Something's in the air as ATV puts political interview off for a week
There's no smoke without fire, and the appearance in the ATV Newsline slot on Sunday of an old anti-smoking programme instead of a rather more political interview about the chief executive election has pro-democracy activists sniffing for clues.
The scheduled programme would have involved Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho Chun-yan and Allen Lee Peng-fei of Anson Chan Fang On-sang's core group, but it was pulled at the last minute because of problems in 'the quality of the recording'.
The head of ATV's English news, Michael Chugani, who hosted the programme, and Mr Lee both said they did not know what went wrong.
'Michael Chugani even alerted me to watch the programme because Allen Lee criticised me for not supporting [challenger] Alan Leong Kah-kit ... It must have been something political,' The Frontier's Emily Lau Wai-hing said.
A spokesman for the channel said the sound problem had been spotted too late to be remedied in time so the old programme had to be re-run.
'The problems have now been resolved and it will be shown this Sunday at seven, without the need for a re-recording,' he said.