Back to the future in the school for announcers

I am in Hangzhou, southern China, on an exchange with Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, which has 11,000 media students. Yet it is only the second biggest in China: Beijing University has many more.

China understands the importance of mass-media to the Party and the country. Each morning, students here scurry to classes well before 8am (a time not known to their British counterparts).

The most sought after course is in bilingual (Chinese/English) announcing. Sixty of the best-looking students - 90% girls, and maybe the best and brightest - are selected from hundreds of applicants each year for a four-year degree. They almost all want to appear on TV. Half of them will make it.

I talked to some of them in an English class: they were interesting but very lacking in curiosity. Their main question was which variety of English accent to adopt - US, English, BBC standard or regional? I told them to go with the flow and do what they are most comfortable with. Some were already 'American' beyond redemption.

They were shocked to hear that the BBC does not train 'announcers' and neither do any British universities. We work on the basis that you either have the talent and ability, and the hinterland to do it well, or not.

I told them about how Jon Snow had handled a live interview with Alastair Campbell on the day of the Hutton Report with no advance notice. He used his knowledge to try to nail the master spinner. Paxo's legendary 'brain-storming sessions' on Newsnight were a lesson for them all, too. Or see Fiona Bruce's account of her job here. 

Somehow, I feel that their desire for fame was stronger than any desire to inform, let alone to cause mischief.

Earlier, I had been at a recording of a Chinese version of Blind Date in the huge campus TV studio. Shiny floor, shiny-suited presenters. Plenty of bright lights. Forty girls (how many of them were maybe announcer retreads?) and a boy. He decided. It brought out sheer nostalgia in me for early Saturday nights on ITV.

In fact, the whole announcing school was sheer nostalgia too. Memories of early BBC/ITV and the corps of announcers who were actors - real or imagined. Equity ruled the roost at ITV. BBC announcers wore dinner jackets to broadcast on the radio.

These Chinese Sylvia Peters will not be in twinset and pearls on the sets of the many news programmes on CCTV - but they will not be far off. Their haircuts were just so and their fashion sense well developed for 18- to 19-year-olds. Those who don't make it to jobs under the studio lights on graduation will become teachers or similar.

Coming to this country is nothing if not nostalgic. But China is catching up with the rest of the world. New skyscrapers, new roads everywhere. Smog too. No doubt they will overtake us in television as they are in every other industry.

John Mair is a senior lecturer at Coventry University and a visiting professor at Zhejiang University of Media and Communications.