New blog series: Entertainment news updates

I wanted to put up this quick message to let everyone know that I've decided to try something new with my blog this year. Those of you who've been long-time followers of my blog probably know that nowadays, I don't update my blog as often as I used to. The main reason why I don't update as much anymore is because I'm usually super-busy trying to juggle work and personal life and everything else in between so time management is a huge issue for me (more often than not, I find myself needing more than 24 hours in a day, lol). The secondary reason (which goes hand-in-hand with the first one technically) is because I'm very very "particular" (I usually use the word "anal" but that word sounds kind of rude) about my writing, especially when it comes to translations, as I'm somewhat of a perfectionist in this area and am quite obsessed with choosing my words carefully so as not to mislead or offend. I also tend to be very long-winded and do not have the gift like others do of being "short and sweet" when it comes to writing, which is why, as I'm sure you've noticed, most of my blog posts are long, wordy, and probably contain more detail than you care to read about. In this context, despite the fact that I'm a writer and I love to write, when it comes to this blog, writing up posts is actually very draining for me and with everything I've had (and still have) going on, it's been hard to keep up. As a result, I haven't been updating this blog as frequently as I would like, even though I continue to read and follow entertainment news (almost religiously) on a daily basis and often come across quite a bit of interesting news stuff I want to share, but don't have time to write up long posts about them.

So back to my first sentence about trying something new (see how long-winded I am? LOL)….basically, I'm planning on starting a new series of posts dedicated to updating readers on various HK entertainment-related stuff that either I found interesting or I know it's stuff that a few of us have been "following" (i.e. HKTV, Fox Asia, OCTB season 2, etc.). Think of it as a "newsreel" of sorts with short (hopefully no more than 1-2 sentences) tidbits on some of the current "happenings" in the entertainment industry. The plan is to do this on a weekly basis (haven't decided which day of the week yet) and it will be stuff that I read about that week (or the day I'm writing up the post). Whenever possible, I will try to include a link to the news source where I got the information, but don't expect this to be a regular occurrence, as I read from (and watch) a multitude of different sources and sometimes it may have been something I read in passing so a link just isn't available (however I will still try to at least reference the news source if I remember).

Just to clarify though -- I still intend to write up my usual long (wordy) blog posts and do full/partial translations of certain articles whenever I can but with my schedule, this will likely happen less frequently than I would like. And on that note, I would actually like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone whom I may have promised at one point or another to translate a particular article or write about a particular topic but never delivered on it – definitely wasn't intentional on my part and hopefully I will be less of a flake in this area in the future (or I just need to be more careful about not over-promising, lol).

Lastly, a big THANK YOU to those who continue to follow my blog and actually read my lengthy posts. I may not be good at expressing it but I definitely appreciate all of you and am grateful for the continued support!

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.

HK television industry news: TVB’s new “cross-platform” ratings system

At the end of the last year, I recall mentioning (though can't remember if it was on my blog or in one of the discussion forums) that TVB will be adopting a new ratings system starting in 2018 (there was a general mention at the time that other stations in HK would be adopting the same system as well by default).  Well, this went into effect already and the first reports are already out.    Before we look at the actual numbers though, let's first understand what goes into the calculation.  For TVB specifically (all the articles out so far are TVB-centric – I have yet to see anything about the other TV stations so not sure how specifically they will integrate this new system), the ratings number will now be a calculation of the following 3 things:  1) traditional TV ratings (those who watch via traditional TV set same time as broadcast– these are the same ratings we have now),  2) myTV Super "live" ratings (those who watch via myTV Super platform same time as broadcast), 3) myTV Super 7 day re-watch ratings (those who don't watch same day as broadcast but go back at a later time to watch).

In order for the above method to make sense, here's a little bit of background and explanation.  We all know that nowadays, in HK especially, very few audiences watch TV on a traditional television set (by "traditional", I'm talking about those "vanilla" TV sets that are only capable of receiving free channels and maybe cable subscription – doesn't include the ones with OTT/set-top boxes) .  With all the advances in technology (and the fact that Hong Kongers are known for leading busy lives that are always "on-the-go"), the trend in recent years has been for audiences (those who still bother with television content that is) to "watch TV" via the Internet (online on a computer or hooked up to a television set via OTT set-top box) or via mobile devices such as cell phone or tablets.  In addition to watching via multiple platforms, the time of day that audiences watch has changed as well – gone are the days when a typical HK family would sit around the dinner table with the TV on and watch programs together while they ate (those who grew up with TVB in the old days like I did would probably be familiar with the phrase "rice mixed with television", lol).  Instead of watching a TV program at the same time that it is broadcast, many audiences nowadays do "catch-up" watching – basically watching all of that week's episodes at one time, either at the end of the week or on the weekend.  So then supposedly, this means that the ratings going forward should, in theory, be more "accurate" in the sense that it takes into account modern audiences' viewing habits.  

