My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 880 Everyone's Romance

It's not far, just in the building next door.

As Qin Yuye followed her husband downstairs, she explained, "Of the two television stations and three radio stations in the entire Wutaishan area, only Radio Hong Kong (HK) is government-run, so the Director of Broadcasting's office is also located at HK, I remember..."

Before they could finish speaking, the two had already walked out of ATV's courtyard. There was a secretary waiting to greet them at the entrance. The secretary, with long hair, was bowing so respectfully that his face was not visible.

Wei Dong didn't look at him much. Ever since he came to the TV station as the boss, he had always put on the airs of a married man who wouldn't look at anyone else.

On the contrary, Qin Yuye chatted with him warmly for a few minutes, completely lacking the arrogance and haughtiness of a TV station boss's wife. Her cheerful and joking tone pleased Wei Dong.

Wei Dong's gaze was fixed on the scale of the radio station building with envy.

ATV's premises are not large, just a ten-story building. The courtyard is already crowded with ten new business vans. The building itself is also twenty years old. It's fine for news and information channels, but the rapidly expanding variety show studios are a bit stretched thin.

TVB is constantly building new film studios, while ATV is indeed quite lagging behind.

So Wei Dong kept thinking about how to increase the area.

HK Radio is a super-large establishment in Wutaishan, even larger than TVB, and it is divided into three different areas: the Radio Headquarters Building, the Radio Television Department, and the Radio Education Department.

In reality, several privately owned radio stations have to rent broadcasting equipment and frequencies from HK Radio.

It's roughly equivalent to the status of mainland China on TV.

Wei Dong was genuinely envious. What good is this radio station anyway? They could turn this whole area into a broadcasting building. It would be so awesome!

As it turned out, the head of the broadcasting department was a woman, and she demanded that ATV move out in an incredibly forceful manner!

The secretary sat next to the translator's wife, making Wei Dong focus all his attention on this department head: "Why? That's land owned by Asia Television itself. Who would be willing to pay how much to acquire it?"

The director's reasoning was utterly absurd: "You have deviated from the original intention of setting up ATV. The focus of this television station was to connect the world with English. Now that it has been drastically reduced to almost no English programs, what use is it to stay here?"

Qin Yuye was startled. Sitting in the chair in front of the executive desk, she couldn't help but lean forward, trying to win him over with the coquettishness of a woman in her early twenties.

Wei Dong observed the woman, who was about forty years old, and was dressed quite elegantly and fashionably.

Even though his wife was so enthusiastic about fashion that Wei Dong couldn't judge her style or price range, what he did see was the nameplate on the table, simply "Tang Anlin".

This past month or so has seen Wei Dong frequently appearing at various business events, and he has basically been living and eating at the TV station.

I'm very familiar with the layout here. Even in offices where we spend every day together, people will still formally place a triangular nameplate on the desk, sometimes with their job title.

But they are mostly in Chinese and English.

This one only used three simple words.

Given her emphasis on English, doesn't this seem unusual?

So Wei Dong calmly replied, "English? You believe that English is the key to Hong Kong's connection to the world, and not anything else?"

Director Tang, with an elegant, feminine touch, rested her chin on her hand: "For example?"

Wei Dong started counting on his fingers: "English is just a basic tool. What truly earns respect are things that are truly inspiring, such as science and technology, military affairs, art, and sports. If we only focus on English and end up producing a bunch of Hong Kong people who can speak English, what's the point? Just like how many Indians can speak English, do they get respect?"

Director Tang immediately retorted, "Is this your intention in setting up the basketball club?"

Wei Dong interpreted this as the other party representing the Hong Kong government inquiring.

So let me explain: "The information channel can be seen as the entry point, giving all Hong Kong citizens the opportunity to see the world and understand as much as possible what is happening in the world, and how ordinary citizens can adapt to and follow this era of information explosion. The variety channel is the exit point, allowing Hong Kong-style entertainment culture to be promoted and spread from the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and to cover the influence of Hong Kong culture from Japan and South Korea to Southeast Asia."

Xiangxiang added, "Once these two channels are firmly established, I hope to launch a sports channel to connect various world-class sporting events with Hong Kong, and then launch a music channel to promote Hong Kong music throughout Asia. Culture and sports should be integrated, and the future of Hong Kong lies in the flourishing of both cultural entertainment and sports."

Director Tang bluntly stated, "Is this something the mainland sent you to do?"

Qin Yuye was nervous. The transfer and sale of Asia Television's equity and assets was one thing, but the television license operating permit and other related matters still needed to be managed and approved by the Broadcasting Department.

The investment of over 200 million could be rejected at any time, and the past ten days of operation have certainly resulted in net investment. However, Wei Dong relaxed and corrected him: "The mainland, whether it is Hong Kong, Makan or the right bank, the three places are all one entity. There is no such thing as the distance and gap between the mainland and its outlying islands. Isn't Hong Kong now connected to the mainland? I am not an official sent to do this job. I am just a businessman. Asia Television was a project that Uncle De was unable to support due to physical strength and investment. I only started to think about improvements after I took over."

A woman's probing question immediately followed: "How did you figure that out?"

