(Photo/Sina Weibo of CCTV)

The 2017 CCTV (China Central Television) Spring Festival Gala, an annual extravaganza featuring singing, dancing, comedic skits and other performances, reached a top online audience of 140 million by 10:30 pm on Chinese New Year’s Eve on Friday night.

The gala has also stayed top of the most-searched and talked-about topics on China’s social media platforms since Friday morning.

Starting in 1983, the gala was previously regarded as a must-watch for many in China on the Eve of Chinese New Year, but has suffered from a decline of viewership and popularity in recent years. Although CCTV has not yet released the TV viewing figures, the general consensus on this year’s spectacular was that it was “better” than last year’s, with fewer critical comments and reviews, part of which might be credited to efforts of its production team to aim for more innovations this year.

In an earlier interview with CCTV on Monday, Yang Dongsheng, director of this year’s gala, said “we’ve made innovations to the gala’s structure and its acts, including the comedy skits and all the songs and dances.”

Local flavors

The 2017 gala featured more stage sets from showcasing different parts of the nation. Apart from the main stage set in Beijing, this year’s gala also had four other stages set in Shanghai, Harbin in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, Guilin in Southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, which allowed for performances that highlighted the nation’s diversity.

There was an ice dance on the Harbin stage against the amazing background of local ice sculptures and lanterns, and a bonfire party was held on the stage set in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. On the main stage, a set by Uyghur comedians was definitely a refreshing departure from the regular comedy skits.

‘Best-looking gala ever’

Featuring “fresh” stars such as Lu Han and the popular boy band TFboys, as well as some of the hottest Chinese mainland youth actors and actresses including Hu Ge and Liu Tao, this year’s gala has been dubbed “the best-looking Spring Festival Gala ever” by netizens. Discussions about their performances received floods of likes and sparked numerous discussions on social media platforms, thanks to their amazingly huge fan bases.

A post about the kick-off show featuring TFboys on the gala’s Sina Weibo account was reposted more than 10,000 times and garnered over 6,000 likes within hours. A rehearsal video featuring Lu and William Chan released earlier on Monday by the account was reposted 120,000 times by Tuesday morning.

During the live broadcast, tens of thousands of comments from fans like “my honey is on the stage!” were left under posts on Sina Weibo with pictures and videos featuring these stars and the number keeps growing.

Saluting heroes

This year, the gala also paid tribute to China’s national heroes, bringing in veterans of the Long March, Chinese astronauts from the Shenzhou space program and soldiers from People’s Liberation Army. Their speeches and performances also received tens of thousands of reposts and comments of respect and love from viewers on social media platforms.

Comedy fail

But judging from the reviews and comments online, the comedy acts and xiangsheng, or crosstalk, in this year’s gala seem to have failed the expectations of many. Even though the acts this year avoided voicing prejudiced opinions against accents of dialects and groups such as left-over women as shown in the past years, and as always, brought in hot-button social issues like blind-dating or familial topics such as caring for the elderly, they were generally considered by netizens as “not so funny.”