTV reporter trying to speak English... This must be the 'international channel,' to be exact CCTV9 - China's official voice to the world.

I am astounded how bad his English is... Apart from being a radio documentary producer, I also offer my services to international businessmen...  For over four years, I have guided Chinese executives and academics in Taiwan from the beginnings of basic vowel formation, through to advanced levels covering accent reduction and vocal placement.  But I have never heard anything as bad as the English I had just heard on CCTV9... Surely a country of over one billion people can do much better than this?

The gibbering finally finished and the station returned to a ghost, er sorry, a newsreader... A young man with an ill-fitting shirt, who looked like he had never seen any sunshine in all his 20-something years.  To make matters worse, his only apparent studio makeup consisted of bright red lipstick, giving him all the credibility of a drag queen reading news!  His pronunciation was also dreadful   ; 'the' became 'da', 'its' - 'is', 'foreign' - 'fowin' and 'invited' - 'envywited' - within just 15 seconds! As for accent, it was as if he was trying to copy Tony Blair - but doing a really bad job at it.  I have heard much better on numerous other international radio and television stations, even from small countries like Vietnam (who hired former ABC Australia staff to conduct speech workshops).  Ghost/drag queen disappeared, then it was time to go to another reporter... This one had slightly better articulation, but a voice that sounded like he had been smoking since the age of five, or maybe one    (listen out for the appalling scripting error "and [blah] and [blah] and environment - [huge pause] and circular economy")... It was an awful throaty voice, that sounded like he was talking from his hospital bed, terminally ill, going, going... If all this wasn't slightly amusing, watching CCTV9 would be a real torture... Oh! - Finally a chance to see something good - the ads are coming on... 

China with its huge amount of new wealth is a key market for almost all car companies... So it was no surprise to see expensive, well-produced advertising from Audi, Benz, BMW, VW   (notice how there is a theme of 'breaking free' in all these ads!)  These were almost always followed by a series of locally produced commercials, that tried to sell various Chinese provinces to international audiences, as ideal manufacturing and trading posts...  I couldn't understand the Hangzhou commercial at all    (even after hearing Chinese speak Chinglish for so long)... Some strangely worded slogan that was never tested on native speakers.  There were also ads for Fujian, Suzhou, Wuyi    - All claiming to be the best cities in China to live! ('Advertising 101' - Do not schedule what will clash with competing advertisers).  Then came the ad for 'Dandong'... They had gone a step further with this one, apparently asking a local American (ie. living in China) to voice it... However the voice was, quite simply, pathetic    ...  He sounded like a 15 year old American boy trying to fake a deep 'hollywood' voice-over, attempting to sound much more grown-up than what he really is.  It also sounded like somebody was twisting his testicles, making him go through excruciating pain!  I was so appalled at this performance that I decided to do some research...  

I found out that this atrocious 'voice' actually sounds 'really good' - in the ears of Chinese people.  The producers are so unprofessional and inexperienced, they want the foreign voice to have the same tone and intonation as Chinese voice-overs, completely disregarding language and cultural differences.  Further, if the foreign voice talent tries to produce a more natural, higher toned voice with clear, articulated speech, the Chinese advertising producers will insist on the totally fake, gravelly, deep throated, muffled voice.  Despite the fact that the commercials are supposed to attract foreigners - and the fact that the producers do not speak English as their first language, the ads are very often purposely finished to sound like this verbal diarrhea!  

To make matters worse, because of their natural inclination to dictate, regardless of any logic, the advertiser will actually write the script themselves and sit-in during the recording session... Forget the fact that they usually have very remedial English and have no knowledge of marketing, or what is considered professional, in the ears of a foreign audience.  Quite simply, it's a matter of, 'I am paying the money, so I have the power - read the ad like this'... There is absolutely no chance that any of these ads will have the desired effect on a foreign audience. As for CCTV9, which airs all this advertising, it seems to exercise no discretion over the quality and credibility of what goes to air.

Throughout the five hours, I watched a lot of CCTV9 (at least every minute!)  Being a radio producer, I also recorded what I heard - and took some screen pictures.  The overwhelming conclusion that I come away with, is that CCTV can have all the best digital wide-screen technology, special effects and dynamic studio sets that money can possibly buy... But if you employ monkeys - you're going to get 'monkey TV'... The rest of this article supports this observation. Speaking of monkeys, let's watch some CCTV Documentary... 

Thankfully, she is only the person who introduces the documentaries - and after a few minutes, like a lunatic witch, her hands rise for the last time - and she vanishes.  Then it is on to the documentary proper.  ...The graphics are expensive, color is great, the theme music is mixed well, editing is very good... These are obviously film (not video) documentaries that have been made by China's brightest producers and directors.  They have been made for big national audiences, right across China.  But I am on the 'international channel', so what I will be seeing has been re-voiced, for my benefit, in English...   

