The 21st Shanghai TV Festival kicked off on Monday.[Photo/Chinanews.com.cn]

In the Internet plus era, what is the future of the TV industry? It became the most discussed topic during the 21st Shanghai TV Festival, which kicked off on Monday.

Instead of watching TV with the whole family as in the past, more and more Chinese people watch TV programs in fragments of time on smart phones, tablets, smart televisions and other mobile Internet devices. To some degree, the monopoly in the traditional television market has been broken.

According to the data released by the Chinese Internet Network Information Center, there were more than 500 million network video users by the third quarter of 2014, covering 70 percent of Internet users in China.

Lu Dongtao, the general manager of Gehua cable TV Network Co. Ltd, expressed his anxiety about the future of the cable TV industry. He said that by the end of 2014, there were around 100 million cable digital television users in China, but most of them didn't know or use the human–machine interaction function.

As a traditional media industry, the TV industry became one of the earliest parties injured by the shock of the Internet. In recent years, like newspaper, magazine and portal sites, television is not the main way to get information, but is a content provider to new media plant forms.

In that case, it is not surprising that the total rating and quantity of the audience obviously declined, along with advertising income. In the first quarter of 2015, the overall decline of advertising income in traditional media was 4.7 percent, which is the biggest drop in five years.

In the face of a new industry pattern, TV companies try to use the Internet train of thought to achieve the transformation. Some TV stations pay attention in program production and some engage in capital investment, while others lay emphasis on media production application.