ENG-1954 — Page 264

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1954

Chinese New Year. In the last few weeks of the year, Chinese programme staff were out almost every day gathering recordings for a new weekly radio magazine "We are Living Below Victoria Peak", in which listeners have heard, among other things, how to make snake soup and a report on an incident in the last Colony civil defence exercise. The Chinese section also marked Sir Winston Churchill's 80th birthday with a feature programme and produced many other full length features on subjects ranging from the Royal Observatory to the Macau Grand Prix. Commentaries. on the latter were relayed live into the English pro- gramme from Radio Vila Verde in Macau.

The increase in the number and complexity of programmes produced entailed full use being made of all studio and recording facilities. Over five hundred programme. items were recorded; there were over three hundred outside broadcasts, sixty plays and features and eighty recitals and concerts. Owing to difficulties arising in the relay of Chinese opera from theatres in Hong Kong, the Chinese section had to provide an additional twelve hours of live programmes per week.

Cooperation with other radio organizations was maintained and much help in the provision of pro- gramme material and transcriptions was given by the British Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcast- ing Commission, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio Nederland. Station KIRO in Seattle pro- duced a half hour feature for Radio Hong Kong on the Washington Trade Fair in which the Hong Kong delegation participated. Radio Hong Kong produced several despatches for the BBC's Radio Newsreel, contributed to the BBC Welsh Region and Light Pro-

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