Ordinary Gweilo

The most frustrating (and frankly rather puzzling) aspect of English language Hong Kong TV is not that we miss out on all the best shows, but that they are scheduled, publicised and presented so very badly.

One example of inexplicable scheduling is that ATV are showing the 2nd series of The Restaurant at 8 pm on Saturdays.  That’s right, overlapping with The Apprentice.  If I’m not wrong, we have two shows set in New York, both produced by Mark Burnett, and probably appealing to the same target audience.  As I recall, TVB purchased the first series and ran it in a weekday 8.30 slot, where it presumably didn’t do very well.  However, you’d think it would be a natural for the Weekend Reality strand at 8.30 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but instead it has ended up on ATV World.

I find it hard to believe that ATV outbid TVB for the show, but if they did then surely they should be putting it out at 10 pm on Saturday – or anywhere else apart from at the same time as The Apprentice. 

Then there’s the insane way that TVB place commercial breaks at apparently random places in so many of their shows.  It’s as if there is a man with a stopwatch determined to have a commercial break at a fixed time.  For example, last week’s Cheese Slices had a break in the middle of a short cooking demonstration when there was a natural break a minute or two later.

It’s even worse when it happens with ‘factual’ shows that were produced with summaries of what has happened so far to follow after the commercial break.  Two fairly recent examples are that Richard Branson Quest for the Best thingy, and the Supernanny series on Friday nights.  No-one at TVB can be bothered to re-edit the show or place the commercials in the break, so you get a non-break, followed by a summary (that you don’t need), followed one or two minutes later by a TVB commercial break in an inappropriate place. 

Finally, there’s the pathetic excuse for a TV listing guide that the SCMP serves up on Sunday.  All it needs to do is list the programs for the current week, and draw attention to anything notable.  So, what do they do?  Get the timings and programmes wrong and fail to notice new shows.  For example, Desperate Housewives was a big success in the States, and TVB have managed to get it on air here fairly quickly (only a few after it aired in the UK, for example).  Yet it wasn’t mentioned at all in the Post’s TV guide the first week it was on TVB, though they did pick up on it the following week.  How can that be when TVB were advertising it on-air for weeks in advance?  Then last week (and this week) they have the show listed as being broadcast at 10:30 when actually it has moved to 10:45.

Hopeless.