Shen Yeh, group chief consultant to the ailing ATV, is used to handling adversity. He has shuffled programme schedules with the ease of a croupier handling a pack of cards; his no-nonsense streamlining plans will see the station's staffing halve to 500 by the end of this year.
But the saving of all those salaries may not bring better programmes to our screens. Certainly they will not bring more Hong Kong programmes.
For the better part of the past decade, ATV has had a viewership constantly one million less than TVB. And ATV has been running at a loss for the same period - at its nadir, a six-digit loss was chalked up every day.
This week Mr Shen celebrated a rare victory. Champagne to celebrate high ratings, morale and budgets has not been seen for a long time at ATV's ageing buildings in Broadcast Drive, but the bubbly flowed freely after Mr Shen announced that My Fair Princess, the Taiwanese soap series that has proved a gem in ATV's listings, had managed to beat TVB by garnering 60 per cent of viewers during last Friday's episode.
Mr Shen also relayed the message to staff from ATV's chief executive Feng Xiaoping that they could each expect a share from a $1 million bonus. The only ATV staff member present - Wong Kong-cheung, a presenter for the gossip programme Hong Kong Today - was ushered forward to thank Mr Shen. As cameras flashed, Mr Shen mockingly said to Wong: 'Look at how your programme is doing compared to My Fair Princess - people must be laughing at you guys!' The gap is indeed enormous. On the same week that the Taiwanese series attracted nearly 1.7 million viewers, Hong Kong Today pulled in only 500,000 and became easily the weakest link in ATV's weekday evening shows.
The irony is not lost on ATV staff. The success of My Fair Princess might have taken the pressure off the staff for a while - especially after the massive lay-off plans announced last month - but that it took an imported programme to rescue the station from the doldrums has left many with little to be pleased about.