The rivalry between local television stations ATV and TVB is heating up. A reporter and camera man from ATV Home's new entertainment news programme, Showbiz Update, were barred from last week's F4 Pepsi press conference. They were also forced to remove the ATV logo from a microphone before being allowed into the Nicholas Tse Ting-fung press bun-fight on Sunday.
Peter Kwan Wai, senior vice-president of ATV's news division, was not impressed. 'Of course we are very unhappy about these two incidents,' Kwan told SAR. 'No media organisations should be barred from covering a news story.'
Since the launching of Showbiz Update on July 1, ATV reporters have also had difficulties getting celebrity interviews, Kwan claimed.
It couldn't have anything to do with stars such as Tse (above) being contracted to ATV's arch-rival TVB, could it? Surely not.
Pepsi scotched such a notion, saying the reason for barring ATV was there were too many reporters. But what's one more hack in a room of 152?
Although F4 have no contracts with the giant TVB, an insider told us the boy band are, naturally, keen to appear on the TV station with the highest ratings - which is TVB.
