Next Saturday (January 16th) is TVB's "JSG Top Ten Award Ceremony." Because the royalty issue cannot be solved in a short amount of time, singers under HKRIA like Eason Chan, Hacken Lee, Kay Tse, Hins Cheung, and Fiona Sit decided to stay absent. TVB won't compromise and they now prohibts MVs of singers under HKRIA to be played in other TV channels.
It's known TVB allows MVs that are independently filmed by the singer, but because of financial crisis last year, they need to earn money in other ways. If he/she needs to promote his/her song in TVB, he/she must let TVB to film the MV, but his/her record company has to pay the fees.
Since TVB has no other major competitors, record companies have no choice but to accept. The four major record companies (Universal, Warner, Sony Music, and EMI) initially planned to let other electronic media channels to play their MVs, but TVB heard and reminded record companies that in the contract, it clearly stated MVs can only be played in TVB; their MVs cannot be played in other TV channels, otherwise TVB will take necessary actions. This caused singers under those four record companies to hold on to MV filming temporarily.
Singers like Hins Cheung, MR, Hacken Lee, and Jason Chan lost their opportunities to promote their concerts and new albums in TVB and in other TV stations. TVB's JSG song chart is dominated by singers from EEG and East Asia, making them big winners in this conflict.
[Mingpao]
