17
Press, Broadcasting and Cinema
WHILE many cities bewail the contraction of newspaper ownership to one or two groups, or even a monopoly, Hong Kong supports no less than 46 daily newspapers and another 26 published once or twice a week. This allows for an astonishing range of political expression, intellectual content, editorial style, and ownership.
While some papers are owned by substantial and well established groups there is always the opportunity in Hong Kong for an ambi- tious journalist to set up on his own. Not only is it possible to start a newspaper on a relatively small capital but the legal for- malities are few and simple. Newspapers published in the Colony must be registered with the Secretary for Chinese Affairs at an annual fee of $100. In addition a surety of $10,000 must be deposited although suitable guarantees of this sum are accepted. This accounts not only for some of the variety but also for a small but constant change on the newspaper scene as small ventures fall by the way and others appear to take their place.
The casualties during 1964 have included two of the three new papers which attempted to combine the English and Chinese lan- guages on the same page. Only one of these novel enterprises has survived. However, several other newspapers have been started and the total number of dailies, despite these changes, is only one less than a year ago.
The most striking changes have been in the circulations rather than the number of separate publications. Accurate circulation figures are hard to come by since by no means all newspapers publish audited figures. However the total newspaper circulation of morning and evening newspapers appears now to be in excess of 900,000 copies a day. This figure represents a sizeable increase on previous figures, even allowing for underestimating in earlier years and must be attributed to the growing population and, of course, the steadily rising educational standards. One morning newspaper established only two years ago has established a steady