2010-05-31 09:54

Her time spent exploring Internet business models prompted some anxious feelings.

In recent years, Wang noticed cable channels were losing dominance as audiences scattered to social media such as Facebook and Youtube and TV ratings began to fall worldwide.

"I started paying close attention to the Internet in 2006 and was thinking about creating an Internet television network in 2007 but the Internet and media environment was too immature at that time," Wang said.

She planned to begin her Internet venture by creating a C2C experience-sharing platform. People with abundant life experience can monetize their knowledge on the site. The inspiration for the idea came to her when she studied at Harvard Kennedy School last spring.

However, she closed the site two weeks after it was launched because she found very few users were willing to pay for knowledge online. Although the niche market is there, it's impossible to monetize it, she said. "The biggest mistake we made was we assumed there would be user demand," she said.

Shortly after, she shifted to her area of expertise and focused on her long-awaited dream, a platform synthesizing television and the Internet.

"Although the environment has yet to mature, it's ready for the things I'm doing," Wang said. Her talk shows are mainly themed on creating jobs and innovation so the company's application for government approval was granted without a problem..

Revenues will mainly be generated from advertising and the distribution of audio and video products, Wang said.

She is exploring new business models and talking with investors but said, "I'll be very prudent in introducing investment, and the precondition for outside funds will be no interference in management and content."

The operational costs are under control because the website doesn't support expensive wide band upload functions, Wang said.

"As an entrepreneur I have to make a profit but I've positioned myself as a media person first. What I expect is that we can produce a series of influential products that can benefit younger people," Wang said.

The company has signed agreements with 30 local channels that allow them to broadcast the programs, and they could also be watched through terminals such as cell phones, Wang said.

"We will put in a great efforts to build and unitize the terminal network. What we are constructing is more than a video website," she said. When she embarked on that C2C site, her friend Jack Ma of Alibaba told her: "Things you are doing today will go through great changes in the future, just as Today's Alibaba never occurred to me 10 years ago when I started."

Ma's prediction turned out to be true. Wang switched her C2C site to the television network after several months. She believes more changes will happen in the future that will be "decided by the market, of course as well as your values and the social changes".

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She says she always welcomes change and even called her first book Eternity in Changes. It was published 15 years ago when she gained a PhD from Peking University.

Ha Xuesheng, an executive at CCTV's Financial News Department and a former colleague of Wang's, said the presenter possessed incredible power in putting her thoughts into practice.

When Wang had an idea to create a new program during the time she worked for CCTV, she would run to the biggest boss and convince him to accept her idea. She always got her way.

"I dislike others dominating my destiny and actually no one can do that. I always follow my own heart," Wang said.

Wang was named one of 238 young global leaders by the World Economic Forum in 2005 and attended the Davos forum seven times. She also studied at Yale University and at the Brookings Institution for one year.

She said each time she returned refreshed and benefited a lot from the overseas experience.

China is the best place for starting new entrepreneurial ventures, she said. In a mature and stable environment such as the United States, success for a venture requires a breakthrough in technique, but a changing society such as China will generate lots of business opportunities itself.

"My core competence doesn't lie in how many celebrities I know, but I strive to build a platform to help solve the puzzles that the young generation are facing in their businesses or careers in such a changing age and then turn what emerges into cultural products and put on channels that young people prefer," she said.