Phoenix Media names Shanghai’s former city spokesman as CEO, splitting founder Liu’s job to improve corporate governance

Liu Changle, founder of Phoenix TV, has stepped down as chief executive officer while keeping his title as chairman of Phoenix Media Investment (Holdings), as one of the largest Chinese-language broadcasters restructures its management to enhance corporate governance.

The division of the two roles, effective February 26, is to “enhance corporate governance of the group … in compliance with the corporate governance code [of Hong Kong’s listing rules],” the board of Phoenix Media said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange (HLEX). “[He] will remain as the chairman of the board and an executive director.”

Phoenix Media, a privately owned broadcaster founded in 1996, appointed the Shanghai municipal government’s former spokesman Xu Wei as its chief executive on the same day. Xu, 54, is a former journalist who worked in the Shanghai bureau of the Financial Times. He was formerly the news director of Shanghai Eastern Radio, and was the general manager and editor-in-chief of Shanghai Oriental Satellite TV Media. He was spokesman for the organising committee of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo after leaving journalism.

The shake-up comes amid a challenging time for Hong Kong’s media companies, as they struggle to stay afloat amid the prolonged advertising slump caused by the city’s worst recession on record, brought on by a combination of the US-China trade war, almost a year of anti-government protests and now the coronavirus pandemic.

Intensifying competition from an ever increasing amount of online news and commentary for advertising dollars have also posed extra challenges for traditional media firms in recent years.