The city’s communications watchdog has received 51 complaints about a television show which featured a whirlwind romance between an elderly Hong Kong man and a younger mainland Chinese woman.
The Office of the Communications Authority said on Thursday that as of June 17, it had received 51 complaints from viewers about TVB show Scoop over its coverage of the couple.
“Complaints include feedback on how the programme’s plot was indecent and had poor values and about its content being unsuitable for children [and being] biased and misleading,” the authority said in a statement.
The watchdog added it would handle the complaints according to procedure.
As of June 20, the authority received a total of 134 complaints this year regarding Scoop, with the coverage on the Ho couple making up over a third of the number.
The current affairs programme, which airs on TVB’s Jade Channel every weekday evening, is known for addressing issues and disputes based on tip-offs from the public.
The couple, a 76-year-old Hong Kong man, surnamed Ho, and a 43-year-old divorcee from across the border who wed about a month after meeting, attracted the attention of authorities after family bickering over the relationship and their financial affairs hit the headlines.
They first appeared on the show after the marriage of the elderly Ho to the younger woman upset his children.
The programme revealed some of the luxury gifts Mr Ho gave Mrs Ho as a sign of his love, including a Rolex watch and diamond ring said to have cost a total of more than HK$200,000 (US$25,612).
The show also quoted Mr Ho saying that a HK$4.5 million joint account held by him and his daughter had been emptied by her when she learned she had a stepmother.
The investigation into the couple was launched as the Housing Department mounted a crackdown on cheats who lied about income and assets to get a public flat.
Rosanna Law Shuk-pui, the director of housing, said earlier this month it would be “inappropriate” not to look into the high-profile pair’s finances on suspicion of surpassing the assets threshold for a public flat, and possible ownership of property in mainland China.
Law said that Mr Ho was not a registered tenant of the flat and should not be living there.
She added Mrs Ho was the tenant, but had only recently moved into the flat, so had not been included in the asset declaration drive which started in April.