Charmaine Sheh and Kenneth Ma’s “A Time of Love 2” To Be Opening Drama for myTV Super
Online video streaming has now become the premiere medium to watch television, and with Netflix’s expansion to Hong Kong, local stations are doing whatever they can to catch up to their online competitors.
Last year, TVB announced that it will launch “myTV Super,” a fee-based over-the-top service platform. MyTV Super will be directly competing against the USA-based Netflix and the China-based LeTV—Internet streaming media sites that are quickly gaining popularity in Hong Kong.
“TVB may still be the number one broadcaster for now, but that might not be the case in the long-run,” said TVB CEO, Mark Lee (李寶安). He remarked that it is now the age of the Internet, and more and more people are using mobile apps to get their daily doses of entertainment instead of watching live television. He stated that TVB must adapt to new platforms or risk being obsolete.
TVB’s MyTV Super will be launching sometime in mid-March. The monthly subscription fee is expected to be under $100 HKD.
“A Time of Love 2” to be myTV Super’s First Original Program
Starting off the service will be TVB’s short film series A Time of Love 2 <愛情來的時候2>, starring Charmaine Sheh (佘詩曼), Kenneth Ma (馬國明), Raymond Wong (黃浩然), Priscilla Wong (黃翠如), and Pakho Chau (周柏豪). A Time of Love 2 features four different short love stories; Charmaine and Kenneth’s story was filmed in Germany.
“I did my duty as an actor, so there’s no pressure,” said Kenneth when he was told that A Time of Love 2 will kickstart myTV super. “I enjoyed the filming process. Germany has beautiful people and beautiful scenery. When I watched the playback, the scene looked as beautiful as a painting.”
Asking if he had any kissing scenes with Charmaine, Kenneth said with a laugh, “The second series has many romantic love stories. There would be hugging, but no kissing!”
Also expected to be shown on myTV Super soon are TVB dramas No Reserve <巾幗梟雄之諜血長天>, Rogue Emperor <流氓皇帝>, Come With Me <性在有情>, Watch Out Boss <波士早晨>, The Last Healer in Forbidden City <末代御醫>, the Mainland Chinese drama The Legend of Miyue <羋月傳>, and the South Korean drama Saimdang, the Herstory <師任堂>.
This article is written by Addy for JayneStars.com.
Ah ha ! So the series rumored to be frozen are not!!! woo! This is great! cant wait !!! <3 2016 gonna be amazing !
Given where tvb is at right now, so many people slate their dramas, do they really think people are going to pay for that service? and it’s mainly young people that are on their phones, not the older generation, who actually still watches tv.
Yea the “internet age” started at least a decade ago. You’re way behind TVB lol. I wouldn’t pay monthly for this because of thwir declined and declining drama quality. I did look forward to those dama that were supposedly too “low quality” to air, I won’t pay for them; Ive6been burn so many times where I really loke the cast and then wham illogical and shotty performances. So no thank you.
Side note: now if HKTV (RIP) would’ve done a pay service, take my money! Lol.
I wonder for those overseas who pay cable for HK channels will get this free or discounted. It’s shotty if they don’t. Also, will they have other series and movies produced by them, e.g. the true classic ones, or just specific ones.
Another side note: Charm and Kenneth segment was my least favorite one. I even prefer Katie over them, which is rare lol.
@jjwong “I wonder for those overseas who pay cable for HK channels will get this free or discounted. It’s shotty if they don’t. Also, will they have other series and movies produced by them, e.g. the true classic ones, or just specific ones.”
Most likely the answer is yes. As it is, the TVB channels that we have access to here in the U.S. are different from what they get for free in HK. I’m ok with paying for cable subscription here since we not only get all the new stuff at the same time as HK audiences do, we also get access to a lot of the older programs plus content that usually only airs on TVB’s pay channels in HK. And this still baffles me, but the customer service from TVB USA is actually pretty good (in contrast to the service in HK, lol) – I’ve interacted with them directly a number of times over the years and so far the experiences have been positive.
I had actually read that myTV Super will also be replacing GOTV (which I was bummed about, since I was waiting for TVB to roll out GOTV to overseas audiences, which they had said on their website that they were planning on doing in the future). GOTV was definitely worth subscribing too, as it was TVB’s official repository of all their TV series and TV-movies ever produced, from the 1970s to current (once they got everything uploaded that is). Based on what’s been reported, doesn’t look like they will be updating GOTV’s content anymore after its ‘merge’ with myTV Super.
I guess we’ll have to wait until the service launches in March to see whether it’s truly worth subscribing to or not. So far, from what I’ve read about the service, the only part that interests me is the plan to include ‘classic’ programs on the roster – flagship programs such as E.Y.T. (miss that show so much!) and majority of TVB’s variety programs from the 80s/90s. Most of today’s audiences haven’t seen those programs (which are definitely worth watching – TVB’s variety programs back in those days were just as good if not better than some of their series back then) and the ones that have watched on the Internet most likely watched an incomplete version. With that said though, who knows when TVB is going to upload those programs…they might wait a long time like they did with GOTV and then do away with it altogether….
P.S.: I would absolutely pay for HKTV’s content too! In fact, I would donate money to keep them up and running if I could (if HKTV had gone the “crowdfunding” route like shameless ATV did, I’m sure they would’ve gotten so much support!). Ah well…back to re-watching “The Menu” (which HKTV is almost done uploading to Youtube) for like the third time, lol!
I highly doubt that putting a TVB online subscription would really do much for their finances. Within a few days, whatever they’re airing would be put online.
2016 is a great year for all people who wants to watch Cantonese programs. Finally, there is some real competition.
2 more TV broadcasting companies, so more TV programs to choose from (travel shows, food tv shows, reality programs, etc). Unfortunately, not much news from these 2 companies about creating new Cantonese TV-series, so I guess in the beginning they are more focused on creating variety programs (costs of these programs are much lower than the costs of making a TV-series). Hopefully, they are also going overseas with their channels very soon.
Most likely, these 2 TV broadcasting companies are going to air Cantonese dubbed foreign TV drama’s from South-Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China.
I wonder if a lot of people are really subscribing to the new pay service from TVB, because people tend to love “free stuff”. It all depends on the pricing of the new pay service.
@mtt84 It’s true that people in general like “free stuff” – especially in HK and China where you would be hard-pressed to find people who are willing to pay for stuff unless it’s forced and they have no other option or the content is desirable enough that they would be willing to fork out the money. I think the recent expansion of Netflix into HK is a good example of this. When Netflix launched a few weeks ago, Hong Kongers were willing to subscribe despite the selection being extremely limited because those subscribers were able to use VPN to access content outside of the region, so they could still watch the series they wanted to watch (plus the price was decent). But when Netflix found out, they cut off the ability to do that and now Hong Kongers are cancelling their subscriptions left and right. Sure, Netflix has ‘promised’ to make more content available later on and they even have plans to collaborate with local production companies to make HK based content, but that’s probably not going to happen for a long time…
If TVB is hoping for this subscription-based thing to be successful, their content will need to be appealing enough for Hong Kongers to want to “sign up” and also stay subscribed…and yes, it will mostly be the younger generation who are already familiar with how to use the technology (which also unfortunately is NOT TVB`s main audience pool). I honestly don’t see that happening given the poor quality of TVB’s programming in recent years, especially if they plan on putting those same shows/series on this new platform.…