TV educational programs mushroomed in China in the 1990s and beyond. They combined education and entertainment, and for the first time in Communist Chinese history, used TV ratings to determine the continued existence of these programs. This article addresses the predominant focus on history and traditional learning in the lectures at the most famous of these programs, China Central Television’s Lecture Room (baijiajiangtan) since its inception in 2001. Borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, it studies how a confluence of state policies, TV station decisions, market imperatives, and educators who presided over the programs created, through storytelling, a modern, open yet culturally conservative world, to keep the audience oriented to modern ideas and practices while deterring excessive individualism or freedom, and a vibrant social milieu favorable to these ideas and practices through audience input via TV program ratings.
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