Rooms with a view of erotica
DROOLING men marching down Canton Road to the Star Ferry . . . not an inspiring sight. But flash some cleavage and some men will do just about anything. Hong Kong has an obsession with certain female body parts, that much is clear.
This number is growing if Cable TV is any judge. The Cineplex channel, which started offering Playboy and other adult movies last March, noted a surge in requests for more erotic fare. Could it be that, as Cable TV anchor woman Crystal Kwok Kam-yan succinctly declared at the glitzy launch, 'all men [have] dirty minds'? 'We are getting an increasing number of requests from viewers for more choices of adult movies and to give them a choice during the Playboy times,' said Rawdon Tsui Sing-kee, business development director of Cable TV.
'If not, they would only be getting one movie per time slot since we can broadcast on one channel and the times are limited.' Which obviously isn't enough to satisfy. Not wanting to leave its audiences dissatisfied and miss the chance for more revenue, the channel decided - in an effort to 'introduce more entertainment programmes for adults' and bring new 'sight and sound' entertainment - to give its subscribers the Penthouse View.
Penthouse View programming would differ slightly from the channel's Playboy fare, according to Tsui. 'Playboy movies are screened from 10pm only on Wednesdays and Sundays, whereas we will only broadcast one Penthouse movie per night,' he added.
Cable TV obviously had faith in its audience's taste for the salacious. The station had picked Wednesday nights to run the Playboy fare as a trial to see if it could get more viewers since other movies on the Cineplex channel were changed every Thursday and would have been playing for a week already. 'We made the right move,' Tsui said, agreeing that horse-racing could be a reason. 'Well, after they finish at the races, they need an outlet whether they win or lose.' The cable operators have gone into Penthouse View with even greater confidence and have brought in the video chain KPS Video and the UVD cinema chain (which specialises in category III movies) for a joint promotional effort. KPS will be promoting the rental of its Penthouse videos while UVD will be screening the same movies.
'We haven't done this before for our adult channels although for other movies we have joint cinema release agreements. Our survey shows that there is very little overlapping on the viewership,' Tsui said. 'Subscribers who watch our adult programmes may not go to the cinemas to watch them or even go out to rent the videos.
'Maybe men will be too shy to do that, or viewers may be women. This joint promotion benefits all three parties.' It was a truly awesome sight when they launched their joint publicity blitz last week by flying in two Penthouse 'pets'. Flashing their 36DD and 34D measurements, Amy Lynn and Leslie Glass had the Chinese media - not to mention every Tom, Dick and Harry who saw them - dogging their every step.