COMMUNICATIONS AND THE MEDIA
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recommendations of the committee, issued 34 warnings to the two television stations and imposed two fines.
Television
Television viewing continued to be Hong Kong's prime leisure activity in 1989, with more than 97 per cent of households owning one television set or more. Forty per cent of them also owned a video cassette recorder. Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) and Asia Television Limited (ATV), each of which broadcasts one Chinese and one English- language service, transmitted an average of 580 hours of programming per week, an increase of about 29 per cent compared with 1988.
Commercial Broadcasters
It was a year of major growth and development for the television industry. Following the renewal of the licences of both television stations (TVB and ATV) for a period of 12 years up to December 2000, competition in programming as well as for human resources was very keen. New programme schedules were frequently introduced to test the market. There was also an increase in the production of programmes which would be attractive to both the local audience and overseas markets, in the form of video productions made in Cantonese. During the year, television productions in general became more diverse and sophisticated with increased technical proficiency.
Serialised dramas were still popular and remained the staple fare on the Chinese services, family soap operas and police stories being the favourites. Other genres like situation comedies, one-off dramas, costume sword-plays and docu-dramas were also well received by viewers.
Feature films, telemovies and chat-shows related to the entertainment world also enjoyed growing popularity. Late night magazine programmes catering for a more mature audience continued to gain viewership.
The year saw an increase in the production of locally-made current affairs programmes and information programmes with a strong local interest. These programmes were welcomed by viewers and constituted some of the most heavily-watched television programmes.
An area of tremendous expansion was in the use of satellite feeds to provide live coverage of major regional and international events. One station introduced a nightly six-hour magazine programme live via satellite on its English language service. This programme, beginning shortly after midnight, covered American and international news and current affairs.
Light entertainment and sport continued to provide periodic highlights in the regular programme schedules, with variety and music specials, game shows, beauty pageants, talent contests and live coverage of international sports events.
Improvements in television transmission coverage continued to be made. Two new transposer stations were completed, bringing the total number in Hong Kong to 21. Current plans are for additional transposer stations to be built at a rate of two each year until all areas in Hong Kong with a population of 2 000 within a radius of three kilometres can receive satisfactory television signals. To standardise and improve the quality of the transmission signals, separate antennae systems were replaced by combined broad-band antenna systems in 10 out of the 21 existing transposer stations. The ultimate aim is to replace the existing separate antennae systems in the remaining transposer stations with combined broad-band antenna systems.