TVB Anniversary Awards: ‘Poon Sir’ (Ben Wong) fails to make the list, ‘Heung Heung’ (Eliza Sam) has 3 nominations; Sandy Yu responds to controversy over nominations list

Due to time constraints, I'll give my comments on this particular article tomorrow. 

However, I will say that the most important thing to pay attention to with this article is the Question and Answer session that ND Daily did with Sandy Yu....

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TVB Anniversary Awards:  ‘Poon Sir’ (Ben Wong) fails to make the list,  ‘Heung Heung’ (Eliza Sam) has 3 nominations;  Sandy Yu responds to controversy over nominations list

Source:  NDDaily News

 

Translation:  llwy12

 

During the press conference yesterday where TVB announced the nominees for various categories in this year’s Anniversary Awards ceremony, the most ‘heartwrenching’ moment came when the nominees for the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category were revealed.  Last year’s Best Supporting Actor winner Ben Wong (黃智賢) was shockingly excluded from this year’s list of finalists for the award, however he still had to take on the responsibility of ‘announcing’ the  nominees for that particular category.  Even the host of the event, Dodo Cheng (鄭裕玲) couldn’t help but show concern for Ben, asking him:  “Are you okay?”  In comparisons, the process of revealing the nominees for the rest of the categories was relatively dull.

TVB’s Anniversary Awards will take place on December 17^th, 2012 – as with past years, the event becomes a ‘battle’ between TVB’s various siu sangs and fa dans for the coveted TV King and Queen titles.  Yesterday, TVB held a press conference to announce the final nominees for the various award categories.  Since this will be the first award show that TVB’s non-drama production head Sandy Yu (余詠珊) will oversee, she has decided to make the show different this year by implementing a ‘one vote per person’ system for the 3 most important award categories:  Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Series.

Every year, most attention is paid to the ‘battle’ for TV King and Queen (aka Best Actor / Actress), however since the nominees in those 2 categories are usually the same few siu sangs and fa dans year after year, many audiences may feel that there is nothing ‘refreshing’ or ‘exciting’ about those 2 categories anymore.  Therefore, in recent years, some of the less ‘mainstream’ awards -- such as Best Supporting Actor / Actress, Most Improved Male/Female Artist, etc. – have garnered more attention.  Since these ‘lesser’ awards directly impact TVB’s future [TN: the up and comers who will eventually take the place of the current crop of artists], the ‘battle’ in these categories have also become more intense over the years.

The most ‘dramatic’ moment of yesterday’s press conference was definitely the announcement of the nominees in the Best Supporting Actor category.  Last year’s BSA winner Ben Wong – who was dubbed by many netizens as the ‘hot favorite’ to win the award again this year – surprisingly did not even make the list!  Yet, he continued on with his ‘duty’ of announcing the final nominees in that category during the press conference.


Nominations list causes controversy – accused of favoring own obedient biological children; ‘traitors’ are not given any chances

Even though TVB constantly says that they ‘don’t differentiate between biological and non-biological’ artists, the reality is that TVB has always had the habit of ‘encouraging’ their own ‘obedient’ children and very rarely ‘rewards’ those who ‘fly out of the nest’ once they develop strong enough wings. 

TVB’s former siu sang Bowie Lam (林保怡) [one of the lead actors for the netizen-dubbed ‘godly’ series When Heaven Burns (天與地)] and fadan Maggie Cheung (張可頤) [lead actress for series The Last Steep Ascent (天梯)] both left their ‘maternal home’ [TVB] earlier in the year -- not only that, both artists also ‘criticized’ their former employer for various things such as being stingy, making artists work ridiculously long hours, having antiquated production processes, etc.  As a result, both artists were ‘notably’ excluded from the nominations list for TV King and Queen this year.   In a further controversial move, TVB essentially ‘promoted’ The Last Steep Ascent’s supporting actress Aimee Chan (陳茵媺) to ‘lead actress’ level by giving her a spot on the top 10 finalists in the Best Actress category.

