Run Run Shaw to Retire as Hong Kong TVB Chairman at Age 104

Shaw will step down Dec. 31 and be replaced by Executive Deputy Chairman Norman Leung, who will become chairman Jan. 1, the company known as TVB said in a filing yesterday.

TVB accounted for more than 80 percent of Hong Kong’s free- to-air television market by advertising sales in 2009, according to consultant Media Partners Asia. It is one of the world’s biggest producers of Chinese-language programming, distributing shows in more than 40 countries, according to its website.

Shaw, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1977, was also a producer behind the 1982 hit movie Blade Runner. He set up Hong Kong’s dominant free-to-air broadcaster in 1967 after a filmmaking career that started in Shanghai in the 1920s. Chow Yun-fat, Andy Lau and Stephen Chow all acted in dramas produced by TVB before going on to movie stardom.