The CCTV New Year's Gala (simplified Chinese: 中国中央电视台春节联欢晚会) is a Chinese New Year special produced by China Central Television. Broadcast on the eve of Chinese New Year on its flagship CCTV-1, satellite channels CCTV-4, CCTV-9, CCTV-E, CCTV-F, and CCTV-HD, the broadcast has a yearly viewership of over 700 million viewers, making it one of the premiere television events of Mainland China. It's the television show with the largest audience in the world. The show features various acts, such as drama, dance, music, and comedy.

History and significance

The first CCTV New Year's Gala was held in 1983. It was the successor to Beijing Television's irregular New Year's Eve broadcasts, which date back to 1956. In the 1983 show, a unique and live New Year-related stage was set up at CCTV in Beijing, with performers in the arts, drama, dance, and song selected from all over the country. For every year since then at the turn of the Lunar New Year, the program begins at 8:00PM and lasts until roughly 12:30AM on the first day of the New Year. The program has become increasingly expensive every year, and tends to be set on larger stages each time. The evolution of the New Year's Gala is, in many ways, representative of China's technological growth since 1983, with a significantly new look around every five years. Research commissioned by China Television Research (CTR) in 2007 indicated that an estimated 93.6% of families watched the Gala on television, although these ratings have been disputed.