Jade 翡翠台 vs Pearl 明珠台

In the gymnasium, I often have the misfortune of being bombarded by multiple TV channels at the same time.  Many machines nowadays have TVs set up in front of them, and many people turn up the volume either out of habit, or because the place is no noisy.  I often have to rely on the captions to follow the broadcast. 

That experience, however, led me to discover one thing: Chinese speaking channels such as Jade are typically much shriller than English speaking channels such as Pearl, at least during the “golden hours” between 8 to 10 PM.  Jade is typically playing some Chinese soap opera.  The “actors” and “actresses” speak theatrically, actually howl rather than speak, scream, and engage in shouting matches all the time.  Pearl is often playing some program about travel and nature.  Even when it is playing serials, people speak with normal voices.

There is a dramatic difference when Pearl switches to commercials - the loudness of the sound suddenly turn up by an order of magnitude, and return to normal when the program resumes. On the other hand, there is no noticeable difference when Jade switches to commercials - it is equally loud.

It is an amazing cultural difference.  Or is it simply the crassness of Hong Kong Chinese TV broadcasting?