Shanghai Media Group is launching a new English-language channel to compete with CCTV 9's lineup of stellar content. I'm still in Europe, but I just saw a survey one of our businesses, Xianzai.com, sent out with SMG and Nielsen Research last week. If you are an expat in China (Shanghai, specifically), take the survey. Click here to give your thoughts to SMG.

On another note, I have yet to make note of the 10th anniversary of our Xianzai.com and Xianzai.cn services. Xianzai started about 10 years, 3 months ago and has continued to grow. One important aspect of its growth was that for many years, international airline carriers could not legally advertise fare deals in China's print media, so Xianzai.com was their only option and seized 100% of the online budgets for all the North American airlines and most of the European and Asian airlines operating anywhere in China. Xianzai still sends out an average of two hotel/airline deals a day (many more than much "bigger" firms operating in or outside of China) and still offers travel deals that the hotels and airlines do not make available to Ctrip.com, eLong.com, or others in the online travel sector.

And, as the executives running Ctrip and eLong know, the Xianzai service alone took in more online advertising travel revenue than Ctrip and eLong combined in 2006 (I have yet to fully look at 2007 numbers). Xianzai.com and Xianzai.cn combined have a dedicated, proprietary marketing database of well over a million high-end Chinese consumers that receive these periodic updates. Travel companies were some of the first worldwide to seize onto Internet marketing, and they continue to see the value in loyalty marketing. Happy belated birthday Xianzai!