control of the broadcasting station was shifted from the Postmaster General to the Public Relations Officer, and in the same month the studios, offices and control rooms of Radio Hong Kong were moved from their old and quite inadequate premises in Gloucester Building to new specially designed quarters occupying the whole of the 6th and 7th floors of Messrs. Cable & Wireless Ltd.'s Far Eastern head office, Electra House, completed in 1950.
The equipment of the new studios was largely provided by a grant of £20,826 from Colonial Development and Welfare funds, and Radio Hong Kong in its new home is now one of the most up-to-date broad- casting units in the Far East. The lay-out of the studios and control rooms, designed to B.B.C. specifications, follows the pattern of the B.B.C. continuity system and the greatest care has been taken to combine proper accoustical insulation with air-conditioning facilities. Situated in the centre of the station and occupying both floors is a miniature concert hall with a seating capacity of 150, and grouped around this are the studios and control rooms, the English language continuity suite on one floor and the Chinese language studios on the other. The main administrative offices of the station are on the upper floor and below these are the central control room, the engineers' workshops and offices and a small recording studio equipped for recording on discs, tape or wire.
The walls, floor and ceiling of the concert hall float on rubber and the hall is thus completely insulated from the main frame of the building.
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Transmissions are made from two medium wave stations, ZBW (845 k/cs) which is an English-language station with regular weekly programmes in French and Portuguese, and ZEK (640 k/cs) from which broadcasts are made in Cantonese, Mandarin and the Swatow dialect. Shortwave transmissions radiate from a third station, ZBW3, on a frequency of 9.525 megacycles. The programmes of ZBW3 are regularly heard in Japan and Australia, in Europe and on the American
continent.
Radio Hong Kong is staffed by a small team of Government-paid employees, responsible for programme building and selection, who are aided in announcing and other duties by a corps of enthusiastic amateur broadcasters. Technical operation is entirely professional, being handled throughout by Messrs. Cable & Wireless Ltd. whose engineers man the studio control rooms and the transmitters situated at Hung Hom, Kowloon.
In December ZBW and ZEK hours of broadcasting were extended to include early morning broadcasts, and the two stations now have three daily periods on the air, at breakfast time, lunch time and from 6
p.m. until
until 11.30 p.m.
The times of the morning and lunch hour
III