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and unjustified invasion of rights of property and contract to
which the Crown itself is a party.
No one of us could understand why it was necessary
for our Government to adopt such a position. We were left to
conclude that external and extraneous influence and pressure
had been applied, although, of course, we are in no position
to have any positive evidence of such.
In
It has always been understood by Government and
ourselves that any future television broadcasting would have to
be in Band V. Our Company was allocated the whole of Band IV
in order to carry out coverage laid down by the Ordinance.
1965 we warned that there was a danger of ourselves overcrowding
Band IV to achieve maximum or full coverage and the Government
at that time had assured us that they would consider releasing
part of Band V to our Company if experience clearly showed this
to be essential. After very careful planning and good
engineering, we have just managed after five years of solid
work to achieve in Band IV what Government has admitted to be
almost complete coverage.
In July 1972, I was requested to attend a conference
with the Acting Colonial Secretary at which time I placed on
record our Company's strongest objections to the intended
proposals of Government and urged that since it was clear that
Band V could accommodate the second and third stations, there
should be no disturbance of Band IV frequencies upon which we
have built our audience literally from scratch.
I further urged that a transmission propagation
expert from BBC should be invited to come to Hong Kong for the
requisite time to make careful studies and offered to place my
Company's field tests and actual experience in broadcasting at