‘I’m a risk-taker’: head of Hong Kong’s new free-to-air TV station pledges creative programming

Lo Ting-fai is a man who makes miracles happen. On Wednesday, Lo is to lead a new campaign meant to transform Hong Kong’s dreary television landscape into a vibrant and creative field again.

“I’m a risk-taker,” said Lo, general manager of PCCW’s ViuTV. “Leadership isn’t having a team of people working ‘under’ me. It is about fighting a battle ‘with’ my comrades.”

ViuTV, Hong Kong’s first free-to-air TV station in 37 years, is more than just taking over the role of ATV, which went off-air last Friday.

Political rivals Jasper Tsang and ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung to star in travelogue on new channel ViuTv

ViuTV aspires to challenge TVB’s dominance and bring young audiences back to watching local television productions with creative reality shows, such as its much-hyped Travel with Rivals.

Its Wednesday night premiere is to feature radical lawmaker “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung going on a charity trip to Poland with long-time political frenemy Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, a veteran of the pro-establishment camp and president of the Legislative Council.

Since its inception in 1967, TVB has dominated the city’s television and entertainment business for decades. Rival ATV might have triumphed in a few battles, but it still failed to challenge TVB’s pre-eminence, despite TVB’s losing more than a million viewers over the past decade.

Nevertheless, Lo might stand a chance at challenging the status quo because he isn’t a typical television man.

A journalism graduate who went on to work in advertising and creative media, Lo is only 37 years old and has been an executive with ViuTV since 2014. His distinct background and young age contrast with TVB’s leader, group chief executive officer Mark Lee Po-on, who was born in 1955 and trained as an accountant.

Lo described creative work as not something to be done “relying on just one or two people” and said that his most important responsibility as a manager was “to remove all hurdles so that my colleagues can do what they want to do”.

Not with a bang but a whimper: Hong Kong’s oldest television station, ATV, finally pulls the plug

To be able to challenge the status quo, one must be allowed to challenge their bosses, Lo added.

“They must dare to challenge the upper level internally,” he said. “They swear at me all the time.”

His next objective is to put together a team of old and new hands in the industry.

“I have a lot of colleagues who are young, but also a lot of colleagues who have been in the TV industry for 30 years,” Lo said.

“They work closely together and strive to produce the best shows. They have failed a lot and they just keep trying, and I give them space.”

Lo’s risk-taking nature stems from his teenage years. He went to Queen’s College and was a student in the science stream, which was the most sought-after subject among local students at one of the city’s most famous elite secondary schools.

But after taking the Certificate Examination at Form Five, which no longer exists in today’s education system, Lo wanted to throw it all away and switch to arts subjects for A-Levels.

Queen’s College did not allow him to do so. Armed with “satisfactory results” according to Lo, he was confident he could find another school to take him on as an arts student. And he did find another school that was ready to accept him the day he received his exam results.

But something strange happened en route to the other school: Lo lost his exam results certificate, without which he could not enrol. Eventually he had to go back to studying science subjects at the famous boys’ school.

Upon graduating from secondary school, Lo wanted to study journalism at university, but he ended up at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1998 reading biology, a subject he hated.

“But it was at that time that I learnt the rule of thumb of being creative,” he said. “You need to get to something that you don’t know or even hate.”

To realise his dream of becoming a journalism student, Lo had to make miracles happen. He needed top grades in order to be able to transfer to journalism school, and to achieve that, he had no choice but to master a subject he hated.

Just one semester later, Lo succeeded in his short-term goal.

He became a journalism major at the university and finished his studies at the end of 2001 with first class honours, an achievement that he said gave him immense pride, even more than earning a master’s degree at Oxford University.

Hong Kong’s TVB, ViuTV and advertising agencies to launch all-encompassing audience survey

Looking ahead, the advent of ViuTV could be a chance for Hong Kong’s television industry to recapture the vibrancy it enjoyed in the 1970s when innovative works were produced almost daily.

Lo said opportunities to push boundaries in the industry still existed, even though the landscape has changed considerably and become much more conservative compared with the experimental heyday of TVB, ATV and Commercial Television.

“Hong Kong today needs to allow failure,” he said.

“At the end of the day, TV is a business, but 30 per cent of it should be dedicated to trial and error.”

Besides churning out reality shows, Lo said he planned to bring Thai dramas to local audiences and hire fresh graduates to helm productions.

“These initiatives might not work eventually, but if I don’t give them a try, particularly for a new generation of talent, there won’t be a new Wai Ka-fai in 10 years’ time,” said Lo, referring to a renowned Hong Kong film and TV producer and director.

ViuTV’s parent company PCCW pledged to invest HK$1.3 billion over its first six years. At present the fledgling broadcaster has 4,000 hours of content ready, with 2,400 hours slotted for the station’s own productions, excluding news programmes. The rest is acquired programmes.

“It’s a huge investment,” Lo said of the plan. “But we also need to plant seeds for the future.”