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HK-TVB uses a massive suspended color lighting system for popular programs in its modern studios.
RICEVIÐ IN REGISTRY No. 81
17 SEP 1970
AKKI6/2
Hong Kong's second TV station
With one eye on popular entertainment and the other
on a responsive Chinese audience, a nascent HK-TVB is now
enlarging its studio facilities to beam more color and live programs
Since its inaugural transmission from Temple Hill barely a year and a half ago, Hong Kong Television Broadcasts Limited (HK-TVB), the Colony's second television station, has pleasantly served to reshape the lives of Hong Kong's Chinese residents. Prior to TVB's debut, the majority of them were virtually bereft of television, notwithstanding the existence of Rediffusion (Hong Kong) Limited (RTV). Although RTV predates TVB by some 25 years, two factors inherent in its operations militate against its esta- blishing a meaningful and all-embracing rapport with the community at large.
The first of these is a technical hur- dle, posed by the Colony's peculiar ter- rain and contours. RTV is a closed circuit, or wired, television facility, and "pipes" its programs into the homes of
Asian Industry
its viewers. Of necessity, it is obliged to limit its subscribers to those residing in areas easily accessible to its engineer- ing and installation crews. Unfortu- nately, as Hong Kong is on the one hand mountainous and on the other marred by undulating land, RTV is forced to confine its service to the main population centers of the Colony, thus excluding large groups of people living in certain sectors of Hong Kong Island and in the New Territories on the Kowloon penin- sula. So restrictive is this obstacle that at the time of TVB's inauguration, less than 10% of the Colony's four million inhabitants could be said to be watching television regularly.
Another obstacle. The second factor that hinders RTV's popular acceptance - which contributes just as extensively
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to the station's loss of viewers as geo- graphy does is the service charge of US$4.10 a month RTV levies on its subscribers. It is a fee which many of the Colony's middle-class Chinese resid- ents, who are RTV's lifeblood, consider prohibitive. Frequently, they are far from impressed by the fare it serves rather childish game shows, a Cantonese film or two, and several poorly dubbed television serials imported either from the United Kingdom or the United States. In other words, little audibly - tinguishes the programs that appear on RTV's Cantonese channel from, sav. those which are aired with monoturous regularity over any of the Colony's radiu stations.
Consequently, it was with sometta akin to elation that HK-TVB, a relatively
May 1909
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