According to a Mingpao article I read today, TVB released their first ratings report under the new system and this is how a few of their programs fared (this covers the week of 1/1/18 to 1/7/18): 

Golden timeslot – 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd line series:

Come Home Love: Lo and Behold = average 23.5 points, 1.53 million audience share (households)

My Ages Apart = average 26.1 points, 1.7 million audience share (households)

Heart And Greed (Heart of Greed 3) = average 25 points, 1.62 audience share (households)

Midnight timeslot (this is the timeslot at midnightwhere TVB usually airs old series / classics)

Files of Justice V = average 7.4 points, 480,000 audience share (households)

Weekend timeslot 

Cantopop at 50 (Anita Mui Tribute special) = average 18 points, 1.17 million audience share (households)

Source: Mingpao 

https://m.mingpao.com/ldy/showbiz3.php?nodeid=1516100418360&subcate=latest&issue=20180116

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Obviously, the above is not an all-inclusive list, plus there is no comparison point in terms of what the ratings would've been for that same week if the old method was used, so personally, I am hesitant to say whether this new system is truly "more accurate".  While it does reflect better the viewing habits of audiences in the current environment, I have some reservations as to accuracy due to a few reasons. 

-          First, it appears that the calculation method for the first number (traditional TV ratings) is the same as it was previously – this number has always been a bit convoluted, as it is based on a series of algorithms and formulas performed on data that is a bit suspect to begin with, since it looks at "average" households and takes a "sampling" based on population.  I'm not a math whiz and hated Statistics in school so maybe I'm just not understanding the calculation properly but I've always been suspicious of this ratings number and what it represents, which is why I rarely ever take ratings into consideration when it comes to TV series (I basically could care less what the ratings are, since it won't impact whether I like the series or not).

-          Second, I'm not totally clear how the second number (online platform "live" ratings) is calculated.  With traditional TV ratings, despite not understanding the formulas and algorithms specifically, I at least DO have a general idea overall how the ratings are calculated (which is basically installing some type of device into the TV sets that will monitor when it is tuned to a certain program, measuring down to the minute, then sending that data to the data processing centers to get put into their various formulas).  With online ratings, how does this work?  I'm assuming it's based on number of unique clicks or something of that nature but honestly, I'm not too sure.  I was able to Google some information in general about the different methods that Internet ratings are usually captured and calculated, but without knowing which method TVB (or whoever is putting together the reports over there) is using, I can't say with any amount of confidence that this number is capturing what it's supposed to capture.

-          The third number is the most "mysterious" one in my book because honestly, how do they even capture who is going back to watch the series and who isn't?  And does it depend on how many episodes are being watched?  So like what if I missed 2 weeks worth of episodes and I binge-watch the first 7 episodes on Saturday and the last 3 episodes on Sunday?  How does that affect the number?  And what if I watch outside of the 7 day window – does that get captured in the following week's data or it doesn't get counted at all?   Obviously there are a lot of "unknowns" still with this one so until I have time to do more research and truly look at what this number is capturing, I can't really say a whole lot about it.

So in conclusion – for me personally, nothing much really changes because as I said earlier, I'm not a ratings-watcher so how well a series does or doesn't do won't impact whether I choose to watch or not….it's the content and the quality of the production that matters in my book.  With that said though, it will be interesting to see how this new ratings system evolves in the coming months as more and more people catch on and start digging into things more.  I'm sure TVB will be asked to explain their calculations at some point and if they do, then I'll be sure to post an update at that time.

Jacky concert - Confirmation of additional Las Vegas show!!

The below picture says it all!  Those who didn’t get tickets for the 2/17 show, make sure to put 1/4/18 on your calendar as that is when the tickets for the added show on 2/18 goes on sale!

