My ‘TVB Rant’ # 23: TVB expanding into Mainland market – good news or bad news?

First off, my apologies to those who have been actively following my blog, as I recognize that I’ve been doing a poor job keeping it updated lately – some things came up and I just haven’t been able to dedicate as much time to it as I would like.  Though I’ve continued to stay on top of the latest ‘happenings’ in the HK entertainment world, I unfortunately haven’t found the chance to ‘blog’ about stuff or do too many translations lately, so I’ve actually got a long list of stuff that I would like to post about still – hopefully I’ll get a chance to do so more consistently in the coming months.

Anyway, back to the post at hand….

I know I haven’t ‘ranted’ about TVB in a long time – of course there has been plenty of stuff to rant about the past few months (probably enough for several posts actually…LOL), but as I said earlier, I’ve had a lot going on, so haven’t had time to gather all my thoughts into a coherent post until now. 

Amongst the many TVB-related ‘happenings’ worth ranting about lately, one piece of news from the past few days got me worked up enough to rant about at the moment:  recently, TVB outlined in more detail their ‘plans’ for expanding into the Mainland China market (they already started doing so a little while back with the creation of TVBC – the Mainland China arm of TVB – but didn’t really talk too much in detail about their plans until now). 

Before I go into my actual rant, let me set the background for this post by briefly summarizing what TVB’s plans are in the Mainland (based on an interview that Virginia Lok did with ND Daily, which was published yesterday – link to original article here).

In summary, the plans are as follows:

.—The goal this year is to elevate the status of TVB artists in the Mainland.  Therefore, any programs that TVBC invests in, TVB will recommend its own ‘contracted’ artists (primarily their own ‘biological’ children who are under management contract) for the programs.

.—More ‘collaborative’ series (series where HK artists will collaborate with Mainland artists – similar to what they did in the series Drive of Life, Growing Through Life, etc.) will be filmed.  TVB will provide the scripts and the artists while SMG (the production company that TVB is collaborating with in Mainland) will provide the filming locations and equipment.

.—TVB siu sangs and fadans will formulate ‘teams’ that will travel to Mainland and collaborate with various ‘teams’ of artists over there.  Also, TVB will continue to seek out other Mainland TV stations and film/TV production companies to collaborate with as well.  Artists who rarely ever film in Mainland (those mentioned in the interview include Moses Chan, Fala Chen, Wayne Lai, Kate Tsui, etc.) will eventually be heading up North one after another…

.—One of the goals that Virginia Lok (as head of the Artists Management Department) has been actively pursuing is to push the current ‘second tier’ TVB artists (VL mentions artists such as Eliza Sam, Christine Kuo, Rebecca Zhu, Oscar Leung, etc. in the interview)  up to ‘first tier’ fadan / siu sang level.  With many of the ‘first tier’ artists heading to Mainland, this will open up the door for TVB to further push this goal in the upcoming year.

.—As for the question of where their scripts will come from (since TVB will be providing the scripts and most of their long-time scriptwriters already left the company), Virginia Lok stated that they are ‘encouraging’ more variety in scripts by having them come from different sources – for example:  Eric Tsang will be writing some scripts specifically tailored for TVB; artists such as Wong Cho Lam will continue to provide ideas and outlines of scripts for TVB’s scriptwriters to work with. 

.—This year, TVB will be sending 10 of its singers to participate in the popular Mainland singing contest “Voice of China”.   [Note:  VL didn’t elaborate on this so not sure if she means TVB-groomed singers such as those who came out of their own singing contest “The Voice” or their so-called ‘actors/actresses turned singers’ – my guess is that she means their “The Voice” singers, as I’m assuming that TVB isn’t going to be foolish enough to send their actors and actresses (most of whom can’t sing to save their lives) to a Mainland singing contest where everyone is levels above them…it would be way too embarrassing….]

.—Lastly, according to Virginia Lok, they are hoping to reach a wider audience in HK – meaning break the tradition of catering to ‘housewife’ audiences only and instead try to appeal to more younger audiences. [TN:  Hmmm…not sure how true this part is because VL’s boss – TVB’s Assistant General Manager Au Wai Lam – stated in an interview for TVB Magazine last year that they will continue to cater to housewife audiences in the future because that’s the majority of the audience pool in HK].

