China Media Group unveils extensive Mid-Autumn Festival programming

The China Media Group (CMG) has announced a diverse lineup of programs to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday symbolizing family reunion, which falls on Tuesday this year.

The 24-hour news channel CCTV-13 has staged on a special programming in each afternoon during the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday from Sunday to Tuesday.

The program aims to showcase the atmosphere of the Mid-Autumn Festival across the country, presenting a cheerful, peaceful scene in which families reunite, admire the moon, eat mooncakes and light up lanterns.

The main venue of the CMG's Mid-Autumn Festival Gala is Shenyang, capital city of northeast China's Liaoning Province. The special gala will be broadcast on the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival, at 20:00 Beijing Time (12:00 GMT) on Tuesday, via multiple CMG channels, as well as its social media platforms. CCTV-1, the CMG's primary channel, has presented various of colorful TV shows, including the third season of cultural travel program "Home in Mountains and Rivers" which focuses on rural life and economy in coastal province of Fujian, along with the lifestyle in rural areas of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The second season of cultural program "China in Intangible Cultural Heritage" takes the audience into traditional handicrafts, dances and customs in east China's Jiangxi Province.

The 2024 Mid-Autumn Poetry Festival, a program which will be held in ancient capital Xi'an for the first time, will also wow the viewers every night of the holiday.

CCTV-3, the art-focused channel of the CMG, will treat viewers with a comedy improv titled "Happy Mid-Autumn Night" on Monday evening. The comedy has been integrated with classical Chinese opera and myth stories.

On the Chinese-language international channel CCTV-4, a special traditional Chinese festival program will take the audience to the colorful ways of celebrations around the world.

The CMG's documentary channel CCTV-9 continued to broadcast "Dunhuang Meets Shaoxing," a four-episode documentary highlighting four major sections of Dunhuang and Shaoxing's grotto culture, calligraphy culture, poetry culture and cultural heritage.

The Chinese opera channel CCTV-11 will broadcast a Mid-Autumn traditional Chinese style concert on the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival,

The Voice of China, the radio channel under the CMG, will launch a convergence media live-streaming program on Tuesday night, amid the poetic and pictorial splendor of the Twenty-Four Bridges in Yangzhou City of Jiangsu Province.

The mobile new media platform of CCTV News and Yangshipin, a short video application under the CMG, have both published their Mid-Autumn special programmings.

China Media Group unveils extensive Mid-Autumn Festival programming

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday slashed interest rates by 50 basis points amid cooling inflation and a weakening labor market, marking the first rate cut in over four years.

"The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance," the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the central bank's policy-setting body, said in a statement.

"In light of the progress on inflation and the balance of risks, the Committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/2 percentage point to 4-3/4 to 5 percent," the FOMC said.

This signals the start of an easing cycle. Starting from March 2022, the Fed had raised rates consecutively for 11 times to combat inflation not seen in forty years, pushing the target range for the federal funds rate up to between 5.25 percent and 5.5 percent, the highest level in over two decades.

After maintaining rates at the high level for over a year, the Fed's tight monetary policy faced pressure to pivot due to the easing of inflationary pressures, signs of weakening in the job market, and slowing economic growth.

U.S. Fed slashes rates by 50 basis points, first rate cut in four years