Television show is an essential part in Hong Kong people daily routine, we watch tv drama when we are taking public transportation and watch entertainment programs with our family together at night. Recently, Viu TV has become the new television station that can challenge the dominant status of Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB). Especially when the tv drama Ossan’s Love (HK version) launched in June 2021, it hit the highest viewership of Viu TV drama and created a vast business opportunity.
Audience as labour?
If we look at the cast and characters in Ossan’s Love, we can identify that most of them are from a Hong Kong boy group- MIRROR. The two main characters are Edan and Anson Lo while one of their members- Stanley, also participated in the drama. At first, MIRROR did not get a huge success in the entertainment industry; however, the situation had a radical change during the launching of the drama. People started to listen their musical work and thus became die-hard fans of them. Simultaneously, Viu TV would not pass up any chance to promote MIRROR, in which Edan and Anson Lo had become the brand ambassador for many luxury brands and received many work requests from different fields such as film and magazine industry. From a news video shown below, Edan and Anson Lo was filming a promotional video for GUCCI together in Tsim Sha Tsui after the release of the drama, and the video in below demonstrated how their fans were packed together like sardines in the shopping mall. The production of Ossan’s Love catalyzed the success of MIRROR, which their fans would spend much money in supporting their music works, celebrating their birthday, and even buying the endorsement products, and it thus became the revenue of them.
The public engagement
Nowadays, the tv drama would develop some gimmick points to let the audience remember the drama. Consequently, Viu TV took the references from Japanese drama which they created an “Uncle dance” for the title song of Ossan’s Love. The dance soon became the attractive point of the drama while the audience or fans can also participate in it, and the dance cover shown below is the best example showing how audience can express their love and support for the drama through the engagement process. These engagement practices can help us to rethink the question that are we still a passive audience?
The fad of this drama has also affected me somehow. Recently, I have been to Tai O in September since it was popular with their Water Lantern Festival. But the other attracting point is that some scenes of Ossan’s Love were filmed in Tai O, which made a dried seafood shop became a scenic spot. The motivation caused by the drama changed my behavior which I has filmed an Instagram story when I visited there. The transmission of television shows is not merely a single way, but the audience can also participate in it through different reactions.
Comments