46. During the summer season Hong Kong was threatened by nine typhoons. It was necessary to man the studios on a 24 hour basis on three occasions during the passage of typhoons Freda, Lucy and Rose.
TELEVISION SERVICE
47. Since the Controller of Television was seconded from the B.B.C., his main tasks have been to advise on policy, equipment and staffing, and a major installation programme at Broadcasting House, to recruit staff and train them and finally to make a start on producing pro- grammes.
48. In response to press advertisements for staff over 3,200 applications were received. Although recruiting and equipping are not yet complete, RHK Television is already functioning. It will, however, be some time before it reaches its full potential in terms of programme output.
49. RHKTV's installation at Broadcasting House consists of one 3-camera monochrome studio, a telecine complex, video tape facilities, film editing and film processing. The main production team consists of 2 Programme Supervisors, 4 Producers and 4 Programme Assistants. In all there is a Government establishment of around 40 including film cameramen, editors, film technicians, designers, stage crews and admin- istrative and clerical staff. Cable and Wireless Limited provides the engineering personnel, which include vision-mixers and studio
cameramen.
50. RHKTV's programmes are transmitted by the licensed commercial television companies and are intended to be complementary to the programmes produced by the companies themselves. In general terms programmes deal with public affairs and are designed to convey messages and ideas of public importance and items of information relating to government activities in an objective manner.
51. While recruiting and equipping was going on, the policy was to produce as many programmes as possible using the available equipment and staff. When RHKTV consisted only of a film unit and a handful of staff with no electronic television equipment whatsoever, a number of short films were produced in Chinese and shown by RTV and HK-TVB at the average transmission rate of two per channel per day. There have also been some English films. Something in the order of 1,500 film advertisement had already been transmitted before the first electronic programme had been recorded.
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