I really didn’t want to be a warm man when I was reborn

By November, after the wages and bonuses for that month were paid on time, the employees' hearts were completely settled.

Zhou Ziyu laid off another group of employees who were dawdling and working in secret, and once again deployed a group of people brought from the mainland. After initially taking control of the situation, he began to carry out reforms and promulgated a series of reform measures.

To put it simply, it means to increase revenue and reduce expenditure, and even to be stingy when it comes to reducing expenditure.

Many people have a misunderstanding that the income of TVB artists is very low. The income of a veteran TVB artist is not even as good as that of actors outside the third-tier mainland.

Why can't TVB be more generous and give artists more wages?

In fact, this salary really cannot be increased easily.

Not to mention TVB, which has more than 4,000 employees, ATV, which currently only has more than 700 employees, spends more than 10 million (HK dollars) on salary for one month.

Add a little more salary and expenses will skyrocket.

After Zhou Ziyu joined ATV, she really realized what it means to be a family member and not know how expensive food and rice are.

Staff salary expenses are 14 to 5 million Hong Kong dollars a month, which is nearly 200 million Hong Kong dollars a year. In addition, holding large-scale events is also very expensive, as well as the operating expenses of the TV station.

It’s no wonder that ATV suffered losses of HK$340 million and HK$378 million in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

In order to revive ATV, Zhou Ziyu brought 1 billion Hong Kong dollars this time.

But Li Zhe's money didn't come from strong winds, and he couldn't always throw it into this quagmire.

Zhou Tzuyu's first step in cutting back on costs was to stop all large-scale events, including next year's Miss Asia pageant.

Miss Asia is no longer as popular as it was back then, and its influence is getting worse every year. There is no need to waste money just to keep up appearances.

Then she completely cut off the TV series and variety show production departments. From now on, the TV station will only produce ordinary programs. TV series and variety shows will be co-produced with Quku Entertainment and no longer independently produce TV series and variety shows.

Since 2007, ATV has begun to reduce the filming of new dramas, or even stopped production completely.

The main reason is that the investment and return are not proportional. It costs tens of millions to invest in a TV series, but the advertisements cannot be sold for less than 1 million, and the copyright cannot be sold at a high price. It often takes three or four years for a TV series to recover the cost.

The market on Hong Kong Island is too small, and it is difficult to recover the cost of a large investment. The only way is to cooperate with the mainland to jointly produce and share the investment.

In order to minimize personnel expenses, Zhou Ziyu is even planning to lay off a group of old employees with mediocre abilities, recruit people from the mainland to replace them, and find more interns to come to Hong Kong for internships.

At this time, the wage gap between the mainland and Hong Kong Island was still relatively large. For employees with the same ability, the salary in Hong Kong Island was three to four times higher than that in the mainland.

Even doubling the wages of those coming to work in Hong Kong would be much more cost-effective, as long as the food and accommodation problems are solved for them.

Mainlanders need a visa to work in Hong Kong, but it is not difficult to obtain a visa as long as they are hired by an employer.

In addition, ATV has more than 100 artists left.

This number is only one-tenth of what it was in its heyday, and they are still not well-known. The famous ones have long since changed jobs and ran away.

Even Asian sisters Wan Qiwen and Chen Wei switched jobs to TVB in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

As for these artists, Zhou Ziyu is not ready to support them in vain. Now that the TV station has no filming, he will let Zhang Wenjun arrange for them to travel north to the mainland to film.

The TV station here in Hong Kong implements a "salary package system", and artists are also working as workers, or even worse than working as workers.

A typical contracted artist only costs about 10,000 Hong Kong dollars a month, which is only 7,000 to 8,000 yuan when converted into RMB. It is very competitive to go to the mainland to film.

In mainland China, the salaries of celebrities have skyrocketed in recent years, and the salaries of ordinary actors have also risen. Even an 18th-tier actor can earn hundreds of thousands a year.

In comparison, these artists in Hong Kong are really "high quality and cheap".