Actually, if we look closely at this year’s nominations list, there are many more examples of TVB being ‘petty’ and also ‘favoring’ their own biological children.  For instance:  Moses Chan (陳豪) getting nominated in the Best Actor category for his performance in The Last Steep Ascent, yet the highly praised performance of his co-star in the acclaimed but poorly rated series Master of Play (心戰) – veteran actor Adam Cheng (鄭少秋) did not garner any nominations;  Raymond Lam (林峯) vying for Best Actor with his performance in Highs and Lows (雷霆掃毒), yet the other lead actor in that same series – actor Michael Miu (苗僑偉) – only gets nominated in the ‘Favorite TV Character’ category;   veteran actress Liza Wang (汪明荃) getting nominated for Divas in Distress（巴不得媽媽…）, yet fellow lead actress Gigi Wong (黃淑儀) – who had criticized TVB earlier for ‘not respecting veteran artists’ – did not make it on the list at all.

During yesterday’s press conference, the most ‘disappointed’ artist was definitely Ben Wong.  With his strong performance as villain ‘Poon Sir’ in the series Highs and Lows (雷霆掃毒), Ben was dubbed as one of the ‘hot favorites’ to compete with Koo Ming Wah (古明華) and Power Chan (陳國邦) for the Best Supporting Actor award this year.  Yet, when the final nominations list came out, Ben was not even included as a contender for the award.  During an interview with ND Daily’s reporter after the press conference, Ben stated:  “I feel a bit helpless and truly quite disappointed.  All I can do at this point is try as much as possible to adjust my feelings, as my road as an actor is still quite long.  Everyone has a road ahead of them and as long as I’ve already done my best, that is enough – everything else, the audiences are wise enough to see for themselves.  I give myself the following 7 words of encouragement: ‘黃智賢, 继续努力’ (‘Ben Wong, continue to work hard!’).”  Asked whether he is dissatisfied with the company’s nomination criteria, he responded:  “The criteria is determined by the company – I’m not clear what their stance is.  Perhaps you guys can ask them, as I would like an explanation as well.  Nevertheless, many of the nominees in the Supporting Actor category this year are truly good actors and some of them have toiled quietly for many years without seeking anything in return, so I am truly very happy for them.”


Nominees in the ‘Most Improved’ categories raise eyebrows; ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category heated battle

The ‘battle’ in the ‘Most Improved Male / Female Artist’ categories is also quite intense this year, with favored artists from TVB’s 2 main production ‘camps’ battling it out – in the Male Artist category, there’s Edwin Siu (蕭正楠) representing Catherine Tsang’s (曾勵珍) side and Oscar Leung (梁烈唯) representing Tommy Leung (梁家樹).  And of course, on the Most Improved Female Artist side, it’s a battle between ‘hot favorite’ Mandy Wong (黃智雯) and the two newly dubbed ‘goddesses’ Christine Kuo (苟芸慧) and Eliza Sam (岑麗香) – especially newcomer Eliza, who is nominated in 3 categories this year despite her ‘newbie’ status.

The ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category is also very intense this year – out of the final nominees, the ‘hot favorites’ are obviously Koo Ming Wah and Power Chan.  With his breakthrough performance as the effeminate ‘So Gay’ in Divas in Distress（巴不得媽媽…）, Koo Ming Wah gained huge praise from both colleagues and audiences alike – the ‘one person, one like in support of So Gay’ poll that a netizen created on Facebook  to support him has now grown to almost 90,000 followers – so of course, his nomination was expected.  However, Koo Ming Wah’s fellow HKAPA [HK Academy of Performing Arts] school mate Power Chan shouldn’t be taken for granted either – Power’s highly praised performance as ‘Eunuch Pang’ in The Confidant（大太監）has garnered much attention lately – plus, with netizens dubbing him as ‘the second Wayne Lai (黎耀祥)’, there’s definitely a huge chance that he might take home the award.


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TVB’s Director of Non-Drama Programs Sandy Yu (余詠珊) responds to the various ‘controversies’ surrounding the 2012 Anniversary Awards nominations list

 [Below is excerpt from 2 of ND Daily’s articles]:

 

Question 1: 

Why did Bowie Lam and Maggie Cheung not make it into Top 10 [for Best Actor and Actress]? 