** LATEST UPDATE 12/30 ** Jacky Concert - Additional Las Vegas show added???

** UPDATE 12/30/17:  IEM Showplace posted the following on their Facebook page this morning:

主辨正積極協調多加一場拉斯維加斯站演出，目前整合進度樂觀。安排加場是需要多方協調，希望粉絲給予更多的鼓勵與正能量，並耐心等待好消息。謝謝！
Currently working on adding another show at Las Vegas Stop and progress so far is optimistic. Please give us more courage and positive energy while we work very hard towards bringing you good news as soon as we can. Thank you.

Source:  IEM Showplace via Facebook


**UPDATE** Ok, apparently this is a glitch — the webpage is no longer accessible now.  People on FB said that their orders were cancelled.  Someone else said they called IEM and were told that the show is still being confirmed and tickets won’t officially go on sale until next week so anyone who purchased tickets for 2/18, their orders will be cancelled.


Hi guys,

Just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that it looks like they added an additional show to the Las Vegas stop for Jacky's concert.  There has been no announcement made so far though and his official concert page hasn't been updated yet.  IEMShowplace's Facebook page (which is the page that they tell us to check every time we call) also has not been updated since 12/8.  However someone on Facebook checked on IEMShowplace's web page and it appears that a show was added for 2/18 at 3pm (see below screenshot).  Not sure if they will be making the announcement soon or if this is a mistake, but since so many fellow fans missed out on tickets for the 2/17 show, I figured I would post this up and you guys can check it out if you want.  If I find out anything further, I'll be sure to update!

P.S.:  Word of warning -- we found out alot of people who bought tickets earlier in the month got their orders cancelled nearly a week later due to the purchase being made "outside of the U.S."  Quite a few people have been complaining on FB about it -- someone actually called and was told their order was cancelled because the person bought their tickets while on a trip in Canada (even though the credit card they used and account they created all had their U.S. address / phone numbers on it).  In reading the Terms and Conditions on IEM's website, it does not specifically prohibit overseas audiences from buying so not sure what the deal is with the cancellations but I wanted to let fans know just in case....

Website:
https://www.iemshowplace.com/jacky-cheung-a-classic-tour-las-vegas-stop/

**UPDATED** HK Television Wars Update: ATV making a comeback!

**12/24/17 Hot off the press update -- Soooo.....things are starting out on the wrong foot already.  Turns out that ATV won't be able to remake MDWAV because the rights to that series (along with a bunch of other popular ATV classics) was sold to Fox Networks.  Fox released a statement today (yesterday) stating that they hold the rights to MDWAV and ATV would be infringing on copyright if they were to remake the series without Fox's consent.  ATV's CEO Ng Yu was asked about this today and he said that it is true that most of ATV's series were indeed already sold to other companies (including TVB, Fox, HMV, Sohu, etc.) and that it was a misunderstanding on their part, as the records are really messy and they are still going through them.  He said that they are in discussions with Fox right now on possible collaboration with the remake but if that doesn't pan out, they have other series they can look at remaking instead.

What a mess!  I mean, how could ATV not know that the rights to the series was already sold to Fox?  And then to announce plans for a remake as though ATV still owned the rights?  This definitely doesn't look good for ATV, especially with their already previously tarnished reputation....

---

Ok, so seeing that I haven't updated HK television-related stuff in awhile and we're coming up on the end of the year, I figured it was time for a mini "recap" of some of the major things going on in the HK television industry as of late.  This will be a quick, relatively short post (yea, I know, departure from my normal "War and Peace" style, but hey, I'm busy and in a crunch for time this month).

I don't plan on talking about all the TV stations, as I don't really have time for that right now (maybe I'll do a year-end recap later – we'll see), so I'll just focus on one major "hot off the press" HK television news for now.

The big news this weekend was ATV announcing their official comeback.  No, they didn't get their license back.  Rather, they are returning as an internet TV station where their programs will be available to watch via mobile platform (phone and tablet app) as well as via OTT (Over-the-Top) TV set boxes.  The new owner is a Mainland businessman with (supposedly) boatloads of money and he has hired quite a few big name industry veterans to head the station, including former TVB (and EEG) director of operations Ng Yu (he will be CEO), former TVB top exec/manager Peter Au, retired former TVB director of promotion and marketing Tsang Sing Ming, and former TVB (and subsequently NowTV) head of variety shows production Ho Lai Chuen (who is supposedly serving in the capacity of "consultant").  Also, they have a new logo now and I believe their official name is called "New Asia TV"….

