News Article: HKTV series to air on Fantastic Television starting in April

Some interesting news that came out a few days ago:  starting in April (on the 17^th to be exact), i-Cable’s free-to-air channel Fantastic Television will be airing HKTV’s series.  According to the below article, the series that will be aired first is To Be or Not To Be (來生不做香港人), which also happens to be one of my favorite HKTV series (I wrote a review on this series a couple years back – those interested can read it here).  When the reporter for media outlet HK01 contacted Fantastic Television, they gave a bit of a vague response and would only confirm that they will indeed be airing To Be or Not To Be starting 4/17 but declined to state whether they will be airing all the rest of HKTV’s series.  There are also (so far) few details on how the deal went down – meaning, did Ricky Wong sell the broadcasting rights for the series to Fantastic Television back when he was still in charge of HKTV or were the rights sold to them by his partner after he sold his stake in HKTV to him a few months back?  Also, did he sell ALL 16 of their series or only select ones?

My initial reaction when I heard this news – I wasn’t shocked, since I had already been anticipating something like this would happen…from the moment HKTV was denied a free-to-air TV license and their option to operate as a mobile broadcaster was also shot down by the courts, the writing was on the wall that something like this was inevitable.   With that said though, my only question is:  why Fantastic Television?  That is the one station with the least amount of standing in HK audience’s eyes right now – I mean, the station launched last year to little fanfare (to the point that many people had no clue they had launched) and since then, they have been the “quietest” station in that basically no one knows what programs they are filming and when they will air.  In fact, I heard that Fantastic Television had aired one of their own locally produced series a few months back yet barely anyone watched it because no one knew it was on.  To be honest, I would much rather that HKTV sell their series to ViuTV, as ViuTV at least has already established decent presence as a free-to-air channel and has a steady audience base already (albeit their audience pool is more of a “niche” group, but hey, having a steady audience that watches their programs on a consistent basis is better than having no audiences at all, right?). 

Given the circumstances, I am actually very curious how this “deal” came about and the reasons behind it.  If I have time, I’ll try to do some “digging” and see what I find.  Meanwhile though, fellow HKTV fans, I would like to hear your thoughts – do you think this is a good move on the part of HKTV, or a bad one?  Or neither?  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section!

.***.

**Translation of article below – please note that I took some liberties when translating this article due to my more in-depth knowledge of the series and HKTV itself, so there were some facts added that weren’t in the original article itself.  Therefore, I consider the below to be more of a “paraphrase” of the article rather than a straight translation.**

Article originally published 3/15/2018

Source:  HK01

Fantastic Television to air HKTV series:  To Be or Not To Be will “re-broadcast” in mid-April

HKTV’s former chairman Ricky Wong (王維基) had tried his hand at building up his TV station HKTV (香港電視網絡) from scratch, at one point investing heavily in the production of over a dozen high quality series such as The Election (選戰), Borderline (警界線), The Menu (導火新聞線), etc.  Many of the audiences who watched HKTV’s series praised the subject matter for being fresh and also the overall high quality of their productions.  Unfortunately, despite audience support, HKTV was unable to obtain a free-to-air television license from the government, which forced them to halt all television production indefinitely and later on switch to becoming an E-commerce business instead.  Awhile back ago, HKTV decided to upload all of their series to Youtube so that all HK audiences could get a chance to watch their series, however later on, it was changed so that only overseas audiences could access, resulting in many HK audiences who wanted to watch not getting a chance to do so. [TN:  I actually didn’t know about this part, as I tried “re-watching” a few of HKTV’s series back when they first uploaded them to Youtube and didn’t have a problem accessing at all —but then again, I’m an “overseas audience” since I live in the U.S., so maybe that’s why?  If anyone who currently lives in HK happened to try accessing HKTV’s series on Youtube and indeed wasn’t able to, I would be curious to know if this part is true or not…].

For those audiences in HK who didn’t get to watch HKTV’s series, here’s your chance to do so, as their series To Be or Not To Be (來生不做香港人) will be broadcast on new free-to-air station Fantastic Television’s channel 77 starting on April 17^th.

