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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
Hong Kong television in 1958 included Marian Anderson, Mark Robson, Lewis Gilbert, Sylvia Syms, Anna Russell, Rafer Johnson, Stanley Matthews, Leo Levitt, Herb Elliott, Blaise Calame, Shirley Evans, Jan Carter, Shirley Simons, Eddy Ray Kirk, Ken Littlewood and others.
More than 97% of the television staff are locally-trained Chinese.
The rental fee for this service is $55 per month, with receiving unit and all maintenance supplied. For those subscribers who own their own television sets, adapted to receive Rediffusion pro- grammes, the monthly rental is $20.
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COMM
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COMMERCIAL BROADCASTING
On 20th December 1957, the Government announced acceptance of a tender for the operation of a new commercial broadcasting station. It will be recalled that, following a debate on a Sessional Paper "The Future of Broadcasting in Hong Kong' in the Legisla- tive Council in 1956, the Government had decided to establish a commercial broadcasting station, since its activities might reason- ably be expected to lead to an enhanced revenue from licence fees which would help to bridge the gap between Government expenditure and revenue on Radio Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company, Ltd., which will operate the new station, was formed during the year and is expected to receive its broadcasting licence and go on the air during the latter half of 1959.
FILM INDUSTRY
The Hong Kong film industry continued during 1958 to maintain its high rate of output of films in Chinese. There are eight major producing studios, as well as a large number of small production companies that rent studio space as they require it. Two hundred and forty locally-produced feature films were submitted to the Panel of Film Censors which has to approve all films before exhibition; about a fifth of them had sound-tracks in Mandarin and the rest in Cantonese. Films in other Chinese dialects are rare. Hong Kong companies are known to have financed a number of films produced in part overseas-in Taiwan, Singapore and Japan.
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