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After their television debut this week, Li Zimeng and Kang Hui may be on their way to becoming household names like Katie Couric and Brian Williams -- in China.

Ms. Li and Mr. Kang are the youthful new anchors of China Central Television's half-hour evening news broadcast, the first fresh faces in more than a decade on a program that is watched nightly by an estimated 140 million people. Mr. Kang, in his mid-thirties, and Ms. Li, 28, made their unannounced appearance on Monday, delivering Beijing's official line on current events in a cheerful manner that departed from the dour demeanors of CCTV's rotating group of six other newscasters.

China Central Television's new evening news anchors Li Zimeng, left, and Kang Hui.

"They were actually announcing the news with a smile! My Heavens!" wrote one viewer on Tianya, a Chinese online bulletin board site. "This is the first time I finished watching the program!" said another. Ms. Li, in particular, was viewed as "the most modern, the most fashionable, and the most beautiful" of the show's anchors, as the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper put it.

The addition of Ms. Li and Mr. Kang reflect the reshaping of China's media and the government's approach to propaganda as new, livelier avenues of information flourish in the country. The duo is part of a broader but cosmetic effort by the state-run broadcaster to add a touch of personality to its programs and woo viewers and advertisers -- but without allowing editorial independence.

Once the only source of televised news for China's one-billion-plus population, CCTV today faces growing competition from Internet news sites and more daring channels offered by smaller broadcasters and News Corp.-invested Phoenix Satellite Television. Young people, many of whom feel little affinity for the Communist Party, are much less likely than their parents to watch CCTV's nightly news.

CCTV apparently hopes Ms. Li and Mr. Kang can help change that. The pair have yet to reappear, but they are the talk of the nation, with feature spreads in newspapers and much buzz on the Internet. CCTV officials declined to comment on the new anchors. One network executive says they are part of a bigger campaign to introduce "more youthful, modern programming that has greater relevance to viewers' lives." (The two anchors are not novices, though. They previously hosted other CCTV programs and are graduates of Beijing Broadcasting Institute, now called Communication University of China.)

First broadcast in 1978 in a format similar to its current form, the evening news program is the core of the government's official message machine. Anchors -- a man and a woman -- read the news each night at 7 p.m. in a humorless manner, looking only at the teleprompter or the scripts on their desk. There is virtually no banter.

The show, called "News Relay," generally leads with reports on the activities of the country's top leaders in order of the officials' rank in the party hierarchy. That formula has been followed so strictly over the years that political analysts often try to determine who is up and who is down based on how much air time each official gets.

Recognizing TV's power as a propaganda instrument, especially among the country's largely peasant population, the government promotes state TV, even installing satellite dishes in remote villages. About 400 million households now have TVs.

As a result, "News Relay" has a viewership that Ms. Couric, who begins anchoring "CBS Evening News" in September, might kill for: the Chinese program gets an estimated average audience that is roughly 14 times that of the highest-rated U.S. network news show, "NBC Nightly News" hosted by Mr. Williams. (CBS battles for second place with ABC.)

Despite "News Relay's" dry format, advertisers flock to it. The 15-second spots available after the show, which runs uninterrupted, are called "golden time slots" that can cost $100,000 each. Yet audiences for some CCTV programs, including "News Relay," are slipping. It now has competition from both Phoenix and a channel called Dragon TV, which is run by the state-owned Shanghai Media Group.

In recent years, the government has pressed China's 1,000-plus TV channels to commercialize -- even though it still tightly controls content. The government, for instance, limits Phoenix's broadcasts to mainly hotels, universities and government offices. But since Phoenix is based in Hong Kong, it is a little less under the government's thumb -- and thus is shaking up TV news in China in part by treating its hip, young anchors as celebrities.

The explosion of the Internet in China, which now boasts more than 111 million users and hundreds of thousands of domestic Web sites, has given the Chinese alternative sources of news. Even with government controls, the Web offers far more diverse reports than CCTV. Many state-owned newspapers also have jazzed up their offerings.

High-level dissatisfaction with "News Relay" surfaced in March, when a member of an official advisory group submitted a proposal to the government arguing that the program had become "monotonous." The document was leaked to the public on the Internet.

In late May, CCTV announced plans to give the program a new image. Changes included a "more fashionable" studio and more "innovative expression," according to an announcement on CCTV's Web site. It said nothing about new anchors.

The show's content so far remains the same. During their broadcast, Ms. Li and Mr. Kang kicked off the news with an 11-minute report on Chinese President Hu Jintao's speech on the topic of innovation to government scientists and engineers.

Indeed, little has changed in how TV journalists in general broadcast news in China, says David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project. "They want media to look more savvy and approachable...but control is the supreme rule," he says.