As CY Leung’s government is turning into a kind of unpopular Louis XVI-style Bourbon dynasty over the HKTV license storm, TVB has found itself a target of public outrage and disdain, like the Bastille itself. The “TVB Switch-off campaign,” organized on the internet for the occasion of the channel’s anniversary celebration night, has cost it a drop in ratings to below 30 points, a record 16-year low.
It was not strong enough to bring down the Bastille on a single day, but the signal against the TVB hegemony, with its low-class TV soap dramas, was fierce enough to alert a nervous Beijing.
I have been an occasional watcher of TVB Pearl. Its news coverage, dominated by international news, at least widens the scope of global vision for those few lucky ones who understand English. The imported documentaries, including one I saw recently with Stephen Hawking explaining in English the mechanism of the universe, sound more human than the howling and giggling of grinning obese chefs, surrounded by gaudy young Hello Kitty lookalike Hong Kong models, who hold their manual V signs and shout “It’s delicious!” in front of a steaming wok, in one of the 1,001 never-ending eat-and-drink programs. My impression of TVB, since I don’t watch Chinese TV and consider myself belonging to the minority of Pearl watchers, is thus heavily biased.
But TVB Jade is popular among Hong Kong Chinese housewives, who hold the remote control in their dining rooms in Mong Kok, Tuen Mun and Kwun Tong. TVB Jade caters for a big community who is not interested in the world, but the price of a kilo of rice or a bottle of shampoo. Contrary to the angry French women peasants who led the March to Versailles for liberty, these Chinese women prefer eating their salted fish and green vegetables at 8pm and watching TVB Jade.
It is this housewife class that dictates which button is pressed on the TV remote, not their husbands or children. So a revolution against TVB cannot succeed unless each Hong Kong youngster and child launches an uprising in each household. Ironically, Chairman Mao’s Red Guards’ tactics would prove useful, with children radically rebelling against their parents. For example, they could seize the remote control from mother, press any English channel, then throw the remote into the toilet and flush it away in the midst of her squealing. Or stand on the rooftop of a building and threaten to jump, unless the crying mother promises to switch to the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. Or simply smash the 32-inch Panasonic plasma screen with a big hammer. With organized resistance like this, TVB’s rating will drop to two or three points within a month. This will then force the management to stop and think for a moment.
Short of these actions, the Bastille will remain the oldest fortress prison, the Bourbon kings and queens will carry on with their feasts, and the Hong Kong people will continue to be fed with the cheap gourmet trash of the screen.