It's difficult for male officials to ask such aggressive questions, but women don't ask them in such a forceful way.

The main reason is that his experience with exchanges at various levels in mainland China is different, which makes Wei Dong make no attempt to hide his "foresight".

"The replacement of radio stations by television is a historical trend, because audio-visual video can naturally crush pure hearing. Is TVB so great? No, it just happened to be at the right moment of the transition from auditory to audiovisual. When the next transition comes, they will die sooner or later. Only the model of ATV can represent the future."

Just from that one sentence, Wei Dong could see the other person's pupils dilate, their eyes brighten, and he was thinking, "You can understand Mandarin, huh?"

But it wasn't until Qin Yuye translated that Director Tang spoke: "What's the next transformation?"

Wei Dong bluntly stated: "Regarding computers, I own a factory in Shanghai that produces over a million computer monitors annually, and we also provide contract manufacturing for millions of Apple computers. It's located in Pengzhen West District, just across the river from Yuen Long. I also have Asia's most advanced chip factory, which will be fully operational and ramping up production early next year. I am the expert who understands the forefront of technology the most. You can imagine when you can see all the images that can be seen on a TV on a computer. Yes, we made hundreds of millions of US dollars this year just by giving computers stereo sound. Once the complete computer is formed, this kind of communication will no longer belong to the broadcasting department. Do you realize that?"

What level of people do you deal with in mainland China?

Even though the person in front of him was only a bureau-level official in a first-tier city, Wei Dong still felt a sense of overwhelming superiority.

The female department head was able to resist with remarkable tenacity, perhaps because women's thinking is difficult to reconcile with this kind of STEM logic: "How can computers replace television and radio? They are for widespread dissemination..."

Wei Dong immediately threatened, "Don't you know that Citibank has started to embrace the internet?"

Actually, he just skimmed through it, only hearing from Lin Wangfu that there was a network card.

Then let's get straight to the point: "Every computer can be connected via telephone lines. When all the computers in the world are connected into a huge network, all information will be transmitted instantly. News from North America will be transmitted to my computer in an instant. In the future, I may even be able to watch North American TV programs, European sports events, and Japanese movies directly on my computer. All of this will be done through communication cables, not broadcast lines... Hmm, it seems like broadcast lines are one of those methods."

As a security guard at the tax compound, I inevitably had to deal with various telecommunications and television repairmen. I remember there was a time when there was indeed market competition where cable TV could also access the internet, but it quickly lost out to broadband and disappeared.

But the female director wasn't interested in the technical details of the broadcast lines and skipped over it: "You're talking about the future. Right now, your business model is already greatly affecting the normal order of this area, and you must relocate!"

Overall, Hong Kong is still quite narrow and crowded, and the city streets... really do resemble Shangzhou and Jiangzhou.

The roads are winding and meandering along the mountains and rivers. Wutai Mountain has very narrow two-lane roads. These days, the huge crowds of people queuing up to receive awards and visit the area do cause some disruption to the neighborhood.

The larger the city, the more emphasis is placed on avoiding interference with each other.

Rang Weidong immediately apologized: "This may be an oversight on our part at the beginning of our work, but our philosophy is to make the TV station more accessible to all citizens. Today we were just discussing things like pay-per-view songs. Do we really have to come all the way to the TV station to pay? So we are considering setting up a small office for the TV station in each district to disperse many of the things that are usually concentrated at the TV station to the districts."

This idea actually came from tax service halls, and it seems that cable TV service halls did exist before, but with mobile internet payments becoming mainstream, these service halls have definitely disappeared.

The other person's expression clearly changed drastically: "You're trying to steal the radio on-demand market? And you're charging for it?"

His tone was even more vicious!
That's right, because in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the mainland was still relatively poor. At most, people could only listen to the loudspeakers in villages and towns, and the transistor radios were all in the AM band, from provincial and national stations.

I have little impression of city-level FM stereo broadcasts that emphasize sound quality.

Therefore, apart from big cities, many small places have not experienced the heyday of FM stereo radio stations. Instead, many college students remember radio station requests as a part of their youth, because these radio stations, like universities, are mostly located in provincial capitals.

Shangzhou's existence was short-lived, lasting only a brief period before it was completely suppressed by cable television.

The 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s in Hong Kong were the golden age of radio stations. It was common for listeners to call in to request songs for specific individuals, express filial piety or love, and it was all basically free with little cost.

However, most areas in mainland China skipped this stage and went directly to cable TV to request songs, which made Wei Dong wonder if it was twenty or how much each song cost.

Back in the day, it was considered shameful for mothers in Shangzhou to have birthdays without their children requesting songs and displaying subtitles on TV!
So now that I see TVB doesn't offer this kind of paid song request business, how could Wai-tung let it go?

But his explanation wasn't about making money: "Ten or twenty Hong Kong dollars, a song every three to five minutes, do you think the TV station is doing this to make money? It's about publishing the names of the people who requested the song to millions of citizens. For ordinary people, this is very... very..."

He wanted to say it was awesome, but felt it would be impolite to say it to the three ladies, yet he lacked the cultural sophistication.

At this moment, the section chief's secretary spoke softly: "It's a very romantic thing."

(End of this chapter)