My TVB Rant# 29: TVB’s 50th Anniversary Awards – the “lowlights” and “WTH” moments…

It's been a long time since I've done one of my "TVB Rants" (I actually had to go back to check which rant number I was on and realized I last did one back in 2016).  Not that there wasn't anything to complain about – believe me, with TVB, there is ALWAYS something to complain about, especially nowadays where it seems that they never fail to irritate me in one way or another – it's just that I've had more important things to do so unless the "transgression" was particularly egregious, I didn't want to take precious time out of my busy day to write about them.  Well, with TVB's 50^th Anniversary Awards that just took place this past weekend, it turned out that there was plenty to complain about – much of it in the "egregious" category – so here I am dusting off my "TVB rant" board once again.

This year's anniversary awards show was beyond disappointing – not just in the results (which I will get to in a minute) but in many other areas as well.  First of all, with this year being such a huge milestone (50^thanniversary), I would've expected at minimum the following: 1) a grand gala event with all the bells and whistles and whatnot that would've made this year's award show memorable and stand apart from all previous year's award shows  2) special guest award presenters who are non-TVB people and many of whom we haven't seen in a long time, 3) special performances and/or special tributes to commemorate 50^thanniversary, like maybe a montage clip showing past winners or something along those lines, 4) one or more award with special meaning / significance to give out only this year (to someone deserving of course) to commemorate the occasion.  Not surprisingly, TVB did not deliver on items 1 through 3 and only partially delivered on #4.  

1)      Instead of the grand gala event I was expecting, we ended up getting the same anniversary awards show that we typically get from them every year – a cheap-looking, disorganized production that felt like it was made on a shoestring budget with limited resources. The hosting was mediocre, the production was nowhere near professional-looking, and the memorability factor was severely lacking. 

2)      In terms of award presenters, there was no excitement whatsoever – in fact, I would say that I was largely disappointed in this area because every year, I look forward to seeing the presenters more than I do the actual nominees and winners.  This year, the award presenters were all mostly TVB people – many of whom were fellow nominees who had to be there anyway so might as well have them present – or people associated with TVB in some way, either directly through actual collaboration on movies (via Shaw Brothers) / TV series (i.e. Wong Jing) or indirectly through a family member's connection with TVB (i.e. Law Kar Ying and Ti Lung).  I'm honestly not sure whether TVB decided to go this route with the presenters out of laziness (i.e. not wanting to take the time to come up with a guest list and then having to call up each person to see if they could attend) or they truly couldn't get anyone outside of TVB to support them because the anniversary awards have been such a disgrace in recent years that many non-TVB artists wouldn't bother to waste their time attending.  My guess is that it was a little bit of both…

3)      I found it truly disappointing that TVB chose not to do anything special to commemorate their 50^thanniversary milestone.  Sure, it can be argued that they kind of "celebrated" already with the anniversary gala but honestly, this is different, as the anniversary awards is supposed to be their biggest show of the year.  I would've expected something similar to what Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards did to commemorate their 50^th anniversary (which was to pay tribute to Best Actor and Best Actress winners from the past 50 years by inviting them all to attend the ceremony and having them appear on stage while the audience gave them well-deserved applause – that was one of the most memorable award moments ever for me!).  Of course, I recognize that this would've been a difficult feat for TVB, since most people don't take their awards seriously anymore so most non-TVB artists wouldn't even bother attending even if they were invited – ok, fine….but how about perhaps doing a video salute then, like putting together a montage of past winners and then having as many of them as possible record a current video clip expressing their thoughts on the 50^th milestone?  This would've been simple enough to do, as all of the past TV King and TV Queen winners are still active in the industry (some even still work for TVB now) and several of them even filmed for TVB in the past year or two.  But yet, there was nothing….

4)      The one "special" thing that TVB did this year was to take the Lifetime Achievement Award and "dedicate" it to everyone who has worked at TVB over the past 50 years (artists in front of the camera as well as those behind-the-scenes).  Liza Wang accepted the award on everyone's behalf and gave a speech that basically was a plea to TVB management to treat their artists (and behind-the-scenes crew) better.  While TVB dedicating the award to "all" of their past employees is definitely a good thing, I feel that they only partially delivered in this area because it was more of a symbolic gesture than an actual award….though on second thought, I guess a "dedication" is better than no recognition at all?

