Chinese Media (Hotel View)

TV
- More than 60 programs (!) available in the hotel to watch.
- State television: CCTV (Chinese Central Television) - 16 programs (!).
- Many other televisions/programs from provinces (i.e. around 40-50 or perhaps even more).
- All of them showing mainly entertainment/educational programs.
- Was it not for the language and faces, the programs would be unrecognizable from any other TV in Europe by their look (modern design, bright lights, fashionable clothes, everyone looks smart and happy, ..only sometimes angry when it comes to solving social issues, but decently moderate).

TV in English
HBO Asia (with Chinese subtitles)
National Geographic Asia (with Chinese subtitles)
CNN
CCTV9 (Chinese state television English channel)

- HBO/NG are preselected for the country's audience, there are no controversial films/documentaries shown, of course. HBO/NG/CNN can be viewed only via cable which for local people requires special permission (hard to get as I was told).
- CCTV9 is a very ambitious and I would say successful project to inform foreigners about world and local news through the official eyes, but still in a very interesting way for someone completely new to the country. It offers news, discussions, documentaries, special series etc. The English of all presenters and reporters is simply excellent, cream of the cream. This is my most favorite news TV station in Beijing, it is not as aggressive as CNN which contains so much advertising and clip reporting. CCTV9 is available to everyone in China.
More: HBO films to air in China


Internet
In the hotel, I cannot access:
wikipedia
google video
many other pages undownloadable
BBC, RFI, B92 etc. take far too long to download and I give up..

Radio
I have not explored this yet as I found only about 1 English radio station that did not appeal to me. Others are in Chinese.