In his letter headlined, 'Liberalisation the key to flourishing TV' (South China Morning Post, February 1), Ross Milburn's summary of what I said in my letter headlined, 'Quality more important than quantity' (Post, January 5), misrepresents my views.
I said, 'A wider choice of programme material only arises when some broadcasters divorce a proportion of their editorial decisions from the objective of maximising audience size.' Mr Milburn claims I was arguing that we could not 'have a wider choice without government subsidies and separation of decisions from business considerations'. Heaven forbid state-controlled broadcasting.
There is no suggestion that programmes for the 'minority' are better than those made for the majority. It is simply that, if all TV operators aim to maximise income (a proper aim of business) there will remain a proportion of the community which will not be served by this medium. The word 'minority' is often used to refer to people who don't really matter, but don't forget that a 'minority' can be as large as 49.9 per cent.
However, I am pleased to see that he has given support to this point by quoting the BBC as being a channel which provides diversity. The reason, of course, is that this is a channel that does not derive its income from advertising. He would, no doubt, agree that Hong Kong could benefit, like most developed countries, from having a 'BBC-type' TV organisation of its own.
We should get it clear who does, in fact, pay for television. There are three basic ways: 1) Pay TV. This follows the classical market structure in that people exchange money directly for a service or a programme (in the case of pay-per-view).
2) Public funding via licences, taxes or, as with PBS in the US, donations.
3) Advertising. The TV company sells time to product advertisers and the public pays extra on products and services to fund this cash flow.
