One of the key free-to-air stations in Hong Kong bowed out in the last few weeks. Sadly, the once great ATV had started with a bang but went out on a whimper…
2016 saw the end of Hong Kong’s longest running free-to-air tv station, ATV. The channel – which began life as Redifussion TV – had endured its ups and downs over the years, with rival network TVB stealing the stars and the ratings, but after a brief resurgence in the mid-late 90s the channel had been struggling. The last few years saw it barely limping along with controversy surrounding its daily operations… as programming issues and unpaid staff problems became public knowledge. The channel was to have wound down in April when its license expired, but after the last few months, where daily broadcast became an issue, the network was finally wound down in early March 2016 and went off the air for the last time just before midnight on April 1st 2016.
Over the years it had been responsible for some classic tv series including Donnie Yen’s well received Kung Fu Master and First of Fury series, the insane but enjoyable Young Bruce Lee show with David Wu (Tiger Cage 2) as the Little Dragon and Shaw Brothers’ legend Lau Kar-leung as his father (see Bruce Lee battle absolutely everyone in Hong Kong and North America, including a jump kicking Klu Klux Klan fighter in the form of Mike Miller from Knock Off)… 4 seasons of The Blood Sword with Kenny Ho (The Red Wolf) as A Man Called Hero (the series was adapted from the same comic books which formed the basis of Andrew Lau’s later film adaptation and the final series of which saw Jeff Falcon and Lo Lieh entering the fray… 70’s superkicker Bruce Liang, Chan Wai-man and many other kung fu legends worked on series for the network.
The network also adapted the Mr Vampire saga into a tv series with Lam Ching-ying reprising his most famous role as the Chinese Van Helsing, and the highly successful Date with a Vampire series (which saw Simon Yam gettting to play his take on Nosferatu and lasted three highly popular series).
Many of the best series have been acquired by Fox Asia for both syndicated repeats and potential remakes and we’d love to see more of the series get some kind of international release either on tv or DVD/Bluray. We’d also love to see someone take the time to dig through the ATV archive for some of the news and documentaries they produced which covered many major events in HK in both the real world and the entertainment industry. There are also some of the master-tapes they have of various Hong Kong movies dating back to to the 1950s which may otherwise be lost for ever….but perhaps with the potential remakes in the works, the spirit of ATV may live on…
