CCTV-4中文国际伴音

Out of 391 entries in China, this one ranks 9. The upper quarter of a national list is an interesting place to be: well known enough to have accumulated opens, not so well known that it is the station everybody already had.

The directory counts 55 opens against this stream. That is well above China's median and it is the reason the station sits where it does on the country list, since the ordering is the count and nothing else.

The country page counts news among its commonest tags, and this station is one of the 47 entries in China behind that count. Worldwide the tag leads 307 stations, which makes the rail below a very wide shelf.

On the same tag worldwide it is 16 of 307, which is inside the top quarter of every news station the directory carries.

The stream is served as an HLS playlist, which is the format broadcasters use to switch bitrates on the fly and the one a plain browser audio element will not open. Nothing is wrong with the station; the player on this page simply cannot follow that kind of link without a library. The extension carries one and handles it.

The stream address on this entry points at piccpndali.v.myalicdn.com, which is where 34 other stations in China are served from as well. Platforms of that size carry the long tail of a country's dial, and they are the reason a listing can look broken when it is one host having a quiet hour.