Urgent Business: Hong Kong, Freedom of Expression and 1997
broadcast Cantonese-language programmes into the territory for some years now. Opposed by the Hong Kong government, as well as by TVB and ATV, the TdM transmitter is nevertheless up and running, though the signals have proved to be less penetrating than originally envisaged. It is possible, however, to receive faint TdM signals in areas of the territory's sparsely populated outlying islands closest to Macau. Areas of the New Territories are also able to receive television broadcasts from the mainland, though this spillover from Guangdong airwaves is not intentional.'
5.2.2 Radio broadcasting
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Average daily radio audiences in 1990 climbed back to just over two million, or one-third of Hong Kong's total population, having been in chronic decline through the later years of the 1980s. There are four radio broadcasting stations operating a total of 14 channels territory-wide: the radio arm of Radio Television Hong Kong, Commercial Broadcasting Co. Ltd., British Forces Broadcasting Services (BFBS) and Metropolitan Broadcasting.
RTHK radio, unlike its television counterpart, is a broadcasting station rather than simply a production unit. Run as a department of the government, its seven channels include three in Chinese, two of which are in Cantonese (RTHK 1 and 2) and one in both Cantonese and Mandarin (6), one English channel (3), one bilingual (4), one for the BBC World Service (5), and lastly one for traffic reports (7). Commercial Radio operates three channels, two in Chinese (CR 1 and 2), one in English (3). Metro Broadcasting has one channel in English (Metro News), one in Cantonese (Metro Hit) and one bilingual service (FM Select). The 12-year Metro licence was awarded in 1990 to a consortium led by satellite player Hutchison Whampoa, and was the first new licence to be granted in 31 years.
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5.2.3 RTHK corporation
A review of broadcasting in 1985 recommended that RTHK be made an independent public broadcaster, funded by government grant and run as a self-governing organization, much like the British Broadcasting Corporation. Its television unit would continue to supply programmes to the franchised stations for broadcast, and its radio arm would continue as a fully-fledged broadcaster.
7 Conversely, it is possible for areas in southern China, even north of Guangzhou (Canton), to pick up Hong Kong television signals. Though illegal, the practice is widespread, particularly in the immediate areas neighbouring the territory: efforts by the Chinese authorities to jam signals or otherwise to prevent their reception are more successful the further they are away from Hong Kong, in Guangzhou particularly. During the 1989 crackdown in Beijing, television and radio broadcasts from the territory, for a while at least, were an important source of news for fellow Cantonese across the border in China.
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Chan Kai-cheung (1990 and 1991), supra note 3, at 520 and 468 respectively. Similarly, English language and bilingual audiences have dropped from 27,000 in 1984 to a number said to be "statistically insignificant" today. The non-Chinese population in Hong Kong is about 3 per cent of the territory's 5.8 million people.)
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