DIGITAL MEDIA

Concerns over censorship and the content of online videos are rising as an increasing number of people forced to stay at home because of the pandemic turn to the internet for entertainment.

I grew up in the golden era of Hong Kong TV drama, of ‘Four Heavenly Kings’ — Andy Lau Tak-wah, Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, Jacky Cheung Hok-yau and Leon Lai Ming. Hong Kong has a mature portfolio, track record, and sophisticated techniques in drama creation. The Chinese mainland is versatile in various genres of drama. We can learn from each other.” Huang Xiaoming, mainland actor

I embrace the idea of collaborating with Hong Kong producers on drama or film projects. We (millennials) have witnessed the Hong Kong golden movie era and its decline. Hong Kong has done an exceptional job of localizing different genres — even outperformed South Korea sometimes. Its workplace TV series is true to life and tells arresting stories.”

Jing Xingzi, young screenwriter cooperating with iQiyi

Known for its frenetic pace of work and two-career couples, Hong Kong has few residents with the luxury of free time for leisure entertainment. They are simply too exhausted when they get home. But COVID-19 forced a halt to that high-stress pace, at least for four months. There is more to life than work at the expense of family. We have discovered a whole spectrum of quality leisure viewing beyond the staid TV dramas. Wang Yuke reports from Hong Kong.

Passive binge-watching of web flicks and TV shows has become the “new normal” as self-isolation keeps communities indoors. Hong Kong residents shrank their commutes and social interactions from late January as schools were shut, with the private sector and the civil service adopting work-fromhome precautions. Home entertainment consumption soared as a direct consequence. More importantly, family time was reclaimed.

Live spectator sports, like soccer, rugby, and basketball, were also not available. Hong Kong viewers limited to formulaic family TV dramas, and almost no alternative local content, are fortunately blessed with excellent broadband, high digital speeds, and smartphones. Consumers can access an abundance of web entertainment content from the Chinese mainland and from international channels.

OTT explodes on mobile web

Hong Kong’s ready access to foreign “over-the-top” (OTT) video services enlarge and diversify viewer options, ranging across Netflix, YouTube, LeEco, Fox Sports, BBC, NatGeo, and more. Powering the growth of OTT is Hong Kong’s high-speed mobile internet penetration, forecast to reach 95 percent by 2023.

Netflix saw first-time app downloads accelerate in Hong Kong from January through March. Netflix aggregates popular TV shows, movies, anime, documentaries, and its own productions. March downloads for Netflix in Hong Kong roughly doubled what they were in January, said Credit Suisse analyst Douglas Mitchelson. Netflix’s global paid subscribers grew 15.77 million in the first quarter, two times higher than the pre-pandemic projections.

Local TV viewership saw a yearon-year leap of 43 percent in February, according to Nielsen Media. The Nielsen Media Index also recorded a 99 percent surge in internet usage in January and February for streaming shows, online shopping, and gaming. Broadcast content alone does not satisfy Hong Kong viewers: 93 percent of internet users in Hong Kong watch videos online, according to the Hootsuite 2019 report, which captures internet, social media, mobile and e-commerce behaviors.

OTT video streaming is forecast to provide Hong Kong’s fastest revenue growth in entertainment spending, according to PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2019-23. OTT video in Hong Kong is set to increase at an 18.7 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from $170 million in 2018 to $400 million in 2023, beyond the global CAGR of 13.8 percent. OTT media service is expected to overtake traditional TV and video by 2023, with on-demand, high-quality content.

Goldfish have more focus?

A 2015 Consumer Insight study by Microsoft in Canada found the average human attention span has shrunk to eight seconds — one second less than that of a goldfish. The study surveyed 2,000 participants and monitored the brain activity of 112 respondents. Gao Wentao, general manager of East China for Endata, which provides data analysis for the entertainment industry, said viewer attention spans have shrunk. Consumers “kill time” with short videos, 15 to 30 seconds each, on mobile devices.

Video streaming was already a growing trend even before the enforced home confinement for the pandemic. The Omnicom Media Group Hong Kong 2018 study registered OTT video services’ weekly penetration rising from 33 to 63 percent, and viewership from 2.6 hours to 10.6 hours respectively, from April 2016 to July 2019.

Not made in HK

Short-video and web dramas for local residents originate largely from the Chinese mainland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There are few homegrown choices. “We’re far behind the mainland in web drama creations,” said Alex Lee, lecturer in TV production at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Annual co-produced web dramas with mainland partners hover at a paltry four or so. Mainland-produced web dramas tallied over 150 in 2019. According to Lee, there are only two Hong Kong TV production and film distribution companies for online dramas — Media Asia, and Emperor Entertainment Group.

Television Broadcasts (TVB), the dominant local broadcaster, prefers to stick to its traditional TV-drama service. “TVB started making TV drama serials from scratch in 1967, captivating local audiences for decades. Despite the growth of OTT web dramas, TVB does not want to lose its edge on broadcast TV. It doubts its core home audience will pay for web drama. TVB resists the temptation to swim with the online-drama tide,” Lee said.

