Open season on tabloid TV

IT IS 8pm; housewife Fung Kin-ling religiously tunes into her favourite TV programme. The familiar theme tune fills her public housing estate flat and the 57-year-old turns up the volume. She doesn't want to miss a word.

Down the corridor, hollow echoes from other television sets can be heard in unison: 'Welcome to the show.' For the next hour, Fung and her neighbours will engross themselves in Hong Kong's latest news and gossip.

Tonight, viewers are told, the show will give an in-depth look into a terrifying murder that has puzzled the territory.

'They do know how to make everything sound like a gripping suspense,' the mother-of-two chuckles. 'Perhaps that's why I like watching the show.' The programme is ATV's Hong Kong Today, a popular tabloid television show that went on air two years ago.

'But I watch TVB's Focus on Focus too,' Fung adds. 'They are very similar these days but I think Hong Kong Today is a better programme because it runs a charity fund to aid the needy.

'But my daughter loves the other one, she finds it more entertaining.' If television ratings are anything to go by, Fung and her daughter are among the millions of local viewers who tune into these two so-called 'info-tainment' shows every weekday.

The subjects they have dealt with range from people born with severe deformities and tragedies such as the recent Pat Sin Range hill fire, to bizarre murder cases and mysteries like UFOs.