In a nutshell – towards TVB’s ‘lofty’ goal of establishing TVBC and expanding into the Mainland market, TVB’s director of external affairs Tsang Sing Ming had this to say:  “We believe that with this method [creation of TVBC], it will encourage some of the siu sangs and fadans who were previously interested in leaving to stay behind now.  At the same time, it will also attract those ‘heavyweight’ artists who already left – such as Charmaine Sheh, Sheren Tang, etc. – to return.  The ‘worth’ (aka salaries) of TVBC artists will be calculated according to Mainland market rates.”   [TN:  I guess this means TVBC artists won’t have to work for ‘dirt cheap’ measly salaries like their HK counterparts do:  good news for those who get ‘chosen’ to be TVBC artists, but definitely bad news for those who remain behind in HK and must continue to ‘slave’ for peanuts (unfortunately, this is majority of the artists currently at TVB – especially the veteran third/fourth line ones….)]

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Now that the background is laid out,  here goes the rant…..

To be very honest, I actually don’t really give a damn about TVB expanding into the Mainland market, as I don’t watch Mainland series anyway and I’m not planning to watch in the future either (doesn’t matter if some of my favorite artists film in the Mainland – the series just don’t interest me).  So basically, what they decide to do over there is not my problem – that’s for the Mainland entertainment world to ‘worry’ about.

The piece that I’m most concerned about is how this expansion into the Mainland thing is going to affect TVB in HK – both the quality of series overall as well as the artists who will be ‘left behind’ so to speak. 

In terms of artists, I’m referring specifically to those third/fourth/fifth tier ‘green leaf’/’gam cho’ artists who are not ‘popular enough’ (meaning they are not on the ‘most favored’ list) to be given the time of day by TVB.  What’s going to happen to these talented green leaf artists who, under the current ‘system’, are already largely ignored and neglected by TVB?  What are the options?  Continue to work slave hours for cheap TVB at below market salaries that are barely enough to make ends meet in the hopes that 20 years down the road (if they make it that far) they will finally be able to climb to ‘recognizable’ status?  Or get out now while there’s still a chance and find something better to do than to work for a company that doesn’t give a damn about them (and never will as long as there are other more ‘popular’ artists to tend to)?

Of course, the ideal situation would be for these artists to ‘have a way out’ in the form of being able to continue doing what they love best (acting) in their own home territory (Hong Kong) -- namely, having the option to work for a different TV station in HK that better suits their needs.  Unfortunately, with this whole free TV license thing still in limbo (and no clear end in sight), the options are very limited – artists who still want to film TV series in HK must either work for slave-driving TVB or the ‘most likely soon to fold’ ATV (newsbrief: ATV’s top exec James Shing recently announced at FILMART that they will go back to producing series again – hmmm…given ATV’s current situation, let’s see if that actually pans out or not).  HKTV is probably the best option out there for most of these artists, but until they get their license (which could take a LONG time), it’s still a bit of a risky choice.

Oh and how about the quality of future series that TVB produces?  I mean, you’d think that TVB learned its lesson from the drastic decline in the quality of their series the past decade or so – just when you think that the quality couldn’t get any worse, now they’re planning on mixing in more ‘collaborative’ series  in the years to come, despite the fact that those types of series were never well-received by HK audiences (understandably so). 

And even with the collaborative series thing aside, the quality will still continue to suffer because the fact of the matter is, many of the ‘second tier’ artists that TVB is planning to promote JUST DON’T CUT IT – majority of the them need to go through acting training big time (oh and while they’re at it, some of them should go through ‘Cantonese as a Second Language’ courses as well…). 

Hmmm….all this makes me think whether TVB’s move to expand into the Mainland market is really because they want their artists to be ‘more known’ in Mainland (as they claim) or they’re actually motivated by something else (like greed and the hunger for power, for example).  I mean, honestly, TVB already has a huge problem with lack of capable artists at home (HK) -- instead of trying to ‘expand’ their empire further, shouldn’t they be more concerned with ‘fixing’ the issues they have at home first (by investing in acting training and changing some of their antiquated policies for example)?