It is at this point that I hear the voice of a man I later learned is Owen Grant   , a New Zealand expatriate who does most of the English documentary narration for CCTV9.  He has a soft, smooth voice... and I have heard that the Chinese like this style.  But it is his pure Kiwi accent that really caught my attention.  A bit of internet research revealed that Grant has been working for CCTV9 for at least five years. Yet, his mumbling regional New Zealand accent, where he runs many of his words together, would be off-putting to all but very local Kiwis...  A lot of the time, he doesn't seem to be really interested in what he's reading... However, to be fair to Grant, quite clearly - many of his scripts have been written by Chinese people, as there are far too many ideas strung together - without appropriate pauses for creative reflection or even basic comprehension.  The higher powers at CCTV9 obviously insist that he shoves as much detail into every minute, thinking - quite unprofessionally - that people are going to be able to take it all in... Again, this is about empathy with the viewer (CCTV9 has none).   

After working in (or being associated with) the media for over 20 years, I can tell you that international broadcasters are most in need of what are called 'neutral accents'...  These are English accents that could come from anywhere...  Or let's just say, somewhere between Washington, London and Sydney...  You hear many of them on Discovery, National Geographic, CNN and a few on BBC World.  The voice I heard on CCTV9 is not cut-out for international broadcasting, unless Grant makes a conscious effort, as many have, to 'neutralize' or 'internationalize' his accent.  Yet it seems, at CCTV9, it's not a matter of what you know, but whether they personally like you or not.  Professionalism doesn't seem to come into the picture.  Similarly, those professional 'neutral accented international voices' around the world, command a decent wage - and rumor has it that CCTV pays peanuts to very young locals as well as foreigners, most having very little broadcasting experience.

I was then subjected to something called 'Dialogue', supposedly a programme that would offer open, frank and professional commentary on current issues.  It was far away from any of these objectives.  In fact, as a sign that the show's producer lacks professionalism, he actually asks for the audience to write in with ideas for future programmes!  Could you imagine hearing this on CNN or BBC World!  Does this sound like a production team that has any idea about how to create original content or possesses knowledge about a wide range of current issues?

In any case, the topic of the day annoyed me immensely... The self opinionated host, Yang Rui (about as interesting as a wet bath mat) was accusing international companies of: Coming to China, making their goods, severely polluting the country and not taking any responsibility... The two 'foreign expat experts' they had on, didn't seem to pick up on the obvious:  This is that, if a foreign company wants to do business in China, it must get into various types of partnerships with Chinese firms, that are indeed predominately controlled by various Chinese provincial governments...  These deals are often very simple... 'You make the goods, we'll pay you the money'.  The contracts usually have little or no mention of how the factories, owned by Chinese, managed by Chinese and employing Chinese workers - get rid of their waste (go HERE for a typical example).  Therefore, Chinese management do dump waste, in land, rivers, the air and the seas. Instead of accusing and demanding that Chinese companies take responsibility for pollution, CCTV9 presented a totally unrealistic stance of, 'poor us, we are the victims of the Western world'... Goodness knows what motivated this attack... A Chinese brand of diplomacy?  I found the lack of insightful discussion and accusatory tone of the programme an insult to my basic intelligence.  I was going to turn the TV off, but was glad that I stuck around for another hour, for one final insight...



The next programme was yet another talk show (they are cheap to produce and do not require talent) called 'Crossover'.  The rambling, over-confident host    introduced the topic, again to be 'adjudicated' by two foreign monkeys, in the most long-winded woeful manner, before finally running out of words and going to the foreigners.  The useful idiot 'expert expat' foreigners were also woeful, but I noticed that one of them had his leg stretched out across the studio floor, in a rather overly casual pose, banging his foot against the coffee table (see pic above).  It was as if he didn't care an inch about the tangent the host had gone off on.  The other foreigner looked equally goofy, his chair too small for him, his legs high above his navel, and his hands between his legs.

I couldn't help but wonder if the two foreigners were producing this body language (voluntary or involuntary), to display disgust at the way the conversation had gone?  A colleague tells me an interesting story about some of the presenters on the other 18 CCTV channels...  It seems that the various anchors and newsreaders don't always like their jobs - and what has been written for them.  The standard way to show this, is to read the script extremely badly, while not really looking at the camera and basically destroying as much of the - already poor - production, as possible.  Perhaps the real powers behind CCTV9 want to achieve just this - destroy everything they broadcast.  Or perhaps they are just extremely unprofessional!  Either way, my earliest recollection of CCTV9 continues to stick with me... A hugely expensive station promo, with beautiful sweeping views from across China... Then a high pitched Asian male voice, saying "CCTV is Asia"... This was a bit of a shock.  Then, even worse, the misspelled caption: "CCTV is Aisa!"... The promo had gone out on satellite across the world, to a potential audience of 45 million... I never saw it again... But perhaps it should come back corrected as, "CCTV is a Joke". 

Addendum 1
Some time before publishing this article I answered an advert for foreign staff to help assist with the preparation of the English, contained within CCTV9's international programming. Despite also sending my Resume (to three different email addresses!) and voice recording DVDs via DHL courier, I received no reply.  Surely a clear sign that CCTV9 doesn't have the vaguest idea of its role in Chinese public diplomacy.  A little bird told me that the reason why I would be of no interest to CCTV9, is because I would be considered too experienced, and therefore too hard to control.  They were right! 

Addendum 2
I have received emails from readers telling me that CCTV9/International has not improved since its inception - only the picture quality has (now full digital).