TVB to Accept Public Submissions of Creative Programming Ideas
TVB is seeking the public’s help to repair and rebuild its tarnished image. The company has recently announced its intent to accept programming ideas and will include the best in its prime-time lineup.
Despite promises to change, TVB continues to face heavy criticism for its declining quality and uninspiring productions. Drastically different from its golden days in the 80s and 90s, the more recent dramas are plagued with illogical plots, overused storytelling techniques, and low production value. The company’s focus on promoting favored artists created many idols, though none can command the type of viewership guaranteed by top actors in the past. The harsh working conditions on the set further repelled its remaining pool of established artists; many chose to commit elsewhere as soon as their management contracts expired.
The company is also threatened by the approval of two new free-to-air TV licenses this year. HKTV’s license rejection unveiled the brewing anger of Hong Kong citizens, who vented their frustrations by boycotting and attacking TVB, challenging its monopoly-like status in the local television market. During the 2013 TVB Anniversary Gala in November, protesters gathered in front of TVB Studios and staged a mock “funeral”, scattering “hell money” and chanting the death of TVB.
Public Can Submit Ideas for TVB Productions
Burdened by declining ratings and worsening public relations, TVB is taking extreme measures to ensure survival. It vowed to pursue legal action against media which it felt was biased in slandering TVB’s brand reputation. Aside from a revamped programming focus for 2014, the company has decided to seek creative ideas from the public, opening a platform for interested individuals to contribute to making more appealing content.
Not only will TVB accept program proposals for dramas, it will also consider ideas for food and travel shows, and even for its English-language channel Pearl. Submissions must follow accepted broadcasting guidelines, and should not involve politics, religion, or violence. The best concepts will be produced by the company, all expenses paid with no budget limitation. TVB intends to create thirty-minute to one-hour pilot episodes and will test them during prime time. The most favorable programs will then earn a permanent slot in the lineup. More details will be revealed in January.
TVB hopes to attract new talent through this initiative, and is likely using this opportunity to position itself as a viewer-friendly company. With the two new free-to-air TV stations gearing up to begin broadcast within the next few years, TVB is certainly working overtime to prove its value in a bid to retain viewer loyalty.
Source: Oriental Daily
This article is written by Katrine for JayneStars.com.
Funn,
Your chance to petition Ruco Chan to be cast in Hanzawa Naoki! We should gather signatures online for more persuasive effort. 🙂
I can envision fans sending their fan fiction stories to TVB to be produced into dramas.
Jayne,
Is this for real? Oh my gosh, I always imagined my ideas becoming a series. I think many other fans dreamed of it too. It would truly be a dream come true if they do take the ideas of the public.
HeTieShou,
Let’s wait how the submission process will be when TVB announces the info in January.
I suspect it may start off as a “news tip” type of box where people can fill out a form on their website for quick suggestions on programming. The email will be sent and hopefully TVB staff will truly read them and send on to the right personnel.
Detailed submissions for drama proposals may be similar to writing cover letters to book publishers in which it would be necessary to pitch very fresh ideas to be noticed.
Jayne,
Yes,let’s wait and see. This idea sounds good on paper but whether they will execute it or not is a different story. I really wonder will they it seriously or not?
I also wanted to add that many things are easier said then done.
I hope Jayne and Funn can organize the petition to make Ruco this Hanazawa Naoki thing here. We Ruco fans will go all out spread the petition since it means a good role for Ruco. TVB need to know that Ruco deserves better roles than what they are giving him so far.
Mydatewithspring,
I do think TVB listens to viewers’ criticisms, especially the complaints filed at the Broadcasting Authority. Wonder how people outside of HK can do so….
Other fan groups may petition for casting their idols into certain roles. But when high-profile projects are announced, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try. 🙂
i’d love to support but i’m not sure it’ll lead to anything. Anyway, i’m behind Ruco all the way whatever the outcome.
Hi Oscar, please give Ruco all the support you can. Right now there are multiple online polls that we Chin pang fans are working hard on. You can participate by helping Chin Pang stay on top. This is a new poll added:
http://www.orientalsunday.hk/ent/homevotefun/Index/voteid/174
We may not be able to give Ruco an award this year but at least we can prove to TVB that Ruco’s hreat acting is much appreciated and should be given recognition by TVB and the press. We want to create noise for Ruco. Please join our cause.
