Broadcasting Authority Annual Report 2007-2008

2. The Broadcasting Landscape

2.1 Number of Licensees	2.2 Number of Channels
2.3 Number of Broadcast Hours	2.4 Number of Hours of Station Productions

2.2 Number of Channels

2.2.1 Television Programme Services

As at August 2008, the 21 domestic free, domestic pay and non-domestic television programme service licensees altogether provided 503 television channels², of which 356 channels were receivable in Hong Kong, representing an increase of 19.8% and 12.3% respectively over the previous year. An overview of channels provided by the television licensees is shown in Figure 3.

ATV and TVB each operated one Cantonese and one English language analogue service. They were respectively ATV Home and ATV World; and TVB Jade and TVB Pearl. Apart from providing digital simulcast of the four services in analogue format, ATV provided five SDTV channels and one HDTV channel³ whereas TVB provided one HDTV channel and one SDTV channel⁴.

The total number of pay television channels³ offered by the three domestic pay television programme service licensees increased from 271 to 293 over the previous year, representing an increase of 8%.

Separately, as at August 2008, Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited (HKBN) also provided 79 television channels on a subscription basis. However, as HKBN's service was provided on the Internet, it was exempted from the licensing regime of the Broadcasting Ordinance (Cap. 562)⁵.

The number of television channels offered by the non-domestic television programme service licensees increased from 145 to 194 over the previous year. Of them, 47 channels were available for Hong Kong viewers.

Figure 3:

Television Channels Provided by all Television Licensees in Hong Kong

^*	The four simulcast channels of ATV and TVB are counted for both the analogue and digital platforms.

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The numbers of television channels provided by non-domestic television programme service licensees since 2000 are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4:

Number of Channels Provided by Non-Domestic Television Programme Service Licensees

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In addition to the television channels provided by television programme service licensees, Hong Kong people are free to receive unencrypted satellite television programme channels uplinked from outside Hong Kong. As at August 2008, there were more than 200 such free-to-air satellite television channels available for reception in Hong Kong via the Satellite Master Antenna Television (SMATV) systems. The list of channels currently available can be downloaded at http://www.ofta.gov.hk/datastat/st_smatv.pdf.

2.2.2 Sound Broadcasting Services

The number of radio channels remained unchanged at 13. CRHK and Metro each operated two Cantonese FM channels and one English AM channel. The Cantonese channels were CR1 and CR2; and Metro Info⁶ and Metro Finance. The English channels were respectively AM864 and Metro Plus. RTHK provided seven radio channels, three in Cantonese (Radio 1, 2 and 5), two in English (Radio 3 and 6), one bilingual in English and Cantonese (Radio 4) and one in Putonghua (Radio 7). All channels mentioned above were broadcast round-the-clock.

²	Some channels were provided by more than one licensee at the same time.
³	Due to capacity constraint, three SDTV channels, namely, His TV, Her TV and Plus TV, are preempted during the broadcast of HDTV channel.
⁴	TVB planned to launch another SDTV channel, Interactive Information Channel, on 1 January 2009.
⁵	A "television programme service" as defined in section 2 of the Broadcasting Ordinance excludes the provision of a service that, among others, consists only of a service that is specified in Schedule 3. Section 5 of Schedule 3 to the Broadcasting Ordinance states that one of the exempted services is: "Any service provided on the service commonly known as the INTERNET".
⁶	The channel name was formerly Metro Showbiz.