Past & Present

TVB History Lesson of the Month: ***After yesterday's serial name poll was put up, I received an E-mail asking if "At the Threshold of an Era" is a new series TVB will film. I realized TVB Generation is read by alot of New Generation TVB fans who are a bit rusty on history because they were too young to remember it. So with some help from Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia as a resource I wanted to devise a little lesson plan. So I hope this history lesson will help you get a better understanding & knowledge of TVB.*** At the Threshold of An Era At the Threshold of An Era was a drama series broadcast by Hong Kong's TVB Jade Channel from late 1999 to early 2000. The show was aired during a slump in TVB ratings (TVB is regularly viewed by more than 80% of Hong Kong's population). This led many to believe that this drama series was used to combat an resurgent ATV and to stave off a dramatic end to TVB's dominance of the Hong Kong TV industry. The show was billed as a millenial spectacular by TVB and some of its most popular artists of the time were drafted in to act , these included Ada Choi, Kenix Kwok, Flora Chan, Sunny Chan Kam Hung, Roger Kwok, Louis Koo, Nicky Wu, Liza Wang, Maggie Siu, Joe Ma, Josie Ho, and Gallen Lo. The series took Hong Kong by storm and was known to be one the most magnificent event that ever happen to HK television. The show was shown as if it was two separate series, partly explained by the fact that TVB needed this drama so badly , to bolster its slumping ratings , that it released the show halfway into production, leaving a break in between to allow production crews to complete the shooting of the series and all post-production work. The show eventually served to get TVB out of its ratings slump and restore its dominance over the Hong Kong TV industry. A repeat of the second part of the series in the summer of 2005 drew impressive ratings, to the shock of many, since series re-runs never normally generate decent ratings, and only serve as fillers between programmes. Desperate times call for desperate measures so TVB will once again use the same tactic in 2006. As the ratings haven't been up par in the last year. They will attempt to bring to life a 150 episode drama, "A Tale of Two Cities" and "The Changing Times", also will problaly be shown as seperate like "At the Threshold of an Era". Hopefully all of us will witness history in the making in 2006.