With Phoenix TV now landed on Hong Kong FTA television, let’s take a look at them expanding in Europe through taking over another channel back in the 1990s…
CNE (Chinese News & Entertainment Channel) was a British satellite TV channel founded by leftist Hong Kong businessman Tsui Tsin-tong in 1992. Catering for the Chinese diaspora, it time-shared with the Sky multichannels in midnights. While their programming was mixed from Putonghua CCTV news and Cantonese ATV shows (the latter perhaps because TVB had their own overseas channel), their language in continuity announcements was largely in Cantonese, as heard in this 1997 sign-on:
Aside from the satellite ident and simple backdrop, there was also some other stings and styles, as seen in this 1996 recording:
By 1997, Tsui was affected by the Asian Financial Crisis, and couldn’t secure funding for CNE. This was when former PLA officer Liu Changle’s Phoenix TV stepped in, who bought the station under liaison from Chinese authorities in August 1999.
Led by former Chinese diplomat Shao Wenguang (lit. trans.), the channel was renamed to Phoenix CNE, switched to fully Putonghua programming, and expanded to 24-hour broadcasting by 2002. This was their ident in 2001, with quite a hint of StarTV as both came from the same design agency (interestingly, Murdoch was a minority shareholder in Phoenix then):
TVB also had their own overseas channel: The Chinese Channel was founded by a Shaw family member in 1994, but was initially not directly associated with the Hong Kong broadcaster. Like CNE, it also broadcast during early hours in Cantonese, with its programmes largely sourced from TVB. This was the sign-on and their news report (plus community announcements at the end) in 1994:
TVB became TCC’s major shareholder in 1995, and renamed the channel to TVB Satellite Channel (lit. trans.) 2 years later. This channel continuity in 1997 featured pre-launch promos for the new channel (at 2:54), including one that promotes digital satellite broadcasting. You can also see how much more polished the TVB channel’s identity was going to be, compared to TCC’s:
The channel later evolved into a range of channels simulcasting with Hong Kong’s pay TV counterparts in mid-2000s, which were closed down in 2014 in favour of OTT boxsets.