A Prospective Discussion On The Format In The CCTV Singing Contest For The Young

The CCTV Singing Contest for the Young, since its debut in 1984, has played a fostering and dominant role in the development of China’s modern vocal music. This programme has evolved gradually from a professional vocal music competition broadcasted on TV to the one that also gives consideration to entertainment. In order to cater for the audience and the market demand, its competition format has experienced various changes.This paper consists of four major parts.Part 1 mainly reviews the authentic contest of each session, the China’s musical development in each of its corresponding period, the historical periods of its development marked off by scholars, and its characteristics of each stage.Part 2 introduces the contest formats of all the CCTV Contest’s previous sessions from the historical angle, which intuitively reflects the format variations.Part 3 first introduces the defects of the contest format, then discusses the numerous generated problems by the defects—including disputes over the best methods of singing, debates on the original means of singing, the “thousands of people singing in one tone” phenomena, battles of originality and copyright, controversies of overall assessment, etc. — and finally extends to analyse such phenomena as the digressed objectives, long-held overemphasis on techniques while underemphasis on craftsmanship and certain contestants’ repetitive participation. In this part, the author gathers plenty of academic comments on the above-mentioned issues, with an objective description of different opinions and a supplementary of his own ones.Part 4 concludes with some possible solutions to the existing problematic situation on the basis of prospective discussion on current format. Formats of other singing contests like China Golden Bell Award Singing Contest, The Voice of China and Sing My Song can be introduced into The CCTV Singing Contest for the Young. With a positive expectation, the author provides some feasible suggestions to improve the CCTV Singing Contest, i.e. innovations to participation, examination, selection.Variations in the contest will trigger general public’s arguments, which in turn continuously influences the changes in the contest format. It is the public focus and reflexion on this singing contest that innovates the format.The format should be innovated according to the demand of public cultural life.For more than 30 years, the CCTV Singing Contest for the Young has made itsirreplaceable contributions to the advancement of China’s vocal music. However,among various high-audience-rating talent shows on TV, this programme gradually loses its attraction because of its difficulty in putting into entertainment elements in this serious competition.During the observation of this contest, we find that it is not impossible to change this embarrassing situation and that, on the premise of the authoritive standard assessment, a breakthrough can be made if minor modifications were required.