By now, I'm pretty sure most people know the results of this year's awards and may even have seen the "backlash" on the various forums and social media. I'm not going to comment on all the winners (or losers) because to be honest, I really don't see the point – so the below is mostly my reaction to the few "surprises" that has everyone talking (more like yelling and screaming?) at the moment as well as some comments on a few less heavily contested categories.  

So here it goes….

The biggest shocker for me was Rebecca Zhu winning Best Supporting Actress for her role in that time-travel Eunuch series (too lazy to go look up the series' English name right now).  My first reaction when I found out she had won that award was WTF?????  I was pissed, but even more so when I actually watched the awards and saw who made it to top 5 – honestly, every single one of the other 4 actresses nominated for BSA were better than Rebecca in terms of acting (plus their characters were more memorable), yet TVB chose to give Rebecca the award over them?  Ok, so you may be wondering why am I pissed when I barely watched any of last year's series, plus I wasn't rooting for anyone in this category anyway since I didn't like most of the nominees.  Well, for me, it boils down to a matter of principle.  Those who are familiar with the anniversary awards' history will probably remember that the current iteration of the BSA award actually evolved from the "Powerhouse Actor/Actress" award, which was created to recognize those artists with great acting prowess but didn't qualify for TV King or Queen due to their roles being supporting rather than lead – so in a sense, the BSA award is the one most closely associated with actual skill in acting.  Most years, the award usually went to veterans, which made perfect sense --  of course, there were some years where TVB strayed and gave the award to someone less deserving, but for the most part I was ok with most of the past winners (with 1 or 2 exceptions of course).  This year though, was especially ridiculous because TVB essentially gave the award to someone who can't act, for a role that very few people even remember!  At first I was really puzzled why TVB would choose to give Rebecca this award when she was so obviously the least deserving of the lot, but then it dawned on me that TVB is planning to heavily promote her in the coming year (with a movie in the works as well as lead roles in several series) – so in essence, TVB used this award to advance their internal agenda (not that this is anything new on TVB's part, since they do this all the time with the TV King and Queen awards, but still…).  I think this year in particular, it was harder to stomach having this award go to someone so unqualified (and with so little acting experience) because veteran artists were largely shut out from the awards this year, with TVB choosing to award mostly the younger generation. 

Speaking of which, that leads me to the second biggest shocker, which was of course Sisley Choi winning the Favorite Female Character award.  This one was shocking in that it made no sense whatsoever, especially since this award (along with the Favorite Male Character award) is traditionally viewed as the "consolation prize" for not winning TV Queen (King).  Even if we look at this award from the perspective of "popularity contest" (which technically is what this award is about), it makes even less sense because Sisley is nowhere near popular.  Yes, she has improved tremendously in terms of her acting from the time she first started (in my book, she went from "previously unwatchable" to "currently tolerable"), but she is still nowhere near the "good" level and quite honestly still has a long way to go in order to get there.  It definitely would've made more sense to award her Most Improved and give the Favorite Female Character award to someone else more deserving.

In terms of Natalie Tong winning TV Queen – yes, it was a shock, but not at the same level as the two mentioned above.  Acting-wise, Natalie is decent (and depending on who we're comparing to, I would even say her acting skills are quite good) -- however she lacks onscreen charisma and quite honestly is a boring actress overall.  One thing's for sure -- she's definitely  not an artist I would bother turning on the TV for.  The controversy concerning her win of course is whether she should have appropriately been nominated in the TV Queen category in the first place, since her role in My Unfair Lady was largely viewed as supporting rather than lead.  Since I didn't watch that series, I can't comment on whether her screen time was enough to warrant a nomination or not but the part I do agree on is that the main reason why she won TV Queen was because Jessica Hsuan did not attend the awards ceremony (my pick for TV Queen was actually Nina Paw, but I would've been okay with Jessica winning it).  Overall though, I would say I am largely indifferent toward who wins TV Queen because this award is one that I stopped caring about long ago (the last actress whom I felt truly deserved this award was Sheren Tang back in 2010 – everyone else who won after her was largely undeserving in my book and only won due to the lack of adequate competition).

