Young Chinese mad for TV imports

Infatuated as she is by the "You Who Came from the Stars," a smash hit TV drama of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in China, it is a torture for Wang Dong, 24, to wait a week for each new episode.

"I'm so fond of the charming young hero! I have changed all the wallpaper on my phone and laptop to his photos," said the postgraduate student in Beijing. Wang has set up a fan group with 20 other girls in her class to gossip about the series through the mobile app WeChat.

Wang is just one of a growing army who have fallen in love with new TV imports they watch online. Domestic online video firms are scrambling to secure rights to broadcast foreign TV shows.

It is not only ROK's TV, but western series are also immensely popular in China. The new season of highly rated American political drama "House of Cards" is drawing legions of online viewers with its China plot lines, like escalating tension between China and Japan in the East China Sea.

The second season of the political drama premiered on Feb. 14 on Netflix in the United States and on Sohu.com in China. It is the most watched U.S. television show on Sohu, with over 19 million views by Saturday.

Watching TV imports online has become indispensable entertainment for a large number of young people in China. Originally, the desire to learn foreign languages prompted a few people to watch imported TV, but things are very different today.

"It's not just for fun. Watching American TV shows is a great way to understand culture and politics, too," said Su Zhou, 26, an editor based in Beijing. "All my friends love American series. That's all we talk about when we hang out."

Su reckons she spends about 80 percent of her spare time watching online shows. She has watched nearly 200 imported TV dramas since high school.

As TV imports gain popularity among young people, the way of viewing them has evolved from traditional TV networks to the desktop PC to mobile devices. The arrival of 4G mobile should mean even more foreign videos on even more mobile devices.

"I used to buy pirate DVDs but now I'm excited to watch 'House of Cards' at the same time as it is broadcast in the United States," said Beijinger Zhang Xinqing.

"The Internet has dramatically changed the transmission mode of television programs," said Kuang Wenbo, a journalism professor at Renmin University of China. "More and more people use online video sites because they can watch a host of TV shows whenever they want."

In recent years, online video has grown bigger and more competitive in China. There were around 428 million people watching videos online by the end of 2013, up 15.2 percent, according to China Internet Network Information Center.

Despite the size of the Chinese online video industry, domestic firms find it hard to make much money due to the high costs of broadcast rights and of delivering the content.

Chinese viewers can devour the video without charge, as long as they are prepared to sit through the advertisement clips that pop up before every episode begins.

Licensed content from foreign TV companies usually costs a lot, but Sohu declined to disclose the costs and earnings of imported TV series. Analysts believe China's online video firms are still losing money on licensed content from studios like HBO and CBS.

Paying for premium content is a habit Chinese viewers are yet to cultivated, said Ma Ke, executive director of copyright purchasing at Sohu.

"Both Sohu and our domestic competitors try to recover our costs by putting ads in the content," said Ma, adding that only a small portion of their output is pay-to-view.