SCMP Editorial: Is TVB’s Jade Solid Gold Top Ten awards the blueprint for universal suffrage?

I actually got a kick out of reading this article so I figured I’d share it with everyone.  Why did I get such a kick out of it, you ask?  Well, because the article echoes my sentiments exactly when it comes to the topic of music awards in HK.  The part I found the most interesting is that the writer of the article compares the JSG voting thing to the universal suffrage debate currently going on in HK right now – I actually didn’t think about it in that light, but when it’s put in that context, the writer is absolutely correct (those who have been following the universal suffrage discussion in the news will probably understand the writer’s point of view). 

Of course, since the article is an editorial, take it for what it’s worth – whether people agree or disagree with the sentiment that the HK music industry is ‘dying’ (or, for some people, it’s actually already ‘dead’), that’s not really the point.  To me, the point of this article is to highlight the pathetic state that HK as a city / nation is in right now…though I guess in a sense, for us die-hard Hong Kongers, this also serves as yet another ‘depressing’ reminder of what our once beloved city has become.  Sad….

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Is TVB’s Jade Solid Gold Top Ten awards the blueprint for universal suffrage? 

Source:  SCMP

Written by Vivienne Chow at SCMP

January is the music awards season in Hong Kong. They were big deals back in the days when Alan Tam Wing-lun was in tense competition with Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing in the 1980s and the Four Heavenly Kings – Andy Lau Tak-wah, Jacky Cheung Hok-yau, Aaron Kwok Fu-shing and Leon Lai Ming – ruled the 1990s. But ever since these super stars went tired of these games, and those who could barely sing the right notes became the new stars in the early 2000s, Canto-pop was dying. Few people care about these music award shows in the past five years or so.

Strange enough, attention to music award shows has resurfaced this year. It’s not just because Eason Chan Yik-shun shocked the crowd when he looked to his iPhone screen for lyrics and gave a performance that was worse than karaoke upon receiving the top awards (best male singer, album, etc) at Commercial Radio’s Ultimate Song Chart Awards Presentation on January 1. At the height of political debates over universal suffrage and Occupy Central, people began to compare these pathetic music awards shows with the political status of Hong Kong.

For those who aren’t familiar with the music awards shows (well, I never attended or covered them as, unlike the Hong Kong Film Awards, which is organised by an industry association and voted by the industry, these music awards have little credibility), Hong Kong has four major music awards organised by four media companies – Metro Broadcasts, Commercial Radio, RTHK and TVB. Every year, Metro Broadcasts hands out over a hundred awards to almost anyone in the showbiz. Commercial Radio’s awards have better reputation as it claims the awards are based on airplay but this means DJs and station management have a high chance to manipulate the results. RTHK...I don’t know what the criteria are. Just like how Hong Kong is run, these are simply no transparency. Perhaps they don’t need to as the awards are just another show, and they don’t have to be accountable to the audience.

TVB’s Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards Presentation, on the other hand, attempted to be accountable to the public but at the same time, many netizens argued that the TVB show was a preview of what 2017 universal suffrage might look like.

This year Jade Solid Gold followed Miss Hong Kong and The Voice of the Stars to bring public voting on board. Those who pre-registered with TVB online could vote for a number of awards, including most popular male and female singers as well as the song awards.

The game was “universal suffrage” in principle – you were allowed to vote as long as you have registered. But the problem is, many netizens argued, there weren’t that many choices available.

It turned out that only singers who have contracts with TVB (and turn up for the night) were allowed to participate in the race. This meant singers like Eason Chan, who is currently the best loved singer in Hong Kong and has won almost all the big awards at other awards shows, got banished from entering the TVB race. The remaining contracted male singers who fulfilled TVB’s requirements were either too inexperienced irrelevant – seriously I cannot name one single song by Raymond Lam Fung (but he won the most popular singer award with 30 per cent votes). Joey Yung Cho-yee won the most popular singer award for the ninth time in a row with 58,815 votes (well, 85 times more than CY Leung’s 689 votes).

TVB might have played transparent, but the screening process made the awards an unfair race by squeezing out the capable ones who deserved to win. If the Jade Solid Gold award is the blueprint for the 2017 so-called universal suffrage for Chief Executive, be prepared to struggle with choosing among a range of B to C-list candidates if you are stuck in Hong Kong by then.

