ARTICLE 19 and The Hong Kong Journalists Association
5.2 BROADCASTING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
5.2.1 Television
The territory's most popular media form, television, had reached 98 per cent of households by 1989, with a remarkable daily average viewership of 98 per cent of the population in 1990.3 Television broadcast franchises are presently held by just two licensees, TVB and ATV, both of which are required to operate two channels, one of which by law must be in English. With a mere 3 per cent of the population watching only English television, and a massive 87 per cent viewing only Chinese television, this "colonial imperative", as it has been called, means the latter group is in a sense "grossly underserved", and the former disproportionately privileged. A bilingual 8-9 per cent of the population watches both channels.5
There has been a slow but unmistakable decline in overall television viewership of local stations. Since the early 1980s TVB has seen an almost 30 per cent decline in its prime-time audience, with viewers on average watching half the hours of television they were watching during the mid-1980s. With the emergence of satellite and pay television, the existing broadcasting stations, especially ATV, could be said to be facing a crisis of no uncertain proportions, with expenditures rising, and advertising revenues and audiences both falling.
In addition to the two broadcasting stations, the television unit of the government-run Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) uses the transmission services of TVB and ATV to air 12 hours of "public affairs television programmes" each week." According to policy guidelines for RTHK, the programmes are meant to "provide a channel of communication between the government and the public in order to promote civic responsibility and identity", as well as to "educate, entertain and inform". Broadcasters are required by law under the Television Ordinance to provide airtime to RTHK. The amount of airtime is specified in the station licences, both of which were renewed for a further 12 years in November 1988.
Two other television broadcasting features may also be mentioned. Teledifusao de Macau (TdM), the radio-television broadcasting service in the Portuguese-administered territory of Macau, 60 kilometres across the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong, has been threatening to
3 Chan Kai-cheung, "The Media and Telecommunications", in The Other Hong Kong Report (1990 and 1991), (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press).
4
Id. (1990), at 508-9.
The 8-9 per cent is measured on a daily average viewing basis and is not meant to be an accurate assessment of bilingualism per se.
6
"Communications and the media", Hong Kong 1990, Government Information Services, 285. An average of 580 programme hours are broadcast by each television station each week.
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