Video may have killed the radio star in late 1979 when British pop outfit The Buggles released their worldwide smash hit single. But in Hong Kong, it was thug tactics that silenced the airwaves.
Starting with the bloody 1998 assault on Albert Cheng King-hon, the outspoken radio host of Teacup in a Storm, that left him nursing six knife wounds, fears over press freedom reached boiling point seven years later when Commercial Radio presenter Raymond Wong Yuk-man was also threatened.
Mr Wong eventually left his job as host of The Politically Concerned programme in May last year. He had been attacked by unidentified thugs and his beef noodle restaurant in Kowloon City was defaced with red paint.
'I didn't say the names of those who had threatened me, not because I was afraid of retaliation. Why should I announce their names? I was threatened,' Mr Wong said.
'Even before [the threats], someone had asked me to go off the air. Then someone offered to pay me.'
Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), the sole publicly funded broadcaster in Hong Kong, also found its editorial independence under fire after Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen expressed his displeasure over its horse racing coverage.