October 8 2007

ATV makeover a bid to attract young viewers
Frederick Yeung
South China Morning Post
(c) 2007 South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

Asia Television (ATV), the smaller of the two free-television broadcasters, intends to attract a younger audience, particularly high-spending 14 to 35-year-olds, by investing more than HK$100 million on self-produced programmes.

The new programming will be part of a makeover that begins today with the unveiling of a youthful new logo aimed at dispelling the public impression that the channel targets elderly audiences.

The makeover is the first visible change to be introduced since the family of Cha Chi-ming took over the broadcaster with a more-than 50 per cent stake in April and injected new funding for digital broadcasting.

The new shareholders appointed former Television Broadcasts (TVB) executives such as Ho Ting-kwan to lead the reform.

"We need to build up a younger image to attract youngsters to switch on to us, as they have the consumption power that advertisers would like to target," said Mr Ho, ATV's chief operating officer.

As a free-television broadcaster, advertising revenue is the main income source. Mr Ho said the broadcaster's new programmes in the coming months would focus on infotainment for local tastes and would have an intellectual slant, to differentiate it from rival TVB, which is strong in drama productions.

ATV will launch more than 10 locally produced infotainment programmes, focusing on local entertainment news, film criticism, stand-up comedy and travel and leisure documentaries, with the partnership of third-party production houses.

Mr Ho said: "The programme cost is over HK$100 million a year with three hours of self-produced programmes daily. Previously ATV spent less on programming as many programmes were acquired from the mainland."

The broadcaster has teamed up with popular talk-show host Chip Tsao and media veteran Lau Tin-chi to host a flagship Zebra Online literature criticism talk show. It will discuss the characters in novels of Louis Cha, who is also the founder of Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily News.

"We are confident that such programmes will be well received by our audience, but of course we have a 'plan-B' if the new programmes don't win praise in the market," Mr Ho said.

In the past 10 years, ATV has been accused of no longer being a Hong Kong broadcaster as its programmes had been mainly acquired from the mainland. Its audience accounts for only 5 per cent to 10 per cent of weekday prime-time viewers, while TVB has more than a 90 per cent share.

"We need to rebuild our image as a Hong Kong broadcaster," Mr Ho said. "Maybe in one year we can rebuild our reputation with our new programmes."

Vivek Couto, executive director of consulting firm Media Partners Asia, said it was time for the new management to refresh ATV's programmes.

"TVB is gaining market share in both viewership and advertising revenue in the TV sector. ATV management should improve the financial situation as it has been losing money in Hong Kong for a long time."

TVB commands a 78 per cent share of local television advertising revenues, while ATV attracts 14 per cent and I-Cable 7 per cent to 8 per cent, he said.