In terms of artists, Ng Yu announced that everyone signed a "per series/show" contract only and are essentially free artists who can work for whichever station they so choose.  They will not be doing artist management in the beginning – instead, they intend on cultivating newcomers by having them work with experienced artists, then they will pick out the ones who are good and sign them to long term contracts (interesting strategy).  There were boatloads of former ATV and TVB artists who attended the official press conference this weekend (note that the official re-launch date isn't until January 29^th – they are just making all the announcements 1 month early), most notably Stephen Chan, Margie Tsang, Wong Hei, Spencer Leung, Joyce Chan, Anne Heung, Queenie Chu, Cillia Lok, Jacqueline Chu, ATV veteran Lau Shek Yin, etc.  Supposedly these artists are only a few of the over 100 artists + behind-the-scenes crew that ATV currently has working for them. 

Programming-wise, the biggest highlights are Stephen Chan hosting the 2018 version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" – of course, he's got pretty big shoes to fill considering how popular that game show was back when Kenneth Chan hosted the Chinese version on ATV many years ago (and no, I highly doubt Stephen Chan will be able to invite the "A-list" guests that Kenneth was able to back in the days when he hosted).  The other big highlight (on the variety show side) is that they will have a live variety program that will air every night Monday thru Friday – the show is called "See You Tonight" (and yes, the similar-sounding name to TVB's iconic live variety show EYT is probably deliberate) and will consist of one episode a night with a different theme each night hosted by different artists.  Spencer Leung, Joyce Chan, and veteran radio host Sarah Lee will host the Monday entertainment news-themed edition (Spencer said that for the first episode, he will be inviting 2 of his "enemies" whom he hasn't seen in a long time on to the show to have dinner with him – he also said he can't guarantee their won't be arguing or fighting so he advised audiences to tune in to see what happens).   Wong Hei and Anne Heung will be hosting Thursday nights, with the theme being travel and food, while Queenie Chu, Cillia Lok, and Margie  Tsang will host Wednesday nights where the theme will be fashion / lifestyle.  Lau Shek Yin will host Tuesday nights with the theme being HK current affairs and societal concerns.  I didn't catch who will be hosting Fridays though – will update once I find out.  

I'm sure the biggest question on people's minds is whether ATV will be filming series.  The answer is yes – the 2 "big productions" they already have in the works is a television version of the iconic HK movie "A Better Tomorrow" (yes, the movie that starred Chow Yun Fat in one of his most famous roles ever, "Mark Gor" – it also famously starred Leslie Cheung and Ti Lung) and also, a remake of ATV's classic hit "My Date with a Vampire" (I was never a MDWAV fan but those of you who are/were, feel free to comment how you feel about this news – good? Bad? Indifferent?).  Cast won't be announced until later, though in terms of MDWAV,  I highly doubt that any of the artists who were involved with the original will be participating in this new remake version.  Also, Ng Yu had done an interview last week (prior to this weekend's press conference) where he pretty much already confirmed that all of their "self-produced" series will be collaborations with Mainland – meaning produced with Mainland money, feature Mainland artists, and overall be geared toward Mainland audiences.

Lastly, the question of the day from reporters during the press conference was whether there would be a repeat of what I like to call "Salarygate" – remember those 4 to 6 months where ATV failed to pay their staff's salaries, resulting in hundreds of ATV staff having to apply to the Labor Department and also take ATV to court to recoup their lost wages.  Ng Yu confirmed that there will absolutely NOT be a repeat of that, as one of the pre-requisites for him agreeing to be CEO (keep in mind that he had retired from EEG last year) was that the owner must put staff salaries first and foremost.  He said the current owner of ATV has tons of properties and business and money is not an issue…in fact, he said that the owner plans on investing 400 million HKD the first year to make sure all relevant and necessary production costs, salaries, expenses, etc. are covered.

