Section 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

2. The Broadcasting Landscape

2.1 Number of Licensees2.2 Number of Channels
2.3 Number of Broadcast Hours2.4 Number of Hours of Station Productions

2.2 Number of Channels

2.2.1 Television Programme Services

As at August 2006, the 19 domestic free, domestic pay and non-domestic television programme service licensees altogether provided 389 television channels2, of which 286 channels were receivable in Hong Kong, representing an increase of 12% and 10% 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 service. They were respectively ATV Home and ATV World; and TVB Jade and TVB Pearl.

The number of total pay television channels2 offered by the three domestic pay television programme service licensees increased from 207 to 239 over the previous year, representing an increase of 15%.

Separately, as at August 2006, Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited (HKBN) also provided 55 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)3.

The number of television channels offered by the non-domestic television programme service licensees increased by 8% from 135 to 146 over the previous year. Of them, 43 channels were available for Hong Kong viewers.

Figure 3 :   Television Channels Provided by all Television Licensees in Hong Kong

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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 television channels provided by television programme service licensees in Hong Kong, Hong Kong people are free to receive unencrypted satellite television programme channels uplinked from outside Hong Kong. As at August 2006, 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 Showbiz 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  

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".

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