The piece that gets me really worked up about this whole thing is the fact that TVB is so adamantly opposed to opening up the market in HK to allow more free TV stations in (and are doing everything in their power to prevent new licenses from being issued).  Sure, I understand the ‘argument’ about trying to protect business interests and profits, etc. but fact of the matter is, those are just excuses because anyone with common sense knows that TVB is not going to go bankrupt just because more TV stations are added to the mix.  I mean, let’s be real – we’re talking about a company that makes billions of dollars every year and while most companies are struggling to even survive, they are still turning over a hefty profit year after year (and now with the full-fledged expansion into the Mainland market, they will be raking in even more profit due to the lucrative market over there).  Given the great prospective and outlook in their favor, why does TVB need to continue selfishly holding on to their monopoly in HK when they know full well that they are stifling the growth of the industry (and threatening people’s livelihoods in the process)?

Bottom line – I don’t have the answer to whether TVB’s expansion into the Mainland is a good thing or bad one, as it really depends on the way you look at it.  But I do know that for me at least, I’m not too thrilled about it (for the reasons stated above).  Whatever the case, let’s see where this decision of TVB’s ends up leading...

TVB to implement ‘One Vote Per Person’ method to choose TV King/Queen; Spokesperson won’t rule out possibility that ‘loopholes’ exist

As most people are probably aware by now, TVB ‘officially’ made the announcement last week that the winners for 3 of the award categories at this year’s Anniversary Awards will be determine entirely by audience vote (they call it ‘One Vote Per Person’, aka OVPP). Which 3 categories? The 3 main ones of course: TV King (aka Best Actor), TV Queen (aka Best Actress), and Best Series.

Since the beginning, I had stated that I feel having 100% audience vote for TV King and Queen is a stupid idea because it makes the awards lose even more credibility (not that they had much credibility to begin with, but with this OVPP thing, the little bit of ‘respectability’ that the awards still had went completely down the drain). It pretty much turns these awards into a ‘popularity contest’ whereby the artists with the most number of fans voting for them wins, since we all know that most fans will vote for their idols out of loyalty, irregardless of how they actually perform acting-wise that year.

Despite how much I oppose the OVPP thing, I must say that I also hate TVB’s previous method of determining the winners – combining the ‘votes’ from audiences, TVB producers, and TVB management (aka the ‘high up execs’).  To me, TVB management has no place in determining the winners because they are so biased, it’s not even funny – plus many of the execs are ‘business people’ who have no experience in actually ‘making series’ (acting / scriptwriting / producing / directing, etc.), so what right do they have to ‘judge’ who does the best job in acting?

For the record, my ‘preference’ when it comes to determining the winners of these types of awards is to have a professional judging panel consisting of industry ‘experts’ (i.e.:  producers, directors, scriptwriters, fellow actors/actresses, etc.) who can truly judge the quality of the acting and the series without bias.  It’s just like with singing competitions, where the ‘judges’ are usually singing teachers, music producers, songwriters, veteran singers, etc. – that type of judging panel makes sense because those people are ‘qualified’ to judge singing skill, technique, etc., due to their expertise in ‘making music’.

As for the article below about TVB’s decision to implement OVPP for the Anniversary Awards – the only thing I have to say is that I felt Mr. Tsang Sing Ming’s responses were extremely LAME…in fact, I actually feel that he didn’t really answer some of the question and instead gave one of those general, vague responses that doesn’t truly address the issue.  But oh well – I’m already used to those types of answers from TVB, so no point in getting worked up over it….let’s just wait and see what happens come awards time!

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TVB to implement ‘One Vote Per Person’ method to choose TV King/Queen;  Spokesperson won’t rule out possibility that ‘loopholes’ exist

Source:  SinaNews

 

Translation:  llwy12

 

 

Despite the fiasco created by the voting failure at the Miss Hong Kong pageant earlier this year, TVB is still very much interested in continuing to utilize the ‘One Vote Per Person’ (OVPP) method for future programs.  On October 25^th, via a phone interview, our reporter was able to obtain confirmation that TVB will once again be utilizing the ‘One Vote Per Person’ method at this year’s TVB Anniversary Awards to choose the winners in 3 categories:  Best Actor (TV King), Best Actress (TV Queen), and Best Series.

