@llt tttßponùwt December 1985
The duel that never was THE Club forum billed as the duel of the year between the local broadcasting giants and two authors of the Broadcasting
Review Board (BRB) held
on
27
(RTHK) into an independent station, BRB chairman Justice Power and Director of Broadcasting Stuart Wilkinson failed to put up a powerful case.
November turned out to be something of a
damp squib. The panelists did not come out fighting with the exception of Tele-
-
vision Broadcasts' controller of public relations and international affairs, Paul Wong, who went on offensive from the start.
Their defence was undermined by the
startling proposal
of
forcing the two
Chinese channels to hand over one hour of prime viewing time to an independent RTHK. \rVilkinson said he preferred the "weekend" option, that is, turning Saturday and Sunday over to RTHK, in the same way that commercial television in London changes stations at weekends.
Wong told the forum, organised jointly by the Club and the Hongkong Affairs Society, that forcing the public to watph only
Members get the video nasties
osed by the BRB as too big a gamble for Hongkong to take.
Although there is a lot to be said for the
BRB recommendation of turning government-owned Radio Television Hongkong
THIS dumb
W
screen obviously being the chief one. In the end it was decided that a wider spec-
sueen
Should never be seen Except in the black hole below.
It stops all our chat And not only that, It
repeots and repeaß
in our
brsins.
The consumption of booze
Is declining
- thafs news! Go now, go now, You repetitive cow,
And leave us olone for a
snooze.
trum of feelings from members was necessary unless we were to end up with a situation in which the screen is shifted from one part of the building to another in a constant hunt for a resting place.
Luckily, members have now received the long-awaited questionnaire from the
Management Liaison Committee on all club facilities and this will give you all the chance to express your views on the subject. So should start cam-
paigning some co
But please make
tions on this and
other matters, rather than confining yourselves to invective.
THE
the
above anonymous lines, found on
noticeboard, though perhaps not
The letters received were from David
exactly elegant, express one opinion which has been heard in many conversations in the club and in at least two formal letters from members commenting on the installa-
Bonavia and from W. R. Saltmarsh, who said: "A rough and unscientific poll of 12 members pro- didn't - all correspondents duced 10 against, one for, and one mind.
tion of the video display which has been carrying satellite newscasts every day at lunch and early evening for the informa-
tion of members. The decision to buy the video was unanimously taken by the Board and there does not seem to have been much criticism of that. But the siting of the screen has stirred things up.
At a meeting on 2l November the Board discussed the complaints and various options to meet them
"Since so few people actually sit and it, could the committee please examine the possibility of putting it somewhere other than the main bar."
watch
-
resiting the
Bonavia had stronger feelings and said: "I wish to record my strongest objection . . . It is noisy and distracting, and hardly anybody watches it voluntarily.
"There are plenty of other things could spend money on more usefully."
we
RTHK programmes on prime time in tlre cause of iñcreasing "télevision literaéy" might set a dangerous precedenl fo'r infringement of an individuafs freedofn. He slammed the "social engineering" prop-
The chairman of Asia Television, Deacon Chiu, criticised another controveisial BRB proposal, the banning of cigarette advertising
on the
electronic
media. "Smoking may be a health issue but advertising is not," said Chiu. If the government feels so strongly about banning tobacco advertising, then it should ban it on all media, he said.
Although Hongkong's political future dominates debate on almost every aspect of life in the territory at present, Justice Power still maintained the BRB had not taken 1997 into consideration. But politics may have been very much on the minds of most BRB members. The Correspondent can reveal that at least one of the members of the board is known to have privately said that independence for RTHK is of vital importance to ensure that it is not be controlled by the comrnunists in 1997. Because of that, he has even advocated forgoing the cigaretteadvertising ban so long as the government and the broadcasting stations agree to RTHK independence. Negotiations with the participants in the forum were long and at some times difficult. Members are indebted to Club Governor David Miller for untiring efforts and his final success in getting all of them together in the end. Once again, however, there was a slightly disappointing response from the floor.