Responding to reporters' questions about the disappointing rating of a recent television drama series, the producer at Television Broadcasts, or TVB, blamed viewers for falling behind the times.

If that is the case, life would be really easy for TVB. All it needs to do is to stick to the old formula, which worked so well in the past to establish it as the predominant player not only in Hong Kong but also in the region.

The problem is that time has changed and so has the taste of viewers, which seems to have eluded TVB. The popularity of its programs, mainly the drama series that once commanded a large following of loyal viewers, has waned in recent years, as reflected in the rating charts.

TVB, of course, is not the only service provider in Hong Kong to be confounded and confused by the constantly evolving and ever shifting consumer trends influenced by the sometimes tumultuous developments on the social, economic and political fronts. Indeed, vendors of a range of goods and services are searching, mostly in vain, for the right theme to drive home their messages.

Widely admired for its past success, TVB has served as the most trusted reference of consumer taste. Anyone who wants to know what Hong Kong people were like during the roaring 1980s would need only to watch a few TVB's drama series produced during that time. A person who had lived through that period would immediate identify with the characters in those dramas. He would know immediately that under the circumstances portrayed, he would have acted and talked just like the script, though not necessarily in as dramatic a manner.

Some programs produced by the government-owned Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), that are rerun in one of the station's channels now, falls in the same genre. One of those drama series is about the life of a typical grassroots family of four living in a housing estate. Watching them now would make even a foreigner who has just stepped foot in Hong Kong understand what real "localism" is like.

In one episode in the RTHK series, the father of the family lends his support to a male candidate in a district council election while the mother favors a woman candidate, who is also her friend. The family feud involved sexism during a time when it was beginning to become a public issue. The story ends with reconciliation when the father eventually recognizes that he values domestic bliss over his personal bias.

TVB's past success was largely attributed to the huge efforts it spent on market research. It was known that the station regularly sent out teams of researchers to the low-cost housing estates as well as middle-class residential complexes to test reactions to the station's programs and find out latest consumer trends.

The information obtained from these exhaustive studies was shared by management, producers and script writers and incorporated into the station's programs. Such efforts had not gone unnoticed by the viewers, whose support had enabled TVB to beat out all challengers which had one by one fallen by the wayside.

Entertainment industry experts have been saying that TVB is facing a different kind of challenge now. To be sure, more young viewers are watching their favorite programs on the phones rather than in front of the television sets. But at the end of the day, it is the contents that count, not the delivery channels. TVB and other program providers in Hong Kong have established multiple channels to reach potential viewers.

What seems ironic is that TVB's staple drama series are facing their stiffest challenge not from other local producers but from the South Korean productions that have zero local context. It would be stupid for TVB to even try to compete with the South Korean studios which, as it is well-known, are supported by the state. What is more, they are producing for a much bigger domestic market than Hong Kong's.

What TVB can do is to go back to its roots to produce programs that potential viewers can relate to, or address issues that they are concerned about. There is really no other way it can prevent viewers from flocking to big-budget programs from South Korea and the Chinese mainland.

The problem is not that viewers have fallen behind the times. It's the other way round.

The author is a veteran current affairs commentator.

(HK Edition 05/23/2016 page10)