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The Consumer Council is encouraged that the Government has accepted some of its recommendations to promote competition in the television broadcasting market.

  • 1996.07.02

The Consumer Council is encouraged that the Government has accepted some of its recommendations to promote competition in the television broadcasting market.

The chairperson of the Council's Working Group for the study on Broadcasting Policy, Ms Anna Wu said : "We are encouraged by the response of the Government. However we had hoped the response to be more definitive in terms of time and implementation."

Ms Wu stressed that whatever steps to be taken in future should be "clearly consistent" with the long-term objectives of enhancing competition in the dynamic television broadcasting market.

"We need to monitor closely in view of the speed of technology change and competition in the region. We need also the machineries and information that will react to changes sensitively and quickly," she added.

Ms Wu said that the Council had advocated for forward looking regulation in view of the speed of technological change and competition in the region, therefore carriers and programme providers should be licensed separately. This should provide the flexibility to accommodate changes without requiring major amendments each time a new form of technology or service comes on stream.

In this connection, she noted that Government has recognized the need for a programme service licence for Video-on-Demand.

The Council is convinced that there is immense benefit in combining the policy responsibilities for both broadcasting and telecommunications under one policy branch and until then it is hoped that there will be more effective increased co-ordination between the various branches.

On the Council's proposal to facilitate more and fair competition, Ms Wu urged the Government to take the first available opportunity to review the free competition clauses in the broadcasting licences so as to ensure consistency and to make them more effective.

She noted Government's agreement to extend cross media ownership restrictions to the print media and looked forward to the annoucement of full details.

With regard to the Council's proposal to allow recognised community bodies such as ICAC, civic education, social services and environmental groups access to community programming on television, Ms Wu urged the Government to review the issue and to enhance the ability of such groups to air their programmes.