While Shaw Brothers, which owned TVB then, was pre-eminent in cinema and TV entertainment in the 1980s, TVB appears to be languishing in recent years. Lee calls it “audience aesthetic fatigue.” Due to stringent cost controls that dictate production, only specific artists can appear in prime-time slots, Lee said. Most TVB dramas feature only their contract actors.

“To cut costs to the bone, scenes, props, and costumes are recycled in episodes and across different drama programs. You’re likely to see a male lead in one drama aired at 8:30 pm, and see him again in a different drama at 9:30 pm. People suffer visual fatigue. Also, the viewers get puzzled watching the same actor switch personas in a single night. It taxes their brain; the make-believe loses its magic.”

Co-production wanes

Aware of the lucrative web drama market, TVB began collaboration with Youku in 2013. Some Hong Kong-made original drama series could be streamed to mainland audiences on Youku. The TVB creation broke viewership records on Youku, with 240 million

views. In 2016, TVB launched a strategic partnership with iQiyi. The year after, their co-production, Legal Mavericks, became the first drama series launched simultaneously on TVB and the mainland platform.

The track record for joint production is mixed. There are a handful of successful co-produced web dramas, including War and Beauty, Forensic Heroes, Beyond the

Realm of Conscience, and Line Walker, amid a ton of flops. There isn’t the buzz one would have expected, and no wild enthusiasm for more, among the parties. Officials from the mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region signed a protocol in November under the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement on trade in services. Restrictions on the import of Hong Kong-produced content into the mainland will be removed for

TV dramas and animated programs. For motion pictures, there will be no restriction on the percentage of Hong Kong creative personnel and artists, or on mainlandrelated content.

However, Lee raises concerns about censorship. That some categories of content remain unacceptable to mainland authorities deters actors and actresses on both sides from collaborating. Lee thinks co-productions featuring or martial arts, are a safer bet. Furious action substitutes for narrative or relationship content without risk of controversy.

Short video pioneers

Mainland short-video providers TikTok and Kuaishou have taken off with great success. TikTok, or Douyin, launched in 2016, allows users to create 15-second videos, soundtracked by music clips and uploaded for general viewing. TikTok was the fourth-most downloaded app in Hong Kong, according to Hootsuite. It garners 800 million monthly active users globally — even larger than China’s biggest streaming media platform, iQiyi — and was downloaded 738 million times in 2019.

“Consumers access short videos at lunch breaks, on bus or subway commuting between home and office, or on their way to meet friends. … That’s when they speed-consume several short videos for a laugh or to relax. It’s an easy way to fill fragments of free time,” said Gao of Endata.

Even iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku, the three mainland streaming giants with long-form video expertise, started shortvideo content; iQiyi intends to target third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities. It commenced its short-video content service in 2018, with new app Nadou. Vice-President Geng Danhao admitted that iQiyi was a latecomer. Tencent in December was concluding a new round of investment into short-video app Kuaishou.

What are the elements vital to retain viewer interest? Prezi’s 2018 State of Attention Report indicates a compelling narrative combined with stimulating visuals and punchy dialogue, as success factors. Nine in 10 respondents said either a strong narrative or a captivating storyline is critical to audience engagement.

Resonance of the viewers is an overriding factor for whether the film or TV drama will make it. Telling human stories is an easy path to strike a chord among all audiences.”

Chen Tak-sum, Hong Kong filmmaker

I apply the filmmaking techniques to drama creation, to make the web drama more engaging. An inherently long story can be condensed into a succinct, compact, and tightly plotted one, with strong visuals to tell the story.”

Zhang Yibai, mainland movie director

Web dramas with innovative and avant-garde themes captivate today’s viewers, as novelty always evokes curiosity. … Video-streaming platforms should trust our (directors) instincts so that we can unleash our creativity to the full.”

Zhang Qingfan, emerging director

Different business models

TV stations make money from on-air advertising and sales of air time to content providers. The longer the TV shows, the more cash for broadcasters. “A drama series on TV could have 40 to 70 episodes of 45 minutes. Such lengthy dramas have lost favor with young viewers impatient with dragged-out, dialogue-heavy stories,” said mainland film director Zhang Yibai.

Video-streaming businesses earn revenues mainly from user subscriptions, as well as advertising on the viewing traffic. So if an online drama fails to maintain the audience’s interest because of weighty dialogue or drawn-out plots, it’s a death sentence. “That’s why online dramas are shorter and more compact. For a drama series, tempo and content are the most important considerations,” Zhang said. “We don’t stretch the plots. We create what we desire. A web drama allows us more flexibility, creativity, and less restrictions than a drama for TV stations.”

Hong Kong film director and producer Chen Tak-sum concedes that a successful drama or film needs a universal theme easy to relate to, regardless of nationality or culture. His award-winning

(1994) was popular with Japanese and Taiwan audiences; it depicts the hedonistic Generation X in Lan Kwai Fong. “The pub nightlife is also an integral culture in Japan and Taiwan.” Audiences there could instantly identify with the characters, their attitudes, and the de-stressing from their day jobs.

Hong Kong audiences are really not handicapped by the lack of locally produced OTT content. The whole universe of news, documentaries, sports, movies, and TV dramas is available on their laptops and mobile phones without restrictions or censorship — for now.