@Mydatewithspring, yes i will 🙂
So glad that so many fans are supporting Ruco, we need to continue to work hard.
good idea,jayne and funn go,we all will support you.
Jayne this is surface thing only. My question is if they accet any particular idea will they adequately compensate that person for the idea? I see only publicity stunt.
But on casting why not? My idea handsaw a is actually roger. Right age.
Ruco will be my second choice. I will rather petition for a sequel to the other truth with Ruco in it.
Funn,
It depends on how TVB implements the submission process. There should be two levels to the type of content submitted to TVB: 1) simple suggestions for improving their programming; 2) samples of more elaborate proposals for dramas or variety shows
For type one submissions, if it’s made simple and clear to the public, then it’s not any different than CNN asking readers to submit hot tips to generate news stories ideas. Actually I like this open approach a lot, but TVB should assign adequate staff to read through all suggestions and respond accordingly by passing them on to higher-lever executives.
For type two submissions, this may be the type of work that can be compensated. Budding writers or songwriters can submit samples of their ideas which may need to be elaborated upon in further followup.
I hope this is not just a PR stunt by TVB to quiet viewers. Since the station was criticized so loudly in 2013, I suspect it’s really time management executives open their ears for public suggestions. Over 10,000 complaints were filed against TVB in their recent Scoop news segment in covering the government’s rejection of HKTV license. Also TVB apparently filed copyright over use of HKTV name (claiming it was the name its TVB magazine used years ago) in attempt to push Ricky Wong into a further corner?
Funn,
Roger is a good choice too. 🙂 You will have to decide who to root for.
I’m excited about the open suggestion box. If enough people make similar type of suggestions, they may reach the right ears.
After protesters took to the streets and organized a “mock funeral” for TVB on its Anniversary Gala night, TVB is finally realizing the negative public sentiment is not going away until it makes some changes.
Jayne,
Roger for Hanzawa and Ruco for some prince charming role ala k-drama. And then if TVB ever make a proper Galileo series, Ruco for Yukawa.
Funn,
I don’t want to see Ruco in Prince Charming role; perhaps it’s too easy. He excels at darker roles.
I agree with Jayne. TVB should stop giving Ruco these easy characters in light hearted dramas and please give Ruco dark and challenging characters. These brings out Ruco’s great acting. What is so hard for them to give him good roles consistently?
They should adapt dramas from japanese manga. They can be found on mangafox and other websites. Although they will have to pay copyrights. There are just so many there that are unadapted.
My money is that they’ll adapt the manga storyline into redundant love triangle family drama plus BBQ ending.
Let’s see how they adapt Hanzawa. My bet is
1. it will be 30 episodes
2. focus will be on family, starting with how Hanzawa met his wife
3. everybody has pub time
4. everybody has nicknames
5. it will be draggy
Plus adapting those manga storyline? If they had been willing to pay for those stories, they would have. For me this is one big show of “TVB listens to the public, we seek your opinion” and if they got bad ratings they can go “What more do you want? We have tried to gauge the viewers’ taste and failed” and back to our own ways.
Plus I am sure there are professional screen writers and story tellers in TVB. I feel perhaps they should just let these people have a free reign and not subdue their creativity and pay them more.
Yes you are right. The only concern is that there aren’t many good scriptwriters left in TVB. Somehow I get the feeling that the good ones might have retired or left the company. The recent scripts seems to have been written by newbie scriptwriters and went through quickly or hurriedly by the professionals.
if TVB follows through with this and actually takes and uses the suggestion from the public, i’m sure it will be more successful than the current state of tvb right now…the problem is, how many changes are they willing to accept? and are they really going to use submissions from the public?
I am not sure if they are going to be successful for sure but lets see how it goes.
At least we can try, if TVB scrapped all the ideas, we’ll know that TVB lied.
”Viewers don’t cares where ideas came from so long its not short of common sense and of realistic enactments.
Re-new of old materials isn’t positive thinking and inexperienced pageant contestants might be fresh face PR’s but lousy tv soap performers.”
