Chinese Broadcast Blues

In 2001, AOL Time Warner (parent of TIME) was granted the right to broadcast its Mandarin-language channel, China Entertainment Television (CETV), to 19 million households in the southern province of Guangdong. But all those eyeballs were never successfully converted into ad dollarsthe venture lost $17 million on a paltry $450,000 in revenue in 2002and last week, the company sold off a controlling 64% stake in CETV to media company Tom.com, part of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing's empire. Tom.com has an extensive mainland advertising network, but it has no TV experience and now must overhaul CETV's lackluster slate of dubbed foreign...