Our junior reporters gained a rare peek at how news and entertainment is made for a global audience at one of Hong Kong's most popular television channels
Demographics
Phoenix TV was founded in 1996. It's a cable TV channel, offered in many places around the world. Although it's based in Hong Kong, Phoenix TV mainly produces news, current affairs and entertainment programmes in Putonghua to serve viewers on the mainland, in Taiwan as well as Chinese people living overseas.
The TV channel also offers sports coverage, reality shows, television series and films. It is now broadcast in more than 150 countries on five continents.
Tayyab Shahzada
Interior Design
Phoenix TV's headquarters, in Tai Po, were originally the Hong Kong offices of the US mobile phone and electronics manufacturer Motorola.
To create more space for a studio, the original structure of the complex had to be changed.
The interior design of the building is simple but modern. Different departments are marked with their own distinct colour.
For example, the news section has a red background, whereas the movie and Phoenix Weekly offices are decorated in yellow.
The large, open spaces allow employees to work in a comfortable environment.
We saw piles of magazines lying on the floor around some of the employees' desks.
That added a sense of hectic clutter to this comfy office: Phoenix TV is a media company, after all.
Elaine Leung, Cheng Wai-kuen
Sneak-peek at live broadcast studio
You can get a good view of the live broadcast area from the balcony on the second floor.
Peeping through the top-down glass, we saw a couple of clover-leaf-shaped open offices. There sat the show's producers and editors, their fingers tapping on keyboards while their eyes were fixed to a TV screen hung above their heads.
The main news anchor's desk - situated on a turntable - was at the far end of the room.
For hourly news updates and breaking news, a broadcaster can use another smaller desk on the side. All the equipment is already in place, so it doesn't require much time to set up a broadcast.
Leona Chen
Tour with a news anchor
Selina Li has been a news anchor at Phoenix TV for nine years. She showed us around the premises. During the tour, she told us an interesting story: "In the beginning, the 24-hour news channel did not have enough Putonghua-speaking news anchors.
"So I had a very tight schedule, but I gained lot of experience from it."
Most of the channel's news anchors are native Putonghua speakers from Taiwan and the mainland.
They are well-supported by an experienced team of Hong Kong producers and editors.
Janet Tam
If you'd like to be part of the junior reporters' club, send your name, age, school and contact number to [email protected] now. Put "application for jun rep" in the subject bar.