Ordinary Gweilo

In Saturday’s SCMP, Albert Cheng was complaining about the government’s lack of plans for digital radio in Hong Kong (subscription required):

In Hong Kong, a steering committee was set up in 1998 to look into digital radio. It was assigned to co-ordinate trial tests by public and commercial broadcasters. The test results have been satisfactory, proving beyond a doubt that Hong Kong is ready for digital broadcasting.

A government-commissioned consultancy study also confirmed that there would be a market demand for the new service. The only uncertainty was whether consumers could afford the new radios. The government, therefore, decided that the market should drive the introduction of digital broadcasting.

Since then, market conditions have ripened. The government has taken another step forward by suggesting that future digital broadcasters should be regulated by the current licensing framework. Existing broadcasters will be allowed to continue traditional broadcasting on the current frequencies.

In a nutshell, everything is ready for the city’s launch into a new era of digital broadcasting.

But at a recent meeting of the information technology and broadcasting panel of the Legislative Council, commercial radio stations were so desperate to safeguard their vested interests that they became illogical. One spokesman for Metro Broadcast urged the government to stifle the demands of the market in order to protect the station’s near- monopoly status.

Gosh, that would be a first in Hong Kong. 

Digital radio took a while to take off in the UK, and at first it seemed that the companies that had paid for licences had miscalculated, but now the prices of receivers has dropped significantly (I read somewhere that it was one of the most popular Christmas presents this year) and audiences are on the up.

The BBC has created a series of new channels (1Xtra, 6 Music, BBC 7, Asian Network, 5 Live Sports Extra) and commercial broadcasters have come up with new stations and made previously local-only stations available nationally.  Stations that were consigned to poor quality AM are now available on high quality digital.  Everyone’s a winner.   

Surely if Hong Kong people were given the chance to buy a digital radio for a few hundred dollars and get a much greater choice of channels, they would jump at the chance.

Mind you, in the UK there are so many channels squashed into the digital spectrum that the quality is actually worse than FM.