14
Press, Broadcasting and Cinema
Of the various forms of public information and entertainment media in Hong Kong, broadcasting recorded the most significant progress in 1966-particularly in the field of television. Hong Kong is very far from being a newcomer to either sound or television broadcasting, possessing as it does one of the oldest of colonial broadcasting stations and the first television service to be established in any British Colony. But the comparatively recent boom in transistor_radios, together with the fact that many of these radios and even television sets are now either made or assembled in the Colony, has helped both to widen the listening and viewing audiences and to promote a greater spirit of competition among rival studios.
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In January the first franchise for transmitting wireless television programmes in Hong Kong was awarded to a locally controlled company, Television Broadcasts Limited. At a public auction which followed on 20th June, the new company was outbid by the estab- lished wired sound and television service, Rediffusion (Hong Kong) Limited, for a plot of Crown land in Lung Cheung Road, just below the Kowloon foothills. Rediffusion purchased the site for the development of a new studio centre which is expected to come into operation in 1967. Another plot in Lung Cheung Road suitable for studio development, auctioned on 25th July, went to the Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company Limited without com- petition and on the opening bid. Television Broadcasts obtained their site, also in Lung Cheung Road, at a third such auction on 29th August. Thus, in a little over two months, three rival companies on Hong Kong's lively broadcasting scene had committed them- selves to extensive development programmes.
At the same time the government's broadcasting organization, Radio Hong Kong, has produced detailed plans of a new Broad- casting House, and tenders for the construction of the studio and office complex are expected to be called in 1967. Consideration was given to a site for this complex in Lung Cheung Road, which