Chapter 141: The Tide of the Times (Part 2)

In mid-November, Su Yun returned to Hong Kong from Shanghai.

Due to dubbing work in the later stage, she spent her 13th birthday in Shanghai. On October 1, National Day, she celebrated with local people for a whole day holding small red flags, and received countless compliments for choosing a good birthday date.

After returning to Hong Kong, Su Yun was coaxed by Grandma Su and the Mei sisters to hold a small birthday party. The four of them had a lively home-cooked meal. Su Yun, who could only eat various kinds of sashimi and sushi when eating out, was hardly moved to the point of crying.

However, compared to Su Yun's simple birthday, which was celebrated by everyone and filled with memories of home-cooked meals, Zhao Rifu's 70th birthday in Hong Kong attracted a lot of attention and envy: on November 19, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an order to knight Zhao Rifu, making him the first person in Hong Kong's entertainment industry to be honored with the title of "Sir".

Su Yun did not feel dissatisfied when she heard the news: although she and the Zhao family have been rivals in recent years, one should look at things objectively rather than personally. Zhao Rifu has indeed made great contributions to Hong Kong's entertainment industry and mainland education throughout his life, and this honor is definitely a reward he deserves.

Compared to Su Yun who sighed and then returned to São Paulo to cancel her leave and make up for her misfortune, Liying and Jiayi, who were in contrast to TBB, became upset because of Zhao Rifu's conferment of the title.

In recent years, Zhao Films has been squeezed hard by Jiahe and various emerging film companies, so Zhao Rifu followed Fang Mona's suggestion and gradually shifted his work focus to television dramas - this has brought quite a stir to the television industry, which had been able to maintain a superficial calm.

Now, taking advantage of the joy of Zhao Rifu being conferred the title, TBB has released news about a number of new works with big investments, which has attracted a lot of attention.

The cake is only so big, if one company eats more, other companies will have less to eat accordingly. Old brands like Li Ying, Hong Kong's first TV station, have been pressured to the point of being unable to breathe, not to mention the emerging Jia Yi.

Ultimately, it was Zhao Rifu who had a good strategic vision at the time. He realized that free TV was the future development trend of TV stations. When the old TV station, Li Ying, was still a pay TV station that required ordinary Hong Kong citizens to pay high prices to watch its programs, he took the initiative to apply for the operating rights of a free TV station.

In the days when watching TV programs was still a luxury entertainment for the masses, TBB successfully attracted a large number of family viewers with the slogan of "completely free, new 625 scanning line technology guarantees better picture quality", making watching TV a form of entertainment that quickly spread to thousands of households, and even creating a craze for buying TV sets in the entire Hong Kong region.

However, the top management of Li Ying TV did not take this emerging free TV station seriously at that time, and still maintained the outdated 400 scanning lines and high fees. As a result, a large number of viewers switched to TBB, which did not require payment and had clearer images.

Finally, during the six years from 1967 to 1973, TBB was the only free TV station in Hong Kong.

In the past six years, the habit of watching movies among family audiences has been ingrained into their bones.

By the time Liying belatedly transformed into a free TV station, the outcome was already decided.

However, most of the bad news came one after another. In the same year, Hong Kong’s third free TV station, “Jia Yi”, officially started broadcasting.

However, in order to obtain the free television management rights, Jiayi also rolled a lot of knots: what Lai Ying obtained was the management rights of the "Chinese and English TV Station" consistent with TBB, which allowed it to open a Chinese Hong Kong Station and an English International Station to compete with TBB's Chinese and English stations Jade Channel and Pearl Channel; Jiayi only obtained the management rights of the "Chinese TV Station", which allowed it to operate only one Chinese station and set aside two hours of prime time every night to broadcast educational programs.

Not to mention that Jiayi was squeezed by two big bosses and had only one Chinese channel which was equivalent to half a TV station, making it difficult to share the production costs; moreover, the golden time occupied by the two-hour educational program every night had become one of Jiayi's Achilles' heel.

The most outrageous thing is that these almost harsh licensing conditions were proposed by Jiayi and his people...

Faced with such self-involution, Su Yun was stunned. After reading the information and asking relevant people, she realized that it was because they wanted to refer to the educational television system in the UK and create a new type of commercial educational television station.

Su Yun also went to see Jiayi's educational program, which occupies the two-hour prime time from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. from Monday to Friday and from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m.: It can be seen that they are very ambitious. These educational programs are directly co-organized with two formal departments, the Extramural Continuing Education Department of Hong Kong Chinese University and the Christian Vocational Training School.

Most of the courses in this educational program are adult education courses, ranging from auto repair to accounting to foreign languages ​​to painting and flower arranging, etc. There are also extracurricular tutoring and corresponding examinations. If you pass the examination, you can also obtain the corresponding diploma. In the future, it is like a large-scale distance education company.

