For better or worse, TVB has been the preponderant influence in Hong Kong's popular culture. Since it made its first broadcast in 1967, virtually every major singer and movie star began their career at the TV station.
Even today, few aspiring stars have much hope of making it if they do not have the good graces of the city's dominant free-to-air station.
Early Canto-pop music - a mixture of western pop, rock and Mandarin songs from the 1940s and 1950s - might not have been invented at the station. But it would not have achieved the predominant music form it has become had such pioneering songwriters as Sam Hui Koon-kit, James Wong Jim and Joseph Koo Ka-fai not been heavily promoted by TVB. They, in turn, became legends in the local entertainment industry.
And for at least three decades, TVB's Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant was one of the city's most important social events of the year, attended by the great, the good and the wealthiest of local society.
'I started my broadcasting career in Hong Kong with TVB and witnessed its heyday,' said Robert Chua Wah-peng, probably the city's most senior broadcaster and creator of TVB's legendary live variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight (EYT).
'I have therefore witnessed its cultural decline. Its stars used to be socially responsible, regardless of their private lives. Today, the programmes are hard to watch and the stars go in front of the camera and behave rudely and set a bad example for young people.'