The night before at the Miss Hong Kong 2012 finals, TVB came up with a new voting system, 'one vote per person', which allowed everyone in Hong Kong to vote for the winner from the top three finalists. However the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. When the last 'golden ten minutes' came around, the server suddenly crashed and the TVB judges ended up choosing the winners themselves. Everyone scolded TVB in words and in writing for their complete failure.
Yesterday the Communication Authority (CA) received a total of 447 complaints on the poor arrangement of the show, it was misleading, audience were deceived, the results were unfair and they never explained how the prizes could be redeemed. The CA expressed they take these complaints seriously; there will be further investigation on the program and based on the evidence, appropriate actions will be taken because this is an unusual situation. As for TVB, they received about 80 complaints. This time, TVB got a total of 527 complaints in one day. Looks like everyone in HK is upset!
TVB General Manager (Mr. Cheng Shin Keong), Miss HK Coordinator (Yu Wing San) and Microsoft HK's Director of Developer & Platform Evangelism (Mr. Chin Tang Chin) held a press conference yesterday to explain the issue. Mr. Cheng expressed when voting began, they discovered the computer system had an unusual flow rate. The numbers displayed were even higher than the HK total population and there is suspicion that there may have been a hacker. In the next 24 hours, TVB hired an independent company to conduct a special investigation into the issue and may even get the police involved. As for the prize (Mini Cooper), Mr. Cheng expressed there will be another vote taking place, audience will have two weeks to vote and the details will be announced in the next two days. He also stressed the 'one vote per person' system was not a tactic to boost the ratings.
TVB Deputy Director of Foreign Affairs (Mr. Tsang Sing Ming) appeared and apologized to the audience and media on behalf of TVB. He expressed they underestimated the public's eagerness: "This year, we wanted to try something new. We really did test the computer systems beforehand, but unexpectedly there was still technical difficulty and disappointed the audience. Actually, it was mentioned before if there were to be any accidents, we would let the judges do the scoring." He expressed the results are already out and there won't be another election. As to if there is someone that needs to be responsible for this incident, TVB will first have to find out the truth. Asked about the prize still hasn't been given out, is it because TVB has to explain to the Communication Authority first? He said: "Not necessary because there will be other arrangements and its still a Miss HK related problem."
Netizens vote for Miss HK again on Facebook
Also, Netizens created a special group on Facebook called "Strong Request for TBB to Explain Miss HK One Vote Per Person Website Problem", and a whole new 'one vote per person' public poll was set up. Yesterday nearly 1500 people participated in the poll and almost half of the voters (~754) picked Tracy Chu. Netizens believed Tracy Chu is the real winner voted by citizens. Jacqueline Wong came in second place and the actual Miss HK winner Carat Cheung only got 130 votes. The results decided by the TVB judges is actually the complete opposite of the Netizens' results.
Source: Oriental Daily, Mingpao
Translated by: aZnangel @ AsianEU Forum