Actually, To Be or Not To Be is a pretty good series that had received acclaim back when it first aired on HKTV.  Led by a strong veteran cast consisting of Maggie Cheung (張可頤), Prudence Liew (劉美君), stage actor Poon Chan Leung (潘燦良) [he is known as ‘Prince of Stageplays’], Savio Tsang (曾偉權), Mimi Kung (龔慈恩), Wilson Tsui (艾威), etc., the series tells the story of two sisters and their differences in upbringing [one in Mainland China and one in HK] that highlights their disparity in culture as well as value systems.  Even with the 3 to 4 year gap from the time the series initially aired to its re-broadcast next month, the series does not feel ‘outdated’ at all and in fact the subject matter is very much still relevant today.  With this news of Fantastic Television airing HKTV’s series, plus the earlier news that Fantastic Television had hired actor Wong He (王喜) as their Director of Programming, it appears that the station is now finally preparing to take some action on the TV series side of things. [TN:  I wrote about the Wong He thing in my Entertainment Newsreel post last week.  You can read about it here].

Towards broadcasting HKTV’s series, Fantastic Television responded to HK01’s inquiry as follows: “Fantastic Television will begin airing HKTV’s series around mid-April, with the intention that HK audiences will be able to enjoy their series on a free-to-air TV station.  Fantastic Television is committed to searching out and bringing high quality programs to its viewers.  As one of HK’s free-to-air television stations, Fantastic Television encourages growth and development of the television industry so that audiences can enjoy diverse and quality programming and truly have a choice in the free entertainment realm.”

In terms of whether the rest of HKTV’s series will be scheduled to air in the near future, Fantastic Television’s rep did not respond directly, only stating that there will be announcements of other productions airing at future dates [TN: They did not specify which productions so they could be referring to either their own productions or HKTV’s productions].

Entertainment Newsreel #4: More TV-related news….

Lots of TV news this past week!  Below are some of the highlights of TV industry related news that I read about this past week.  Again, this is not an all-inclusive list and most of this is being written from memory so there's a huge possibility I missed some stuff.  If there is anything I missed that you would like to know about, feel free to put in the comments and I'll either respond there or put it in the next post if I remember….

TV News

HMV (China 3D)

-          Hmv (China 3D) chairman Stephen Shiu Jr.  held a press conference last week announcing his intention to foray into TV series production (for those who are not familiar, his company currently produces movies and also music).  Stephen Shiu Jr. said that he is interested in doing web series because that's the largest media platform aside from movies – with movies, audiences spend 2 hours watching and that's it, but with TV series, they could spend 30 hours or more chasing a series.  He will be entering the web series arena (like pretty much every other HK production company out there nowadays) and his series will be available in OTT format as well as via phones and tablets.  One thing that Stephen Shiu Jr. said during an interview which I thought was interesting (and I'm assuming a huge reason why so many production companies nowadays are going into the "web series" market) is that he prefers web series because there are little to no limitations on what they are allowed to do, versus "regular" TV series (i.e. the kind TVB films) where target audience is more family-oriented and so they are limited by strict broadcast regulations.  He also said whether they continue on the series production route will depend on whether this first series is successful.

-          HMV's first series has already been filmed and is currently available on their platform HMVOD.  The series is called "Hong Kong West Side Stories" and will be 13 episodes at 30 minutes each.   Louis Cheung will star in the series as will Myolie Wu (in what is touted as her first official "comeback" since giving birth).  I still need to read up more on the series so not a whole lot of information to share at this point other than the series is a comedy and Louis plays an "animal whisperer" (someone who communicates with animals).

Fantastic Television (i-Cables free TV arm)

-          Awhile back ago, when ATV made its "comeback" as an internet TV station, one of the highly-touted "recruits" to join their venture is former TVB GM and current CRHK chairman (CEO? I'm bad with the terminology) Stephen Chan, who will be hosting the 2018 version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire for the station.  Nowadays, where Stephen Chan goes, we are likely to see his buddy Wong He as well, which is why I was not surprised in the least to see Wong He also attend ATV's launch party (filling in as host for Stephen Chan, who fell ill and couldn't attend) and confirming that he will be hosting a weekly program for them.  Well, it turns out that in addition to hosting programs for ATV, Wong He will have another responsibility soon – he was invited by the new COO of Operations for Fantastic Television (i-Cable's free-to-air TV arm that "quietly" launched last year) to be Creative Director overseeing production of their TV series (OTT format of course).  The announcement hasn't officially been made yet and while Wong He alluded to it in a recent FB post, it is pretty much still a "rumor" at this point (and apparently, not everyone at Fantastic Television knows, as HK01 interviewed someone who works there and they only know Wong He is joining but don't know what capacity).