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To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this whole ATV thing.  In my book, that station's reputation is so tarnished already that it will essentially take Herculean effort to truly re-establish themselves as a possible force to be reckoned with in HK audience's eyes.  Personally, even after their announcement, I wasn't all that excited about their programs, as there really wasn't much that interested me except for that "See You Tonight" variety program that I might possibly watch, mostly out of curiosity to see whether it will truly be an "original effort" or merely a copycat of EYT (long-time TVB fans will probably remember that Ng Yu is still considered the "father of E.Y.T." and is largely credited with making that show the success it was for so many years, so it's hard for me to believe there won't be 'E.Y.T.' influences in the show).  The 2 series they announced so far I'm definitely not interested in – as I said above, I was never a fan of MDWAV so I could care less that they are doing a remake of it, but I did love the movie "A Better Tomorrow", which is one reason why I don't want to watch the ATV remake version because I know for sure they are going to butcher it (come on now – I don't care who they end up casting, no one is ever going to surpass Chow Yun Fat's iconic performance in that movie!).  With that said though, one thing I will say is that if the powers-that-be at ATV have been paying attention to entertainment news the last couple months, they perhaps would've heard the iconic film's director John Woo recently reveal that actor Mark Cheng was originally slated for the role of 'Mark Gor' but he turned it down due to scheduling conflict, so Chow Yun Fat got picked for the role (CYF was known as "box-office poison" at that time – he was a huge television star, but movie-wise, practically every movie he had made leading up to that movie had bombed).  To me, it would be interesting (and probably a huge talking / selling point for ATV) if they were to cast Mark Cheng in the lead role for the TV version – in a way, giving him a chance to fix a previously "missed opportunity"….but this is just me putting in my two cents…I actually have no idea who ATV is going cast in either series.

Concluding thoughts:  Basically, my approach with this ATV comeback thing is "wait and see".  As I said above, I'm not excited for any of their programs or artists.  On the contrary, I'm actually more excited about the internet series from other lesser name (in HK at least) production companies:  namely, OCTB season 2 (which will start filming next month) and also both of Fox Asia's HK series "Trading Floor" and "Stain'd".  The trailers for both series have been out for awhile already and even though both were only a few short seconds, the little I saw already blew TVB series out of the water big-time.   I read in the news that they recently did a special director's cut of "Stain'd" where they edited all 5 episodes into a movie length film and debuted it at the Macau Film Festival, where 2 of the series' stars Kara Hui and Tse Kwan Ho as well as director Patrick Kong were in attendance (the other lead, Anthony Wong, was not in attendance) – the film version was supposedly quite intense and gory (the story is based on a real life HK murder case – the infamous recent case of a teenager who hatched an intricate plot to kill his parents and dismember their bodies, then blamed the killings on the mentally ill friend who  had assisted him).  With 3 award-winning A-list actors leading the series, no doubt the acting will be top-notch!  "Trading Floor" also I'm excited about, mostly because of the cast (again, award-winning movie actors Francis Ng and Liu Kai Chi), plus the producer is none other than Andy Lau – the "big names" attached to the project and the guaranteed top-notch acting are enough to get me absolutely interested!

Jacky Cheung Concert Tour - U.S. Shows - ticket information!

Finally – ticket information for Jacky's U.S. shows was just announced!  For those who can read Chinese, below are the original posts from iemshowplace's (concert organizer) Facebook page.  There are some special instructions on here so make sure you read it carefully.  

For the benefit of those who may not be able to read Chinese, I went ahead and translated (note that the posts for both the Connecticut and Las Vegas shows have the exact same information on them, with the only difference being the dates and times).

Translation:

Jacky Cheung – A Classic Tour – Las Vegas (MGM Grand Garden Arena)

Date/time:  February 17, 2018 at 8pm

IEMshowplace Facebook fans can buy tickets on 12/7/17 – one day ahead of official ticket release.  Please be aware of the following:

1.       A limited amount of tickets will go on sale starting 12/7/2017 (Thursday) from 12:00noon to 11:59pmand will end once all tickets have been sold.  In order to purchase tickets, you will need to use your Facebook account to log in to the ticket sales website.  The website for presale will be announced on 12/7/2017 at 11:59am on Facebook.

2.       Those who purchase tickets online will not be able to choose their seats.   The tickets will be sold on a "first come first served" basis.  Once you indicate the which level of tickets you want, the system will automatically choose the seats starting from the middle inner seats in that ticket bracket and expand out from there to both sides.  If your credit card fails to go through, then you will need to wait until the system purges your information before placing another order

3.       Please note:  After your online order successfully goes through, all sales are final – no refund or exchange will be allowed.  

