ENG-1973 — Page 215

THE MEDIA

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subsidiaries. The Asian editions of Time, Newsweek, and almost one million copies every month of Reader's Digest are printed in Hong Kong.

Television

Hong Kong was Britain's first overseas territory to operate a television service when Rediffusion (Hong Kong) pioneered a wired television service in 1957. The company began operating on one channel which screened 28 hours of television a week to about 63,000 viewers. By 1973, the company had more than 100,000 sub- scribers with a 405-line, two-channel service, one in Chinese and the other in English.

The company's exclusive franchise to operate the service ended in April 1973. It was granted a limited extension of the franchise and terminated its service on October 31, 1973. During the year, the company became a shareholder in a new company, Rediffusion Television, which now has a franchise to operate a dual-channel wireless television service.

A second television service came into operation in November 1967, with the first wireless transmission from Television Broadcast (HKTVB). This company, which has operated under an exclusive licence during its first five years, broadcasts two wireless channels, the Jade (Chinese) and the Pearl (English). The company employs the UHF, 625-line PAL colour system with its main transmitters on Temple Hill. There are now nine auxiliary transmitters for each channel, located in various areas to give coverage to both urban and rural Hong Kong. At the end of the year, HKTVB installed an additional storey onto its large studio and office complex.

Following the recommendations of a working party on the future of broadcasting, the government invited tenders in March 1973 for the setting up of two further commercial wireless television stations to operate additional services, one to be a two-channel (English and Chinese) service, the other to be a single-channel (Chinese language) service. The successful tenderers were Rediffusion Television and Com- mercial Television respectively. Rediffusion Television, by extensive modification and additions to the existing wired service programme production unit, was able to start colour broadcasting on the Chinese service from its main transmitter on December 1, 1973, and hopes to have its full service in operation during 1974. Commercial Television is scheduled to start operations in mid-1975,

Under the Television Ordinance the licences of all television franchise holders are administered by a Television Authority assisted by the Television Advisory Board. One of the obligations of the commercial television companies is to provide air- time for government produced programmes. The majority of these programmes are produced by Radio Hong Kong's television production unit. This unit continued to expand its output during the year and now provides a regular series of productions in both English and Chinese for transmission by commercial stations. These include talks and discussion programmes and a popular Chinese drama series.

There is also a requirement under the ordinance that licensees broadcast the schools' programmes produced by the Education Department. Now in its third year the division operates from the ETV centre in Broadcast Drive. It produces 15-minute