Meanwhile, G.E.M. Gloria Tang Tsz-kei simply couldn’t care less about the stupid Hong Kong showbiz games and ventured into China. The young Canto-pop singer became an overnight singing sensation on the mainland after appearing in mainland reality show I’m A Singer, winning some 200,000 new followers on her Weibo after the first show. Hong Kong? Forget it. The real fame and cash on mainland matter more to some people.

News Article: TVB launches pay-to-watch internet television service

The below article actually came out earlier in the week, I just didn’t have time to actually post about it until now. 

On 1/14, TVB officially launched GOTV, which allows audiences in HK to view TVB series on mobile devices as well as the Internet.  As the article states, the service will be on a ‘paid subscription’ basis (similar to Netflix) whereby users will pay a monthly fee and be able to view as many TVB series as they want.

When I first heard of this service a few months ago (TVB has been talking about it for awhile), my first concern was what the ‘library’ would look like in terms of which series would be available to watch.  As we all know, TVB’s series have really gone downhill in recent years and many of their series nowadays are not worth watching at all – so if the majority of the series available would be the recent ones (i.e. the ones made after 2000), then this service would definitely not be worth subscribing to.  However, if the older series are in there – especially the ‘classics’ from the 70s/80s/early 90s eras, then yes, this service will be absolutely valuable, as it will give audiences a chance to watch those older series that are very hard to find anywhere else nowadays.

I actually went in to check out the library of series being offered and am happy to report that it looks like many of the older series will be in there!  I chose the ‘By Year’ option and in browsing through the list, I saw that there are quite a few series in there from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s that will be made available.  Right now, most of the series that are actually uploaded are recent series (not surprisingly), but at least the ‘shells’ for the older series are in there already, which means that it is just a matter of time before those get uploaded (looks like TVB is taking the gradual approach with this project and uploading a portion of the series to test the system out first).  

With all that said however, it doesn’t look like all the series TVB ever produced will be in there, at least not initially.  The current library consists of 341 series according to the article, which actually isn’t a lot at all considering how many series TVB has produced over the past 46 years (just as a point of reference – based on my calculations, the number of series TVB has produced over the past 4 decades is way over 1000).  I’m not sure what ‘criteria’ TVB is using to determine which series should be added and at what time, but hopefully it will get to a point where everything is available (though my guess is that this probably won’t happen until a few years down the road).

The other thing I noticed when browsing is that TVB also has many of their TV-movies in there as well (TVB produced A LOT of those back in the 80s/90s and many of them were just as good as their regular series) – this is definitely a good move, as I’m sure many of today’s audiences haven’t seen a lot of the TV-movies that were produced back then.  The only other thing I wish this service had was a section for variety shows and specialty programs, as those programs are truly hard to find nowadays and are absolutely a valuable piece of TVB as well as HK entertainment history.  Perhaps later on down the road, once this service is more established, they might decide to add this feature…but for now, the series and TV-movies are good enough.

Personally, I’m quite excited about this service!  Sure, I’ve seen majority of the older series (from the 70s/80s/90s) and already own most of them either on video tape or DVD, but there are quite a few that I haven’t watched in a long time and would like to re-watch – this service definitely makes it easier to do so.  Most importantly though, this service gives today’s audiences a chance to experience what ‘quality series’ is truly about and finally understand why many of us TVB old-timers continue to speak so fondly of the ‘golden era’ of TVB.  As many of us have reiterated over and over again, the series from back in the days were definitely way better produced than today’s series in almost all aspects (i.e. script, casting, acting, production values, etc.), but since the older series are so hard to find nowadays, audiences couldn’t really watch them even if they wanted to.  With GOTV, audiences now have that chance to watch!

I actually haven’t had the chance to ‘explore’ the GOTV service in depth yet, so can’t really speak to the mechanics of the service and whether it truly does what it claims.  I also don’t know how the picture quality of the series will be, especially with the older series – I’m pretty sure it won’t be in HD, but that’s ok…even if it’s old video tape quality, that’s still better than nothing.   

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TVB launches pay-to-watch internet television service

Source:  SCMP

The battle between Hong Kong Television Network and its rival Television Broadcasts Ltd intensified on Tuesday after TVB launched a pay-to-watch internet service that allows subscribers to watch dramas it has produced since it was founded in 1967.

The launch came as HKTV was preparing for the July launch of its mobile TV service, which viewers will also be able to watch through internet-connected devices.

But TVB general manager Cheong Shin-keong said its new service GOTV, was not started deliberately to steal business from Ricky Wong Wai-kay’s service, which he is launching after being denied a free-to-air licence.

“We have been planning this for two years…and we are launching pay-to-watch services, not free TV. The timing of the matter may give you this idea, but the truth is that it is not,” Cheong said yesterday.

