HICK 30611
14 HO.
$1
Information Depr
in
To incorporate in
25 June
5Brush Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London W1A 1AA
IK OF
REGISTRY from the Chairman, George Howard
Achon Taken
12A
briefing for
Er Ps
PS//afs po/in Ridley P3/PUS "Si' { Youle My Donard
16th June 1981′
Pl. consider whether brief needed
My dear Peran. Jur Govers call a Sos
23 Jane D
I thought you might like to have something on paper before the discussions we are to have next week about the Hong Kong relay station, amongst other things.
There are substantial audiences for our broadcasts in North China, including Peking, but their audibility is never very good and can be very poor. Voice of America, Russian and other services come in much more strongly than the BBC. This is not surprising considering their location and signal strength compared to that of ours at Singapore.
When I was in China last month I was told by Chinese officials from various departments that they would like the BBC's services to be more audible in both Chinese and in English. The degree of approval ranged from there being "no objection to increased audibility" to a positive welcome; comparisons were made with the strength of the signal emanating from Voice of America, the Chinese putting it that they would prefer the BBC to be 'on top' rather than the reverse, while a former London correspondent of XIN HUA, the Chinese News Services, said that he would like his journalists to hear the BBC programmes more clearly so that they could learn how to write stories. It was useful to have cleared this particular ground before going to Hong Kong itself.
There are two possible sites, both of which I inspected. The Governor has asked me to write to him about them, so that he can consult his Executive Council: this I am doing, and will send you a copy of the letter.
LON GOD-Lehms FED HKEP PUSD Finance Office
RungL
17/20
See 114
ILB
I understand that there may be some technical objections from certain other services for which you are responsible, as our transmissions would be of greater strength than any others which at present emanate from Hong Kong, but I believe that our engineers will be able to ensure that there are no real problems on this score.
The stumbling block is, of course, the question of how the new transmitter is to be paid for. My discussions in Hong Kong, however, led me to believe that the Hong Kong
17
-1-