Sent from my iPhone

Jacky’s Concert: Official Announcement!

** Sorry guys -- looks like this post got all warped up initially...I guess that's what happens when I try to do a rush post from my phone!  I fixed the post so it should be good now.**


It's here!!!!

Official announcement for U.S. shows on Universal's Facebook page! In terms of where/how to buy tickets, the last sentence says "details will be announced in next couple days"

***UPDATED***Jacky Concert News - North America tour dates!!!

**UPDATED 11/30/17**

Ok, so I have updated information.  I actually called the concert organizers (Universal) and was able to get confirmed information from them.  Jacky will indeed be doing 3 shows in Connecticut and 1 show (so far) in Las Vegas – the dates below are also accurate ( I didn’t ask about Canada, since I live in the U.S., so my apologies to Canadian fans).  The lady I spoke with said that tickets have not officially gone on sale yet.  I told her that I know of people who claim to already have bought tickets and she said she knows, as there were a bunch of people who somehow were able to get into their website earlier and buy tickets even though they were not officially on sale (perhaps website was hacked?)…as soon as they found out about this, they shut everything down, which is why there is no information about Jacky’s concert on their website (iemshowplace.com).  The tickets don’t officially go on sale until next week – the exact date and time will be announced on their Facebook page in the next couple of days.

Also, in terms of prices, the most expensive tickets range between $468 to $488 USD – this is important to know because if anyone tries to sell you tickets for more than that price (not including handling charges of course), most likely they are scalpers.  Just wanted to make everyone aware so fellow fans don’t get jipped out of their hard earned money.

I’ll keep posting updates as I find out more info.

**UPDATED 11/29/17**

There is finally word on the show dates for the North America (USA / Canada) leg of Jacky's concert tour!  I got word from a friend that the show dates for U.S. and Canada are tentatively scheduled for the following:

Las Vegas:  2/17/18 at MGM Grand Garden Arena

Connecticut  2/2/18 through 2/4/18 at Mohegan Sun Arena

Vancouver, Canada:  2/27/18 at Rogers Arena

**

From what I understand, the above dates are tentative and supposedly additional dates are being finalized.  I checked UMG's official concert tour web page and none of the above dates are posted yet -- not sure if they are behind on posting or the dates haven't been confirmed yet.  I haven't heard any official announcements from Universal or Jacky's fan club yet so of course take this with a grain of salt.

In terms of ticket information, I've seen some websites that supposedly are selling tickets, but not sure if I believe the legitimacy of those.  I checked the website that was listed on the Las Vegas poster (yes, there is a poster for the Las Vegas one already...though real or fake I don't know) where supposedly tickets were being sold, but when I pulled up the site, Jacky's concert isn't even listed.  My friend said that his friend told him he bought tickets already but again, not sure how true that is.  I checked MGM Grand's website where it lists upcoming shows all the way out through February and so far nothing there either.

I will definitely post further if I hear anything -- for now though, this is all I've got.  If anyone else hears anything, feel free to give me a holler in the comments!

TVB 50th Anniversary Gala – My Thoughts

With this year being TVB’s 50^th anniversary, I decided to tune in to their Anniversary Gala celebration that took place on November 19^th (this past weekend) just to see if they would do anything “special” to celebrate such a significant milestone.  Most people know that I’ve been following TVB since the 80s era and back then (as well as throughout the 90s), the anniversary gala each year was truly a “grand” event that I always looked forward to watching – it was absolutely a glamorous affair where all the stars would come out and give us audiences a truly entertaining and memorable show.  Nowadays, things are obviously different – the anniversary gala has ceased to be a “grand” affair for at least a decade now and every year, it seems like TVB is merely “going through the motions,” haphazardly throwing something together just because they have to (after all, being HK’s main free-to-air TV station, they can’t “not” celebrate their own birthday, as it would make them look really bad).  I’ve continued to watch the anniversary galas the past couple years, even though most of them have been horrible – I do so mostly out of curiosity to see whether, for once, TVB will make a decent gala show…unfortunately, each year, I am hugely disappointed, as the show gets worse and worse each year, to the point that I wonder why I even bother watching.  Though I knew better than to have any type of expectations for a TVB program, I still went into the 50^th anniversary gala hoping that perhaps this time, with it being such a special occasion, TVB won’t let me down.  Looks like this was wishful thinking on my part – while the show overall was heaps better than last year’s gala (which I don’t consider a compliment since last year’s gala was the worst one ever, both in terms of ratings and content), overall, it was still disappointing in that the show was pretty much “same old same old” as previous years in terms of being lackluster, boring, and hugely disorganized.   Writing this post up now, several days after the gala aired, I honestly can’t remember much of the event, which is already a sign that the show was not memorable.  This is especially significant given the fact that I am able to vividly remember almost all of the past galas that took place back in the 80s and 90s even though it has been years since I last watched those shows, yet I can barely remember any of the galas from the past 15 years.  It’s pretty sad and I guess in a way, it shows how little I care about TVB nowadays compared to the past. 

