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Friday, March 12, 2010

Stephen Chan (陈志云) Arrested By ICAC

Updates: It seems that the first hand news I got from 98.8 FM is not that accurate. The latest from The Standard is that Stephen Chan is milking money from TVB and TVB's artists by setting up a shell outsourcing company. Since he's the GM, the artists can't helped but to do job for the shell company for free or very little pay. The shell company will then collect the money from clients on the artists' behalf, pocketing all the money or most of it.

The shell company also get money for doing production work for TVB in a few of it big shows such as the Jade Singers Celebrate TVB Anniversary in October. Each shows the shell company pocketed hundred of thousands of dollars without even doing any real production work because the production is again outsourced to another real production company with a lower price of course.

This sound so much like the Little Napoleans and cronies in our BN government. Get a contract through connection using a shell company with a very high price and outsourced it out in a very low price to a real company that is doing the real job. I guess this kind of people is everywhere and not only in Malaysia huh. LOL.

Previously written:

I heard from 98.8 FM last evening that Stephen Chan (陳志雲) the General Manager of Broadcasting of Hong Kong TVB was arrested by ICAC (equivalent to our MACC but I think ICAC is much better) on a suspicion that him and 2 other top management of HKTVB bribed the officers in Hong Kong Broadcasting Department so that no new license on free to air TV will be given out to new comers. Well, he’s innocent until proven guilty but I doubt that ICAC will make the arrest without a strong evidence to build a strong case against them.

The bosses of the big four recording company must be laughing right now because Stephen Chan has been the bottle neck of the royalties issue between HKTVB and the big four. The issue started late last year and was never resolved. Both parties stand on firm ground. HKTVB even get to the stage to cut all appearance of all the singers from the big four recording companies. Singers like Kay Tse, Eason Chan, Hacken Lee, and those that come under the big four were boycott by HKTVB, refusing to give interview or any air time to the singers. Only EEG’s artists and TVB’s own artist were seen on TVB’s channels for the last couple of months.

So with Stephen Chan’s position been suspended by the Board of Director of HKTVB, will this royalties issue resolved? Actually this boycott is kind of a blessing for the other broadcasting stations in Hong Kong like Cable TV and HKATV, which previously all singers were exclusives under HKTVB and cannot appear on any other TV stations in Hong Kong. But this is not good for the singers. For example, after Kay Tse appears on Cable TV’s game show, HKTVB cut all her husband’s shows in TVB, flexing their monopoly muscle. So to keep the monopoly, the General Manager and top management has to resort to bribing to prevent any competition? And they say Hong Kong is a free market. LOL. I guess there won't be anymore 志云饭局 in the future.

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