-          Personally, I'm not too surprised, as Wong He has always been a talented (albeit opinionated) actor who obviously has his own ideas on how TV series should be produced (when he was with TVB, he was very vocal about stuff that he felt didn't make sense and had no problems approaching scriptwriters to "tweak" dialogue and such that didn't flow right).  In the years since leaving TVB, Wong He has continued to film stuff (movies, TV series, hosting programs etc.) and took the leap into behind-the-scenes work as well, writing scripts and also directing/producing stuff (this is what I've gathered from his interviews the past couple years – I don't have any specifics on what types of projects he has been involved with though).

-          It will be interesting to see what Fantastic Television's vision will be in terms of TV series with Wong He at the helm.  Since they launched last year (to pretty much zero fanfare), they have pretty much been in the shadows will not much coverage about them in the media (I follow some non-mainstream media outlets and only hear of the programs they produced occasionally).  I know they did produce a few series earlier on (I think they were idol-type series focused on love and relationships) but not sure if those series ever aired or whether they will continue in that direction in the future.

ViuTV

-          Ok, this one is technically not related to ViuTV (at least not yet), but since the artist I'm writing about currently still "works" for ViuTV (well, at least he still attends various ViuTV functions) and the news has to do with one of their series, I figured this was the most appropriate place to put this.

-          Earlier, when it was announced that former TVB producer Jonathan Chik (who has moved his career to Mainland) will be producing a brand new Mainland series with the cast from his 2011 TVB series "When Heaven Burns" (a series which fared dismally when it aired but was later pushed up by netizens as a "godly series"), there was much talk about the reunion between that series' main leads Charmaine Sheh, Moses Chan, and Kenny Wong.  However, one lead's name is glaringly missing from this list:  Bowie Lam.  Of course, people immediately started wondering whether Bowie will be in the new series or not, since he was instrumental as one of the 3 male leads (and technically it wouldn't be a true WHB reunion without him).  Well, according to HK01's interview with Bowie (which was in an article that came out early last week), Bowie will not be participating in Jonathan Chik's new series.

-          When asked about the new series, Bowie said that Jonathan Chik never approached him about it (interesting though not entirely surprising).  He said that even if Jonathan does approach him, he wouldn't be able to participate anyway because he will be producing and starring in a series of his own this year.  Bowie said that his series is in its preparation stage right now with the script still being worked on – cast hasn't been decided yet, all he knows is that he himself will be in it.  The series will be co-directed by 'fat ball' and '25', whom some of us here will recognize as the directors of the series that Bowie filmed for ViuTV earlier, "Margaret and David: Green Bean" – Bowie will serve as executive producer as well as main lead (not sure if he is writing the script too, as he didn't say specifically).  Bowie said that he hopes the series will be able to air at the end of this year.

-          I'm actually kind of excited because I was probably one of the few people who actually watched "Green Bean" and really liked it.  I didn't really follow the production too closely at the time but I had heard there had been problems during filming because of discord between the series' producer / author of the books the series was based on and the directors/cast (@sport – since you know more about this than me, feel free to comment), so it looks like this series gives the directors and Bowie the chance to do what they had wanted to do with M&D but couldn't?  I will definitely be keeping my ears open for more information on this.

And finally….TVB

-          The big news last week (which I'm sure everyone knows by now) was that TVB held a press conference on 3/9 "officially" announcing the return of golden screenwriter Chan Po Wah (she wrote many great series but the one all of us fans remember the most is of course "Blood of Good and Evil").  Technically, this is "old" news because Po Wah Jeh had already indicated in previous interviews last year that she would be returning, it's just that she was still working on the script for her new series at the time so nothing official was confirmed yet.  Based on those interviews, Po Wah Jeh will be returning for this one series only (as a favor for TVB) and will continue her career in Mainland (which has been very successful) once she's done.

-          The name of the series is "Wonder Women" and it will be a comedy.  Most of the cast had actually already been announced previously (male leads will be Raymond Wong and Pakho Chau) but TVB had (supposedly) kept the female lead top secret so they could announce on the day of the press con (more on this later).  Of course, everyone knows by now that Miriam Yeung was cast as female lead and will be returning to film this series for TVB after a 17 year hiatus (her last series was 2001's A Taste of Love).  Miriam will be pairing with Raymond in the series – this will be a reunion of sorts for them, as both of them collaborated previously in the movie Love Undercover.  The interesting part is that Raymond's character in this series has the same name as his character in that movie (which to me is a sign that TVB is playing up the Raymond/Miriam reunion and using their previous collaboration as a gimmick to hype the series).

