Karaoke (BY Bruce Lam)

Karaoke is an entertainment unit transferred from Japan in the 90s. It composes of a TV screen and a few microphones. People usually sit in a room with the above equipments and sing the songs they like. It became a mega hit among the teenagers in late 90s and until now it is still the most popular entertainment activity in Hong Kong. The reason why it became so popular is closely associated with the pop music culture in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong music industry is flooded with pop music. In the 90s when Karaoke was introduced, there were the “Four Stars” representing Hong Kong music. Nowadays, there are numerous singers, artists in the industry, to name a few of the more popular ones are Eason Chan, Joey Yung. The Hong Kong music is characterized by its themes and how the whole song rhymes along.

The theme of Karaoke music is usually related to relationships and love affairs. These songs strongly reflect how teenagers think and feel about relationships and hence teenagers like to sing these songs in Karaoke to express their feelings. This represents a lack of ability of our future leaders in expressing their opinions and emotional control. A research has shown that teenagers feel more comfortable “expressing” themselves in a Karaoke room than in a normal friends gathering.

Karaoke presents a social phenomenon that people no longer feel comfortable expressing their feelings directly, they rely on Karaoke to voice out how they feel.

This is largely due to the conservative culture that embedded in most Hong Kong people. We feel insecure around most people even our friends, therefore we establish a protective wall when meeting new friends or even less close friends. Hence the only way we could express our feelings is through karaoke. I believe we should look into this more seriously because it may turn most of our future leaders into introverts which will lose Hong Kong’s competitiveness in a long run. 

Another interesting feature about Karaoke is how the songs rhyme. If we look closer into the lyrics of each song, we would find many of the songs are very unreasonable and sometimes difficult to understand the meanings behind it. This is because they lyrics writers try so hard to make each song rhymes and they had to put in words that don’t really match the whole song.

Why do they have to write songs that rhyme? This is largely because the largest revenue sources for their songs are not CDs nowadays, but selling to these large karaoke outlets. The customers only want to sing songs that are easily remembered and sing out easily. Therefore songs were created base on these two criteria.

Karaoke is definitely one of the greatest inventions and entertainment activities for most Hong Kong people. However, I lack of variety in songs and its quality are deteriorating, it is important for the music industry to come up with better and more creative ideas in order to keep the people interested and aroused.

Game shows (Carol Yam)

Recant years, many different types of game shows appear in Hong Kong. From “Who Want to Be a Millionaire? 百萬富翁” in 2001 to “Miljoenenjacht (1) 一擲千金” in 2007, all of them are very popular. The audience rating is even more than three hundred million, the host becomes famous afterward. What makes these shows succeed? The high value prize? The tense atmosphere? The candidate’s response? No matter what, if something becomes a trend, you cannot resist to have a look on it and share with friends.

 “Who Want to Be a Millionaire? 百萬富翁” in 2001 was the beginning of leading the game shows from foreign countries. It came from Britain. The rules are randomly choosing ten candidates. At first, they need to answer a question as fast as possible; the fastest candidate can have the opportunity to win the highest prize $1,000,000. The candidate has to answer fifteen multiple choices questions. These questions are from the easy to the difficult and complicated. If the candidate answers correctly, he can get more money. Question no.5 and no.10 are the safe line. When the candidate passes the safe line, it is sure that they will not get anything but disappointed. Also, there are three function keys that help them to pass through the difficult questions. After using all the function keys, the candidate can leave the game anytime and take the money away.  

This show broadcasted in the ATV in 2001. ATV was always a loser when compare the audience rating with the TVB. But “Who Want to Be a Millionaire? 百萬富翁” broke the rule. It created a very high audience rating that ATV had never tried before, and the host Ken Chan 陳啟泰 becomes a famous star. His professional image, his humor, and his interaction between the candidates are the bonus of the show. At that time, nearly three hundred million Hong Kong people chased this show every weekday. They put themselves into it and looking forward to who will become the first millionaire winner from the show. As a result, he comes out in November, 2001.

 Starting from that time, game shows become a dispensable programme in Hong Kong. Perhaps the normal lives of Hong Kong people are too nervous. The rush hours, the working pressure make us cannot take a rest easily. Through these types of game shows, we can find a hole to have a break. We can laugh merrily or curse angrily without using our brain. Only we are watching the game shows, we can relax our atwitter nerve.