Cue Violins

Is it just me or does anyone else agree that Ricky Wong’s resignation letter was one of the most maudlin business documents ever uttered by a CEO? The head of ATV, the lesser of Hong Kong’s two terrestrial TV stations, ended his 12-day tenure yesterday for reasons that need not detain international readers. The ghastly sentiment of his written notice is something we can all get a mild jolt of amusement from, however. Instead of the typical terse two-liner favored by professionals, Wong drew up a rambling 14-paragraph valediction, which he actually released to the media. In it, he compared himself and ATV chairman Linus Cheung to devoted parents unable to agree on the best way to take care of a baby. He then went on say that both he and Leung were “inseparable, no one can keep us apart,” and added “our work ties may be over but our brotherhood continues.” After sobbing his way through references to “personal honor,” “precious lessons,” and claiming to have had ATV’s success as his “one single focus” (well, for 12 days, at any rate), Wong then made the astonishing disclosure that he had “fallen in love with ATV.” And that was all part of the problem, you see. “The one you most love,” Wong sniveled, “is not the one you will marry or the one who becomes part of your life.” Do you know, I think I was about 17 when I stopped declaiming lines like that, but here’s a 46-year-old exec, acting like a loser in a teenage melodrama. God only knows what sort of programming decisions he would have made, had he stayed in office.