ROBERT CHUA HAS SPENT 38 years working in the world of television. And these days he doesn't like what he sees. The man who gave Hong Kong its all-time favourite television programme, Enjoy Yourself Tonight, is upset by what he terms 'degratainment': shows that degrade the people they feature or 'rob them of their dignity'. By that, he means shows such as The Weakest Link.
'Television is meant to inform, to entertain and to educate,' says Chua, 55. 'Those are the three basic things. If you can entertain and educate, it is a very effective medium. But now it has turned into what I call degratainment. Take The Weakest Link. It can be just nasty. It makes people look stupid on air. OK, the first series of Survivor was good. But now they have moved on to things like drinking cow's blood. We don't really need that.
'People in this industry should really speak up against the wrongs. If people are being humiliated, this is wrong. And we have to be very careful about this.'
Sitting in the boardroom of a public relations company in Causeway Bay, Chua looks every inch the executive in his smart, dark suit and designer glasses. We have met to discuss his latest project, his own game show called Everyone Wins, but it soon becomes clear he has more than one issue on his mind. He fidgets while taking me through the show's promotional tape and, once I ask his opinion of the state of Asian television today, his eyes light up. 'Yes,' he sighs. 'I have many opinions on that subject.'
One of the problems, says Chua, is that the region's television stations pick up these shows either in blind desperation based on overseas ratings or due to a lack of creativity in the development of Asian programming. 'We have very good, professional people out here,' he says. 'But I don't think there's very much creativity going on. It has now become a case where more people in Asia should be encouraged to create things that are ours, and then we can take them to the world.'
Chua has been in the vanguard of Asian television since he moved to Hong Kong from Singapore in 1967. It was then that he helped start up Television Broadcasts (TVB) which went to air with his own creation, Enjoy Yourself Tonight, that year. It was TVB's first live show and went on to become Asia's longest-running TV variety show. After overseeing programmes across three decades, Chua established China Entertainment Television (CETV) in 1994, selling his majority stake in the company to AOL Time Warner in 2000. And now Chua has devised Everyone Wins. He says it's the type of game show audiences have enjoyed ever since television broadcasting first became popular in the 1950s but with one unique difference - it is interactive, so home viewers are involved at all times. It is also totally Asian-designed, from the sets to the soundtrack.
'I have been in television for a long time and I think part of my success has been that I react to things the way an audience reacts,' says Chua. 'I love creating and making things happen. With all this game-show craze going on I thought it was a good time to go back to doing what I love best, and that's creating new shows.
