Lingua Sinica on the decline of TVB – which you may or may not see as an allegory of the whole of Hong Kong.
…In the “golden decade” of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s — when a small British colony became the continent’s biggest cultural exporter — “TVB” was as synonymous with local soft power as the name of any Cantopop superstar.
…TVB, today, is the city’s least-trusted source of news on TV. So much of the public has turned against the station that consumer boycotts nearly brought it to its knees, prompting official intervention that condemned boycotts as a dangerous form of anti-government resistance. Even its once-beloved dramas have become the butts of jokes. Faced with financial losses year-on-year and bubbling hostility at home…
…Following [censorship of footage of police beating Ken Tsang in 2014], TVB … saw an exodus of staff. Since then, TVB seems to have become more selective in its hiring. Current staff include an anchor and sub-editor from Russian state news agency Sputnik and a senior sub-editor from the state-run Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group. The risks of another walkout over self-censorship are low.
…despite being [protected from competition in the free-to-air] local market, TVB is somehow still losing viewers and hemorrhaging money. In their latest annual report for 2023, the broadcaster was a jaw-dropping HK$838,169,000 in the red — their sixth consecutive year of deepening losses.
From the Standard, another sign of a changing Hong Kong…
A 57-year-old handyman has been denied bail after being arrested and charged by national security police for publishing over 100 seditious posts on social media, including calling the Hong Kong administration a dictatorship.
Chow Kim-ho, a part-time venue handyman and a former member of the pro-democracy party League of Social Democrats, was charged yesterday with one count of knowingly publishing content with seditious intention under the national security ordinance.
No plea was taken but national security judge, West Kowloon court chief magistrate Victor So Wai-tak, denied him bail. Chow was remanded until his next court appearance on December 30.
Among the allegedly seditious content was references to ‘revolution’. Irony time: last October 1 was the 75th anniversary of what?
Can you also be arrested for suggesting that testing Japanese seafood and other products for radiation has been a wasteful performance?
Over 100,000 samples of Japanese food imports tested by the Hong Kong government over 447 days for radiation, and unsurprisingly not a single item exceeded WHO-recommended levels. A policy that was never based on science, but on politics and nationalist sentiment against Japan
My 36 year stint as a TVB Pearl Evening News viewer is in its final death throes. I generally check in at 7.30pm but apart from Melissa G, almost all the presenters and reporters are so grating to the ears (the local and English ones) that I switch off within two minutes.
It’s sad that Singapore has an international 24-hr news channel like CNA and in Hong Kong we can’t even produce a local 20-minute bulletin that’s watchable.
I’m getting a new TV soon and I doubt I’ll even bother hooking it up to the TV aerial. TVB Pearl is basically just an Aussie cooking channel now anyway.
I occasionally see the TVB logo on the lower corner of the big screen at Mongkok Police Station, facing Nathan Road. A TV station now no more than a propaganda machine. The presence of Sputnik and TKP newsroom operatives sums up the demise. But wasn’t it always crap?!
So Honkers will soon be ASIA’S SNOOKER HUB
14th Nov 2024 – World snooker champion Judd Trump has publicly declared his preference for life outside the UK, largely due to personal and professional reasons. The 35-year-old, currently ranked world number one, has shifted his base to Hong Kong, where he shares a relationship with local figure skater Maisy Ma.
This just days after Ronnie O’Sullivan pitched his tent here.
The financial support this pastime will have access to will be manna to the many triad bars with pool tables. New revenue stream for Jockey Club?
If Hong Kong does become a Snooker Hub, with the arrival of snookerists Ronnie and Judd, combined of course with our home-grown champion Ng On-yee, it will be without any plans, promotions or committees by our government – no clunky app, faux-cute mascot, or so-called mega-event. Fancy that!
Young Winston: The last man standing was Freddy, ooh ahh.
Forget about TVB. I am nostalgic for the old days of ATV. Little Yonden, strapped in that peculiar Crocodile suit (do Crocodile suits still exist?), looking eagerly into the camera while he shared The News with us. There was also Tammy Tam, who insisted that Jiang Zemin had died while Jiang was still quite alive. Talents like that don’t go to waste and that’s why they are now holding senior positions at the Alibaba Rag, the print equivalent of TVB. That is, they are both dying a slow death.
TVB’s decline is exemplified by the programme “Straight Talk”. Michael Chugani was never the most aggressive of interviewers, but he did have guests who were critical of the powers that be and had interesting things to say. Now under Eugene Whatsisname, the programme is basically a propaganda outlet for pro-establishment nonentities, with not an incisive question in sight.