Sir Run Run Shaw leaves Hong Kong television for good

When you think “media mogul”, you probably think of someone like Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch. When they started their own empires and began in the business, the world looked a lot different than it does today. No internet. No geostationary satellites.

But before CNN and NewsCorp., it was people like Sir Run Run Shaw that helped progress mass media into the thriving business that it is today. At the tender age of 101, the Hong Kong media mogul recently retired from his post as executive chairman of the broadcast group TVB. The multi-billion dollar TV empire ranks today as one of the top 5 television producers in the world, and Mr. Shaw is also the founder and chairman of Shaw Brothers Ltd.

Ambitious and daring, Run Run learned English by studying at Shanghai-based YMCAs as a kid. At the age of just 19, Run Run left school with his older brother Run Me to begin their careers in cinema. Within ten years, the two had built an empire of over 130 cinemas across the region. That wasn’t enough for Run Run, so he and his brother moved to Hong Kong to get involved in the actual production of cinema features. By 1979, Shaw Brothers Productions was the largest privately owned studio in the world, and produced at its height up to 40 films a year.

Still, TV was the real territory of conquest. Forty-two years ago, almost two decades before the founding of CNN, TVB was the first over-the-air commercial television station in Hong Kong; which at the time was still a territory of the United Kingdom (Run Run was knighted in 1977 in honor of his immense accomplishments). As a free-to-air (FTA) broadcaster, TVB was a platform for the launch of many of Hong Kong's major film and pop stars of the last half century. The network also hosts the annual Miss Hong Kong and Miss Chinese International beauty pageants. Expanding beyond China, today TVB has operations in countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and the United States, among others.

In a report by Life magazine in 1966, one journalist described a typical day for Run Run in the heyday of his studio and television career:

“[Run Run] rises each day of the week at 6 am, eats a spare breakfast of Chinese noodles and tea, does Chinese calisthenics, dresses, reads a script or two and heads for the studio in one of his Hong Kong based Rolls Royces. He arrives by 8 am, completes a tour of the working stages by 9:15, and settles in for a morning of watching rushes from the previous day's shooting, looking at competitors' movies, and reading more scripts. He lunches briefly at the bungalow, has a half hour's nap, then returns to the office until nightfall. He turns in at midnight and repeats the schedule every day except Sunday, when he comes to the studio to see a selected sampling of competitors' films (six or seven at a sitting).’

As many professionals retire to a life of pudding and Jeopardy by the age of 70, the departure of 101 year-old Sir Run Run Shaw from the entertainment business marks a life of incredible fulfillment and accomplishment; one that will live in on through the movies and audiences he’s entertained for the better part of a century.

*Perhaps the most famous film ever made by Shaw Productions, “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin”

*Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, which is the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Zhejiang, China (Run Run’s hometown).