The second online spring festival gala of CCTV has started to collect programs from home and abroad to broadcast during 2012 spring festival, the organizing committee said at a news conference in Beijing on Friday.

With the theme of slogan of "micro life, cloud happiness", the cntv.cn gala will focus more on the life's of grassroots people and provide a platform to show their talents, said the organizer.

Children perform at the news conference for online Spring Festival Gala 2012, Dec 16, 2011. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Up to now, the gala's organizers have selected more than 200 programs from thousands of received videos from across the nation and an online vote has been set on its official website for the people to select their favorite programs.

Featuring high-tech, fashion, young and internationalization, the gala will introduce multiple means to have interactions with the audience, including micro blogs and Weixin (micro info).

And as in previous year, well-known singers, artists and celebrities from home and abroad will be invited to attend the gala and it will also seek overseas Chinese to give performances, according to the organizers.

The gala's mascot, a pair of dragons (a supernatural animal in Chinese fairy tales) named as @Dragon is unveiled at the news conference, which is celebration of the year of the dragon in 2012.