-          Personally, I like Raymond – he has always been a solid actor in my book and was unfortunately under-utilized by TVB most of his career (I guess having a background in movies didn't help him much).  From the looks of things, it looks like Raymond will FINALLY be first lead in this series given that he will be pairing with Miriam – but of course, this is TVB after all so who knows….it's pretty obvious that TVB is trying to promote Pakho big time so they could very well make him first lead and Raymond is just co-lead like usual.  

-          Speaking of Pakho – I watched the his interview with reporters at the press con on the news the other day and he actually said that he knew in advance that Miriam was cast as the lead on the female side.  Normally this is no big deal, but the reason why I'm bringing it up here is because there was so much hoopla over TVB keeping the female lead a secret up until the press con – in fact, TVB made it quite clear that only the top execs and the series' producer/director knew who the female lead would be.  Raymond said that he had no clue who the female lead would be and only found out when he saw Miriam walk onto the stage during the presscon (though he said that when he heard his character's name in the series, he did suspect for a brief moment that it could be Miriam but he didn't think it was possible given her status now).  So if only the execs and producer were supposed to know and it's obvious no one else from the cast knew, how the hell did Pakho already know in advance?  Sounds suspicious – either Pakho is claiming to know when he really didn't or TVB chose to share the information with him only, which tells me that in their eyes, they are considering Pakho as the lead who gets privy to "inside" information (this is the way TVB usually does things – when they have someone they consider a big enough lead filming for them, they will share all sorts of information with them…I honestly don't consider Pakho a "big name" but I guess TVB has different standards, as usual).

-          Personally, I'm not excited at all.  Chan Po Wah is one of my favorite scriptwriters and prior to this announcement, I truly was looking forward to her new series, but as soon as the cast was announced, all interest went out the window.  I like Raymond, but not to the point where I would watch every series he is in.  I'm not a fan of Miriam's and though I feel she is a competent enough actress, she's not someone I would be excited to watch.  No comment on Pakho, since I didn't watch his previous series (though I heard that his performance was very wooden) but I've never been a fan of his singing either so him being in this series means nothing to me honestly.  For me, the biggest reason to skip this series is because Tony Hung and Rebecca  Zhu are also co-starring in this – both are artists I can't stand at all (I've taken to turning off the TV whenever I see Tony on screen now, lol).  So yea, this one is a definite skip for me.

-          By the way, for those who are wondering – yes, this is the series that Chan Po Wah had originally said she had "written especially for" Sheren Tang…and yes, this was the series that triggered all those rumors of Sheren returning to film for TVB again after the fallout they had earlier (I saw some websites back then "report" Sheren's return as "confirmed" and "for sure" which honestly pissed me off because I hate such irresponsible reporting – one of my biggest pet peeves is when people try to pass off rumors as "confirmed truth" without doing their due diligence to vet the info….how hard is it to put "rumored" in front of the information so people aren't misled??).  Anyway, looks like whatever the original plan was for Sheren to star in this, those plans fell through – I'm not sure what happened (I've been trying to dig on both sides but so far haven't come up with anything).  Reporters did ask Po Wah Jeh at the press conference about Sheren originally being slated to star in this series, but she gave a vague response, saying something along the lines of "Sheren and I will get the chance to collaborate again in the future".  From Sheren's side, I know in earlier interviews (late last year), she had talked about being really excited to work with Po Wah Jeh again and all indication at that time was that the likelihood of her returning for the series was high.  Since I like Po Wah Jeh, I am going to give her and TVB the benefit of the doubt in this instance and assume that Sheren couldn't participate due to schedule conflict (though of course I have no idea how it went down).

-          One last interesting fact – in previous interviews, Po Wah Jeh had thrown around the idea of casting Sheren and also Francis Ng as the leads for this series, but now the confirmed leads are Miriam, Raymond and Pakho.  I don't know about you but to go from Sheren and Francis to  Miriam / Raymond / Pakho is a HUGE downgrade in my opinion.  Just saying….

News Article: Hong Kong to liberalise rules for cross-media ownership in first major broadcasting policy change in 17 years

The big news in the HK television industry this week is the government's long-awaited move to "loosen up" the city's notoriously restrictive broadcasting rules.  

The article below explains it pretty well so I'm not even going to attempt to paraphrase things — you can read the details for yourself either below or in the link to the original article provided.

