TVB enters the live broadcast with goods, and the development of Hong Kong entertainment can turn from cool to hot?

（IC photo/ 图）

Recently, Hong Kong TVB and Taobao cooperated for the first live broadcast to bring goods, anchors including TVB senior artists Chen Hao and Chen Minzhi, which lasted for 6 hours of business hours, and finally handed over the first delivery report card of 23.5 million yuan.

A week ago, TVB announced a partnership with Taobao to collaborate on more than 48 live broadcasts this year, a move that is expected to bring tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars in revenue — which also sent TVB's parent company TV Broadcast's share price soaring for days, the biggest increase in recent years.

However, TVB's move has also caused some controversy, and some people wonder why the former "Asia's strongest film and television label" also entered the live broadcast and how is it related to the development status of TVB? Can live streaming e-commerce become a new growth point for TVB and reverse its decline in development?

Turnover declined, and development was in trouble

Although some people question that TVB's entry into live streaming is "not doing business", in fact, entering live streaming is precisely the "main business" that TVB has relied on and is good at in the past - TV business - there is a crisis.

For more than 40 years since the birth of TVB in 1967, TVB and ATV have been the only two public television stations in Hong Kong, and TVB has surpassed ATV in the competition and has been in a dominant position for a long time.

At that time, TVB's magic weapon was a large number of excellent self-made content, with hundreds of hours of self-made content every year, and more than 80% of the dramas broadcast on its own TV stations all year round were self-made, and only about 20% were purchased dramas. With the huge radiation and influence of TVB dramas in Asia, TVB's performance is thriving. Most of its revenue comes from TV commercials - dramas are well-run, ratings are high, and its position in Hong Kong is absolutely monopolized, as long as merchants run TV commercials, they will basically choose TVB.

TVB's financial report clearly shows the process of TVB's once growing growth. In 2000, TVB's annual turnover reached HK$3.49 billion, and its net profit reached HK$774 million; then its turnover showed an overall upward trend, with turnover exceeding HK$4 billion in 2005 and net profit exceeding double digits to HK$1.187 billion; in 2011, TVB's turnover exceeded HK$5 billion; 2013 was TVB's heyday, with a record turnover of HK$5.686 billion and profit reaching a record HK$1.738 billion.

After the peak, TVB entered a stage of decline. In 2014, the company's turnover and profit both declined, and the decline accelerated thereafter.

The profit in 2016 fell to HK$500 million, in 2018 it began to fall into a loss, in 2019 the turnover fell to the range of HK$3 billion to HK$4 billion, and in 2020 the turnover has fallen to HK$2.72 billion - this annual revenue is already lower than 20 years ago. The loss further intensified in 2021, reaching HK$647 million.

TVB's main business has encountered difficulties, which are affected by multiple factors.

For example, the decline in the influence of TVB dramas in turn affected the investment of dramas, which further aggravated the decline in the influence of TVB dramas, once forming a vicious circle. Another example is the launch of ViuTV, another public TV station in Hong Kong in 2016, which quickly grabbed young viewers and took away a lot of TVB's viewership share and advertisers...

TVB has been actively boosting content production over the years, such as increasing cooperation with mainland video websites and TV platforms, experimenting with more diverse themes and styles, testing short dramas, etc., showing signs of continuous improvement.

It is worth noting that the downward trend of the economy, the limited advertising business in the Hong Kong single market, the competition of international streaming media to seize audience time, and the competition of other TV stations are also reminding TVB that it must not only have TV as its main business, but also expand diversified revenue models.

（IC photo / 图）

The e-commerce business is picking up and the potential is gradually emerging

TVB is targeting the e-commerce business. In 2018, TVB launched the online shopping platform Big Big Shop, which was not paid much attention to at that time, mainly used to help merchants do publicity and promotion, and the revenue was also very limited. For example, in 2020, TVB's financial report showed that e-commerce business accounted for only 1% of TVB's annual revenue that year. Also in 2020, HKTVmall, another platform specializing in shopping in Hong Kong, surpassed TVB in terms of market value, promoting TVB's entry into e-commerce.

