NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
W(B)L 51-7406
CONFIDENTIAL
1
Copyright Issue:
24. The Hong Kong Government consider
it undesirable in principle that RTV
should be allowed to sell the product
of a competitor (TVB) without the
latter's consent. If, under existing
arrangements, RTV could make use of
individual items in TVB programmes sand-
wiched between its own advertising
matter, there would be no doubt about
the undesirability of the present
position:
it would clearly not be in
the public interest to allow a television
company to collect advertising revenue
without the corresponding obligation
to provide and finance programmes.
But in fact RTV has stated (and the
Hong Kong Government can, under the terms
of the licence, require that TVB's
programme will be relayed contemporaneously (in fact RTV. have stated that the programme will be relayer
and/in its entirety without abridgement
Zin
or other alteration (i.e. including
advertising matter). This is a service
that RTV's parent company performs in
relation to ITA programmes in the UK,
making its profits from bringing these
(and BBC) programmes into the homes of
the public in a relatively trouble free
Although RTV is a competitor
fashion.
of TVB, offering on another channel
an alternative programme of its own
from which it derives advertising
revenue, etc., it could be expected to make maximum use of the opportunity to relay TVB ●n a second channel. On the face of it, therefore, one would expect TVB to welcome a service that