TVB's profit plummeted by 40% in the first half of the year bet on new media business to save itself.

before ATV was wound up and delisted, and then viuTV was in hot pursuit, the benchmarking position of TVB was in jeopardy. In order to cope with the changes in the new environment, TVB carried out drastic reforms, introducing mainland capital and cooperating with mainland Internet companies. At the same time, it also created new Hong Kong dramas and made up for variety shows at home, and did not hesitate to invest a lot of money to build OTT platform myTVSUPER and social platform BigBigchannel. Although the radio and television business is still the main source of income for TVB, the new media business has become a new engine for TVB's performance growth. Can TVB, which has been filming online dramas, doing live broadcasts and socializing for 50 years, save itself by getting younger?

strong > performance has fallen to a freezing point. How can TVB save itself? / strong >

in recent years, the persistent downturn of Hong Kong's TVB has become a clich é topic. For traditional television media that rely on advertising, TVB's advertising revenue continues to decline due to Hong Kong's weak economy, especially the downturn in the retail and consumer goods industries, which are major advertisers.

judging from TVB's 2016 results, the net profit of TVB belonging to listed companies dropped from 1.331 billion Hong Kong dollars in 2015 to 500 million Hong Kong dollars, a drop of 60%. A broadcast of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro made TVB lose 150 million yuan, while the new business myTV SUPER led to an increase in operating costs, which made the already declining TVB even worse. You know, as early as ten years ago, the half-year net profit of Hong Kong TVB has reached 497 million Hong Kong dollars.

in the first half of 2017, TVB still showed no sign of stopping its decline. Its net profit was only HK $170 million, down 44% from the same period last year. TVB attributed the decline in performance in part to the pending share buyback plan, and the company needed to set aside 4.209 billion yuan to prepare for repurchase and failed to make proper use of it to earn high interest rates.

although the overall profit was lower than expected, the Hong Kong economy recovered slightly in the first half of 2017, with GDP growing by 4%, which means that the advertising industry is good, and the television broadcasting industry, which depends on advertising revenue, is also picking up. TVB's radio and television business accounts for 65 per cent of the total business, with a net growth of 9 per cent in revenue from advertising and film and television production.

however, it is worth noting that this year coincides with the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, and a large part of the increase in advertising is due to advertising by the government and semi-official organizations. Therefore, judging from the development of various businesses of TVB, the development and growth of the local radio and television business, which depends on its survival, is still weak, and the radio and television business is closely related to the economic environment of Hong Kong, so it is impossible for TVB to reverse the decline in advertising revenue in the short term. TVB urgently needs to find the next profit growth point.

the overseas business that TVB once pinned its hopes on-- including Chinese markets such as Singapore and Malaysia, and overseas markets such as the United States, Canada and Australia, but the overseas paid viewing model has been hit by illegal OTT set-top boxes and other pirated joint sales. The actual effect is not good. Overseas business revenue continued to decline after 2012, and overseas market revenue fell by 11% in the first half of 2017. As a result, TVB stopped the traditional pay TV services in Europe and Australia and developed a new media TVBAnywhere platform instead.