 

Earlier, when TVB utilized the OVPP method for the Miss Hong Kong pageant, the process failed due to ‘technical problems’, resulting in severe criticism from the general public.  Even with the ‘technical problems’ seemingly resolved now, new questions surrounding the OVPP process have arisen – including the biggest question of all:  “If the audiences vote to determine TV King and Queen, what happens to the ‘professional’ aspect of the awards?”

 

 

Audiences vote for ‘the Best’, rest of the awards don’t change

 

Heading into anniversary season, the yearly TVB Anniversary Awards has become a hot topic of discussion as usual.   A few days ago, TVB released the results of the investigation into the Miss HK voting failure – the report stated that the voting outage had nothing to do with hackers [as previously suspected], but rather resulted from ‘technical’ problems. [TN: according to the official report, users attempted to vote multiple times in order to increase their chances of winning the car, resulting in a high volume of transactions that exceeded a predefined limit for the specific time frame and thereby crashing the system.]    With the investigation complete, TVB has plans to continue utilizing this method in future events.

 

On October 25^th, our reporter called up TVB’s director of external affairs Tsang Sing Ming (曾醒明).  He expressed that TVB has already confirmed that they will utilize the ‘One Vote Per Person’ method to determine the winners of the Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Series awards at this year’s ceremony, however the method for determining the rest of the awards won’t change for now.  Mr. Tsang also revealed that the anniversary awards ceremony itself will likely go through a process change this year – the ‘other’ awards will be determined more in advance so that the last 3 days leading up to the ceremony will be reserved for audiences to vote on the 3 ‘main’ awards:  “By giving audiences 3 days to vote, we can avoid the issue we had during Miss HK where too many people voting at the same time paralyzed the system.”

 

Mr. Tsang continues:  “Nowadays, many younger audiences prefer using the Internet rather than television --  the HK television industry is considering a better way to attract these younger audiences to participate.  The ‘One Vote Per Person’ method can be conducted over the Internet, which is more convenient compared to the ‘old’ way of having to fill out a form.”  From the Miss HK pageant to the Anniversary Awards, it seems that TVB has become especially fond of the ‘audience vote’ method – Mr. Tsang explains that this will become a ‘trend’ in the future of HK television.

 

 

The ones with most fans win, lacks credibility

 

In the eyes of many industry insiders, the method of OVPP becoming a more formalistic ‘trend’ in the industry is definitely cause for concern.  TV Series Magazine’s《電視劇》Editor Sui Chak (水澤) [specializes in writing about TVB series and artists] expressed that he does not see a good future for the OVPP method.

 

Sui Chak states that a bit of ‘controversy’ already existed in the previous method of choosing the winners for TV King / Queen [TN: previous method was a combination of audience, TVB producers, and TVB executives votes], but at least the “underlying basis for determining the winners was based on acting -- plus in the past few years, non-management contract artists, such as Sheren Tang (鄧萃雯) for example, were able to win, which is proof that things were getting better. Applying the OVPP method would cause the awards to become ‘popularity’ awards instead where the artist who has the most fans wins – this lacks credibility and is unfair to the older, ‘talent-path’ veterans who may not have such a large fanbase.  In terms of Best Series, many audiences don’t consider whether the series is truly good or not – most of the time, audiences will support a series merely because of their idols.  Fans will likely vote for a series because their idols star in them, but do they really think that the series is good?  Probably not.”   According to Sui Chak’s analysis, if TVB utilizes the OVPP method, the winner of the TV King award will “without a doubt be Raymond Lam because when it comes to popularity, no other artist can surpass him.”

 

Sui Chak continues:  “The ‘One Vote Per Person’ method should actually be used for the ‘Favorite Male / Female Character’ awards – there would be no problems with 100% audience vote with these 2 awards because by virtue, these are ‘popularity’-based awards anyway.  As for the other awards, those should be determined by the management team and producers – the ‘professional’ versus ‘popularity’ awards should remain separate.”  Sui Chak feels that by implementing the OVPP method [for the Anniversary Awards], TVB seems to be going in the wrong direction.