But he admitted GOTV would be in “indirect competition” with HKTV.

TVB is charging subscribers HK$59 a month, or HK$499 a year.

Initially, the subscriptions will give audiences access to about 341 dramas –10,000 episodes in total – on their smartphones, tablets, or computers.

TVB plans to put more dramas into the service gradually.

Cheong said he hoped 100,000 people would have subscribed to the service by the end of the year. He did not reveal how much had been invested, but he believed it would take only one to two years to break even.

He said about a million Hongkongers had subscribed to pay TV channels such as i-Cable and Now TV and he hoped that the number of GOTV subscribers “will not be embarrassing” in a few years’ time.

“We are not competing against (HKTV) directly. But we are competing indirectly in the way that we are all fighting for the audience’s time,” Cheong said.

TVB said earlier that it would terminate the leasing of six transmission stations to China Mobile Hong Kong, which HKTV bought last month to air its programmes.

The broadcaster has cited legal uncertainties arising from China Mobile’s ongoing checks into the acquisition of its subsidiary to see if it violated mainland rules.

Cheong said yesterday that TVB had already sent a letter to HKTV to request a meeting on this matter, but had not received a reply.

The government rejected HKTV’s application for a free-to-air television licence several months ago. Then last month, it announced that it would be launching TV services through the internet from July 1.

It will be offering content on three to five channels. At least one of the channels to be offered from July will be a 24-hour news channel. The content of the rest is yet to be decided, but most will be free, except video-on-demand services.

Francis Fong Po-kiu, president of the Information Technology Federation, said that GOTV would pose a challenge to HKTV. The extent of the impact would be determined by the quality of the programmes offered.

“It depends on whether HKTV can keep the quality of its programmes in the future,” he said.

Fong also said that GOTV’s subscription price was reasonable. It should be able to attract a group of people who could not afford the time to watch television when the dramas were broadcast, but wanted to watch them when they had the time.

Chinese University Survey: The Credibility of Hong Kong News Media Outlets Continues to Decline

Happy New Year to all my dear readers!  Hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing holiday break!  J

One of the New Year’s resolutions I set for myself this year is to do a better job keeping up with and updating this blog, as I realize that I slacked off a bit last year.  My schedule will be just as busy this year as it was last year, but hopefully I’ll be able to set aside more time to work on this blog and finally be able to post up the stuff that I’ve been working on but never found time to finish.  Once again, a sincere THANK YOU to those who continue to support my blog – not only by reading the stuff I post, but also being patient with me when I fail to respond to comments timely (I actually DO read all the comments, but unfortunately I’m not always able to respond as timely as I would like…). I’m also hoping to do better with this in 2014…

Ok, so now that I got that out of the way – on to my first official post of 2014…

I came across the below article yesterday that I really wanted to share with everyone.  Sure, it may not be directly related to the HK entertainment world per se, but technically, the content of the article DOES include entertainment news as well. 

The article recaps a survey conducted by Chinese University in HK in which Hong Kongers were asked to rate the Media outlets in terms of which ones they felt were the most credible.  This survey is actually not a new thing, as it’s done every once in a while and the results are released publicly – it’s just that I never paid a whole lot of attention in the past because the results are generally similar in that the Media outlets that already have a reputation for being credible are usually still at the top of the list.  This year though, I actually took the time to look at the analysis and noticed some very interesting things – a few of which I would like to share below:

.—The survey is broken up into 2 main categories:  HK Media organizations (i.e. TV / radio stations) and News outlets (i.e.: newspapers and other Media that ‘officially’ report news).  Based on the overall scores (for all Media outlets combined), it’s obvious that the credibility of HK Media outlets as a whole has continued its downward trend, as the combined overall scores are way lower than what they were 3 years ago (when the survey was last conducted).  Though I’m not surprised at all with these results, it’s definitely not good news for Hong Kongers, since this means that the Media environment in HK continues to be dismal.

.—In terms of the TV/radio station category, RTHK continues to remain #1 on the list, which I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise, since that radio station IS government-funded and so to some extent, they have a certain ‘social responsibility’ and probably higher standards that they must follow because of it.  The interesting thing is that RTHK has been in the number one spot since 1997 – wow…

Other than RTHK being in the number one spot for the past 16 years, the other thing that sticks out the most to me is that the credibility of both free TV stations in HK (TVB and ATV) has dropped significantly this year.  TVB went from being #2 (a position which they had held since 1997) to #4 (dropping two spots) while ATV went from being #5 (they’ve wavered between #4 and #5 over the past 16 years) to #8 (dropping 3 spots to the very bottom of the list).  Of course, I’m not surprised that TVB and ATV scored poorly, as public opinion of both stations has been on the decline for years…but it looks like this year, the impact was the greatest because their positions dropped so much.  It’s actually kind of pathetic if you ask me….

