A King of sport extremes

PICTURE the scene as a television camera positioned at a bottom corner of a soccer net captures the action, with Paris St Germain taking on Barcelona in the European Cup match in Paris. Enter stage left a hand wielding a pair of scissors that proceeds to 'cut' the netting as it billows after a goal is scored.

The hand belongs to Michael King who is thousands of kilometres away from Paris in Wharf's Cable TV studios in Tseun Wan. While no more than a tenth of Hong Kong's 1.5 million homes have taken up the Cable TV subscription service, King's nightly slots have assumed something of a cult status for a steadily growing number of viewers, especially among those who have despaired over the poor treatment generally accorded to sports on TVB and ATV.

King performs like a combination of a fairground barker and a sportscaster, with a grasp of how to manipulate the advances in television presentation. Rather than sit behind a desk, he stands in front of a blue curtain to make his reports on the 7.30 pm and 11.30 pm bulletins - and what the viewers see is him apparently standing in the middle of a filmed report.

The technique is one weather presenters in the US and Europe have used for many years, but it is a novelty in Hong Kong - especially for sports casting. It was devised by the head of English news at Cable TV, the former TVB Pearl newsreader Peter Maize, and King said he was enthusiastic about the concept as soon as it was outlined to him.

'If you stand, it changes your delivery; in fact, the dynamics of the way you present. I like the way I can stand up and come to the camera - it's really neat,' the 27-year-old American explained shortly after finishing his first slot of the evening.

For instance, when he covered a yachting story featuring a sea-level camera splashed by a bow wave, he returned to the screen with a glass of water thrown over his head. Then he made a report about a dog sled race in Alaska wearing a parka and dodged blows from a boxer who was filmed training.