Besides, by organizing these artists to go north to film, the company can get some share, which not only saves expenses, but also generates income.

It can be said that in order to reduce expenses, Zhou Ziyu went to extreme lengths.

In the eyes of ATV employees and artists, she has also changed from the generous Ms. Zhou to the second best Ms. Fang.

(Fang Yihua, the former head of TVB and Sir Shao’s confidante, is famous for his frugality and stinginess, and is nicknamed Iron Abacus.)

What they didn't know was that Zhou Ziyu really knew Miss Fang's life in detail, and even regarded her as a learning object.

However, just reducing expenditure is not enough. What is more important is open source.

As long as the income cannot be improved, no matter how much expenditure is reduced, it will not really get rid of the predicament.

In order to increase her income as soon as possible, Zhou Ziyu flew back to Shanghai to advertise for Quwan Technology, Quku Entertainment, CIEL Clothing, Pinxixi, Quxin... everywhere.

Relying on the relationship with Li Zhe, he won more than a dozen advertising orders. Although the unit price was not high, the total price was several million.

Promoting new movies for Quku Entertainment, advertising CIEL clothing, promoting Quxin on Hong Kong Island, etc.

The biggest deal was to promote Pin Xixi on Hong Kong Island.

With the backing of Penguin Company and Qudong Group, Pin Xixi is extremely wealthy and advertises everywhere, but there happens to be no promotion on Hong Kong Island.

Zhou Ziyu also reached a strategic partnership with Quku Entertainment and purchased a batch of second-hand shooting equipment at a low price.

ATV's equipment is still in the era of video recorders. It's too expensive to buy new equipment, so I bought a batch of obsolete second-hand goods to use first.

The suspension of the Miss Asia beauty pageant, the large-scale layoff of old employees, and the reuse of mainland teams have made many old ATV employees and artists dissatisfied with Zhou Tzuyu, and the outside media has also been very skeptical and criticized.

But the results of the reform soon became apparent.

In November, we still lost 10 million to 20 million, and by December, the loss dropped to less than 10 million.

After adjustments and reforms were made to the program, ratings began to continue to rise.

Among the old dramas bought at low prices from Quku Entertainment, some of them had pretty good ratings after they were aired.

In particular, "Dream of the Three Kingdoms" (the Three Kingdoms version of "Palace") was an unexpected hit, with the highest ratings reaching 28 points, beating TVB in the same period.

This is the first time in recent years that ATV has surpassed TVB in ratings.

Zhou Ziyu personally presided over the revision of news programs, and the relaunched Mandarin news performed well in ratings.

Several new programs, such as "Movie Broadcast", the livelihood program "ATV Close", and the newly revised "Weather Report", have received good responses. The ratings are not very high, but they are stable.

There is also the variety show "Please Give Me a Meal Show" which was launched in January (2014).

This star-making meal show was co-produced by Quku Entertainment's production team sent to Hong Kong and ATV. After it was broadcast, its reputation and ratings both exploded.

In fact, before Zhou Ziyu came to Hong Kong Island, Li Zhe gave her a reference plan for ATV reform.

This plan was written by combining his own experience and convening the efforts of everyone.

There are many popular programs in later generations, such as "Chinese Restaurant", "Where Are We Going, Dad", "Longing for Life", "Idol Producer", "Produce 101" and so on.

But Zhou Tzuyu only tried some low-investment programs in the early stage.

"Please Give Me a Meal Show" is the only one with a relatively large investment, and has invited several popular celebrity guests from Hong Kong and Mainland China.

She has lived in Hong Kong Island for more than a year and has long been aware of the huge differences in cultural concepts between Hong Kong Island and the mainland.

Programs that are popular on the mainland may not be popular on Hong Kong Island.

Just like TV dramas, mainland costume dramas, especially dramas, are very popular here on Hong Kong Island, but modern fashion dramas are easily acclimated.

Therefore, large investment in variety shows must be cautious and cautious, and must be combined with the actual situation of Hong Kong Island.