However, distance education like this is fine in the future when compulsory education has been basically universalized, but in Hong Kong, where the average knowledge level is low and people can become white-collar workers after graduating from high school, the two Japanese TV stations, Asahi TV and Tepco TV, which would have almost gone bankrupt if they had not given up their educational functions in time and transformed into comprehensive TV stations, are probably its future direction.

Even in such a situation where the income and expenditure could not be balanced, Jiayi still vigorously promoted that their TV station would spare no effort to produce high-quality TV series with big investment and big production.

It is obvious that Jiayi's boss is suitable to be the ideal art businessman who loves to generate electricity in the future, rather than the current commercial boss who does all kinds of things just to maintain the operation of the TV station.

Lamenting Jiayi's inevitable fate of bringing about his own death at an early age, Su Yun took advantage of his spare time to visit relatives and friends.

During this period, Lu Shaolong's recovery was very good. Master's wife Lian Da said that if nothing unexpected happened, he should be able to stand up with the help of crutches during this year's Lunar New Year. Upon hearing this news, Su Yun was sincerely happy for her master.

"What about you? I heard that you went back there recently?" It is not difficult to find out what Su Yun has done in Shanghai if you are interested.

"Yes, since I've already become 'red', I might as well make my stance clear - my movies can't be shown here anyway, so I might as well contribute to the cultural cause of my motherland." Su Yun answered honestly.

"Then you have to pay special attention." Lu Shaolong warned.

"Don't worry, I will prepare for the entrance exam to an American university next year. Computer science and engineering..." Su Yun blinked, "Is it suitable for me?"

Thinking of the gorgeous and fantastic seven-story pagoda that Su Yun had shown him before, and how Su Yun had successfully carved out a place in Hollywood with the help of movie special effects, Lu Shaolong sighed with mixed feelings.

He was sincerely happy for his little apprentice's talent, but he was also worried about her unyielding character.

"Anyway, you'd better be careful. I feel like there's been a lot of commotion in the circle recently." Lu Shaolong warned again.

In the film industry, Xu Gujie and his brothers seem to have plans to set up a satellite company affiliated with Jiahe and break away from complete control; and in the television industry, TBB, Liying and Jiayi are competing fiercely to poach each other's talents. Su Yun tried to switch to the television industry in Japan. If she makes some achievements in the future, maybe someone who dares to do it for the sake of profit will invite her to join.

Whether it is TBB, Liying or Jiayi, the status of the bigwigs behind them is enough to negotiate with the people in Taiwan. When the storm is over, they will be able to resolve the meaningless ban for Su Yun.

"They are very busy and probably won't pay attention to a small shrimp like me." Su Yun joked with a smile.

"If you call me Xiao Xia Mi, then what should I call me?" Xu Gujie, who came in, also followed suit.

"Grandfather!" Su Yun happily went over and hugged Xu Gujie and Lin Bao, the godfather and godmother, and then said with a smile, "I was originally planning to visit you later, but I didn't expect you to come here first."

"Your adoptive mother heard your voice next door and was worried about you, so she insisted that I come with you so that you wouldn't have to go there again." Xu Gujie explained.

"Thank you, godmother!" Su Yun called out sweetly. Lin Bao was very happy to hear that. She touched her head and said that she had grown a lot taller and bigger.

After a round of greetings, Xu Gujie also raised the question that Lu Shaolong had asked before: "I heard that you plan to put the movie back there?"

Su Yun nodded.

"Then you must be careful and take good care of yourself." Compared to Lu Shaolong, who has retired from the film industry in recent years, Xu Gujie, who has been working hard in the film industry with his brothers, is more aware of the recent developments in the film industry.

After that movement, several left-leaning film companies in China, in addition to sending their own films back to the mainland for screening, also extended invitations to other film companies in Hong Kong.

Who doesn't want to make money? However, due to the situation in Taiwan, many film companies simply sent the old films that were piled up in their warehouses over there.

So far, Su Yun has "foolishly" sent back all her movies, from "The Perfect Match" which was shown in Hong Kong to her last movie "Perfect Match" which was not shown in Hong Kong, as well as "The Thousand Faces Girl" which has not been broadcast in Japan. Not only have they all been packed up and taken to Shanghai, she also rushed to a film translation studio to join in the dubbing work.

I don’t know how many people are laughing at her for being stupid: As for the market over there in mainland China, I hope that Su Yun’s efforts to please others can earn her a box office revenue that is a little higher than the shipping and production costs, so that she won’t suffer losses and cry, right?

Before the earth-shaking changes brought about by the rolling tide of the times, no one would have believed that one box office miracle after another would be born.