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broadcaster. Such persons are disqualified from exercising control' of a television licensee company unless approved by the Governor in Council at the time of the application for a licence. Any subsequent increase in the control exercised by a disqualified person, or the introduction of a disqualified person to exercise control of the company, has to be approved by the Governor in Council. 'Disqualified person' includes:
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(a) an advertising agent;
(b)
(c)
(d)
a company which supplies material for broadcasting by a licensee;
a company transmit s
which is a licensee or which sound or television material
whether in or outside of Hong Kong; and
a
person who exercises control of a company specified in (b) & (c) above. 'Exercise control of a company' is defined as holding beneficially more than 15% of the vot ing shares or holding office in that company.
In order to maintain consistency with the conditions applied to television licensees, some members of the BA considered that no disqualified person should, except with the permission of the Governor in Council, be allowed to exercise control of the licensee company. Other members, however, were not in favour of introducing such a restriction. The current radio licence does not cont ain any provision regarding disqualified persons. The Administration has considered whether a set of modified and less stringent criteria might be formulated for radio, such as setting the percent age at which a disqualified person is, say, deemed to be exercising control of a television station at 30% (instead of 15%). However, we came to the conclusion that there are no strong grounds to introduce such a provision now.
It is not likely that any undue influence would be brought to bear through this medium by 'media barons' given the competing role played by the future 7 channels of the public radio broadcaster and in view of the less pervasive influence of radio generally as compared with television. To subject radio broadcast ing to such a regime simply for the sake of achieving
sake of achieving consistency with television policy would be unreasonable given the different nature of the two media. The Administration does not recommend the inclusion of a 'disqualified person' clause in respect of the radio
licence.
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Non-local' ownership
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As regards 'non-local' ownership also, there is less
need for the same degree commercial radio licensee
of
as
control to be imposed on a on the wireless television
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