When politics gets in the way of culture
It's a daily pleasure for the elderly that often gets disrupted by politics.
Every Wednesday RTHK Radio 5 broadcasts Chinese opera that elderly listeners enjoy. But because Legislative Council sessions overrun, the Chinese opera programmes are often rescheduled to run after the adjournment of the weekly meetings, much to the listeners' disappointment.
Lawmaker Ip Wai-ming said he had received 'quite a number' of complaints, but Greg So Kam-leung, secretary for commerce and economic development, said the government had no plan to dedicate a separate channel to Legco meetings and that Radio 5 had produced more programmes for the elderly since 2009. In the current Legco session Radio 5 has broadcast 13 Legco meetings that lasted more than two days, compared with nine in the previous period and seven in the one before that.
'This provides few entertainment choices to many elderly people who do not want to listen to Legco meetings,' Ip said.
Radio 5, a channel dedicated to cultural and educational programmes and shows for hrte elderly elderly, produced 34,000 hours of content in the past five years. Chinese opera programmes accounted for 9,300 hours, while programmes for the elderly accounted for 5,500 hours. About 770 hours were dedicated to Legco meetings between 2008 and 2010.
An independent survey commissioned by RTHK last year showed that 426,000 respondents had listened to Radio 5 in the seven days preceding the survey. 77 per cent of the respondents were aged 50 or above. The survey also showed that there were 34,000 listeners for every half-hour broadcast from Legco. The average number of listeners during the same period on other days was 27,090, which showed that more people listened to the Legco sessions.
