TVB and OnTV collaboration: Midnight time slot series poll

Ok, so I was catching up on some entertainment news today and came across an article from on.cc (which I’ve linked up below).  In the article, on.cc – or, more accurately, their television division ON TV – officially announced yesterday (9/13) that they are collaborating with TVB on a special poll.  Together with TVB, they’ve chosen 10 ‘classic’ TVB series for netizens to vote on (via Facebook) during the 2 week timespan from 9/14 to 9/28 -- TVB has agreed to re-broadcast the series with the most votes in their midnight timeslot starting on 10/5 (once the currently airing series Time Before Time is finished).

According to the article, the voting will go through 2 phases:  in the first phase, OnTV will post detailed information about each series, including cast photos, plot summary, video clips, recommendations on ‘must-watch’ scenes, etc so that each person voting will supposedly have all the details they need to vote.  The second phase will launch next week, though OnTV didn’t give any details on what this phase consists of.  Also, a very important point – there is no limit to the number of series each person can vote for…so for example, if you like all 10 series, you can vote for all 10 if you want.

Before I list out the 10 series that OnTV and TVB chose, I just want to say this:  maybe I’m thinking too much into things, but I just find it very coincidental that I wrote about this EXACT SAME idea on my blog a few days before this whole thing got rolled out.  Technically, I wrote 2 posts on TVB midnight timeslot – the first one was in July in which I kind of ‘complained’ about TVB’s choice of series and informally gave them some ‘suggestions’ on the next series to air.  Then last week, I did a most detailed post on which series I would’ve chosen if I were the program lineup director.  In addition to that, I also relayed the suggestion of doing a poll to have audiences pick what they want to watch in that timeslot.  Well, looks like now the poll is actually happening – though the part I don’t understand is why OnTV is doing the poll rather than TVB themselves. [Sidenote:  Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but there’s a part of me that can’t help but think that OnTV is associated with TVB somehow.  I already suspected this a few weeks ago when I was able to trace a picture that a few websites had used back to OnTV’s video clip – in that picture, OnTV was reporting on news about Lesley Chiang and Fred Cheng’s breakup.  They interviewed Lesley while she was at HKTV’s dinner for their series Hidden Faces, yet in the picture, any reference to HKTV (including their logo and the name of their series) were all blurred out.  When I saw the picture, I had questioned why a mainstream media outlet -- which, in order to maintain credibility and reputability, should take a ‘neutral’ stance when reporting news – would have the need to ‘block out’ another company’s logo and all references to that company’s product (especially since they didn’t block out the logo to the commercial sponsors of that event, Vidal Sassoon).  I later discovered that the picture was ‘clipped’ from the news video posted on OnTV’s website – sure enough, when I went on to check, everything in the video referring to HKTV was blurred out.  This is the first time that I’ve actually seen a mainstream media outlet in HK take such ‘action’ against a company that is not one of their competitors.  Well, now this whole thing with the poll further fuels my ‘suspicion’ about OnTV’s position. I won't go too much into it here, since it's kind of irrelevant to this post, but will probably revisit this topic again later on.]

Now that I’ve said my piece about the poll and OnTV, here are the 10 series that OnTV and TVB have chosen for audiences to vote.  (Discerning readers will probably notice that a few of these series were on my ‘suggestions’ list as well, except my list was limited to series from the 80s and 90s eras only).

Here are the 10 series from OnTV (in no particular order):

War of the Genders (男親女愛) – 2000

Looking Back in Anger (義不容情) – 1989

The Duke of Mount Deer (鹿鼎記) – 1984

The Feud of Two Brothers (流氓大亨) – 1986

It Runs in the Family (孖仔孖心肝) – 1990

Detective Investigation Files (刑事偵緝檔案) – 1995

Don’t Look Now (執到寶) – 1980

Files of Justice (壹號皇庭) – 1992

Police Cadet (新紮師兄) – 1984

A Step Into the Past (尋秦記) – 2001

And which series do I vote for?  Without a doubt, definitely Looking Back in Anger (not hard to guess considering I’ve been ‘harping’ on TVB since July to air that series in their midnight timeslot and also relayed that thought in 2 blog posts).   Outside of that series, I really don’t want to vote for the others because I actually disagree with some of the series on the list.  I’m actually curious to know how they came up with these 10 choices because as a long-time TVB fan who is familiar with their series from the late 70s to now, there are definitely other more ‘classic’ series that would bump some of these series out of top 10 contention. I'll have to do a little more digging but hopefully, either OnTV or TVB explain their criteria for choosing these series somewhere on their website or FB pages.

Source links:  

OnTV Facebook page (series profiles)

on.cc article (brief series intros)