 Why did The Last Steep Ascent’s supporting actress Aimee Chan get ‘promoted’ to lead actress competing in the Best Actress category?

 Ben Wong is a ‘hot favorite’ among audiences for Best Supporting Actor, yet he was excluded from the nominations.  Why was the ‘public opinion’ of audiences ignored?

Sandy Yu’s response:  The nominations lists were determined via voting by 9 management executives.  Each executive had their own ‘criteria’ for determining who to include in the top 10 list.  We used the method of tallying up the votes to come up with the final list – if 2 artists had the same number of votes, then we would do a re-vote to determine the finalist.  We do not have any bias against artists who already left TVB, as the attitude we took during voting was to consider ‘who performed well’.  However it’s possible that because certain artists are no longer ‘TVB artists’, there might have been a slight feeling of ‘estrangement’ amongst a few of us during voting, which is likely what gave the impression of there being a preference for biological versus non-biological, but it’s nothing serious.  The company did not give us any instructions or rules saying that those who left cannot be nominated.

As for Aimee Chan, she did not ‘mysteriously’ get ‘promoted’ to lead actress vying for the Best Actress award – she truly did perform well!  All of the executives saw how much she has improved and felt that she has more and more ‘star quality’, so that’s why we made that decision [to nominate her in Best Actress]. 

Regarding Ben Wong – I already talked it over with Miss Lok (TVB’s head of production and resources Virginia Lok) and when we get back, we’ll need to have another meeting to discuss whether there are any other ‘lost jewels’ [aka ‘unrecognized talent’] in the various award categories as well as whether there are artists who may feel disappointed in their hearts over the nominations.  We also need to discuss whether there are any categories where the audience’s reactions are particularly strong.  We will discuss again and see how to deal with the situation.


Question 2:  Why are there only 3 award categories for audiences to vote on?  How about the existence of ‘management executive favoritism’ in the nominations lists?

Sandy Yu’s response:  This year, we really wanted to do a 100% audience vote awards ceremony, however if all of the award winners in all categories were to be chosen by audiences, the process is way too complicated!  By choosing 3 of the most important awards for audience vote, we wanted to simplify the process as much as possible.  If we’re handing over 3 ‘big awards’ to the audiences, do you think we’d have our executives ‘specify’ winners in the other ‘small’ award categories?  The nominations list was determined by tallying the votes from each of our 9 executives – during the voting process, we did think about whether there are artists that audiences really like but were not included in the nominations and whether the audiences reaction will be huge or not?  If such a situation does occur [huge negative reaction from audiences], the 9 of us will immediately have another meeting to discuss how to resolve the situation.  In principle, the mechanism used is fair and impartial, however when it comes to the details, there is room for adjustment.


Question 3:   Will the number of audience votes in the Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Series categories be announce during the awards ceremony?

Sandy Yu’s response:  Probably not – currently, there are no plans to do so.  First of all, the method we’ll be using to tally the votes will be quite complicated – we will be utilizing a large, international accounting firm to help us tally the votes, so the results are guaranteed to be fair.  If we really go the ‘transparent’ route of revealing the number of votes each artist received, it might cause awkwardness and actually might hurt certain artists more than help them.


Question 4:   With the Best Actor / Actress categories determined by 100% audience vote, certain artists who have huge fan bases (Raymond Lam for example) and might win because of that, does that mean their performance was the best and most deserving of the award?

Sandy Yu’s response:  Unless the artist has 500,000 fans, then he/she can say they will win for sure – otherwise, it’s not guaranteed.  With the way the voting process is set up this time around, there is no way for fans to ‘buy votes’ to support their idols.  The voter will be required to enter their HK ID card number as well as their cell phone number – a combination of both these numbers will be consider ‘one person’.  Therefore, casting one vote is actually not going to be easy at all.  This time around, we hope that everyone in HK will participate, not just fans of the artists.