Media Source for "Natural" Sounding Mandarin Chinese I've been looking to improve my Chinese pronunciation and listening skills. When looking at most tv dramas and textbook dialogues, however, I can't help but notice that tones and pitches tend to be overpronunced in a way that just sounds very unnatural to me and different from the Mandarin I hear in my daily life. Because these sources sound unnatural, I don't really &quot;believe&quot; in them and don't think it would be productive to try to imitate them.
This might be a good example. Randomly choosing the conversation at 10:50, and comparing it to the conversation at, say, 11:15 here, the former seems theatrical and overpronunced, unlike the more everyday dialogue present in the latter link.
I'm a male speaker, however, and would need a reality TV show or other media genre with a less theatrical mode of pronunciation and articulation with more male speakers. Aside from reality TV, would anyone have suggestions for other genres? Within reality TV, could anyone recommend some programs?
I have linguistics training, and don't mind answers with technical jargon if one wants to comment on the differences between the two modes.
the radio television hong kong has channel in mandarin; in their website, they've archive of past programme, or podcasts.

http://programme.rthk.hk/channel/radio/index.php?c=pth&amp;m=archive

the site design is a little bit "non-standard", just click any links, until you see "收聽 listen" with a headphone icon.

have fun :)