In 2021, TVB partnered with Shaw Brothers to acquire a 75% stake in the parent company of Ztore and Neigbuy, two other online shopping platforms in Hong Kong, for a total of 200 million yuan. In 2022, Big Big Shop's business will be integrated into Shiduo and Neighborhood Buy, and TVB will also set up a special e-commerce business group to be operated by professionals.

The incoming e-commerce has indeed brought highlights to TVB's financial reports. In 2021, e-commerce business accounted for 8% of TVB's total revenue for the whole year, and by the first half of 2022, e-commerce business accounted for 25% of TVB's total revenue in the first half of the year.

At the same time, the proportion of TV business in TVB's total revenue fell to 33% from 44% in the same period of 2021; In addition to these two revenue heads, in the first half of 2022, TVB's other major revenue was OTT streaming platforms (including video sites including Tuitui) accounting for 9%, Chinese mainland business accounting for 22%, and international business accounting for 11%.

Whether it is a streaming platform, Chinese mainland business or international business, it is an extension of TVB's main business, and their current growth space is relatively limited. E-commerce business is indeed a rapid growth point of TVB business, and in 2020, 2021 and the first half of 2022, the proportion increased from 1% to 8% and then to 25%, which can be described as rapid growth.

The development space of e-commerce business is not limited to Hong Kong, but can also enter the mainland market through live streaming. This also leads to the in-depth cooperation between TVB and Taobao in live streaming as mentioned in the opening news. This cooperation initiative has also driven TVB's stock price to soar, and its potential is optimistic about the capital market.

（IC photo / 图）

Feelings work, feelings alone are not enough

One of the obvious advantages of TVB's entry into mainland live streaming is "feelings" - many mainland viewers grew up watching TVB dramas, were deeply influenced by TVB dramas, and had filters for many TVB actors.

This time, TVB became a hit by live broadcast on Taobao, relying on emotional points. For example, Chen Hao and Chen Minzhi both introduced products in Cantonese, and suddenly had the feeling of watching Hong Kong dramas. And when the two actors were live broadcasting, they also threw out the famous lines from the TVB classic drama "Heart Storm" from time to time, and the two echoed, making many netizens who watched the live broadcast sigh "memory kill".

In other words, even if the live broadcast brings thousands of goods, TVB's live broadcast is the only "Hong Kong drama-style live broadcast" with no other branches. TVB has many classic works, and there are many senior actors with appeal, and in the remaining more than forty live broadcasts, it can bring waves of memory killings and create topics again and again.

Previously, many artists cross-border live broadcast brought goods, only to read advertisements stiffly, but made netizens feel disillusioned. Judging from the professionalism of TVB artists, netizens are not too worried about this, and Chen Hao and Chen Minzhi's first performance is already very good.

It's just that feelings in live streaming are effective, such as creating topics and creating traffic, but feelings alone are not enough. Prior to this cooperation with Taobao, TVB opened three accounts on other short video platforms last year.

These accounts mainly rely on amateur live broadcasts, TVB stars are more recording short videos to call, from the third-party data, this time the test was not successful. On the one hand, the emotional card has not been played, on the other hand, there are big problems in quality control, such as some beauty products seem to be cheap, but whether they are genuine has been widely questioned.

The key to the success or failure of live streaming goods lies first of all in quality control - it must ensure reliable quality and perfect and considerate after-sales service. Of course, good quality also has to have low prices, to ensure that the whole network is lower prices, but also to have a reliable supply chain, not only to ensure the stability of supply, but also to have a relatively large say in the negotiation, for consumers to get a more favorable price.

Therefore, for TVB, launching the first shot of live streaming is only the first step, in order to really go solid and long-term, we must return to the essence of live streaming goods - beautiful things, and the price must be competitive with other merchants. It remains to be seen whether TVB can truly form its own IP in the live streaming industry and reverse the company's decline in development in one fell swoop.

Chen Zifei