Super Girl, China’s version of Pop Idol, is to be dropped from television schedules in spite of attracting 400m viewers at its peak, after some officials saw it as subversive because the

audience-voting format too closely represented western-style democracy .

Li Hao, deputy editor and spokesman of Hunan Satellite TV, which broadcast the show, was quoted as saying the changes were under disciplinary measures by the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television, and the broadcaster would soon launch new programming on morals, security and housework instead.

Super Girl has attracted regulatory scrutiny before. The show was launched in 2004 and hit its peak of 400m viewers in the final episode of 2005, but was suspended once before and repeatedly criticised. Aside from unease about creating stars with votes, officials criticised it as profane and “unhealthy”.

State media said SARFT was punishing the broadcaster because the show had frequently over-run its time slot.

However, the changes follow months of regulatory pressure on Hunan TV and was widely seen as a sobering reminder of the country’s censorship regime.

In May, Ouyang Changlin, director and Communist party secretary of Hunan Broadcasting System, the satellite TV station’s parent, told the Financial Times that HBS was revamping programming in response to new censorship demands.

Mr Ouyang, chief architect of the entertainment-focused strategy, said back then HBS had to make its programmes more acceptable to the authorities. SARFT had demanded broadcasters should be led by “quality, responsibility and values”.

Super Girl, and similar talent shows, will no longer be broadcast from next year, state media reported at the weekend. It is understood that currently SARFT has moved only against Hunan TV. HBS could not be reached for comment.

GroupM, the media group, forecast last week that television advertising spending in China will grow 13 per cent this year to Rmb201bn ($31.5bn) and jump another 14 per cent to Rmb229bn in 2012. Hunan holds the second-largest share after CCTV, the national broadcaster.

Beijing’s propaganda authorities are also scrambling to optimise internet censorship with Weibo services, microblogs resembling Twitter, attracting hundreds of millions of users.