So what does this mean for the issuance of new free-to-air licenses?  Well, here's the thing — essentially the only major change the government is making in terms of licenses is that they will allow some of the companies that were previously banned from applying for TV licenses (newspaper outlets, advertising agencies, etc) to do so now.  With the "playing field" expanded now, this opens the door for more "players" to come in and apply for a TV license in HK, which means that there could potentially be more "contenders" for licenses than ever before.  With that said however, the other major rules (owners must be HK resident for minimum 7 years; final approval of license rests in the hands of Chief Executive) as well the license approval process in general don't change (at least not on paper), which means that the government can still decide to approve or not approve licenses at whim — in other words, the change may mean more applicants, but that doesn't necessarily equate to more licenses, since approval is still up to the government.

TVB is understandably okay with these "new rules" because 1) it doesn't really affect them much where competition is concerned, since government still has final say-so in terms of approvals and we all know that TVB has the government "in their pockets", ready to do their bidding; 2) it is actually more beneficial to TVB because one of the rules the government is doing away with is having to get their (govt) approval for non-HK residents to have a "controlling stake" in a free TV station (TVB's Mainland investor Li Rui-gang tried to do exactly this — officially "take over" the station — last year but had to abandon the effort because it violated this particular rule).  So now Li Rui-gang can renew his efforts without fear of being rejected and proceed to turn TVB into a Mainland station with expanded footprint into Hollywood (wait, wasn't TVB already going down this path anyway?).

The other 2 free TV operators in the city — ViuTV (NowTV) and Fantastic Television (I-cable) — haven't officially responded to this news but to be honest, it's not like they have much of a say anyway, since their footprint is so small right now that their opinion probably doesn't matter much in the eyes of the government.  

Who this really affects are those companies that currently have license applications still "pending" with the government (specifically HKTV) as well as any future companies that may decide to apply.  With the opening up to more applicants, a company like HKTV, which already got rejected once by the government and basically has been on their shxt-list ever since, stands even less chance of ever being approved for a license (the govt will now have more companies to compare against and claim that all of them are "more qualified" than HKTV).  Like I said in the previous article that I posted — more and more, it's looking like Ricky Wong made a wise decision to pull himself out and instead focus on e-commerce.  No doubt he will find more success there than the struggling HK television industry....

***

Source: SCMP

http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2133993/hong-kong-ease-restrictions-domestic-tv-licensees-first-major

Hong Kong to liberalise rules for cross-media ownership in first major broadcasting policy change in 17 years

Cross-media ownership rules in Hong Kong will finally be liberalised under proposed changes to broadcasting regulations widely viewed as outdated since they have remained unchanged for 17 years.

If the suggested changes, laid out in a public consultation document released on Tuesday by the government, are approved by the Legislative Council, newspaper owners, advertising agencies and other media companies will be able to get into the free TV, pay TV or radio broadcasting business.

They had previously been banned from cross-media holdings to avoid editorial uniformity and a potential industry monopoly, but a rapidly changing media landscape and technological advances have prompted a total rethink.

However, the ban on awarding new broadcasting licences will remain in place for those already running free TV, pay TV or radio businesses.

And individuals who have yet to gain permanent residency through seven consecutive years of living in Hong Kong will not be given new licences either, making such businesses off-limits to overseas or mainland Chinese owners.

Besides relaxing cross-media ownership rules, the government also proposed to: refine restrictions on foreign control by allowing non-Hong Kong residents to own more shares in free TV companies without securing the government's approval; allow free TV and sound broadcasting licensees to be subsidiary, rather than independent companies; and keep the status quo in granting approval for broadcasting licenses.

Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah said "the proliferation of online infotainment covering a range of different tastes, focuses and stances" meant the risk of editorial uniformity in traditional media "had been significantly reduced".

"Our goal is to facilitate innovation of and investment in the industry to bring about greater benefits to the community," Yau said, adding that easing the rules could also help traditional media stay afloat amid increasing competition from their internet-based counterparts.

While the city's dominant free-to-air broadcaster, TVB, welcomed the government move as long overdue, some academics and experts were lukewarm about it, seeing the official approach as too conservative.

The three-month consultation announced on Tuesday is the first major bid to overhaul broadcasting regulations, which were introduced in 2000 when internet access was just expanding. Industry players have long called for a review of the rules, given the evolution of the media landscape.

