Kurt Loder Prepares To Brush Up On His Mandarin

We’re pretty sure we have exactly zero readers in China, a fact that has little to do with government censorship, and everything to do with the fact that second-rate Brandon Flowers gags don’t exactly demand an international following. But if you happen to be among the 1.3 billion people living in the PRC, get ready for an invasion of slightly fuzzy Room Raiders clips:

Viacom Inc. announced a deal to distribute music videos and television shows through the Web site of Chinese Internet-search company Baidu.com Inc., in the latest move to bolster the online presence of its core MTV Networks cable division. Baidu is by most measures the most popular search engine in China, which has 123 million Internet users…

Viacom’s deal has created an “MTV channel” on Baidu’s site movie.baidu.com, where users can pay to download music videos or can watch television shows free, but with advertising. About 15,000 hours of content will be available initially.

We’re curious as to what programs MTV will make available over there, especially since the Chinese government is a tad bit sensitive: The Culture Ministry recently canceled a Jay-Z concert over “vulgar language,” and if something like that offends them, who knows what they’ll make of, say, the Rhianna-Juelz Santana episode of My Sweet Super 16. Even we wanted to leave the country when that came on.

Viacom to Distribute Content In China on Baidu Web Site [WSJ] Red Rockers – China [MP3, link expired]