Sack the yellow coats and inject new bood!
Don’t expect free hand outs of any sort.
Problem are all around and the belt needs tighten and expect a drought if the Ho Hole Ho ain’t content.
A lot of times I find it’s not the problem with the ideas, but the execution of it that is TVB’s problem. So even if fans submit ideas, TVB can still screw up on the execution and they might face even greater backlash because now you’re screwing with the fans’ ideas.
True, but you really wonder if they will even consider the ideas of the fans and public or take them seriously? I can imagine them dismissing a lot of them because they may think it is not good enough in their eyes.
OK … so they ran out of fresh ideas and come up with a ploy to get new ideas for free … from viewers. Classic cheapskates.
Open your eyes and read the full announcement from TVB regarding this issue, people whose submissions are used will receive payment and a future contract if the idea is developed into a longer episode. Perhaps your prejudice have rendered you ‘blind’….
pay them in peanuts? tvb have milked the current staff dry
TVB has milked everything dry so they have to try to milk ideas from the public now. But I still wonder if they will even take the public’s ideas into consideration?? Lets wait and see.
haha, i think you are right, btw, tvb staffs should just fire themselves starting with the ones at the top, eg the general manager and miss lok, with this news out, tvn admit they are lousy
Allowing the general public to submit submissions could be a good thing but it really depends! (:
To all Ruco’s supporters, this is our chance to make Ruco shine above all the other mediocrities at TVB. Please submit your best work but make sure demand that Ruco is in the lead role and make sure to write Ruco’s character in the best way possible. Since TVB won’t do it, it’s time we take things into our hands. We are already doing great in the hk yahoo votings, although for some reason we didn’t manage to gain victory after voting hard for the Malaysia star award.
yes, but remember to make ruco’s character complex, realistic and compelling…don’t make ruco some romantic one dimensional hero/saint like he is in your wet dreams…
he will get hate for it and won’t get to exercise his acting chops…
I agree definitely. Ruco deserves to get complex and deep characters from TVB but sadly TVB mostly give him simple and plain characters to do. What is wrong with TVB. These saint and plain characters won’t bring out Ruco’s magnificent acting abilities, the complex and intriguing dark characters will. TVb should stop dumping Ruco into small 20 episodes comedy or light hearted series. Slow Boat Home was a disaster and Raymond Wong has too much screentime.
Well Ruco under rated ATM when Ruco time comes when he win 4 to 5 best actor awards like Kevin and chi lam people will say his over rated
TV should adapt some fanfics, there are some very good one out there!!
I think grace Wong and especially Nancy Wu should be given better role and tvb scrpit writers actors should be treated better there’s nothing wrong with tvb but it’s not as good as what it use to be during the 1990s with gallen and all those awesome actors and script writers around
What difference would it make in terms of predictability when making series using current tvb format and the audience’s ideas, which have been influenced by generations of TVB series?
What they really need are careful, loop free and original scripts to make the story more compelling and reasonable.
I wonder if they’ll accept submissions in English. I’m gonna start writing a pilot.
I wondered when they would start this. Everyone has always been complaining about lack of creativity and they have all those overworked script writers who are probably crying themselves to bed every night over deadlines and scripts.
It was the next logical step to finding new script writers from outside.
Sadly, I think they will just go with modern love story/triangles since they are the easiest and cheapest to produce.
TVB need more of those as much as they need more greedy executives.
I hope they prove me wrong and we get some smashing wuxia stories.
The whole idea sounds good on paper, but whether TVB will actually follow through with it is another story entirely.
Yes, investing in good scriptwriters is important, but there’s more to a good production than just the script — the acting and the production values are equally important in my opinion.
One part I found interesting about this whole thing was that TVB has decided to go the ‘pilot episode’ route, which is what HKTV was doing prior to the license debacle. It’s actually something that Hollywood has been doing for a long time as well (much of HKTV’s production process was based on what they do in Hollywood). Hmmm…I thought TVB was ‘opposed’ to HKTV’s way of doing things? Outside of Norman Leung (who actually said good things about Ricky Wong), the rest of the management have criticized HKTV in the past for taking a more ‘Westernized’ approach to their productions. So now that they’re desperate, they’re suddenly ‘ok’ with going this route? Hmmm…first TVB trademarks HKTV’s name, now they’re ‘adopting’ their processes too…I wonder what’s next?
llwy12,
Although HKTV did not receive their license to operate, HKTV’s way of handling their drama productions opened up discussions and criticisms over ways that TVB can improve.