Current restrictions resulted in mainland Chinese media tycoon Li Ruigang, a major shareholder of The Young Lion Holdings, seeking special approval from then chief executive Leung Chun-ying in 2016 to become a non-executive director of TVB because of his association with an advertising agency across the border and overseas.

In 2000, Richard Li Tzar-kai, a son of tycoon Li Ka-shing, had to obtain special approval from the government to buy Cable and Wireless HKT VOD services. It was because his father and his elder brother Victor, who control Hutchison Whampoa, now called CK Hutchison, are the ultimate owners of Metro Radio.

A TVB spokesman said: "We have, many times in the past, reflected to the government and the Communications Authority that some parts of the Broadcasting Ordinance … were too harsh and out of date."

Major pay TV service operator Cable Television said it was not prepared to comment at this stage.

The head of Shue Yan University's department of journalism and communication, Professor Leung Tin-wai, said: "Rapid advancement in technology is blurring the traditional boundaries between telecommunications and broadcasting. The government is too conservative. It should have removed all the licensing obstacles for media."

Francis Fong Po-kiu, president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, echoed Leung's views: "Many newspapers now run videos to supplement their online reports. And TV stations also make use of the internet to reach out to more audience. It is a bit backward if the government still mulls ways to control the media by means of licensing."

Fong said the proposed changes were also meant to address the "imbalance" in the regulatory regimes for traditional broadcasting services and internet media, as the growth of internet-based TV and audio programme services in recent years had changed the business environment of Hong Kong's broadcasting industry.

According to government studies, the time a viewer spends on free TV dropped from 3.2 hours a day in 2009 to 2.3 hours last year.

In 2009, some 85.6 per cent of the audience would view free TV programmes every day, but the percentage dropped to 71.8 per cent in 2017.

TV advertising revenue fell from HK$13.4 billion (US$1.71 billion) in 2013 to HK$11.9 billion in 2016, while that of digital media rose to HK$5.2 billion in 2016, from HK$3.5 billion in 2013.

In its evaluation of the current regime, the government rejected public calls for the Communications Authority alone to approve free TV licence applications, maintaining that the chief executive in council should remain the authority for free or pay broadcasting services locally.

As for internet-based TV and sound programme services, the commerce minister referred to the experience of regulators overseas and stated the government's preference for such areas to continue operating without broadcast licensing controls.

The public consultation for changes to broadcasting regulations ends on May 19. Later this year, the government will consult the public on proposed amendments to telecommunications regulations, specifically relating to 5G services and the internet of things.

Lawmaker Charles Mok, who represents the IT sector, said the government had not addressed in its consultation paper the issue of quality of programmes in the media.

But he was pleased to see that officials had decided against a licensing scheme for internet-based media.

HK Television Wars update: New ratings system in the coming year!

So, I was catching up on my reading and one of the articles I came across last week talked about how the HK television industry is switching to a completely different, more unified ratings structure at the beginning of next year (January 2018).  I've posted a link to the article below in case anyone wants to read the original Chinese version of it, since I don't plan on translating this particular article word for word like I usually would (mostly because of time constraints, as I've got a few other projects I need to work on).   With that said though, I do recommend that those who are able to read Chinese (more specifically Cantonese, since most of HK01's articles are written in the local HK style and language) should read the article in its entirety, as there are some really good points and perspectives brought up in the article about the television wars that you probably won't find in the mainstream papers.

Instead of translating the whole thing, I decided to sum up / paraphrase only the part about the ratings system, since that's what this post that I'm writing is about:

-          Starting in January of next year (2018), all 3 free-to-air TV stations (TVB, ViuTV, Fantastic TV) will be participating in a newly appointed 3^rd party ratings survey. 

-          For the first time ever, the ratings calculations will take into account viewing data from mobile phones and tablets, which includes "re-watches" of the same program within a 7 day period.

-          The ratings will be divided into 3 categories:  TV Live (traditional TV platform such as Jade channel), OTT Live (Over-the-top streaming platform such as MyTV Super and set-top boxes), and OTT Re-watch (same platform as OTT Live except counting "re-watch" data)

-          Changing to this system will hopefully result in a more fair, more objective, and more uniform comparison of the 3 free-to-air TV stations' ratings and thereby eliminate all the current issues that stem from each station calculating their own ratings.