The only 2 things I remember from this year’s anniversary gala were also the 2 best segments of the entire show and in the spirit of giving credit where it’s due, I will give TVB a rare pat on the back for both these segments (don’t get used to it though, lol).  The first segment I thought was done well this year was, surprisingly, the anniversary gala skit – this time around, the skit was actually kind of funny (I have no problems admitting that I got a few laughs out of watching certain artists make fools of themselves):  Wayne actually made me laugh when he resurrected his classic imitation of Roman Tam, I chuckled when Raymond Cho imitated Wayne, and yes, FAMA was hilarious with their imitations of Dodo Cheng and Eric Tsang (and watching Eric “beat them up” afterwards was funny too, lol).  Of course, when I compare this year’s skit to the “classic” ones from the older anniversary galas, it absolutely pales in comparisons – but taken by itself, there was obviously some thought and effort put into the skit this year and for that, I will give TVB some brownie points.

For me though, the biggest highlight of the entire show was the “Hidden Heroes” segment where TVB paid tribute to all the “green leaf” (supporting) artists who have worked for them over the years.  This segment was technically in two parts – the first part consisted of Fook Luk Sau (Wong Cho Lam, Louis Yuen, Johnson Lee) dressing up as comic book super heroes (Batman, Wonder Woman, and I can’t remember who the third one was) to battle 3 “enemy villains” played by veteran green leaf artists Law Lok Lam, Jimmy Au, and Lau Kong.  To be honest, the “fake battle” was kind of cheesy and if it weren’t for the 3 veterans, I probably would’ve stopped watching the segment altogether, but I’m glad I stuck with it because part two was truly AWESOME!  After the corny battle scene, FLS announced that there was actually more and when they turned around, all of the “green leaf” artists were standing on stage (the ones who attended the gala of course).  The first row of artists were specially chosen to represent the various types of “supporting” roles that we see often in TVB series and each of them were formally introduced as well as got the chance to say a few words to the audience.  I loved this segment and actually got a little teary-eyed seeing so many wonderful supporting actors / actresses up there finally getting the “5 minutes of fame” they deserve.  For once, TVB actually did the right thing by giving these unsung heroes (the true pillars of all TVB series) the credit they deserve and even though it still wasn’t enough time in my opinion (take parts one and two together and it was only about 15 minutes max), it’s already a huge improvement considering these artists usually get no recognition at all in past galas.  Again, to give credit where it’s due, kudos to TVB for thinking about the “green leaf” artists this time around and for putting together a segment that was truly memorable as well as fitting of a 50^th anniversary celebration (enjoy the praise while it lasts TVB because it’s rare for me to give any nowadays….).

Below I’ve included a link to part two of the “green leaf” artists tribute (on Youtube) as well as a brief “write-up” that HK01 did on the segment.  I hope you enjoy the segment as much as I did! 

One last note -- I’ve also done tributes to green leaf artists on my blog in the past and I honestly hope that other bloggers who follow the HK entertainment industry will do the same.  There is never enough recognition or credit given to supporting artists (mainstream media cares mostly about the lead/popular artists and/or artists who are controversial and constantly put themselves in the line of media fire), so whenever I see tributes of this sort to these “unsung heroes,” I have no problem heaping on the praise.  It’s a small token of my appreciation and gratitude for these artists’ unwavering dedication and efforts at making HK entertainment still worth following!

Video source: HK01 article