 

 

Q & A with Tsang Sing Ming

 

The ‘concern’ over the OVPP situation seems to have divided on-line fans of TVB series into 2 groups:  while some netizens / fans feel that using the OVPP method can reduce the ‘cannon fodder’ resulting from TVB’s notorious ‘party politics’, an even larger group of netizens / fans are worried about the ‘fairness’ factor [TN:  artists winning based purely on number of fans rather than performance].  The concerns of these netizens can be summarized into 4 main questions, which our reporter took the opportunity to ask TVB’s spokesperson Tsang Sing Ming over the phone (see below).  Mr. Tsang admits “that ‘loopholes’ definitely do exist in the process, however we won’t know [how it’ll turn out] until we try it.”

 

Question 1:  Certain artists have large fanbases, so naturally they will receive the most number of votes.   However, wouldn’t this be unfair to those artists who truly perform [act] well but don’t have as many fans?

 

Tsang’s response:  We cannot deny the fact that artists with large fanbases have more of an advantage.  However if these artists were truly able to gain so much support and ‘influence’ so many people to rally behind them in the first place, then it proves that the artist must already have a certain solid foundation – in that case, winning the award is understandable.

 

 

Question 2:  Prior to this, there were already 2 ‘popularity’ awards chosen mostly by audience votes – the ‘Favorite Male Character’ and ‘Favorite Female Character’ awards.  Now that the TV King and Queen awards will be decided by audience vote as well, then wouldn’t the 2 awards essentially mean the same thing?

 

Tsang’s response:  For the ‘Favorite Male / Female Character’ awards, we will be utilizing a combined audience vote + professional judges method to determine the winners, which will help differentiate them from the TV King / Queen awards.  As to the specific criteria that the judges will utilize, we will continue to study it and hopefully come up with the most suitable solution.

 

 

Question 3:  What about the possibility of overzealous fans voting repeatedly for their idols, thereby creating duplicate votes?

 

Tsang’s response:  We will be using the same system that we did for the Miss HK voting earlier – each person must register using their HK identification card number and each ID number will only be allowed to vote once.  This will be able to prevent people from voting multiple times.

 

 

Question 4:  For the ‘Best Series’ award, won’t the series that air closest to the anniversary period have the greatest advantage, since these series will still be fresh in audience’s minds?  So this means that series such as The Hippocratic Crush 《OnCall36小時》, which aired close to 6 months ago, won’t have much of a chance, since audiences have likely forgotten about those series already?

 

Tsang’s response:   That’s why we arrange for certain grand production ‘anniversary series’ to air around anniversary time.  Anniversary series do have a little more advantage, since audiences usually pay more attention to them.  True, other series might possibly be affected a bit, but if the series are truly ‘good series’, we believe that audiences will still have a deep impression of them.

 

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Producer Chong Wai Kin responds:  “It’s only a ‘program’!”

 

Compared to the many ‘concerns’ that netizens have, people within TVB seem to have a more ‘relaxed’ attitude toward the OVPP issue.

 

This year, producer Chong Wai Kin (莊偉建) has anniversary series Silver Spoon, Sterling Shackles《名媛望族》in the running – the series just started airing and already, it has received much acclaim from the general public.  However, in the face of the new ‘One Vote Per Person’ method this year, whether the series will be able to hold its own against the series manned by the younger, popular idols remains to be seen.  Towards this, Chong Wai Kin candidly states that it doesn’t matter to him:  “We have to give it a try in order to know if it’s going to work!”  The way he sees it, the purpose for implementing this type of method is to attract more audiences:  “After all, the previous method was used for too long already – audiences are tired of it.”  As for netizens’ concern that using OVPP will cause the awards to become ‘popularity’ awards, Chong Wai Kin admits that he is not too concerned with it:  “Actually, whether a series is good or not, everyone already has their own ‘conclusion’ about it.  Therefore, the way I see it, this awards thing is merely a ‘program’!” [TN:  My interpretation of Chong Wai Kin’s last comment:  ‘people are making a big fuss over this unnecessarily…]