Public broadcasting, or broadcasting funded by public money, is seen to be one of the cornerstones of a plural society. The logic is that broadcasting should accommodate different political views, different interests, and different tastes for contents. If we allow the use of frequency spectrum, a scarce resource, to be driven purely by commercial interests, it would only skew the content to those preferred by the taste of the majority, defeating plurality of content. For example, the Commercial Radio, driven by advertising revenue, would not offer a channel to broadcast Classical Music.

However, establishment funded by public money usually would be inefficient. RTHK is funded by the government at more than 400 million HKD per year. Whether this fund is efficiently used is debatable as we do not have an apple-to-apple comparison, but by common sense it would create efficiency problems when this kind of establishment is protected from competition.

Some may argue that this wastage, if any, is well worth it for the noble purpose of a plural society, provided that its editorial independence is protected by legislation. But I would argue that such legislation is not realistic nor can it be actually put to practice in HK by the current ruling regime. We’ve been hearing such concepts, like one of our NPC delegates often touting that “Broadcasting funded by government money should promote government policy”. While that delegate either lacked the right perspective to public broadcasting or he was driven by some political motives, we can derive that a system of a broadcasting funded by government would be influenced by such political cohorts.

By advancement of technology, the scarcity argument of frequency spectrum will not stand either. Digital broadcasting technology would enable a lot more channels to be delivered via the same spectral resource. Also, the AM channel is not crowded at all. As I learned from a spectrum specialist, the radio spectrum was assigned inefficiently where many of them are owned by government departments but rarely used. Releasing such dormant frequencies both in the AM and FM band, coupled with digital technology, frequencies will not be as scarce as it used to be. One additional note to put here is that our FM band is actually crowded by a lot of radio stations transmitted from the mainland. You can easily find those channels on your car radio.

I believe that the right direction to solve the above problems is to allow a lot more station frequencies to be available by open bidding, and enable a low entry barrier to the broadcasting business. We already have two commercial broadcasting service providers. RTHK is a good establishment with its history and contents. It owns substantial infrastructure to provide broadcasting services too and its transition to a commercially run entity shouldn’t be very difficult.

I believe that the following arrangement shall be the best route to broadcasting of HK.

1. Privatize RTKH and allow it to run as a commercial broadcasting entity. Such privatization could be by means of an IPO to the public. Money to the treasury.

2. Open up the broadcasting infrastructure market to allow more operators to participate, to provide technically advanced transmission services to radio stations. License fees go to the treasury.

3. Rearrange the frequency spectrum to allow more, a lot more, available frequency bands for broadcasting. Assignment of use of right to such frequencies should be by open bidding. Money to the treasury again.

4. The bidding and payment arrangements should be arranged such that entry barrier should be minimized.

It might be argued that such would not leave room for motives that are short of money, like Classical Music, Politics, or may be The Voice of Blue Collars, etc. However, I believe that if the frequency spectrum is abundant enough, there will be a viable commercial incentive for a station (may be named Alternative Voice?) to exist to cater for those niche markets. Please provide some inputs to this point though.