The rest of the positions in the TV/radio station category didn’t change a whole lot, though CRHK (Commercial Radio) did take the #2 spot this year, which is the highest it’s been for more than a decade.  Looks like their position keeps going up (they went from being #5 back in 2006 to #3 in 2009 and 2010, reaching the #2 spot in 2013), so I guess this means they’re doing something right?

.—In terms of News outlets, South China Morning Post continues to dominate in the #1 spot (that’s good to hear, since that’s where I get a lot of my news articles from…LOL). 

Ming Pao dropped to #3 this year (they’re usually #2 on the list) – though being in the top 3 isn’t bad, the fact that they did drop a bit is concerning, since that’s another outlet where I get the majority of my news from.  Not exactly sure what happened, but hopefully this is only a one-time thing, as I would hate to see them take a downward spiral….

Oriental Daily moved up to #8 this year (they were #9 in 2010 and #11 in 2009), so it looks like they are moving upward once again.  I personally still don’t like the way they put together some of their articles and I still manage to find a lot of ‘sloppy’ reporting when I read their stuff, but the fact that they continue to move up the list shows that they are at least making the effort to be more credible….I guess that should count for something…

Not surprisingly, Apply Daily continues to be near the bottom of the list (they fell to #17 this year, versus being #14 or 15 in previous years).  I’m actually kind of glad to see them so far down the list because it shows that more and more, Hong Kongers are starting to ‘wake up’ and realize just how bad that newspaper is (for those who don’t know, Apply Daily is part of the Next Media empire – need I say more??).

Lastly, Wenweipo and Da Kung Po came in at #19 and #20 respectively (wow, they pretty much dropped to the bottom of the list!).  I remember many years ago, someone had told me that Wenweipo and Da Kung Po were among the ‘more credible’ ones in terms of news media agencies – I guess that’s no longer the case because their credibility is pretty much ‘in the toilet’ as far as this particular poll is concerned (though it doesn’t look like they were ever that high to begin with).  Luckily I don’t get much of my news from either of these 2 outlets, so doesn’t affect me too much.

Full article translated below…

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Chinese University Survey:  The Credibility of Hong Kong News Media Outlets Continues to Decline

Source:  The House News

Translation:  llwy12

Chinese University’s Media and Public Opinion Center recently conducted its survey of local media and news outlets in HK.  The results of the survey indicate that the credibility of HK’s news media outlets overall has continued to decline compared to 3 years ago.  Individually, majority of the media outlets’ average scores are lower than previous years -- amongst those, the drop in HK’s two main free-to-air TV stations’ (TVB and ATV) scores are the most obvious:  TVB dropped from second place (in previous years) to fourth place while ATV dropped 5^th place to last place (#8) on the list.  In terms of news agencies, South China Morning Post continues to take the #1 spot on the list.

Overall, majority of the news outlets’ positions didn’t change a whole lot, which indicates that the fundamental ecology of Hong Kong’s Media as a whole has not changed much over the years.

Chinese University’s survey was conducted between November 27^th , 2013 to December 9^th, 2013 – during this time, 917 HK citizens were interviewed via phone and asked to score the Media outlets – both as a whole and individually -- using a point scale of 1 – 10 points (with 10 being the highest).   Based on the phone calls, citizens gave ‘HK Media as a whole’ a score of 6.18 points, which is 0.18 points lower than the last year the survey was conducted (2010).  In terms of individual scoring, the average score of all Media outlets combined was 5.82 (a 0.22 point drop from 3 years ago).

Amongst the individual Media outlets whose credibility scores dropped this year, the ones who saw the most significant drop in their scores were:  TVB (0.4 point drop), ATV (1.6 point drop), Hong Kong Commercial Daily (0.35 point drop), Apple Daily (0.29 point drop), Wenweipo (0.48 point drop), and DaKung Pao (0.46 point drop).

The Media outlets who saw the highest increase in their scores include:  HK Broadband Network (0.26 point increase), The Standard (0.21 point increase), and The Sun Times (0.16 point increase).

The 10 most credible Media outlets based on the poll are as follows:

Below is the complete list of all Media outlets’ scores: