EACH night at 7pm, many of China’s television channels beam the state broadcaster’s flagship news programme into Chinese homes: a remorseless half-hour diet of where Xi Jinping went today, how well the economy is doing and (for a few minutes at the end) a look at all those people in foreign countries killing each other. Despite China’s transformation over the past 40 years, the evening news has changed very little. Around a tenth of the population still watch it—a remarkable number given the profusion in recent years of livelier news sources in print and online.

News Simulcast, usually known by its Chinese name, Xinwen Lianbo, has chronicled the country’s extraordinary metamorphosis with almost unremitting leadenness since it was first aired in 1978. The same opening tune has been used for nearly 30 years (though the orchestra has improved). News is chosen not for its importance or human interest but for its political value in bolstering the Communist Party. It is translated into eight minority languages, just to be sure its message is understood by as many people as possible.

The fare has barely changed in decades. A typical programme in the 1980s highlighted the development of a self-opening umbrella and a contest in which happy only children (China had recently introduced a one-child-per-couple policy) performed household chores. Today the backdrop is just more high-tech. Scenes of bullet-trains and microchip makers have replaced those of dreary state-owned factories. Now, as then, reports featuring Chinese leaders—no matter how trivial their activities—nearly always take precedence over other news. A popular rhyming ditty accurately describes the format: “The leaders are always busy, the people are perfectly healthy, the world outside China is extremely chaotic.”

Early newscasters—almost always one man and one woman—were chosen for their standard Mandarin pronunciation and stolid demeanour; the same few read the news for decades. These have been replaced with younger, more glamorous presenters (though they still need official permission to change their hairstyles). To make broadcasts seem more newsy, banks of TV screens flicker in what appears to be a newsroom behind. But live reports are rare; they create too big a risk of something embarrassing making it to air.

A fraction of households had TV sets when Xinwen Lianbo started broadcasting. But as China entered the age of mass consumption a few years later, TV news became the perfect vehicle for the party to try to guide public opinion. Xinwen Lianbo’s ratings peaked in the mid-1990s, when 200m-250m tuned in. Now the audience is 130m-140m, though the fall is not as big a worry for the party as it might seem: in 2003 China Central Television launched a 24-hour news channel, giving viewers complete freedom to choose when to catch up with the latest propaganda. Xinwen Lianbo still has more viewers than any other TV news on Earth.

For many, the programme provides useful clues to the party’s latest thinking, and a chance to see leaders who rarely appear in public. Propagandists have used the news to try to demystify President Xi, says Chang Jiang of Renmin University in Beijing. The president is shown as a man of the people, drinking tea with villagers or kicking footballs. His voice is often heard, notes Mr Chang—perhaps because, unlike his predecessors, he speaks standard Mandarin and is therefore widely understood. Ratings apparently rise when his elegant wife, Peng Liyuan, appears. But such cosmetic innovations are as far as the party will go in tinkering with a brand they consider successful.