-          Unfortunately, the government-owned RTHK's TV channel(s) will not be included in this ratings survey

Source:  HK01

Link to original article:

https://www.hk01.com/01博評-藝%EF%BC%8E文化/96544/-蘭花刼vs詭探-博評-TVB之失-ViuTV之得

So here's my two cents:

On the one hand, I feel it's a good thing that all the TV stations in HK will finally be using the same ratings system after decades of each station doing their own thing.  Those who've followed my posts the past few years know that I don't give a rat's you-know-what about ratings (not going to rehash my viewpoint here – if you're interested, check out the other blog posts I've written in the past about the HK ratings system)….especially ratings in the HK television world, which have always had a reputation for being inaccurate and farcical due to each station's "habit" of calculating the ratings in whichever way they so please and then announcing those numbers to the world as though they were fact.  This was an issue even back during the TVB vs ATV days -- I honestly can't tell you how many times I've laughed at the 2 stations' absurdity over the years "arguing" over their ratings numbers, with TVB always beating ATV to the chase in announcing "both" stations' ratings (not sure why TVB was calculating ATV's ratings but they always did even though ATV had their own 3^rd party system that did it for them), followed by ATV always crying a river about TVB "deliberately" misrepresenting their numbers and ATV management insisting that it was "absolutely impossible" for their station to consistently receive only single digit ratings (in the Wong Ching era of ATV, the ratings was just one of the bajillion things that ATV management was constantly "in denial" about).    Sure, now ATV is officially out of the picture, but that hasn't stopped all the "arguments" over the ratings, since there are now two new free-to-air TV stations in town to pick up where ATV left off (in the ratings argument, that is).   Currently, each station still does their own thing when it comes to ratings and there is no consensus whatsoever on whose numbers are truly accurate (though most of HK – media, general population, etc. -- goes with TVB's ratings calculations because, hey, they are the biggest and longest running TV station in HK now that ATV is gone, plus they monopolize the TV industry anyway, so how dare anyone NOT use their ratings?  Yeah, whatever…)

The other side of the coin of course is that this whole ratings system change is "too little, too late".  Yes, it makes sense to incorporate the viewing numbers from other platforms given that's how majority of audiences watch TV nowadays and yes, it's a more accurate representation – I absolutely agree with this.  However, the part I'm irked about is that the HK television industry should have made this change 5 to 10 years ago instead of waiting until now to do it.  Honestly, what difference does it make now to have a more "accurate" set of ratings all coming from the same source?  Does anyone really care?  TVB certainly doesn't, since, in their eyes, they will always be "ratings king" and no one will ever be able to surpass them, no matter how hard they try….which of course makes it not surprising at all that TVB has chosen to essentially "give up on" the HK market and instead focus its sights on the Mainland.  This brings me to the crux of my sentiment on why changing the ratings system is "too little, too late":  Not sure how many people heard the news that came out a few days ago about TVB choosing to air Unlawful Justice Squad in Mainland China before airing in HK, which is being viewed as yet another indication of TVB not giving a crap about HK audiences (like all the backlash they’ve been getting the past few weeks about the decision to air Phoenix Rising in their golden timeslot is not enough).   I guess getting hundreds of thousands of “hits” for their series on the internet from Mainland audiences is more important than the “measly” tens of thousands of HK audiences who actually have to go through the trouble of turning on the TV set…

Of course, it can be argued that the other 2 free-to-air TV stations – ViuTV and the just-launched Fantastic Television – do care about the ratings so changing the system will benefit them.  Um, not really…we all know that both stations are way too new and there is no way for them to catch up to TVB anytime soon where ratings are concerned.  Maybe 10 years down the road (if either station lasts that long), they might have a chance of "breaking even" with TVB, but by that time, it truly won't matter anymore because TVB will likely have given up the HK market completely by then, plus who knows if there will even be any more HK audiences around to be a part of the ratings count?  As this article very aptly stated, the "trend" in HK when it comes to majority free-TV audience viewing habits is to either turn on the TV to watch TVB, or turn off the TV and watch nothing at all.  If TVB's programs suck (which has been mostly the case for the past decade at least), most audiences in HK don't automatically turn to other free-TV channels even if the alternative exists – it has been this way for decades and, as the saying goes, it's hard to break old habits.  Yea, I know it's weird and probably hard for people who didn't grow up with the HK television industry to accept, but it's very much a reality – watching TVB has become a "way of life" for most HK folks and unfortunately, as much as I hate to say it, this is never going to change unless the day comes when TVB no longer exists….so basically any talk about ratings is pointless and meaningless.