As for Mayanne Mak's win for Most Improved Female Artist (not necessarily shocking but rather unexpected due to the fact that she is a host, not an actress) -- I actually feel that the problem with her win isn't that she doesn't deserve Most Improved because she definitely does…the fault lies primarily with TVB for combining this award into one when it should have more appropriately been split into two.  I remember back in the day when the anniversary awards first started (back in 1997 through the early 2000s), TVB used to separate out their awards into "drama series" awards and "non-drama series" (variety/informational programs) awards.  The MI award used to have 2 sets of winners, one for acting in drama series and the other for hosting variety programs.  This is actually the way it SHOULD be and the way most awards ceremonies around the world do it, so I don't understand why TVB still combines it.  To be honest, out of all the female award categories this year, I actually feel that Mayanne's win was the most deserving, as she truly did do a great job this past year.  Personally, I'm actually happy to finally see a female host who has the potential to be Dodo Cheng's successor someday, as it is VERY MUCH needed at TVB right now.  There are plenty of up-and-coming male hosts to take over for Eric Tsang but how many are there on the female side?  Like two? (I'm talking hosts actually signed with TVB, not the ones they "borrow" from the various radio stations).   It's definitely not very many, that's for sure!  Hosting is not an easy job and not everyone is cut out for it – I would much rather see TVB having the likes of Mayanne hosting more variety programs than forcing us to endure those awful MHKs trying to fumble their way through a hosting gig that they obviously were not cut out for.

With all that said though – in terms of MI award, even though I feel that Mayanne is deserving of the award, I can understand the "backlash" due to the expectation that an actual "actress" was expected to win.  However, like I said earlier, the "backlash" should really be directed toward TVB and not Mayanne, since TVB should never have combined that award into one in the first place (it used to be separated out between drama and non-drama back in the old days).  Also, by having one MI award for both drama and non-drama, TVB basically locked themselves into a corner, since it's obvious the direction that they were trying to take with this year's awards was to promote up-and-comers – they could've given the MI award on the female side to both Mayanne and Sisley and then give the Female Character award to someone else and everyone would've been happy.  Aiye TVB – once again making all the wrong decisions!

In terms of Most Improved Male Artist –  sure, Mat Yeung is deserving, but um, he should have won like 10 YEARS AGO!!   I mean, how ridiculous is it for an artist who has been in the industry for 20 years (most of that time with TVB) to be receiving an award that is traditionally reserved for newbie up-and-comers?  Not only that, but how many times has Mat been nominated in this category?  Way more times than necessary, that's for sure!  I'm all for rewarding Mat for his improvement, but TVB really needs to work on redefining their award categories so that they line up more with reality.  They should either change the criteria of the Most Improved award (i.e. restrict it so that only newcomers who've been in the industry/TVB less than 5 years are eligible to be nominated) – or if they don't want to do that, then create a true "Newcomer" award so people can stop associating MI with newbies and instead let MI be purely improvement-based regardless of years in the industry.

Concluding thoughts…..

I've said many times before that if TVB wants to remain relevant in the awards game, they really need to re-assess what type of awards they give out and see if what they are doing currently still makes sense.  I'm sure TVB knows that pretty much no one takes their awards seriously anymore and if they don't change, I can totally see the anniversary awards going down the same path as JSG (in fact, this already started happening years ago).  And when I say change, I mean true change, not all this gimmicky crap that they claim to do but never really follow through on (i.e. allowing audiences to vote and actually taking those votes into consideration).  One of the most irritating things about the anniversary awards in recent years is how TVB keeps touting the fact that they allow audiences to vote for the "big categories" but looking at the results, that is obviously a bunch of hogwash, as most of the winners are obviously artists that TVB is planning to promote in the coming years.  With this year's awards in particular,  I think this became even more clear when, after the awards show, TVB exec Virginia Lok mentioned that several of the winners (referring specifically to Rebecca and Sisley) are artists that director Wong Jing especially pegged as his choices to lead in a few of his movie (and TV series) projects in the coming year.  So basically, TVB used their anniversary awards as a platform to fast-track the artists they have huge plans for in the coming year to the positions they need them to be in, which to be honest isn't good at all for those artists because they haven't reached those levels yet…forcing them into those "big shoes" that they are not yet capable of filling is going to do nothing but bring them (the artists) backlash and hate.  To me, the biggest disappointment isn't really the results of this year's awards, but rather, it's seeing that TVB is up to their old tricks again, which tells me that TVB really hasn't learned anything from their past 50 years in existence.