Spring Festival TV gala audience, viewership hit record highs

The audience and viewership for this year's Spring Festival TV gala, which was aired on Friday night, the eve of the Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, both reached record highs, according to ratings statistics.

As of Friday midnight, about 679 million people had watched the live broadcast of the TV gala, an annual celebratory show staged and televised by the China Media Group, resulting in over 1.5 billion instances of viewing, an increase of 12.69 percent year on year.

A total of 250 million people watched the live streaming of the show via their mobile phones, with the total views reaching 420 million, up by 37.97 percent and 57.58 percent, respectively, compared with 2023.

The event also triggered over 16 billion mentions on social media platforms.

The China Global Television Network (CGTN) worked with over 2,100 media organizations in about 200 countries and regions to live broadcast or report the show -- attracting more than 800 million international views.