A crackdown on foreign media appears to have taken its toll
More U.S. television shows were removed from Chinese streaming services in what appears to be the latest consequences of the state censor’s crackdown on foreign series.
Shows like Agent Carter, Empire, and Shameless disappeared from multiple streaming portals this week, the L.A. Times reports.
Amid a campaign by the government of President Xi Jinping to sanitize the Internet in China, the country’s state censor, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, said last year that foreign shows — which have soared in popularity in China — would require government approval for the entire series before episodes aired online. Foreign series, the regulator also said, could only account for one third of programming on the online streaming sites, according to the Times.
Since then, shows like The Big Bang Theory have been pulled from streaming sites, typically without explanation.
Despite the rancor on social media after the latest purge, it remained unclear why the specific shows were removed, according to the Times.
[LA Times]