National broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) plans to reduce the length of Vietnamese serials on VTV1, one of its main channels for news about politics and society, from 45 minutes to 30 minutes per episode, including advertisements. For more than two years now the 8 p.m. prime time slot on Ho Chi Minh City Television (HTV)’s HTV7 now has foreign sitcoms rather than Vietnamese serials. Its 1 p.m. slot, which also used to be reserved for Vietnamese serials, first switched to foreign sitcoms and later to foreign soaps. On HTV9, the 6 p.m. slot, once the domain of dramas from Ho Chi Minh City Television Film Studios, has been taken over by foreign films. In the past SCTV14, a cable channel dedicated to Vietnamese dramas, used to have two slots daily, at 6.45 p.m and 8.45 p.m., for new Vietnamese drama series, but now mainly show old drama series, and new movies have become rare. Low competitiveness The drop in ratings, and thus advertising demand, is the reason for many … [Read more...] about TV channels give up on Vietnamese serials, foreign films rule the roost