The pilot episode is a good idea, but it really works better for shows that have a seasonal cycle and the script can be worked on an ongoing basis taking account viewers’ feedback. “Come Home Love” is in the best position to do so due to its long-running length; TVB can film content to appease the majority or quickly nix characters that are unpopular.
you right,tvb say so much but nothing is done yet.see the issue with eric tsang, he said that he asked some big names to return to tvb. anthony wong,tony leung ka fai,andy lau,sammo hung,but no one of them will come back.the main problem are the managers of tvb,they lack the vision that is needed to bring tvb back to their golden age,’80 and ’90.
Many things are easier said then done, but hopefully TVB goes through with their plan or else they will be accused of making empty promises.
TVB is smart to use this gimmick to generate “positive” exposure. I wonder how will the royalties be paid to the originator of the idea or would it be plagiarism as they have done so in the past without compensation? The originator of the idea would not really know until the show is in production mode which might be a little late.
so where can we send in our ides? Jayne.
Wilson,
TVB will announce submission process in January. Will share if we come across the details.
thanks Jayne. Will be looking forward to the submission date.
The North Pole.
Can’t stop laughing at your comment 🙂
TVB does need improvement but it’s not like the “golden years” were perfect either. When I watch some of the old series, a lot of them weren’t that great. It’s just that with the internet, criticism can be heard immediately and people just tend to be meaner when they can hide behind anonymity.
I do have some ideas though, so I can’t wait to submit them in. haha
Agree with you. Not all the old series were that great as what some people posting comments here would have us believe. The sets looked cheap and tacky and the plots almost always had clear cut villains and good guys; I much prefer characters with shades of gray rather than black or white characters. The storylines were also just as predictable and the plot draggy. It’s just that nowadays with the internet, we have access to so many more choices and as a result have become more picky and critical.
Every time period, company,and country have good and bad series. However, I think most people would agree that many of the series from the golden era were pretty good but of course not all of them were. But with the current series nowadays, many of them are not good and only a few are good.decent. However, it is Aldo of course down to a matter of opinion.
This plan is not about promoting who(Ruco or whoever) should be the next big star, this is about pitching in creative programming ideas. Pitching in idea on who to promote is a bit bias and inappropriate.
Learn something from kdrama! I’ve felt lousy watching tvb dramas after watching kdrama. Kdrama have got their own weaknesses but they are so much better and they seem to invest a lot in the production!
It depends on the series and yes many TVB series nowadays are not good, but I personally do not really like Kdrama. I have not seen that many that I like. I have watched many Korean dramas and only like a select few. But it is down to preference and a matter of opinion.
There are also so many novels and stories from famous writers that have not been adapted yet. Maybe they should also take those into consideration?
then they’d have to pay for story rights. and they’ve pretty much butchered a lot of novels and stories, to the point where most writers won’t bother selling adaptation rights to them…
Jayne – depending on how they do the submission contest, would you be open to doing a mini-Jaynestar contest to help your English readers submit story ideas? I have a bunch of ideas but no way to present anything clearly in Chinese which I presume will be the only submissions that will be read.
TVB will bankrupt soon.
“Submissions must follow accepted broadcasting guidelines, and should not involve politics, religion, or violence.”
OK, so that rules out ‘Games of Thrones’ then.
But seriously, politics and religion are the two most important and relevant topics in every society. Many groundbreaking shows are produced in other countries revolving around these issues. How can TVB step outside of the box if they continue to play it safe and not produce dramas that deal with what really matters? This should have been made apparent to TVB last year, when the public voted ‘When Heaven Burns’ as Best Drama.
Please, TVB, please make this a reality!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1etU1-3HXas
THAT IS A BRILLIANT IDEA. I think it’s quite doable 🙂