AOL partners with Shanghai Media Group to beam programs

AOL partners with Shanghai Media Group to beam programs

AOL

MUMBAI: The Internet unit of Time Warner, AOL is set to begin carrying news content from Shanghai Media Group on its Chinese-language website.

The programs will be available to users of http://aol.com/chinese, which carries news and programming, webcasts of sports events and other Internet services related to China.
Shows will be broadcast on AOL's Chinese language Web site and will focus on Chinese social, business, sports and entertainment topics. Said SMG Broadband spokeswoman Wang Xiaotang,"AOL aims to broadcast that content to Chinese all over the world."

SMG will provide more than three hours per day to its U.S.-based partner MediaZone, which worked with AOL on the Chinese-language portal. MediaZone is a worldwide provider of online television programming and a partner in China of AOL and Shanghai Media Group.

According to AOL's Web site, its Chinese language Web site was developed with ChinaPortal.com, a MediaZone division.

"By creating this free, language-specific portal, we can better serve the millions of people in the United States who want access to critical features and communications tools, especially the latest news and entertainment video, in Chinese," said AOL Web strategy executive Norman Koo in a statement.

State-owned Shanghai Media Group was formed from the merger of the city's government-run radio and television stations in 2001 and ranks as one of China's biggest media and entertainment conglomerates.