Stuart Wolfendale

You have to give some thanks for cable news bulletins because if you relied entirely on the terrestrial boys and girls in Hong Kong, there would be evenings when you would be just one or two notches up from viewers in Pyongyang.

Take Wednesday evening, for example. TVB Jade’s 6.30 bulletin opened with three items so localized and anaesthetized they made HK magazine look like the IHT. The lead was a story of how 5 illegals working in an NT cottage factory were bravely apprehended by 3,624 police officers. This was followed by an item on Mainland pig supplies which looked as though it combined two passionate local themes: China food poisoning and Hong Kong hypochondria. This gave way to another hypochondria piece on contaminated Mainland toffees being removed from local shops because of analysis reports from that spankingly accurate source, the Philippines health ministry.

The more compelling subjects of the day, revealed by ATV’s World bulletin an hour later, had been the death of 200 people in a fiery plane crash at Sao Paulo airport, an oil spillage on a highway that had gridlocked Island traffic for hours and the opening a huge book fair which is significant in a local culture notoriously disinclined to read.

The pigs got a slot lower down. The story included the nugget that one company imports 80% of our pigs. The SAR really should sue the Waddington board game company for the use of the title “Monopoly”. We were and remain the original. The Chinese sweeties were eventually included too because the “White Rabbit” brand has been testing teeth here for generations. The NT arrests got ten seconds.

The difference between the TV English and the Chinese language views of the world is put down to the probability that those watching Jade are mostly working class Mainland immigrants and old people. They are presumed to be thick as two short planks, to enjoy watching bad guys being put in the back of wagons with hoods over their heads and to hold cheap pork and toffees as central to their lives.

Well, if they have found a winning formula, I suppose they will stick with it. You, in the meantime, had better admit that PCCW salesman who bangs on your door during dinner and get “Now”, dude.

Posted in All, Quickies, Television and wireless