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CALL ON MISS SPENCER BY HUTCHISON OF HONG KONG AND BBC WORLD SERVICE
Present
TELEVISION, THURSDAY 27 JUNE AT 1630
Ms Saunders Piff
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Miss Spencer
Mr Davies, Information Dept
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Lord Derwent, Hutchison
Mr Richard Li, Hutchison
Mr Chris Irwin,
Chief Executive, BBC WSTV
Miss Spencer began by saying that since the earlier meeting to advise us of the proposed Hutchison/WSTV venture we had been in
contact with Hong Kong and had been able to speak to the Governor during his present visit to London. The Governor had welcomed the prospect of a British TV service, but felt that no immediate change was possible in the present arrangements concerning Cantonese
broadcasting. However policy was under review and the position was
not immutably fixed.
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by autumn this year.
Mr Irwin said that, after weeks of negotiation, Hutchison and
WSTV had committed themselves to a framework agreement for one of
Hutchison's Asiasat channels to take WSTV news and current affairs
programmes.
There were still some details to fill in and he
would go to Hong Kong in the next few days. There was now a real prospect of WSTV being transmitted from Asiasat
stretches from the Gulf across Asia to Japan
The service would be in English initially with rights also for Mandarin, and it was hoped that Cantonese programming would be possible in future. Lord Derwent said he thought it would be an
important UK objective for British television programmes to reach
Cantonese speakers in southern China and South East Asia. He found it paradoxical that the Hong Kong Government, for essentially local
reasons, should put an obstacle in the way of this.
Miss Spencer
asked about the relative importance of Cantonese and Mandarin among the potential audience. Was it not the case that even in Guangdong
Province Mandarin was understood, and that Mandarin was the
linguafranca among most overseas Chinese? Mr Li said that while
so Mandarin was still a second language for many. There
this was
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