Media industry puckers up to defy downturn

The Chinese media industry dolled itself up and kissed off the global economic downturn by enticing double-digit growth this year.

Getting a boost from what experts call the "lipstick effect" - women turning from expensive purchases like jewelry to smaller feel-good items during a recession - the output of the industry hit 422 billion yuan ($62 billion) last year, an 11.3 percent increase from the previous year.

"People seek cheaper means of entertainment like playing online games or watching movies as their 'lipstick' to release the pressures from economic life," Cui Baoguo, chief of the media operation and management studies center under Tsinghua University, said yesterday at the launch of the 2009 Blue Book on China's Media Industry.

The figure is expected to reach 531.4 billion in 2010.

China's film industry flourished last year as the box office hit 8.4 billion yuan, 25 percent over the record of 2007, said the Blue Book.

The sales of the online gaming industry in China last year increased 76.6 percent year-on-year to reach 18.3 billion yuan.

Online gaming brought direct business income of 47.8 billion yuan to telecom and IT industries.

However, China's advertising industry was an exception to the expanding media industry of 2008, in the wake of the economic crisis, according to the Blue Book.

"Online advertising decreased 25 percent, followed by a decrease in newspaper advertising of 15 percent," Huang Shengmin, professor of advertising at the Communication University of China, said yesterday.

The advertising industry was also influenced by the earthquake that hit China last year, he said. All commercial advertising gave way to news reporting and charity advertising during the earthquake, said the Blue Book.