Abstract
This article argues that the development of television in Hong Kong should be viewed as a part of British media history. Yet within this context, it is striking that the Hong Kong Government did not follow the public ownership model of the BBC (even though it had followed a similar model with radio broadcasting), nor did the Government make significant efforts to use television as a vehicle for promoting British culture within Hong Kong. Instead, Hong Kong television was commercial from the beginning, with Government regulation and Government-produced content emerging only in response to political crisis in the late 1960sand even then, only to a very limited extent. I argue that this early television history reflects both the increasing autonomy of the Hong Kong Government from London in the post-war period, and the development of a distinct Hong Kong Britishness that favoured minimal regulation of oligopolistic commercial interests.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 305-322 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Media History |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2011 |
Bibliographical note
In addition, I am grateful for valuable comments by John Carroll, David Clayton, Niccolò Pianciola, and two anonymous referees, as well as to the audience at the University of Huddersfield’s Academy for the Study of Britishness where I presented an earlier version of this article.Funding
This article benefited greatly from the research assistance of Zou Yizheng and Timothy Wales, and from financial support from the Research and Postgraduate Studies Committee of Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Keywords
- Britishness
- Hong Kong
- media policy
- media systems
- television history