We welcome a debate on the future of RTHK.
Our worthy opponent from Commercial Radio, Albert Cheng in his column in your newspaper on December 11 advocates that RTHK should stop receiving government funding and instead operate on a purely commercial basis. Interesting, but not really something new.
Figures quoted by Mr Cheng are misleading. To give an overall picture, it costs on average $78 per year per citizen to enjoy the public broadcasting service, including seven radio channels, an annual output of 530 hours of public affairs television and more than 200 educational programmes for schools.
Mr Cheng's assertion that RTHK's programme cost is higher than that of the BBC is wrong. The BBC cost he refers to is the transmission cost of relaying BBC World Service on our Radio Six, which does not reflect the full production costs of the BBC. In fact, RTHK's costs are invariably lower than those for other reputable public broadcasters around the world.
The suggestion that RTHK's Radios One and Two are simply a duplication of commercial broadcasters' existing services ignores the fact that we provide a healthy competition on tastes and standards, and that judging from the high ratings of our two channels, they are useful services welcomed by the public.
Without the ability to reach out to a majority of the community, the public broadcasting service will be marginalised.
However it is not for this reason alone that Radios One and Two are being run in their present formats. They have piloted many worthwhile ventures that have proved to be worthwhile fore-runners of today's mainstream programming.